RETURN TO SICILY AND MOUNT ÆTNA.
SUBJECT OF MOUNT ÆTNA RESUMED:--ITS BEAUTIES--ITS HORRORS--REASON WHY
PEOPLE ENDURE THEM.--LOVE-STORY OF AN EARTHQUAKE.
[Illustration]
In now emphatically returning to Sicily, though we have never been
entirely absent from it, while discussing the pastoral poets of other
countries, we shall round our subject properly by finishing the circle
where we began it; and in order to render our plan as complete as
possible, we have not been without a sense of chronological order. In
resuming, therefore, the subject of Ætna, we proceed to regard the
mountain in relation to the impression it makes on modern times and
existing inhabitants.
The reader is aware that our Jar was not intended to be associated with
nothing but sweets. Bees, it was observed, extract honey from the
bitterest as well as sweetest flowers; and we only stipulated, as they do,
for a sweet result;--for something, which by the fact of its being
deducible from bitterness, shows the tendency of Nature to that dulcet
end, and gives a lesson to her creature man to take thought and warning,
and do as much for himself. In truth, were man heartily to do so, and
leave off asking Nature to superintend everything for him, and take the
trouble off his hands, which it seems a manifest condition of things that
she should not (man looking very like an experiment to see how far he can
develop the energies of which he is composed, and prove himself worthy of
continuance), how are we to know that he would not get rid of all such
evils as do not appear to be necessary to his well-being, and, in the
language of the great Eastern poet, make “the morning stars sing for
joy?”--sing for joy, that another heaven is added to their list. Mount
Ætna, for instance, which is one of the safety-valves of the globe, does
not _force_ people to live within the sphere of its operations. Why,
therefore, should they? Why do not the inhabitants of Catania and other
places migrate, as nations have done from the face of an enemy or famine,
and plant themselves elsewhere? When the convulsion comes, and destruction
hovers over them, the saints are implored as the gods were of old, and
everything is referred to the ordinances of Heaven. But the saints might
answer, “Why do you continue to live here, in the teeth of these repeated
warnings? Why cannot the earth have safety-valves, but you must needs
plant yourselves right in the way of them, as infants may do with
steam-engines?” This is the honey that might be extracted from the bitter
past. On the other hand, if this be idle speculation, and the reason of
the thing be on the side of continuing to implore the saints and perishing
in earthquakes, then Nature, who is always determined to have no evil
unmixed, suggests topics of consolation from the greater amount of good;
from the far longer duration of the periods of serenity and joy around the
mountain, compared with those of convulsion; and from all those images of
beauty and abundance, which produce another honey against the bitterness
of what cannot be altered. The bee himself, like the nightingale and the
dove, and other beautiful creatures, is an inhabitant of Ætna. The fires
of the mountain help to produce some of his sweetest thyme. The energetic
little, warmth-loving, honey-making, armed, threatening, murmuring,
bitter-sweet, and useful creature, seems like one of the particles of the
mountain, gifted with wings. We might as well have brought our honey from
Mount Ætna as Mount Hybla, and very likely it actually came thence; only
the latter, like Mount Hymettus, is identified with the word, and its
supposed district still famous for the product. In fact (though the name
seems to be no longer retained anywhere) there were several Hyblas of old,
one of them at the foot of Ætna; so that our Jar may come from both
places. The word, which is older than Greek, was probably Phœnician, from
a root signifying mellifluence; unless it originated in the sound of the
bubbling of brooks, of the neighbourhood of which bees are fond.
We cannot quit Mount Ætna without saying something more of it, especially
as it has lately been in action, not without hints of its operation as far
as Scotland, where there have been many shocks of earthquake. Everybody
knows that Ætna is the greatest volcano in Europe, some twenty miles in
ascent from Catania, and with a circumference for its base of between
eighty and ninety. All the climates of the world are there, except those
of the African desert. At the foot are the palms and aloes of the tropics,
with the corn, wine, and oil of Italy. The latter continue for fourteen or
fifteen miles of ascent. Then come the chestnuts of Spain, then the
beeches of England, then the firs of Norway--the whole forest-belt being
five or six miles in ascent, interspersed with park-like scenery, and the
most magnificent pastures. Singing-birds, and flocks and herds are there,
with abundance of game. The remainder, a thousand feet high, is a naked
peak, covered for the greater part of the year with snow, but often hot to
the feet in the midst of it, toilsome to ascend, and terminating in the
great crater, miles in circumference, fuming and blind with smoke--the
largest of several others. The whole mountain, with an enormous chasm in
its side four or five miles broad, stands in the midst of six-and-thirty
subject mountains, “each a Vesuvius,” generated by its awful parent.
