Etna Part 3

"The sky was clear, and the immense vault of heaven appeared in awful majesty and splendour. We found ourselves more struck with veneration than below, and at first were at a loss to know the cause, till we observed with astonishment that the number of the stars seemed to be infinitely increased, and the light of each of them appeared brighter than usual. The whiteness of the milky-way was like a pure flame that shot across the heavens, and with the naked eye we could observe cl.u.s.ters of stars that were invisible in the regions below. We did not at first attend to the cause, nor recollect that we had now pa.s.sed through ten or twelve thousand feet of gross vapour, that blunts and confuses every ray before it reaches the surface of the earth. We were amazed at the distinctness of vision, and exclaimed together, 'What a glorious situation for an observatory! had Empedocles had the eyes of Galileo, what discoveries must he not have made!' We regretted that Jupiter was not visible, as I am persuaded we might have discovered some of his satellites with the naked eye, or at least with a small gla.s.s which I had in my pocket."

Brydone wrote a hundred years ago, but his idea of erecting an observatory on Mount Etna was only revived last year, when Prof.

Tacchini the Astronomer Royal at Palermo, communicated a paper to the Accademia Gioenia, ent.i.tled "_Della Convenienza ed utilita di erigere sull' Etna una Stazione Astronomico-Meteorologico_." Tacchini mentions the extraordinary blueness of the sky as seen from Etna, and the appearance of the sun, which is "whiter and more tranquil" than when seen from below. Moreover, the spectroscopic lines are defined with wonderful distinctness. In the evening at 10 o'clock, Sirius appeared to rival Venus, the peculiarities of the ring of Saturn were seen far better than at Palermo; and Venus emitted a light sufficiently powerful to cast shadows; it also scintillated. When the chromosphere of the sun was examined the next morning by the spectroscope, the inversion of the magnesium line, and of the line 1474 was immediately apparent, although it was impossible to obtain this effect at Palermo. Tacchini proposes that an observatory should be established at the Casa Inglesi, in connection with the University of Catania, and that it be provided with a good six-inch refracting telescope, and with meteorological instruments. In this observatory, constant observations should be made from the beginning of June to the end of September, and the telescope should then be transported to Catania, where a duplicate mounting might be provided for it, and observations continued for the rest of the year.

There seems to be every probability that this scheme will be carried out in the course of next year.

During this digression we have been toiling along the slopes of the _Regione Deserta_ and looking at the sky; at length we reach the _Piano del Lago_ or Plain of the Lake, so called because a lake produced by the melting of the snows existed here till 1607, when it was filled up by lava. The air is now excessively cold, and a sharp wind is blowing.

Progress is very slow, the soil consists of loose ashes, and the mules frequently stop; the guide a.s.sures us that the Casa Inglesi is quite near, but the stoppages become so frequent that it seems a long way off; at length we dismount, and drag the mules after us, and after a toilsome walk the small lava-built house, called the Casa Inglesi, is reached (1.30 a.m., temperature 40 F.) It stands at a height of 9,652 feet above the sea, near the base of the cone of the great crater, and it takes its name from the fact that it was erected by the English officers stationed in Sicily in 1811. It has suffered severely from time to time from the pressure of snow and from earthquakes, but it was thoroughly repaired in 1862, on the occasion of the visit of Prince Humbert, and is now in tolerable preservation. It consists of three rooms, containing a few deal chairs, a table, and several shelves like the berths of s.h.i.+ps furnished with plain straw mattresses; there is also a rough fireplace.

We had no sooner reached this house, very weary and so cold that we could scarcely move, than it was discovered that the courier had omitted to get the key from Nicolosi, and there seemed a prospect of spending the hours till dawn in the open air. Fortunately we had with us a chisel and a geological hammer, and by the aid of these we forced open the shutter serving as a window, and crept into the house; ten minutes later a large wood fire was blazing up the chimney, our eatables were unpacked, some hot coffee was made, and we were supremely comfortable.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Casa Inglesi and Cone of Etna]

At 3 a.m. we left the Casa Inglesi for the summit of the great crater, 1,200 feet above us, in order to be in time to witness the sunrise. Our road lay for a short distance over the upper portion of the Piano del Lago, and the walking was difficult. The brighter stars had disappeared, and it was much darker than it had been some hours before. The guide led the way with a lantern. The ascent of the cone was a very stiff piece of work; it consists of loose ashes and blocks of lava, and slopes at an angle of "45 or more" according to one writer, and of 33 according to another; probably the slope varies on different sides of the cone: we do not think that the slope much exceeds 33 anywhere on the side of the cone which we ascended. Fortunately there was no strong wind, and we did not suffer from the sickness of which travellers constantly complain in the rarefied air of the summit. We reached the highest point at 4.30 a.m., and found a temperature of 47 F.

