Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 56, No. 345, July, 1844

A few bits of wall scattered over the corn-fields are all that now remains of the dwellings of the men who built this temple for their city, and who, by its splendour, deluded the Athenians into a belief of greater wealth than they possessed.

Our ascent to the theatre, the day after, proved to be a very steep one, of half an hour on mule-back; in making which, we scared two of those prodigious birds, the ospreys, who, having reconnoitred us, forthwith began to wheel in larger and larger sweeps, and at last made off for the sea. We found the interior of the theatre occupied by an audience ready for our arrival; it consisted of innummerable hawks, the chaoli just mentioned, which began to scream at our intrusion. The ospreys soon returned, and were plainly only waiting our departure to subside upon their solitary domain. We would not be a soft-billed bird for something in this neighbourhood; no song would save them from the hawks' supper. Having luxuriated on the 24th of May for full four hours in this enchanting neighbourhood, we were sorry to return to our inn—and such an inn! We departed abruptly, and probably never to return; but we shall think of Segeste in Hyde Park, or as we pass the candlestick Corinthians of Whitehall. Thucydides13 relates that a prevailing notion in his time was, that the Trojans after losing Troy went first to Sicily, and founded there Egesta and Eryx. Now, as on the same authority the first Greek colony was Naxos, also in Sicily, Greeks and Trojans (strange coincidence!) must have met again on new ground after the Iliad was all acted and done with, like a tale that is told.

On our return towards Palermo, one of our party having a touch of ague, we crossed the street to the apothecary, (at Calatafrini, our night's halt,) and smelling about his musty galenicals, amidst a large supply of malvas which were drying on his counter, the only wholesome-looking thing amidst his stores, we asked if he had any quinine. "Sicuro!" and he presented us with a white powder having a slightly bitter taste, which, together with an ounce of green tea, to be dispensed in pinches of five grains on extraordinary occasions, comes, he says, from the East. On our observing that the quinine, if such at all, was adulterated, and that this was too bad in a country of malaria, where it was the poor man's only protection, he looked angry; but we rose in the esteem of peasants in the shop, who said to each other—"Ed ha ragione il Signor." Wanting a little soda, we were presented with sub-carbonate of potash as the nearest approach to it—a substitution which suggested to us a classical recollection from Theocritus; namely, that in this same Sicily, 2000 years ago, a Syracusan husband is rated by his dame for sending her soda for her washing in place of potash, the very converse of what our old drug-vender intended to have washed our inside withal.

The Roman Catholic religion patronises painting oddly here; not a cart but is adorned with some sacred subject. Every wretched vehicle that totters under an unmerciful load, with one poor donkey to draw six men, has its picture of Souls in Purgatory, who seem putting their hands and heads out of the flames, and vainly calling on the ruffians inside to stop. We read Viva la Divina Providenza, in flaming characters on the front board of a carriole, while the whip is goading the poor starved brute who drags it; for these barbarians in the rear of European civilization, plainly are of opinion that a cart with a sacred device shall not break down, though its owner commit every species of cruelty.

The next day found us again installed at our old quarters in Palermo, where, during our brief remaining stay, we visit a conchologist, before which event we had no notion that Sicily was so rich in shells. Two sides of a moderately large room are entirely devoted to his collection. Here we saw a piece of wood nearly destroyed by the Teredo navalis, or sailor's bore, who seems more active and industrious here than elsewhere, and seldom allows himself to be taken whole. Out of hundreds of specimens, three or four perfect ones were all that this collector could ever manage to extract, the molluscous wood-destroyer being very soft and fragile. His length is about three inches, his thickness that of a small quill; he lodges in a shell of extreme tenuity, and the secretion which he ejects is, it seems, the agent which destroys the wood, and pushes on bit by bit the winding tunnel. But his doings are nothing to the working of another wafer-shelled bivalve, whose tiny habitations are so thickly imbedded in the body of a nodule of flint as to render its exterior like a sieve, diducit scopulos aceto. What solvent can the chemist prepare in his laboratory comparable to one which, while it dissolves silex, neither harms the insect nor injures its shell. Amongst the fossils we notice cockles as big as ostrich eggs, clam-shells twice the size of the largest of our Sussex coast, and those of oysters which rival soup-plates. We had indeed once before met with them of equal size in the lime-beds at Corneto. Judging by the oysters, there must indeed have been giants in those days. But this collection was chiefly remarkable for its curious fossil remains of animals from Monte Grifone. In this same Monte Grifone, which we went to visit, is one of the largest of the caves of bones of which so many have been discovered—bones of various kinds, some of small, some of very large animals, mixed together pell-mell, and constituting a fossil paste of scarcely any thing besides. None of the geologists, in attempting to explain these deposits, sufficiently enter into the question of the origin of the enormous quantity, and close juxtaposition, of such heterogeneous specimens.

