AN ISLAND-JEWEL.

Shannon News, 16 October 1923, Page 4

AN ISLAND-JEWEL.

SET IN TURQUOISE SEA

WHEN CAPRI WAS A DEAU-

VILLE,

Sir Lees‘ Knowles has just dug up a forgotten fragment of British military history. His new book, “The Taking oi Capri,” is a- blank verse translation of an epic poem by Antonio Farace, a priest of the island, relating how the British troops (chiefly Maltese and Corsican), who had held the Island against the French from 180 b to 1808, Tost it to'an expedition sent against them by King Joachim Murat of Naples, the surrender after 15 days' siege being signed by Sir Hudson Lowe—later on chief warder to Napoleon at St. Helena—just four hours before a British fleet arrived with ;a relieving force.

y Capri’s first leap into prominence was when it become the Deauville of the first century A.D. <

TIBERIUS’S GILDED BAR'GE

The enterprising owner of the place, in t)ie year 26, built a villa there and presented it to the Emperor Tiberius. For 11 years the Capri season was opened by the arrival of the Emperor inSa gilded barge with purple awnings, and all summer he and his court would lollunder the shade of climbing vines on cushioned couches set out in marble pergolas from which you looked straight down the brown cliff for 1000 ft. on to the lazy transparence of an aquamarine and turquoise sea.

And then befell Capri the mysterious fate of many fashionable resorts. Someone .probably said t it was getting vulgar and that rich plebeians. were growing too common there. So after the Emperor Tiberius died no one went to Qapri any more and for 1800 years it became a forgotten little fishermen’s island again. , DEN OF DRAGONS.

Two Germans were really responsible for putting the place back on tne map of Europe in the year 1826. They were" artists named Fries and KopiscliV ‘ who, looking for somewhere ? cheap to stop for a painting tour, chose Capri. There they heard the island-legend of a mysterious grotto, whose dark and narrow en-

trance just shows above the surface of the water at the foot of the sheer cliff that forms the island’s northern coast-line. This hole,'maintained the, islanders, led to nothing less than a submarine den of dragons.) Despite these gruesome tales Herren Fries and Kopisch had themselves rowed to the dark hole in the rock and then swam through it—to find no nest of dragons but the “ Blue Grotto ” whose beauty soon made Capri famous throughout Europe arid has provided the island with a steady income ever , since. If you lie-flat on your back in a rowing boat, there is just room, when the sea is calm, to slip through the entrance, and when you raise your head again you are in a vaulted cavern, floating on water of a wonderful translucent blue, caused by light coming up froin below through subrnerged archways in the rock. AN ISLAND-JEWEL. Capri luus now become one of the recognised places where successful novelists spend part of their fortunes which serial rights, book rights ana film rights, British, American, arid Colonial, so quickly amass for them. No happier retreat could bo imagined for the contemplative mind than that little white and green island jewel set in a smooth sea that shines like a polished shield.