When Sir William Hamilton ascended towards the end of June the temperature at the base of the mountain was 84 F., and at the summit 56 F. When Brydone left Catania on May 26th, 1770, the temperature was 76 F., Bar. 29 in. 8-1/2 lines; at Nicolosi at midday on the 27th it was 73 F., Bar. 27 in. 1-1/2 lines; at the Spelonca del Capriole (6,200 feet), 61 F., Bar. 26 in. 5-1/2 lines; at the foot of the crater, temp.

33 F., Bar. 20 in. 4-1/2 lines, and at the summit of the crater just before sunrise, temp. 27 F., Bar. 19 in. 4 lines.

On reaching the summit we noticed that a quant.i.ty of steam and sulphurous acid gas issued from the ground under our feet, and in some places the cinders were so hot that it was necessary to choose a cool place to sit down upon. A thermometer inserted just beneath the soil from which steam issued registered 182 F. For a short time we anxiously awaited the rising of the sun. Nearly all the stars had faded away; the vault of heaven was a pale blue, becoming a darker and darker grey towards the west, where it appeared to be nearly black. Just before sunrise the sky had the appearance of an enormous arched spectrum, extremely extended at the blue end. Above the place where the sun would presently appear there was a brilliant red, shading off in the direction of the zenith to orange and yellow; this was succeeded by pale green, then a long stretch of pale blue, darker blue, dark grey, ending opposite the rising sun with black. This effect was quite distinct, it lasted some minutes, and was very remarkable. This was succeeded by the usual rayed appearance of the rising sun, and at ten minutes to 5 o'clock the upper limb of the sun was seen above the mountains of Calabria. Examined by the spectroscope the Fraunhofer lines were extremely distinct, particularly two lines near the red end of the spectrum.

The top of the mountain was now illuminated, while all below was in comparative darkness, and a light mist floated over the lower regions.

We were so fortunate as to witness a phenomenon which is not always visible, viz., the projection of the triangular shadow of the mountain across the island, a hundred miles away. The shadow appeared vertically suspended in s.p.a.ce at or beyond Palermo, and resting on a slightly misty atmosphere; it gradually sank until it reached the surface of the island, and as the sun rose it approached nearer and nearer to the base of the mountain. In a short time the flood of light destroyed the first effects of light and shadow. The mountains of Calabria and the west coast of Italy appeared very close, and Stromboli and the Lipari Islands almost under our feet; the east coast of Sicily could be traced until it ended at Cape Pa.s.saro and turned to the west, forming the southern boundary of the island, while to the west distant mountains appeared. No one would have the hardihood to attempt to describe the various impressions which rapidly float through the mind during the contemplation of sunrise from the summit of Etna. Brydone, who is by no means inclined to be rapturous or ecstatic in regard to the many wonderful sights he saw in the course of his tour, calls this "the most wonderful and most sublime sight in nature." "Here," he adds, "description must ever fall short, for no imagination has dared to form an idea of so glorious and so magnificent a scene. Neither is there on the surface of this globe any one point that unites so many awful and sublime objects. The immense elevation from the surface of the earth, drawn as it were to a single point, without any neighbouring mountains for the senses and imagination to rest upon, and recover from their astonishment in their way down to the world. This point or pinnacle, raised on the brink of a bottomless gulph, as old as the world, often discharging rivers of fire and throwing out burning rocks with a noise that shakes the whole island. Add to this, the unbounded extent of the prospect, comprehending the greatest diversity and the most beautiful scenery in nature, with the rising sun advancing in the east to illuminate the scene."

When the sun had risen we had time to examine the crater, a vast abyss nearly 1000 feet in depth, and with very precipitous sides. Its dimensions vary, but it is now between two and three miles in circ.u.mference. Sometimes it is nearly full of lava, at other times it appears to be bottomless. At the present time it is like an inverted cone; its sides are covered with incrustations of sulphur and ammonia salts, and jets of steam perpetually issue from crevices. Near the summit we found a deposit, several inches in thickness, of a white substance, apparently lava decomposed by the hot issuing gases.