Horror and loveliness prevail throughout it, alternately, or together. You
look from mountain to mountain, over tremendous depths, to the most
beautiful woody scenery. The lowest region is a paradise, betraying black
grounds of lava, and beds of ashes, which remind you to what it is liable.
The top is a ghastly white peak, shivering with cold, though it is a mouth
for fire, but lovely at a distance in the light of the moon at night, and
presenting a view from it by day, especially at sunrise, which baffles
description with ecstasy. Count Stolberg, a German poet, who beheld this
spectacle in the year 1792, when the mountain was in action, says, that by
the dawning light of the day he saw nothing round about him but snow and
black ashes, vast masses of lava, and a smoking crater, together with a
huge bed of clouds, the darkening extremities of which the eye could not
clearly distinguish either from the mountains or the sea, “_till the
majestic sun rose in fire, and reduced every object to order_.--Chaos
seemed to unfold itself, where no four-footed beast, no bird, interrupted
the solemn silence of the formless void:
Wo sie keinen Todten begruben, und keiner erstehen wird,
as Klopstock says of the ice-encircled pole:
No dead are buried there; nor any there will rise.
“Ætna cast his black shades,” continues he, “over the grey dawn of the
western atmosphere; while round him stood his sons, but far beneath, yet
volcanic mountains all, in number six-and-thirty, each a Vesuvius. To the
north, the east, and the south, Sicily lay at our feet, with its hills,
and rivers, and lakes, and cities. In the low deep, the clouds, tinged
with purple, were dispersed and vanished from the presence of the golden
sun; while their shades flying before the west wind, were scattered over
the landscape far and wide.”[7]
Mr. Hughes’s description is minuter, yet still more effective. “At
length,” says he, “faint streaks of light, shooting athwart the horizon,
which became brighter and brighter, announced the approach of the great
luminary; and when he sprang up in his majesty, supported on a throne of
radiant clouds, that fine scriptural image of the giant rejoicing to run
his course, flashed across my mind. As he ascended in the sky, the
mountain tops began to stream with golden light, and new beauties
successively developed themselves, until day dawned upon the Catanian
plains. Sicily then lay expanded like a map beneath our eyes, presenting a
very curious effect; nearly all its mountains could be descried, with the
many cities that surmount their summits; more than half its coasts, with
their bays, indentations, towns, and promontories, could be traced, as
well as the entire course of rivers, sparkling like silver bands that
encircle the valleys and the plains. Add to this the rich tints of so
delightful an atmosphere; add the dark blue tract of sea rolling its
mysterious waves, as it were, into infinite space; add that spirit of
antiquity which lingers in these charming scenes, infusing a soul into
the features of nature, as expression lights up a beautiful countenance;
and where will you find a scene to rival that which is viewed from
Ætna?”[8]
Compare this spectacle with one of the great eruptions, and the agonising
days that precede it. Smoke and earthquake commence them. The days are
darkened; the nights are sleepless and horrible, and seem ten times as
long as usual. People rush to the churches in prayer, or crowd the
doorways (which are thought the safest places), or remain out of doors in
boats or carriages. Religious processions move in terror through the
streets. Sometimes the air is blackened with a powder, sometimes with
ashes, which fall and gather everywhere, such as Pompeii was buried with.
Lightnings play about Ætna; the sea rises against the dark atmosphere, in
ghastly white billows; dreadful noises succeed, accompanied with thunder,
like batteries of artillery; the earth rocks; landslips take place down
the hill-sides, carrying whole fields and homesteads into other men’s
grounds; cities are overthrown, burying shrieking thousands. At length,
the mountain bursts out in flame and lava, perhaps in forty or fifty
places at once, the principal crater throwing out hot glowing stones,
which have been known to be carried eighteen miles, and the frightful
mineral torrent running forth in streams of fiery red, pouring down into
the plains, climbing over walls, effacing estates, and rushing into and
usurping part of the bed of the sea. A river of lava has been known to be
fifty feet deep, and four miles broad.[9] Fancy such a stream coming
towards London, as wide as from Marylebone to Mile End! By degrees, the
lava thickens into a black and rustling semi-liquid, rather pushed along
than flowing; though its heat has been found lingering after a lapse of
eight years. When the survivors of all these horrors gather breath, and
look back upon time and place, they find houses and families abolished,
and have to begin, as it were, their stunned existence anew.
