Naples and the Blue Grotto

May 21, 1897

This morning I started out at six to walk downtown – a couple of miles and incidentally to find a barber shop. Naples is built on a hillside and the descent is so steep that the streets are mainly winding. The houses are mostly of a mud brick and from 3 to 7 stories high. The streets in the business and poorer sections of the city are very narrow, often with no sidewalk at all and where any are, they are 3’ – 4’ wide. Some of the wretched streets are not over 10’ – 12’ wide, with 5 and 6 story houses fairly swarming with people and dirt. The sanitary arrangements are horrible and it is strange that a public community, which is civilized, would permit it. Herds of goats were met with the scores, also very large cows usually with a calf by the side; these are driven from door to door and the goats or cow are milked on the spot in the customer’s presence, usually only a glass full to the costumer. The streets being so narrow the goats take the sidewalk as a rule. I have often heard of goats eating tin cans and circus posters, but never believed it, but here I saw goats eating and chewing waste paper from the refuse piles on the streets. The most common beast of burden is the donkey or burro and they are driven singly in carts and haul immense loads in proportion to their size. It seems queer to see a little burro not bigger than a fair sized three months old calf jogging along pulling a load of produce and the whole family perched on the tope beside. All kinds of venders filled the streets with their cry. Bread is carried about and delivered on foot. The bread, macaroni and meat are exposed for sale in the open doorways, right next to the dirty reeking streets, where the odors and dirt are enough to sicken a Turk.

Talk of baccili(sic), Microbes and other germs. This is surely their home. Lovely wild and cultivated strawberries and fine blackberries are on sale, but the surroundings make them unpalatable. Many of the better class houses had nice gardens of flowers, fig, lemon and orange trees. The lemons were large and ripe and we had oranges served us with leaves on the stem. Many of these walls had broken glass set in mortar at the top to prevent trespass. The young ladies are usually plump and fairly good looking. They all wear their hair pompadour and go bare headed, even when dressed up. The cab fare is reasonable – 1 lira, 19 ½ cents – takes one or two people to or from any depot or landing in the city. The street cars are run 1^st and 2^nd class, the only difference being that the former have a dirty cushion to sit on, while the others are rattan. You are in the same car. The street car fare varies from 2 -6? according to the distance.

At nine o’clock we took the boat for Capri and the Blue Grotto. The steamer fare round trip was $2.00, but as they had no wharf you had to pay 12? every time for being taken over in a rowboat both landing and embarking and 4? each way at Capri. We went by way of Sorrento where the finest oranges in Italy are grown, and where a steamer was being loaded from row and sailboats. We saw the house where the poet Tasso was born, the Italian soldiers home and various ruins. Capri is a rocky island in the Bay of Naples. On a rocky precipice at one end were the ruins of the Roman Emperor Tiberius’ villa and in a sandy cove the ruins of his bath. On the northerly end were the ruins of a castle of Frederick Barbarossa. The Blue Grotto is at the north end. The blue water was the lovliest(sic) blue all around the bay. The steamer stopped and we were taken in boats to the grotto; two in a boat besides the oarsman – cost 25? each. The cave is entered through a narrow opening just wide enough to admit the boat and one has to lie down in the boat in order to enter. The cave is 180’ long, 80’ wide, 40’ high in the center and the water is 60’ deep. The only light came from the little entrance and through the water from below. The rock overhead is bluish and the water is the most enchanting blue imaginable. The oars and bottoms of the boats look blue and if you dip your hand in the water, it looks blue. After yelling to hear the echo, we went back to the steamer and then landed at the village of Capri where we had lunch at the Hotel Continental outdoors under an awning, overlooking the Bay of Naples and Vesuvius. We then started out for a walk to the top of the ridge where the main town called Ana Capri is located. The whole island wherever there is any soil is given up to vines, olives, lemons and figs. Every little while we would pass shrines more or less pretentious, erected to the honor of some of the numerous saints Italy possesses. At the top we had the lovliest(sic) view of both sides of the island, but were not halfway up to the rocky extremities at either end. We then took a cab to the landing and a boat to the steamer where boys diving for pennies amused us before the boat started.

One thing one notices here is the large number of soldiers about the streets and several citizens complained to me that the government took all they earned to keep up the army. Another thing is the crowd of beggars, some horribly deformed, that follow you like a swarm of flies. Old and young everywhere whine and beg and follow you for a long way, those deformed exhibiting their misfortune.