Hydrochloric acid is said to frequently issue from the crater; the gases that were most abundant appeared to be sulphurous acid and steam. The interior of the crater appeared to be very similar to that of the Solfatara near Puzzuoli. During the descent from the cone we collected various specimens of ash and cinder, some red, others black and very vesicular, others crystalline, some pale pink. The steep slope of the cone was well shown by the fact that, although the surface is either extremely rugged owing to the acc.u.mulation of ma.s.ses of lava, or soft and yielding on account of the depth of cinders, a large ma.s.s of lava set rolling at the top rushes down with increasing velocity until it bounds off to the level plain below.

[Ill.u.s.tration: View of the Val de Bove]

The great cone is formed by the acc.u.mulation of sand, scoriae, and ma.s.ses of rock ejected from the crater; it is oval in form, and has varied both in shape and size in the course of centuries. When we saw it, it was not full of smoke or steam; but it was possible to see to the bottom of it, in spite of small jets of steam which issued from the sides. It presented the appearance of a profound funnel-shaped abyss; the sides of which were covered with an efflorescence of a red or yellow, and sometimes nearly white, colour. The crater presented the same appearance when it was seen by Captain Smyth in 1814, but he was so fortunate as to witness it in a less quiescent state. "While making these observations,"

he writes, "on a sudden the ground trembled under our feet, a harsh rumbling with sonorous thunder was heard, and volumes of heavy smoke rolled over the side of the crater, while a lighter one ascended vertically, with the electric fluid escaping from it in frequent flashes in every direction.... During some time the ground shook so violently that we apprehended the whole cone would tumble into the burning gulf (as it actually had done several times before) and destroy us in the horrible consequences; however, in less than a couple of hours all was again clear above and quiet within." When Mr. Gladstone ascended in 1838, the volcano was in a slight state of eruption: "The great features of this action," he writes, "are the sharp and loud claps, which perceptibly shook from time to time the ground of the mountain under our feet; the sheet of flame which leapt up with a sudden momentary blast, and soon disappeared in smoke; then the shower of red-hot stones and lava. At this time, as we found on our way down, lava ma.s.ses of 150 or 200 pound weight were being thrown a distance of probably a mile and a half; smaller ones we found even more remote.

These showers were most copious, and often came in the most rapid succession. Even while we were ascending the exterior of the cone, we saw them alighting on its slope, and sometimes bounding down with immense rapidity within, perhaps, some thirty or forty yards of our rickety footing on the mountain side. They dispersed like the sparks of a rocket; they lay beneath the moon, over the mountain, thicker than ever the stars in heaven; the larger ones ascended as it were with deliberation, and descended, first with speed and then with fury. Now they pa.s.sed even over our heads, and we could pick up some newly fallen, and almost intolerably hot. Lastly, there was the black grey column, which seemed smoke, and was really ash, and which was shot from time to time out of the very bowels of the crater, far above its edge, in regular unbroken form."

At the Casa Inglesi we remounted the mules, and made a slight detour to the east in order to look down into the Val del Bove, which is here seen as a gigantic valley, bounded on the north by the precipitous cliffs of the Serra delle Concazze, and on the South by the Serra del Solfizio. It is believed by Lyell and others that in the Balzo di Trifoglietto, at which point the precipices are most profound and abrupt, there was a second permanent crater of eruption. The Torre del Filosofo, a ruined tower, traditionally the observatory of Empedocles, stands near the Casa Inglesi. Not far from this a great deposit of ice was found in 1828. It was preserved from melting by a layer of ashes and sand, which had covered it, soon after its first existence, as a glacier: a stream of lava subsequently flowed over the ashes, and completely protected the ice; the non-conducting power of the ashes prevented the lava from melting the ice. The snow which falls on the mountain is stowed away in caves, and used by the Sicilians during summer. A s.h.i.+p load is also sent to Malta, and the Archbishop of Catania derives a good deal of his income from the sale of Etna snow.

