Down below, in that more accessible modern settlement, everything was bright and many-tinted; there was movement and noise and colour; a dazzling spot!  The subtle influence of the sea, though it lay four hundred feet lower down, was ever present; one felt oneself on an island.  On reaching these heights that feeling evaporated.  You were embowered in mighty trees, in the midst of which stood the Old Town.

Unlike that other one, it faced due North; it lay, moreover, a few hundred feet higher up.  That alone could not have explained the difference in temperature, one might say in climate, between the two.  To begin with, there was on this tiny upland basin exceptionally deep soil, borne down by the rains of unnumbered centuries from the heights overhead and enabling those shady oaks, poplars, walnuts and apples to shoot up to uncommon size and luxuriance and screen away the sunny beams.  From above, meanwhile, a perennial shower descended.  The moisture-laden sirocco, tearing itself to shreds against the riven summits of the high southern cliffs, dripped ceaselessly upon this verdant oasis in clouds of invisible dew.  You could often enjoy the luxury of a shiver, at night-time, in the Old Town.

It was a stronghold originally; built on these heights for the greater security of the islanders against Saracenic inroads.  When a more peaceful era drew night the population began to decline; they found it more convenient to establish themselves in the new settlement lower down.  Then came the Good Duke Alfred—­that potentate who, as Mr. Eames was wont to say, Nihil quod TETIGIT non ORNAVIT.  He took a fancy to this quaint old citadel which, before his day, could only be reached b a rough mule-track easily defended against invaders.  After constructing a fine road of access with many twists and turnings, wide enough to admit the passage of two of his roomy state carriages driving abreast, he turned his mind to other improvements.  Professing to be an admirer of the good old times, he decided to keep up its traditional character—­it was to remain a fortress, in appearance if not reality.  A massive crenellated rampart, furnished with four gateways and watch-towers at convenient intervals but serving no purpose in particular, grew up around the place; every one of its houses which failed to fit in with the design of this battlemented structure—­and there were a good many of them—­was ruthlessly demolished.  The Old Town was enclosed in a ring.

Desirous, next, of putting an end to the annoying exodus of the natives, he fixed by law the number of inhabitants; there were to be five hundred souls, neither more nor less.  If in any one year the population exceeded that figure, the surplus was taken away, from among the adult males, to work as galley-slaves in his fleet; a deficiency in the requisite number was met by giving new husbands from the lower town, often three or four at a time “with a view to