Three or four miles inland from Trapani, at the north-west corner of
Sicily, rises a precipitous solitary mountain, nearly 2500 feet high,
with a town on the top. A motor bus makes a circuit of the mountain,
taking one up to the town in about an hour. It proceeds inland, past the
church of the Annunziata, the famous shrine of the Madonna di Trapani,
and the ascent soon begins. As one looks back towards the sea, Trapani
gradually assumes the form that gave it its Greek name of Drepanum, for
it juts out towards the island of Levanzo like a sickle "with the sea
roaring all round it." Marsala is usually visible beyond the innumerable
salt pans and windmills. One of these windmills is especially pleasing;
it consists of five or six dummy ships with real sails on a pond; these
ships form, as it were, the rim of a wheel lying on its side, the spokes
being poles which attach the ships to the axle, an island in the middle
of the pond. The wind blows and the ships race after one another round
and round the pond, causing the poles to work the mechanism which is
inside the island.
The manufacture of salt is one of the chief industries of Trapani and one
of the chief causes of its wealth. In Sicily it practically never rains
during the summer; the sea water is collected in large, open pans, being
raised by means of the screw which has been in use all over the island
for nearly twenty-two centuries, ever since Archimedes invented it to
remove the water from the hold of one of Hiero's ships at Siracusa. All
through the summer the heat of the sun evaporates the moisture, leaving
the salt which is afterwards exported to Newfoundland, Norway, the North
of France and many other countries and used for salting fish and other
purposes.
The road continues to ascend and the horizon appears to ascend also, so
that the sea takes up with it the AEgadean islands till, presently,
Marettimo looks over the top of Levanzo, while Favognana lies away to the
left. The Isola Grande (S. Pantaleo), the fourth island, is not a
prominent object, being low and near the land, a good deal to the south
towards Marsala; but in former times, when it was Motya, it was the most
important of them all. The sea extends right and left till it is lost in
the haze which so commonly obscures a Sicilian horizon.
The road goes more and more inland and, still rising, diverges from the
shorter road taken by the old horse bus and passes through Paparella.
Presently the mountain shuts out Trapani and the sea, and then the
country lying inland about the base of the mountain comes into view
bounded by a distant amphitheatre and, as the road completes the circuit
of the mountain, and still rising joins the other shorter road at the
Trapani gate of the town, the sea comes into sight again, with the
horizon high above Trapani and the promontory of Capo S. Vito bounding it
on the right.
This mountain, formerly world-renowned as Mount Eryx, and still often
called Monte Erice, is now Monte S. Giuliano and gives its name both to
the town on the top and to the comune of which that town is the chief
place. The highest point of the town is towards the east of the
mountain-top, and here are several towers, some belonging to the
Castello, a Norman fortress, and others to Le Torri, the summer residence
of Count Pepoli. On the north, east and south sides of the summit the
mountain is precipitous, but towards the west it slopes from the towers
through a public garden called the Balio, and then through a maze of
narrow, winding streets, down to the Trapani gate. The normal population
of the town is about 4000, but in the summer and autumn this is largely
increased, inasmuch as the great heat of Trapani and the low country
drives as many as can afford it to live on the summit where it is seldom
too hot.
The rest of the comune lies dotted about on the plain at the foot of the
mountain and consists of a dozen small villages, all visible from the
summit. These have mostly grown up within the last hundred years or so
as colonies from the chief town, for when the country was less secure the
women and children were left within the town walls while the men went
down to work in the fields and to fish in the sea, returning for Sundays
and festas, and gradually, as it became possible, settlements were formed
below to which the women and children could safely be moved. Custonaci,
however, one of the villages of the comune, did not spring up in this way
and is of older date than the others.