During our descent from the mountain we were much struck by the apparent nearness of the minor cones beneath us, and of the villages at the base of the mountain. They seemed to be painted on a vertical wall in front of us, and although from ten to fifteen miles distant they appeared to be almost within a stone's throw. This curious effect, which has often been observed before, is due to refraction. At the summit of Etna we have left one-third of the atmosphere beneath us, and the air is now pressing upon the surface of the earth with a weight of ten pounds on the square inch, instead of the usual fifteen pounds experienced at the level of the sea. In looking towards the base of the mountain we are consequently looking from a rarer to a denser medium; and it is a law of optics, that when light pa.s.ses from a denser to a rarer medium it is refracted away from the perpendicular, and thus the object, from which it emanates, appears raised, and nearer to us than it really is. The objects around Etna appear near to us and raised vertically from the horizon for the same reason that a stick plunged in water appears bent.

We reached Nicolosi again about noon, having left it eighteen hours before. The ascent of the mountain, although it does not involve much hard walking, is somewhat trying on account of the extremes of temperature which have to be endured. In the course of the morning of our descent we had experienced a difference equal to more than 40 F. As to the ascent, you are moving upwards nearly all night; you have six hours of riding on a mule, some of it in a bitterly cold atmosphere; you get very much heated by the final steep climb of 1100 feet, and you find at the summit a piercing wind; of course there is no shelter, and you sit down to wait for sunrise on cinders which are gently giving off steam and sulphurous acid; the former condenses to water as soon as it meets the cold air, and you find your great coat, or the rug on which you have sat down, speedily saturated with moisture.

CHAPTER IV.

TOWNS SITUATED ON THE MOUNTAIN.

Paterno.--Ste. Maria di Licodia.--The site of the ancient town of Aetna.--Biancavilla.--Aderno.--Sicilian Inns.--Adranum.--Bronte.-- Randazzo.--Mascali.--Giarre.--Aci Reale.--Its position.--The Scogli de'Ciclopi.--Catania, its early history, and present condition.

We have before alluded to the fact that Etna is far more thickly populated than any other part of Sicily or Italy; in fact, more so than almost any equal area in the world, of course excepting large cities and their neighbourhood. This is due to the wonderful fertility of the soil, the salubrity of the climate, and, on the eastern base, to the proximity of a sea-coast indented with excellent harbours. The habitable zone of Etna is restricted to the _Regione Coltivata_, nevertheless some of the towns on the north and west have a considerable elevation; thus Bronte is 2,782 feet above the sea, and Randazzo 2,718. All the princ.i.p.al towns are situated on the base road of the mountain, which was indeed constructed in order to connect them. Out of the sixty-four towns and villages on the mountain, the following are the most important: Catania, Aci Reale, Paterno, Aderno, Bronte, Randazzo, Aci S. Antonio, Biancavilla, Calatabiano, Giarre, Francavilla, Linguagrossa, Licodia, Mascali, Misterbianco, Nicolosi, Pedara, Piedemonte, Trecastagne, and Tremestieri.

On our return from the summit, we rested for awhile at Nicolosi, and in the cool of the evening started to make a _giro_ of the mountain by way of the base road. Descending by the Nicolosi road as far as Mascalucia, we branched off to the west, and made for Paterno, pa.s.sing near the town of Belpa.s.so, which was destroyed by the earthquake of 1669, and subsequently erected on a new site. It still contains more than 7,000 inhabitants, although the district is extremely unhealthy.

Paterno, the second largest town on the flanks of Etna after Catania and Aci Reale, stands in the very heart of the Regione Coltivata, and possesses more than 16,000 inhabitants. According to Cluverius, it is the site of the city of Hybla Major (~Hybla Megale~), a Sikelian city which was unsuccessfully attacked by the Athenians soon after they first landed in Sicily. During the second Punic War, the inhabitants went over to the Carthagenians, but the city was speedily recovered by the Romans. Pliny, Cicero, and Pausanias allude to it, but its later history has not come down to us. An altar was lately found in Paterno dedicated to _Veneri Victrici Hyblensi_. Several towns in Sicily were called Hybla, probably--according to Pausanias--in honour of a local deity. Paterno was founded by Roger I. in 1073: it was once a feudal city of some importance, and possessed a cathedral and castle, and several large monasteries. Although much fallen to decay, it still possesses a good deal of vitality, and the population is on the increase.