By eight o'clock we are on board the Palermo steamer, which is to convey us hence to Messina. The baked deck, which has been saturated with the sun's heat all day, is now cooling to a more moderate warmth, and soothing would be the scene but for the noise of women and children. Large liquid stars twinkle here and there, like so many moons on a reduced scale, over the sea, and the night is wholly delightful! A bell rings, which diminishes our numbers, and somewhat clears our deck. The boats which carry off the last loiterers are gone, shaking phosphorus from their gills, and leaving a train of it in their tails; and the many-windowed Pharos of the harbour has all its panes lit up, and twinkles after its own fashion. Round the bay an interrupted crescent of flickering light is reflected in the water, strongest in the middle, where the town is thickest, and runs back; and far behind all lights comes the clear outline of the darkly defined mountain rising over the city. Our own lantern also is up, the authorities have disappeared, Monte Pelegrino begins to change its position, we are in motion, and a mighty light we are making under us, as our leviathan, turning round her head and snuffing the sea, begins to wind out of the harbour. A few minutes more, and the luminous tracery of the receding town becomes more and more indistinct; but the sky is all stars, and the water, save where we break its smoothness, a perfect mirror. Wherever the paddles play, there the sea foams up into yellow light and gerbes of amber-coloured fireballs, caught up by the wheels, and flung off in our track, to float past with incredible rapidity. Men are talking the language of Babel in the cabin; there is amateur singing and a guitar on deck—Orion is on his dolphin—adieu, Palermo!