Yet they build again over these earthquakes. They inhabit and delight in
this mountain. Catania, the city at its foot, which has been several times
demolished, is one of the gayest in Italy.
How is this?
The reason is, that all pain, generally speaking, is destined to be short
and fugitive, compared with the duration of a greater amount of
pleasure;--that the souls which perish in the convulsion, were partakers
of that pleasure for the greater part of their lives, perhaps the gayest
of the gay city;--that all of them were born there, or connected with
it;--that it is inconvenient, perhaps without government aid impossible,
to remove, and commence business elsewhere;--that they do not think the
catastrophe likely to recur soon, perhaps not in the course of their
lives;--nay, that possibly there may be something of a gambling
excitement,--of the stimulus of a mixture of hope and fear,--in thus
living on the borders of life and death--of this great snap-dragon bowl of
Europe--especially surrounded as they are with the old familiar scenes,
and breathing a joyous atmosphere. But undoubtedly the chief reasons are
necessity, real or supposed, and the natural tendency of mankind to make
the best of their position and turn their thoughts from sadness. So the
Catanian goes to his dinner, and builds a new ball-room _out of the lava_!
Perhaps the most touching of all the consolations to be met with in the
history of these catastrophes, is the testimony they bear to the maternal
affections. The men who perish from the overthrow of houses are said to be
generally found in attitudes of resistance:--the women are bent double
over their children. The great vindication of evil is, that (constituted
as we are) we could not know so much joy, nor manifest so much virtue
without it; and certainly, in instances like these, it fetches out, under
circumstances of the extremest weakness, the most beautiful strength of
the human heart. Still, such wholesale trials of it do not appear to be
demanded by any unavoidable necessity. The fact forces itself upon the
mind, that human beings need not continue to live in such places, and that
the geological well-being of the globe does not demand it. As to animals
of the inferior creation, who are destroyed at these times, assuredly they
know almost as little about it till the last moment, as the lamb who licks
the hand of his slayer; and as soon as the mountain is cleared, the larks
and nightingales are again singing, and the bees enjoying the flowers in
its most awful ravines.
For months, for years, sometimes for a hundred years and more, perhaps for
many hundreds, this tremendous phenomenon is quiet. Homer does not seem to
have heard of its burning. The volcano first makes its appearance in
Pindar. Theocritus knew its capabilities well; yet he speaks of it as
nothing but a seat of pastoral felicity. His Polyphemus contrasts its
serenity with the dangers of the sea; and another of his shepherds, in
answer to an observation about fathers and mothers, says to a shepherd of
the plains, that Ætna is _his_ mother, and that he is as rich in sheep and
goats as the latter fancies himself to be during dreams. The first
recorded eruption of Ætna was in the time of Empedocles, about five
hundred years before Christ; and from that time to the year 1819
inclusive, a French writer has calculated that there have been
seventy-two others _mentioned_.[10] We cannot say how many more have
ensued. The one that not long ago took place was harmless, we believe, as
far as lives were concerned, except to some rash persons who were too
anxious to see the effect of the lava upon a pool of water. The pool
turned into steam, and scalded them. Slight eruptions are little regarded,
and indeed are little dangerous compared with what precedes them. The
worst peril is the earthquake. The lava, though an ugly customer, can be
safelier treated with. Even slight earthquakes are not much heeded, after
the first alarm. Mr. Vaughan, an English traveller in the year 1810, says,
that upon his going into the town of Messina, after a slight shock, from
his country-lodging, and approaching the carriages in which some ladies
were sitting in expectation of another, he said to one of them, an
acquaintance of his, “Is it not shocking?” “It is indeed very shocking,”
said the lady. “_You were not at the Opera?_”[11] Humboldt speaks of a
young lady in South America, who was so accustomed to these visitations,
that she thought the topic vulgar. She expressed a wish that people would
leave off talking about “these nasty earthquakes.”
If you tell a Sicilian that there are no earthquakes in England, he
acknowledges, of course, the merit of their absence, but smiles to think
that you can suppose it a compensation for the want of vines and olives.