The peculiar charm of the mountain cannot be fully realized unless one
visits it at all seasons and in all weathers. I have been there in the
winter; the summit was hidden in a cloud which, as we drove up into it,
obscured the view and chilled the marrow. It was before the days of the
motor, when a horse bus did the journey by a shorter route in about three
hours. I was on the box with the coachman who gave me a spare cloak with
a hood to keep me dry and warm. Two of my friends, natives of the
mountain, one a doctor and the other the accountant to the Municipio,
were at the Trapani gate to meet me, both in hooded cloaks, so that I did
not recognize them till they spoke. The wind was tremendous. The narrow
sloping streets were running with water as we walked up through the town
to the albergo, where Donna Anna received us. There was no blazing fire
or warm room as there would have been in an English inn, only
semidarkness and dampness. The damp had patched the painting on the
ceiling and disfigured the whitewashed walls, on which were hung a few
pictures--a lithograph of the Madonna di Custonaci, a cheap Crucifixion,
a reproduction of the design for the monument to Vittorio Emmanuele in
Rome, three shiny chromolithographs of English country scenes,
representing the four seasons minus one, an absurd French engraving,
_Education Maternelle_ and S. Francesco da Paola, with a shell for holy
water. S. Francesco belongs to South Italy, but he is a favourite in
Sicily because he walked across the Straits of Messina to carry the Last
Sacraments to a dying man. On the undulating tiled floor were a few of
the rugs peculiar to the neighbourhood. They are made by the natives on
looms, the length being thin, strong string and the width white, black
and coloured cotton rags--old petticoats, shirts, aprons and so on,
washed clean and torn into narrow strips. With a little ingenuity they
make the colours go in simple patterns, chiefly diamonds and zigzags; but
sometimes they are more daring and attempt drinking-cups, etc.: the most
effective are made by running the strips in rows without any regard to
pattern.
Some winds blow some clouds away, but the roots of this cloud were so
firmly wedged in among the narrow streets and through the cracks of the
doors and windows, which would not shut close, that this wind could do
nothing with it but blow it more deeply in and the house was full of mist
like the Albert Hall in a winter fog. The natives consider it more
healthy to keep the same temperature indoors and out, so there is not a
house on the mountain with a fireplace, and only a few with stoves. The
absence of chimneys is a feature of the town, as it is of other Sicilian
towns that can bear their absence better. And these are the people who
commiserate an Englishman on being compelled to live in our cold, damp,
foggy island! In support of my statement that we do occasionally see the
sun, I showed them a picture-postcard of a house in London standing in a
garden. It was midday, but we had to have a lamp to see the picture;
nevertheless they supposed that the flowers were artificial and were
renewed when we had a festa because, of course, real flowers will not
grow in our perpetual fog. I told them that our fogs prevent flowers
from growing in England just as much as their brigands prevent foreigners
from travelling in Sicily, and that both are more spoken of than seen.
It must, however, be admitted that the natives do not appear to suffer
from the effects of their climate. They boast that statistics show them
to be particularly free from pulmonary complaints, and to have an
unusually low death rate. As the doctor said, in a tone of professional
discontent, they enjoy an epidemic of good health.
Supper consisted of maccaroni, bread and wine, and the table-cloth and
napkins were as damp as one's towels after a bath. My two friends sat
with me and introduced me to a student with a slight cast in one of his
melancholy eyes, a misty tenor voice and the facile Italian smile, who
had come up from Castelvetrano to study a little philosophy, and supped
with me.
When it was bedtime, they all three came with Donna Anna into my bedroom
to make sure that I was comfortable and the old landlady took the
opportunity of consulting the accountant about the prisoners. Although
the inhabitants of the province of Trapani are all good people,
nevertheless now and then some slight crime is committed, an occasional
wounding, a simple stabbing or so, and consequently it is convenient to
have a prison handy. Part of the castle on the mountain is used for the
purpose and Donna Anna provides the prisoners with their food and also
sees to their sheets, bedding etc. They could not have a better matron
and if she keeps everything in the prison as clean and good as it is in
her house, I am afraid she may perhaps make the prisoners more
comfortable than they deserve.
