This point, once dedicated to Venus, now to Peter—­both, be it remembered, fishers of men—­is one of the most singular in Europe.  The island of Palmaria, rich in veined marbles, shelters the port; so that outside the sea rages, while underneath the town, reached by a narrow strait, there is a windless calm.  It was not without reason that our Lady of Beauty took this fair gulf to herself; and now that she has long been dispossessed, her memory lingers yet in names.  For Porto Venere remembers her, and Lerici is only Eryx.  There is a grotto here, where an inscription tells us that Byron once ’tempted the Ligurian waves.’  It is just such a natural sea-cave as might have inspired Euripides when he described the refuge of Orestes in ‘Iphigenia.’

VI.—­LERICI

Libeccio at last had swept the sky clear.  The gulf was ridged with foam-fleeced breakers, and the water churned into green, tawny wastes.  But overhead there flew the softest clouds, all silvery, dispersed in flocks.  It is the day for pilgrimage to what was Shelley’s home.

After following the shore a little way, the road to Lerici breaks into the low hills which part La Spezzia from Sarzana.  The soil is red, and overgrown with arbutus and pinaster, like the country around Cannes.  Through the scattered trees it winds gently upwards, with frequent views across the gulf, and then descends into a land rich with olives—­a genuine Riviera landscape, where the mountain-slopes are hoary, and spikelets of innumerable light-flashing leaves twinkle against a blue sea, misty-deep.  The walls here are not unfrequently adorned with basreliefs of Carrara marble—­saints and madonnas very delicately wrought, as though they were love-labours of sculptors who had passed a summer on this shore.  San Terenzio is soon discovered low upon the sands to the right, nestling under little cliffs; and then the high-built castle of Lerici comes in sight, looking across, the bay to Porto Venere—­one Aphrodite calling to the other, with the foam between.  The village is piled around its cove with tall and picturesquely coloured houses; the molo and the fishing-boats lie just beneath the castle.  There is one point of the descending carriage road where all this gracefulness is seen, framed by the boughs of olive branches, swaying, wind-ruffled, laughing the many-twinkling smiles of ocean back from their grey leaves.  Here Erycina ridens is at home.  And, as we stayed to dwell upon the beauty of the scene, came women from the bay below—­barefooted, straight as willow wands, with burnished copper bowls upon their heads.  These women have the port of goddesses, deep-bosomed, with the length of thigh and springing ankles that betoken strength no less than elasticity and grace.  The hair of some of them was golden, rippling in little curls around brown brows and glowing eyes.  Pale lilac blent with orange on their dress, and coral beads hung from their ears.