At Leghorn Cooper engaged a Genovese felucca, “La Bella Genovese,—­a craft of thirty tons, beautiful mould, lateen-rigged, carrying two of that sail and a jib, and ten men for her crew.”  Aboard this small vessel the author and his family spent six days of pure pleasure, yet “somewhat bitten by fleas.”  They touched at Elba and other islands, and skirted the coasts of Tuscany, the Roman States, and so on to Naples, of which Cooper wrote:  “Oh Napoli! glorious, sunny, balmy Napoli!” This cruising along the western coast of Italy in the Bella Genovese suggested to the author one of his favorite stories, “Wing-and-Wing,” which was published twelve years later.  In Naples several weeks were passed at a hotel; thence to a short-time home of their own on the cliffs of Sorrento.  The very air of Italy was a delight to this sunny-hearted sailor, who so deeply felt the charm of all Italian nature.  “The house we have taken,” he wrote, “is said to be the one in which Tasso was born.  It stands on the brow of the cliffs, within the walls of the town, and in plain sight of every object of interest on the bay.  We occupy the principal floor only, though I have taken the entire house.  There is a chapel beneath the grand sala, and kitchens and offices somewhere in those lower regions.  We enter by a porte-cochere into a court which has a well with a handsome marble curb and a flight of broad, marble steps fit for a palace.”  Seaward several rooms led to the sala, fifty feet long, and facing the water.  Cooper tells of its tiled floor, gilded couches, chairs, and marble busts.  The great charm of the house was its terrace, fifty feet long by twenty-five wide, and protected by a stone balustrade, massive and carved, hanging over the blue Mediterranean, and giving to view Vesuvius, Ischia, and all the coast of glorious sea.  Hearing an outcry from his son Paul one day, his father found the boy with his head fast between two of these great spindles—­“in a way that frightened me as well as the youngster himself.  It was like being imbedded in a rock.  Below the terrace runs a narrow beach, where our children delight to play, picking up shells and more than shells,—­ancient mosaics.  There is a little room off from the terrace I use for writing,” and where he could watch the beauty of the sea.  Much of “The Water Witch” was rapidly written in this study on the inspiring terrace of Casa Tasso, Vesuvius in sight.  Daily excursions were made.  When four-of-the-clock threw the rock shadows far over the water, they went a-boating.  On land they made “donkey” and “non-donkey” jaunts. Capo di Monti, overlooking the town landing-place, was also a favorite resting-place, and gave some bright pictures of native life.  By an amusing practice of giving their king—­a fine old mendicant with a lame leg—­and his daily-growing train a grano a day at the gate, Cooper and his family on their excursions were freed from an army of beggars.