On leaving Paterno the road turns to the North-west, and pa.s.ses through the village of Ste. Maria di Licodia. Here originally stood the Sikelian City of Inessa (~Inessa~), which, after the death of Hiero I., was peopled by colonists from Katana (then called ~Aitne~). The new occupants of the city changed its name from Inessa to Aetna, which it retained. The town later fell into the hands of the Syracusans, and in 462 B.C. the Athenians in vain attempted to take it. During the Athenian expedition both Aetna and Hybla were allies of Syracuse. In 403 B.C. Aetna was taken by Dionysius, who placed in it a body of Campanian mercenaries. Sixty-four years later (B.C. 339) the town was taken by Timoleon. For many succeeding years we find no further mention of it.

Cicero speaks of it in his time as an important place, and the centre of a very fertile district; it is also mentioned by Pliny and Ptolemy, and Strabo says that it was usually the starting point for those who ascended the mountain. Of its later history we know absolutely nothing.

Six miles to the north-west of St. Mariah di Licodia, the road pa.s.ses through Biancavilla--a town of 13,000 inhabitants, and the centre of a cotton district.

The road continues in the same direction until the town of Aderno is reached; and here we arrived late in the evening, and gained our first experience of a Sicilian inn in an out-of-the-way town. After many enquiries we were directed to the only inn which the place could boast, kept by a doctor. No one appeared at or near the entrance, of course there was no bell or knocker, and we made our way up a dark stone staircase till we arrived at a dimly-lighted pa.s.sage. A horrible old Sicilian woman now appeared, and showed us with great incivility the only room in the house, which its inmates were willing to place at our disposal. It was a fairly large room, with a stone floor which apparently had not been swept for weeks, and walls that had once been whitewashed; the furniture consisted of three beds placed on tressels, a plain deal table, and some primitive chairs. As to food they had neither bread, meat, wine, eggs, macaroni, fruit, or b.u.t.ter in the house; neither did they offer to procure anything. Even when some eggs had been obtained, and (after an hour's delay) cooked, there was not a single teaspoon to eat them with. The people of the town appear to subsist chiefly on beans and a kind of dried fish. If our courier had not been a very handy fellow and a tolerable cook, we should have been obliged more than once to go to bed supperless. As it was, the best he could do on this occasion was to get some bread, eggs, and wine, and--best of all--some snow, for the heat was intolerable. In a town of the same size--15,657 inhabitants--in England, we should have at least two really comfortable inns ready at any moment to receive and entertain the weary traveller.

[Ill.u.s.tration: View of Etna from Bronte]

Aderno stands on the site, and has preserved the name, of the ancient Sikelian city of Adranum (~Adranon~). According to Diodorus there existed here, from very early times, the temple of a local deity named Adra.n.u.s. The city was founded by the elder Dionysius in 400 B.C.; it owed its importance to the renown of its temple, which was guarded by a thousand dogs. In 345 B.C. the city fell into the hands of Timoleon, and it was taken by the Romans at the commencement of the first Punic War.

After this we cease to hear of it. The modern town was founded by Roger I. in the 12th century. The fine Norman tower--now used as a prison--and the monastery, were both built by King Roger.

After leaving Aderno the base-road ascends, turns nearly due north, and leads us past a number of lava streams, notably those of 1610, 1603, and 1651. A good view of Monte Minardo, and the minor cones in its more immediate neighbourhood, is obtained on the left, while on the right we see the Valley of the Simeto, and Centorbi high upon the hills.

Nearly due west of the great crater is the town of Bronte, which is 2,782 feet above the sea, and has a population of more than 15,000. It is a very primitive place, and several centuries behind the age; it reminded us forcibly, in one or two particulars, of Pompeii: the streets are narrow and tortuous, and the roadway very uneven. Awnings are sometimes hung across the street from side to side to provide shade. The shops are exactly like those at Pompeii; and in the main street we noticed an open-air kitchen, to which the would-be diner repairs, purchases a plateful of food, and eats it standing in the public way.

The inn was even worse than that of Aderno, and apparently had never before received guests. We were offered one miserable room, without a lock to the door, and unprovided with either table or chair. Of course the bare idea of offering to procure, or furnish, or cook, any kind of food was too monstrous to be entertained for a moment. With difficulty the courier obtained some eggs, macaroni, and fruit, on which we dined in a small barn attached to a wine-shop.

At Bronte we are only nine miles from the crater, on the steepest side of the mountain, and near the Tertiary sandstone which underlies this portion of the mountain. A short distance outside the town we saw great beds of the lava of 1832, piled up fantastically in all sorts of forms, and excessively rugged and uneven. It is quite bare of vegetation, and does not appear to have even commenced to be decomposed.