APPROACH TO MESSINA

The Italian morning presents a beautiful sight on deck to eyes weary and sore with night, as night passes on board steamers. We pass along a coast obviously of singular conformation, and to a geologist, we suppose, full of interest. We encounter a herd of classical dolphins out a-pleasuring. We ask about a pretty little town perched just above the sea, and called Giocosa. By its side lies Tyndaris—classical enough if we spell it right. The snow on Etna is as good as an inscription, and to be read at any distance; but what a deception! they tell us it is thirty miles off, and it seems to rise immediately from behind a ridge of hills close to the shore. The snow cone rises in the midst of other cones, which would appear equally high but for the difference of colour. Patti is a picturesque little borgo, on the hillside, celebrated in Sicily for its manufacture of hardware. In the bay of Melazzo are taken by far the largest supplies of thunny in the whole Mediterranean. From the embayed town so named you have the choice of a cross-road to Messina, (twenty-four miles;) but who would abridge distance and miss the celebrated straits towards which we are rapidly approaching, or lose one hour on land and miss the novelties of volcanic islands, and the first view of Scylla and Charybdis? It is but eight o'clock, but the awning has been stretched over our heads an hour ago. As to breakfast—the meal which is associated with that particular hour of the four-and-twenty to all well regulated minds and stomachs—it consists here of thin veneers of old mahogany-coloured thunny, varnished with oil, and relieved by an incongruous abomination of capers and olives. The cold fowls are infamous. The wine were a disgrace to the sorriest tapster between this and the Alps, and also fiery, like every thing else in this district. Drink it, and doubt not the old result—de conviva Corybanta videbis. (Oh, for muffins and dry toast!) Never mind, we shall soon be at Messina. And now we approach a point from which the lofty Calabrian coast opposite, and the flinty wall of the formidable Scylla, first present themselves, but still as distant objects. In another half hour we are just opposite the redoubtable rock; and here we turn abruptly at right angles to our hitherto course, and find ourselves within the straits, from either side of which the English and the French so often tried the effect of cannon upon each other. It is now what it used to be—fishing ground. The Romans got their finest muræna from the whirlpools of Charybdis.14 The shark (cane di mare) abounding here, would make bathing dangerous were the water smooth; but the rapid whirlpools through which our steam-boat dashes on disdainfully, would, at the same time, make it impossible to any thing but a fish. A passenger assured us he had once seen a man lost in the Vistula, who, from being a great swimmer, trusted imprudently to his strength, and was sucked down by a vortex of far less impetuosity, he thought, than this through which we were moving. From this point till we arrived at Messina, as every body was ripe for bathing, the whole conversation turned naturally on the Messina shark, and his trick of snapping at people's legs carelessly left by the owners dangling over the boat's side. We steam up the straits to our anchorage in about three-fourths of an hour. The approach is fine, very fine. A certain Greek, (count, he called himself,) a great traveller, and we afterwards found not a small adventurer, increases the interest of the approach, by telling us that the hills before us, bubbling up like blisters on chalcedony, have a considerable resemblance, though inferior in character, to those which embellish the Bosphorus and the first view of Constantinople. Inferior, no doubt, in the imposing accessories of mosque and minaret, and of cypresses as big as obelisks, which, rising thickly on the heights, give to the city of Constantinople an altogether peculiar and inimitable charm. Messina is beautifully land-locked. The only possible winds that can affect its port are the north-west and south-east. In summer it is said to enjoy more sea breeze than any other place on the Mediterranean. Our Greek friend, however, says that Constantinople is in this respect not only superior to Messina, but to any other place in the seas of Europe. Pity that the fellows are Turks! We did not find much to interest us within the walls of Messina. There was, to be sure, a fine collection of Sicilian birds, amongst which we were surprised to see several of very exotic shape and plumage. One long-legged fellow, dressed in a dirty white Austrian uniform, with large web-feet, on which he seemed to rest with great complacency, particularly arrested our attention. He stood as high as the Venus di Medici, but by no means so gracefully, and thrust his thick carved beak unceremoniously in your face. His card of address was Phoenicopterus antiquorum. The ancients ate him, and he looked as if he would break your nose if you disputed with him. A very large finch, which we have seen for sale about the streets here and elsewhere in Sicily, rejoices in the imposing name of Fringilla cocco thraustis. He wears his black cravat like a bird of pretension, as he evidently is. The puffin (Puffinus Anglorum) also frequents these rocks, though a very long way from the Isle of Wight. No! Messina, though very fine, is not equal to Palermo, with its unrivaled Marina, compared to which Messina is poorly off indeed, in her straggling dirty commerce-doing quay. We went out to see a little garden, which contains half a dozen zare-trees and as many beautiful birds in cages. We are disappointed at the poverty of our dessert in this region of fruitfulness—a few bad oranges, some miserable cherries, and that abomination the green almond. We observe, for the first time, to-day folks eating in the streets the crude contents of a little oval pod, which contains one or two very large peas, twice the size of any others. These are the true cicer, the proper Italian pea. Little bundles of them are tied up for sale at all the fruit stalls, and men are seen all the day long eating these raw peas, and offering them to each other as sugar-plums.

In the Corso we see a kind of temporary theatre, the deal sides of which are gaudily lined with Catania silk, and on its stage a whole dramatis personæ of sacred puppets. It is lighted by tapers of very taper dimensions, and its stalle are to be let for a humble consideration to the faithful or the curious. It turns out to be a religious spectacle, supported on the voluntary system—but there is something for your money. A vast quantity of light framework, to which fireworks, chiefly of the detonating kind, are attached, are already going off, and folk are watching till it be completed. Then the evening's entertainment will begin, and a miser indeed must he be, or beyond measure resourceless, who refuses halfpence for such choice festivities. Desirous to make out the particular representation, we get over the fence in order to examine the figures of the drama on a nearer view. A smartly dressed saint in a court suit, but whom mitre and crosier determine to be a bishop, kneels to a figure in spangles, a virgin as fond of fine clothes as the Greek Panageia; while on the other side, with one or two priests in his train, is seen a crowd in civil costume. A paper cloud above, surrounded by glories of glass and tinsel, is supported by two solid cherubs equal to the occasion, and presents to the intelligent a representation of—we know not what! Fire-works here divide the public with the drum—to one or other all advertisement in Sicily is committed. A sale of fish and flesh, theatric entertainments, processions, and church invitations, are all by tuck of drum, or by squib and cracker. How did they get on before the invention of gunpowder? If a new coffeehouse is established, a couple of drums start it advantageously, and beat like a recruiting party up and down the street, to the dismay of all Forestieri. The drum tells you when the thunny is at a discount, and fire-works are let off at fish stalls when customers are slack.