When she had disposed of her business she asked whether I should like
some fire in my bed. I was going to decline, not being in the habit of
using a warming-pan, but then I thought of the table-cloth and the
napkins at supper--and my friends said that every one on the mountain
always has fire in the bed in cold, damp weather--so I agreed, and Donna
Anna fetched what looked like a flower-pot containing hot charcoal. She
put this between my sheets with a wicker cage over it, and presently
shifted its position. I wanted her to leave it all night in a corner of
the room to take the chill off, but this met with opposition from all
because they did not wish me to be found in the morning asphyxiated in my
sleep like a Parisian milliner in a novel. I would have chanced it, had
I been allowed, for the milliners always have the greatest difficulty in
stopping up all the chinks, and even then occasionally survive; whereas,
although Donna Anna pinned up a blanket across my window, it did not keep
out the gale that was raging all about the room. The general opinion
being against the charcoal, I acquiesced and it was taken back to its
home in the kitchen. It was the only fire in the house and was what
Dickens would have called an honest and stout little fire. It had cooked
the maccaroni for supper and, after warming all the beds, went back to
rest from its labour until the morning when it would be called to make
the coffee for breakfast. It deserved its rest, not that it dried my
sheets, but it warmed them; and the doctor assured me that it is the
coldness and not the dampness of wet sheets that gives one a chill, so he
considered me practically safe. If only I had had a cold at the time, he
said, I should have been completely safe on the principle that one must
be off with the old cold before one can be on with the new. Owing,
doubtless, to the kindly influence of the good little fire, I passed a
comfortable night and took no harm.
When I came down in the morning there was the student immersed in his
philosophy; the industrious little fire had obligingly allowed itself to
be coaxed into two, and he had secured part of it in a flower-pot on the
floor between his feet and had a rug over his knees. The cloud was as
thick and the wind as boisterous as it had been the day before, so I
followed his example, got another flowerpot, split off a bit of fire for
myself and sat down with a rug.
The next morning the cloud had gone and I returned to Trapani. The bus
started very early and I had to rise before the sun, but the view would
have repaid sitting up all night. We saw Marettimo hovering over Levanzo
"on the horizon all highest up in the sea to the West," as Ithaca is
described in the _Odyssey_. We saw Ustica floating over Cofano and Capo
S. Vito. We looked down on Custonaci, the Sanctuary of the Madonna and
the great curve of the bay from Cofano to the foot of the mountain. We
gazed over the low, undulating country covered with villages, roads,
fields and villas that lay all around us on the inland sides--the country
through which in 1860 Garibaldi marched to Calatafimi with his thousand
volunteers after landing at Marsala. We saw Monte Inice and the heights
above Segesta. We saw Pantellaria, halfway to Africa, but we could not
see Africa itself for Cape Bon is only visible under very exceptional
atmospheric conditions.
I have been on the mountain in the spring and eaten quails for supper.
It was the time of their migration, and they had been caught as they
rested on the islands. I have never been able to ascertain exactly what
it is that the quails do. First I read in a book that when going north
in the spring they rest on Levanzo and when returning south in the
autumn, on Favognana. Levanzo being north of Favognana this meant that,
in both cases, they choose for their resting-place the second island they
come to. There is no mistake about this being what I read, for I made a
memoria technica about it at the time out of what Rockstro, my old
counterpoint master, used to say musicians do in performing the diatonic
major scale unaccompanied. In ascending they pass over the grave
supertonic and take the acute supertonic, and in descending they pass
over the acute supertonic and take the grave supertonic; the two
supertonics being only a comma apart, as the two islands are only a very
little way from one another.
Then I was told by a native of Trapani that this is just what the quails
do not do, and that, in fact, they rest on the first island they come to,
namely, on Favognana when going north, and on Levanzo when going south,
being too tired to fly across the geographical comma that divides the two
islands. I was next told by another native of Trapani that the quails
rest on all the three islands indiscriminately and not merely on Levanzo
and Favognana, thus destroying any attempt at purity of intonation and
introducing equal temperament along with Marettimo, which had not
hitherto been touched upon. He also said that if in any year it was
found that the quails avoided any one of the islands, the reason would be
that there were too many people on it. Finally, I was told by another
native that when the quails were going north in the spring of 1906 the
wind suddenly changed and blew most of them into Trapani itself, and
people picked them up by hundreds in the streets. It does not matter, of
course, so long as one gets the quails for supper, but if one really did
want to know, one would have as much difficulty as in finding out how
Orlando got hold of la Durlindana and where it originally came from.