Bronte gave its name to Lord Nelson, who was created Duke of Bronte by Ferdinand IV.:--an appropriate name for a great warrior ([Greek: bronte], thunder). The Nelson estates are scattered around the town.

On leaving Bronte the road conducted us past several high hills of sandstone and quartzite near Monte Rivoglia; then we pa.s.sed near Maletto, and, leaving the malarious lake Gurrita on our left, we soon after arrived at Randazzo. Near Maletto the road reaches it highest point--3,852 feet.

The town of Randazzo was founded by the Lombards in the 10th century; during the Middle Ages it appears to have been a prosperous, populous, place; at present it possesses more than 8,000 inhabitants. The Emperor Frederick II. created his son Duke of Randazzo, and added to the name of the town, _Etnea_. It contains several very interesting architectural remains; a church of the 13th century, a mediaeval palace--the Palazzo Finochiaro,--and a ducal palace now used as a prison. The houses are for the most part built of lava, and some of the shops have ma.s.sive lava counters extending half across their open front, while the door occupies the remainder, as at Pompeii. The view from Randazzo is very fine in every direction; the crater of Etna appears near, and Monte Spagnuolo--many hours distant--just outside the town. The town is 2,718 feet above the sea, just above the Valley of the Alcantara--of which it commands a fine view, and also of the limestone hills on the other side.

We were obliged to pa.s.s the night in the town, in an inn scarcely superior to that of Aderno, but distinctly better than the miserable Albergo Collegio at Bronte. At least the people were civil, and did their best. The one room of the inn had a bed in each corner, and a deal table in the middle. Three of the beds were occupied by engineers who were surveying in connection with a new line of railway; the fourth was made over to the courier. I slept in a small kind of ante-room on a bed chiefly composed of deal boards placed on tressels. Here again the courier was invaluable, in fact it would be simply impossible to make the circuit of Etna without a courier. He procured some eggs, macaroni, fruit, snow, tomatoes, and even meat, and cooked everything well, without a trace of garlic. He also took care that the linen was clean, and the general arrangements as comfortable as they could be under the circ.u.mstances. Let us also admit that neither at Aderno, Bronte, nor Randazzo were we troubled with musquitoes or any worse species of insect. These, we were a.s.sured, would appear in full force in the following month (September). Our only inconvenience of this nature arose from swarms of flies. The inns of these out-of-the-way towns probably receive scarcely a dozen travellers in the year, and these are Sicilians, who are not used to better accommodation. Evidently a _forestiare_ is quite a novelty: the people of these small towns used to look at us with great curiosity, and crowded round the carriage when we started. At Bronte we had a good example of this curiosity: owing to the hardness of the lava of 1832 the head had come off the handle of our hammer, and we went into a carpenter's shop to have it put on again.

Presently we noticed that eleven people, including a priest, were looking on, apparently with intense and absorbing interest.

From Randazzo the base-road descends, until at Giarre it is near the sea-level. This road is one of the most beautiful in Sicily; it is part of the old military route from Messina to Palermo, and it was traversed by Himilco in 396 B.C.; by Timoleon in 344 B.C.; and by Charles V. in 1534. After leaving Randazzo the valley of the Alcantara becomes visible, while beyond it rise the lofty mountains of the Nebrodes. The road pa.s.ses near Monte Dolce, and soon reaches Linguaglossa, a small town from whence the craters of 1865 may be reached in about four hours.

The rapidly descending road pa.s.ses through Piedemonte and Mascali, in the heart of an extraordinarily fertile region. Mascali, a village of 3050 inhabitants, was considered by Cluverius to be the site of the Greek town of Callipolis, founded by a colony from Naxos as early as the fifth century, B.C. A full view of the coast line is obtained from the Capo di Taormina on the north, to a point below Riposto on the south. We descended through plantations of nuts, and groves of oranges and lemons, to gentle slopes covered with vineyards.

From the town of Giarre, (17,965 inhabitants), we get a view of the Val del Bove, which, however, is almost always obscured by thin white clouds, while the summit of the mountain is clear. We noticed, indeed, every day that the summit, which had been absolutely clear all the day and night, became covered with clouds shortly before sunset, while about an hour later the clouds cleared off, and the mountain was sharply defined against the sky during the starlit night. Some of the effects of sunset behind clouds resting on the summit, while all the rest of the sky was bright blue, were exceedingly beautiful, and were quite untranslatable into any known language, save that of painting, and of music. Perhaps Turner could have done justice to them.