An old tower, five miles off, is called the telegraph. People go there for the panorama at the expense of three horses and two hours; but you are repaid by two sea views, either of which had been sufficient. Messina, its harbour, the straits, the opposite coast of Calabria, Scylla, and Rhegium, (famed for its bergamot,) are on the immediate shore, and a most striking chain of hills for the background, which, at a greater distance, have for their background the imposing range of the Abruzzi. The Æolian islands rise out of the sea in the happiest positions for effect. Stromboli on the extreme right detaches his grey wreath of smoke, which seems as if it proceeded out of the water, (for Stromboli is very low,) staining for a moment the clear firmament, which rivals it in depth of colour. Some of the volcanic group are so nearly on a level with the water, that they look like the backs of so many leviathans at a halt. The sea itself lies, a waveless mirror, smooth, shining, slippery, and treacherous as a serpent's back—"miseri quibus intentata nites," say we.

JOURNEY TO TAORMINA

We left Messina under a sky which no painter would or could attempt; indeed, it would not have looked well on paper, or out of reality. There are certain unusual, yet magnificent appearances in nature, from which the artist conventionally abstains, not so much from the impotence of art, as that the nearer his approach to success the worse the picture. At one time the colours were like shot or clouded silk, or the beautiful uncertainty of the Palamida of these shores, or the matrix of opal; at another, the Pacific Ocean above, of which the continuity is often for whole months entire, was broken into gigantic continents and a Polynesia of rose-coloured islands that no ships might approach; while in this nether world the middle of the Calabro-Sicilian strait was occupied by a condensation of vapour, (one could never profane them by the term of sea-mist or fog,) the most subtile and attenuated which ever came from the realms of cloud-compelling Jove. This fleecy tissue pursued its deliberate progress from coast to coast, like a cortege of cobwebs carrying a deputation from the power-looms of Arachne in Italy to the rival silk-looms at Catania. We pass the dry beds of mountain torrents at every half mile, ugly gashes on a smooth road; and requiring too much caution to leave one's attention to be engaged by many objects altogether new and beautiful. The rich yellow of the Cactus, and the red of the Pomegranate, and the most tender of all vegetable greens, that of the young mulberry, together with a sweet wilderness of unfamiliar plants, are not to be perfectly enjoyed on a fourfooted animal that stumbles, or on a road full of pitfalls. We shall only say that the Cynara cardunculus, (a singularly fine thistle or wild artichoke;) the prickly uncultivated love-apple, (a beautiful variety of the Solanum,) of which the decoction is not infrequently employed in nephritic complaints; the Ferula, sighing for occupation all along the sea-shore, and shaking its scourge as the wind blows; the Rhododendron, in full blossom, planted amongst the shingles; the Thapsia gargarica, with its silver umbel, looking at a short distance like mica, (an appearance caused by the shining white fringe of the capsule encasing its seed,) and many other strange and beautiful things, were the constant attendants of our march. We counted six or seven varieties of the spurge, (Euphorbium,) each on its milky stem, and in passing through the villages had Carnations as large as Dahlias flung at us by sunburnt urchins posted at their several doors. The sandy shore for many miles is beautifully notched in upon by tiny bays like basins, on which boats lie motionless and baking in the sun, or oscillate under a picturesque rock, immersed up to its shoulders in a green hyaloid, which reflects their forms from a depth of many fathoms. On more open stretches of the shore, long-drawn ripples of waves of tiny dimension are overrunning and treading on one another's heels for miles a-head, and tapping the anchored boat "with gentle blow." The long-horned oxen already spoken of, toil along the seaside road like the horses on our canal banks, and tug the heavy felucca towards Messina—a service, however, sometimes executed by men harnessed to the towing-cord, who, as they go, offend the Sicilian muses by sounds and by words that have little indeed of the Δωριζ αοιδα. The gable ends of cottages often exhibit a very primitive windmill for sawing wood within doors. It is a large wheel, to the spokes of which flappers are adjusted, made of coarse matting, and so placed as to profit by the ordinary sea breeze; and, while the wind is thus sawing his planks for him, the carpenter, at his door, carries on his craft. We pass below not a few fortresses abutting over the sea, or perched on the mountain tops. Many of these are of English construction, and date from the occupation of the island during the French war: in a word, the whole of this Sicilian road is so variously lovely, that if we did not know the cornice between Nice and Genoa, we should say it was quite unrivaled, being at once in lavish possession of all the grand, and most of the milder elements of landscape composition. It is long since it became no wonder to us that the greatest and in fact the only, real pastoral poet should have been a Sicilian; but it is a marvel indeed, that, having forgotten to bring his Eclogues with us, we cannot, through the whole of Sicily, find a copy of Theocitus for sale, though there is a Sicilian translation of him to be had at Palermo. As he progresses thus delightfully, a long-wished for moment awaits the traveller approaching towards Giardini—turning round a far projecting neck of land, Etna is at last before him! A disappointment, however, on the whole is Etna himself, thus introduced. He looks far below his stature, and seems so near, that we would have wagered to get upon his shoulders and pull his ears, and return to the little town to dine; the ascent also, to the eye, seems any thing but steep; nor can you easily be brought to believe that such an expedition is from Giardini a three days' affair, except, indeed, that yonder belt of snow in the midst of this roasting sunshine, has its own interpretation, and cannot be mistaken. Alas! In the midst of all our flowers there was, as there always is, the amari aliquid—it was occasioned here by the flies. They had tasked our improved capacity for bearing annoyances ever since we first set foot in Sicily; but here they are perfectly incontrollable, stinging and buzzing at us without mercy or truce, not to be driven off for a second, nor persuaded to drown themselves on any consideration. Verily, the honey-pots of Hybla itself seem to please these troublesome insects less than the flesh-pots of Egypt.