The student from Castelvetrano was still there with his melancholy eyes,
studying philosophy. He said he found the mountain more suitable for his
purpose than his native town because it was more tranquil. I had been at
Castelvetrano, but had not noticed that it was a particularly noisy
place, indeed, I could no more have distinguished between the
tranquillity of Castelvetrano and that of the mountain than between the
acute and the grave supertonic.
The next time I met this student he had completed his studies and was
employed as a clerk in the Italian railway station at Chiasso, the
frontier town on the S. Gottardo, at an annual salary of 1,080 lire,
which is about 43 pounds 4s. He could hardly have been sent to a station
more remote from his native town. He had had a holiday of twelve days,
and had gone home to embrace his adorata mamma. The government gave him
a free pass, so he travelled by rail, crossing from Reggio to Messina,
and it took him forty-six hours. When he arrived at Castelvetrano he was
so knocked up by the journey and the change of air that he was obliged to
go to bed, where he remained till it was time for him to get up and
return to Chiasso, and this means that he was in bed for more than a
fortnight, because his holiday was extended to twenty days in
consideration of his illness. He was quite contented about his position
and prospects and told me these facts without any complaint. On the
whole, Mount Eryx would appear to be not such a bad school for
philosophers: nevertheless, when one considers the large part played in
evolution by the inherited desire of the organism to live beyond its
income, one may doubt whether it is good for a country's progress that
many of its men should be so philosophically contented with so little.
They do not, however, include the whole of the population, for Italy
cannot be said to be without examples of aggressive discontent. It is
somewhere between the two extremes that practical commonsense should be
looked for. In the meantime, if it is a question of sharing a supper of
spring quails on Mount Eryx, a peaceful, gentle philosopher is probably a
more agreeable companion than a socialistic nihilist.
If one had the power of choosing one's company, this philosopher would
counsel one not to exercise it; for he looks upon choosing as a
presumptuous kind of trying to control nature. I pointed out that one
cannot altogether detach oneself from nature and that doing nothing is
still choosing not to choose, but he replied that it is the lesser evil,
as in choosing not to write a tragedy in five acts, which I had to admit
can seldom be wrong. Further he asked, inasmuch as we had neither
arranged our meeting nor ordered the quails, were we not at the moment
both enjoying the advantage of having acted on his philosophy? I bowed
and said I had been particularly fortunate this evening; but in Sicily
one is always safe because the people are so charming that the art of
travelling among them consists in allowing things to happen and in being
ready to welcome whatever may come.
Perhaps the best season for going on the mountain is the late summer and
early autumn, when the Trapanese come up for the villegiatura. It is not
too hot during the day, as it is by the sea, and it can be almost chilly
by night, which it never is below. Every one is in a holiday frame of
mind; even the ladies of Eryx go out, whereas during the winter they
seldom leave the house, unless, perhaps, after a storm for a turn in the
balio to see how the trees look when laden with snow. There are picnics
and excursions to other places on the slopes of the mountain where
friends are passing the summer who presently return the visits by coming
up to breakfast with us. There is a touring company performing in the
theatre, there is music, there are drives and all manner of quiet
amusements.
On the mainland of Italy, tobacconists' shops display the Royal Arms with
a notice that they are licensed to sell tobacco and salt. Here a license
is necessary only for tobacco, salt being free in Sicily. This combines
with the absence of rain to make the manufacture of salt profitable; but
should a thunderstorm dilute the pans, the fresh water must be evaporated
out again and time and money are lost. Storms come so rarely in the
summer, however, that the caprices of the weather interfere but little
either with the salt works or the excursions.
If there is no excursion or no special occupation, we go to the caffe or
the club, or call on the chemist who is sure to be surrounded by friends,
or sit in the balio smoking and talking nonsense by the hour. And there
is always the inexhaustible wonder of the great view. The spacious dome
of the sky, which curves above and around, unites at the horizon with the
inverted dome of the earth and sea, which curves around and below, the
two together forming an enormous hollow globe in the midst of which the
top of the mountain seems to be suspended like the floating island of
Laputa. Conte Pepoli can sit in his castle and watch the half-tame
ravens, with little silver bells on their necks, as they flit around the
window and perch on the crazy wooden balcony where an old priest is
asleep in a chair, over the edge of a precipice of many hundred feet,
backed by leagues upon leagues of Sicily.