After leaving Giarre we pa.s.sed through a good deal of highly cultivated land belonging to Baron Pennisi, the largest landholder and richest man in Sicily. He makes good use of his wealth, and seems to be very popular among all cla.s.ses. He possesses three palaces in Aci Reale, and has done a great deal to beautify the town. Archaeologists will remember him as the possessor of the finest collection of Sicilian coins in the world. Many of these have been found on his own estates, but he never scruples to give large sums of money for any coin which he covets.

Aci Reale, one of the prettiest towns in Europe, is situated in the midst of a very fertile region 550 feet above the sea. To the east it faces the Ionian sea, while on the west towers Etna. The town is full of wealthy inhabitants, and the houses are large, lofty, and well built. It contains 24,151 inhabitants, and possesses celebrated sulphur baths, and one of the best hotels in Sicily. The wealth of this small town is well shown by the following fact: Since its foundation in the tenth century, till within a year or two of the present time, the town had been under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Catania. It happened, however, a few years ago, on the occasion of a religious procession in Catania, that the people of Aci considered that their patron Saint, S. Venera, was slighted. In fact the image of S. Agata, the patron Saint of the Catanese--whose veil has so often averted the lava-streams from the city--was put in all the prominent parts of the procession, while the image of S. Venera was comparatively neglected. The people of Aci at once returned home, and sent a pet.i.tion to the Pope, praying that they might have a Bishop of their own directly subject to the Holy See, in order that they might no longer be subjected to such slights. The Vatican having duly considered the question consented to raise Aci to the dignity of a Bishopric, and to pay the Bishop a yearly stipend of 10,000 lire, (about 400, but equal to 600 in Sicily), on condition that 200,000 lire were paid at once into the coffers of the Vatican.

This was promptly done, and now Monsignore Gerlando Genuardi, Bishop of Aci Reale, may snap his fingers in the face of Monsignore Giuseppe Benedetto Dusmet, a Benedictine of the Congregation of Monte Ca.s.sino, and Archbishop of Catania.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Island of Columnar Basalt off Trezza]

Six villages in the neighbourhood of Aci Reale bear the name of Aci: Aci Castello, Aci Sant' Antonio, and so on, but Aci Reale claims to stand upon the very site rendered memorable by the story of Acis and Galatea.

The river Acis (now called _Acque Grande_) rises from a bed of lava, and falls into the sea a mile from its source. Aci Reale stands on seven different beds of superposed lava, having layers of earth resulting from decomposed lava between. The Canon Recupero calculated from observation, that a lava requires at least 2000 years to form even a scanty layer of earth, consequently he inferred that the lowest of the lava streams upon which Aci rests must have been formed 14,000 years ago. These views he stated to Brydone a hundred years ago; the latter says, "Recupero tells me he is exceedingly embarra.s.sed by these discoveries in writing the history of the mountain. That Moses hangs like a dead weight upon him, and blunts all his zeal for enquiry; for that really he has not the conscience to make his mountain so young as that prophet makes the world. What do you think of these sentiments from a Roman Catholic Divine? The Bishop, who is strenuously orthodox--for it is an excellent See--has already warned him to be upon his guard, and not to pretend to be a better natural historian than Moses; not to presume to urge anything that may, in the smallest degree, be deemed contradictory to his sacred authority." The Canon Recupero lost his church preferment on the publication of Brydone's book, and the whole body of clergy of Girgenti received a reprimand on account of a capital story which Brydone told of a dinner at which the Bishop presided, during which several of the reverend Canons suffered severely from the effects of English punch, which Brydone had brewed for them. We quite agree with Admiral Smyth when he says, "It is a pity that Mr. Brydone laboured under such a cacoethes, as to sacrifice a friend for the sake of a good story." Of course we now know that Recupero's estimate of the age of Etna was far within the true limits, but we derive this information from other sources. No true estimate can be obtained from the observation of the decomposition of lavas, for it has been often observed that two lavas will decompose at very different rates.

A little to the north of the village of La Scaletta, at the base of the rocks upon which Aci Reale stands, there are two small caverns in the abrupt face of the basalt, which can only be approached in a boat. They consist of columnar basalt bent very curiously, and capped by amorphous basalt.