The next day begins inauspiciously for our ascent to Taormina; but the attendants of the excursion are already making a great noise, without which nothing can be done in either of the two Sicilies. A supply of shabby donkeys are brought and mounted, and, once astride, we begin to ascend, the poor beasts tottering under our weight, and by their constant stumbling affording us little inclination to look about. It takes about three-fourths of an hour of this donkey-riding to reach the old notched wall of the town. Two Taorminian citizens at this moment issue from under its arch, in their way down, and guessing what we are, offer some indifferent coins which do not suit us, but enable us to enter into conversation. We demand and obtain a cicerone, of whom we are glad to get rid after three hours' infliction of his stupidity and endurance of his ignorance, without acquiring one idea, Greek, Roman, Norman, or Saracen, out of all his erudition. After going through the whole tour with such a fellow for a Hermes, we come at last upon the far-famed theatre, where we did not want him. Here, however, a very intelligent attendant, supported by the king of Naples on a suitable pension of five baiocchi a-day, takes us out of the hands of the Philistine, and with a plan of the ground to aid us, proceeds to give an intelligible, and, as appears to us, a true explanation of the different parts of the huge construction, in the area of which we stand delighted. He directed our attention to a large arched tunnel, under and at right angles to the pulpita, and we did not want direction to the thirty-six niches placed at equal distances all round the ellipse, and just over the lowest range of the CUNEI. All niches were, no doubt, for statues; but these might also have been, it pleases some to suppose, for the reverberation of applause; and they quote something about "Resonantia Vasa" from Macrobius, adding, that such niches were once probably lined with brass. Of bolder speculatists, some believe the kennel to have been made with a similar intention. Others hold that it may have been a concealed way for introducing lions and tigers to the arena! Now, what if it were a drain for the waters, which, in bad weather, soon collect to a formidable height in such a situation? Whether for voice, or wild beasts, or drainage, or none of these objects, there it is. As to the first, we cannot help being sceptical. Did it ever occur to an audience to wish the noise they make greater, and contrive expedients for making it so?