In one of the apartments some rough-looking peasants are eating dinner, a frugal meal:  a dish of unclean polenta, a plate of grated cheese, a basket of wormy figs, and some sour red wine; no bread, no meat.  They looked at us askance, and with no sign of hospitality.  We made friends, however, with the ragged children, one of whom took great delight in exhibiting his litter of puppies; and we at length so far worked into the good graces of the family that the mother was prevailed upon to get us some milk and eggs.  I followed the woman into one of the apartments to superintend the cooking of the eggs.  It was a mere den, with an earth floor.  A fire of twigs was kindled against the farther wall, and a little girl, half-naked, carrying a baby still more economically clad, was stooping down to blow the smudge into a flame.  The smoke, some of it, went over our heads out at the door.  We boiled the eggs.  We desired salt; and the woman brought us pepper in the berry.  We insisted on salt, and at length got the rock variety, which we pounded on the rocks.  We ate our eggs and drank our milk on the terrace, with the entire family interested spectators.  The men were the hardest-looking ruffians we had met yet:  they were making a bit of road near by, but they seemed capable of turning their hands to easier money-getting; and there couldn’t be a more convenient place than this.

When our repast was over, and I had drunk a glass of wine with the proprietor, I offered to pay him, tendering what I knew was a fair price in this region.  With some indignation of gesture, he refused it, intimating that it was too little.  He seemed to be seeking an excuse for a quarrel with us; so I pocketed the affront, money and all, and turned away.  He appeared to be surprised, and going indoors presently came out with a bottle of wine and glasses, and followed us down upon the rocks, pressing us to drink.  Most singular conduct; no doubt drugged wine; travelers put into deep sleep; robbed; thrown over precipice; diplomatic correspondence, flattering, but no compensation to them.  Either this, or a case of hospitality.  We declined to drink, and the brigand went away.

We sat down upon the jutting ledge of a precipice, the like of which is not in the world:  on our left, the rocky, bare side of St. Angelo, against which the sunshine dashes in waves; below us, sheer down two thousand feet, the city of Positano, a nest of brown houses, thickly clustered on a conical spur, and lying along the shore, the home of three thousand people,—­with a running jump I think I could land in the midst of it,—­a pygmy city, inhabited by mites, as we look down upon it; a little beach of white sand, a sailboat lying on it, and some fishermen just embarking; a long hotel on the beach; beyond, by the green shore, a country seat charmingly situated amid trees and vines; higher up, the ravine-seamed hill, little stone huts, bits of ruin, towers, arches.  How still it is!  All the stiller that I can, now and then, catch the sound of an axe, and hear the shouts of some children in a garden below.  How still the sea is!  How many ages has it been so?  Does the purple mist always hang there upon the waters of Salerno Bay, forever hiding from the gaze Paestum and its temples, and all that shore which is so much more Grecian than Roman?