The following amusing conversation took place in an inn, between the
English traveller just mentioned and a priest and his landlady, at
Caltagirone. The priest, “after many apologies for the liberty he was
taking,” says Mr. Vaughan, “begged to converse with me upon the subject of
England, which the people of these parts were very anxious to hear about,
as the opportunity of inquiring so seldom occurred; and, by the time I had
dined, I observed a dozen people collected round the door, with their eyes
and mouths open, to hear the examination.
“‘And pray, Signor, is it true what we are told, that you have no olives
in England?’[12]
“‘Yes, perfectly true.’
“‘_Cospetto!_ how so?’
“‘_Cospettone!_’[13] said the lady.
“‘Our climate is not propitious to the growth of the olive.’
“‘But then, Signor, for oranges!’
“‘We have no oranges neither.’
“‘_Poveretto!_’ said the landlady, with a tone of compassion; which is a
sort of fondling diminutive of ‘_Povero_,’ ‘Poor creature,’ or as you
would say to your child, ‘Poor little fellow!’
“‘But how is that possible, Signor?’ said the priest. ‘Have you no fruit
in your country?’
“‘We have very fine fruit; but our winters are severe, and not genial
enough for the orange-tree.’
“‘That is just what they told me,’ said the lady, ‘at Palermo, that
England is all snow, and a great many stones.’
“‘But then, Signor, we have heard, what we can scarcely believe, that you
have not any wine?’
“‘It is perfectly true. We have vines that bear fruit; but the sun in our
climate is not sufficiently strong, which must be boiling, as it is here,
to produce any wine.’
“‘Then, Jesu Maria! how the deuce do you do?’
“I told them that, notwithstanding, we got on pretty well; that we had
some decent sort of mutton, and very tolerable-looking beef; that our
poultry was thought eatable, and our bread pretty good; that, instead of
wine, we had a thing they call ale, which our people, here and there,
seemed to relish exceedingly; and that, by the help of these articles, a
good _constitution_, and the blessing of God, our men were as hardy, and
as loyal and brave, and our women as accomplished, and virtuous, and
handsome, as any other people, I believed, under heaven.
“‘Besides, Mr. Abbate, I beg leave to ask you, what cloth is your coat
of?’
“‘_Cospetto!_ it is English!’ with an air of importance.
“‘And your hat?’
“‘Why, that’s English.’
“‘And this lady’s gown, and her bonnet and ribbons?’
“‘Why, they are English.’
“‘All English. Then you see how it is: we send you, in exchange for what
we don’t grow, half the comforts and conveniences you enjoy in your
island. Besides, _padrona mia gentile_ (my agreeable landlady), we can
never regret that we don’t grow these articles, since it ensures us an
intercourse with a nation we esteem!’
“‘_Viva!_’ (‘Long life to you’), said the landlady, and ‘_Bravo!_’ said
the priest; and between _bravo_ and _viva_, the best friends in the world,
I escaped to my lettiga (litter).”[14]
We must close this article with a love-story, in connexion with the
dreadful earthquake of 1783, which destroyed Messina, and swept into the
sea, _in one moment_, nearly three thousand persons on the opposite coast
of Scylla, together with their prince.[15] The reader may believe as much
of the love as he pleases, but the extraordinary circumstance on which it
turns is only one of a multitude of phenomena, all true and marvellous.
Giuseppe, a young vine-grower in a village at the foot of the mountains
looking towards Messina, was in love with Maria, the daughter of the
richest bee-master of the place; and his affection, to the great
displeasure of the father, was returned. The old man, though he had
encouraged him at first, wished her to marry a young profligate in the
city, because the latter was richer and of a higher stock; but the girl
had a great deal of good sense as well as feeling; and the father was
puzzled how to separate them, the families having been long acquainted. He
did everything in his power to render the visits of the lover
uncomfortable to both parties; but as they saw through his object, and
love can endure a great deal, he at length thought himself compelled to
make use of insult. Contriving, therefore, one day to proceed from one
mortifying word to another, he took upon him, as if in right of offence,
to anticipate his daughter’s attention to the parting guest, and show him
out of the door himself, adding a broad hint that it might be as well if
he did not return very soon.
“Perhaps, Signor Antonio,” said the youth, piqued at last to say something
harsh himself, “you do not wish the son of your old friend to return at
all?”
“Perhaps not,” said the bee-master.
“What,” said the poor lad, losing all the courage of his anger in the
terrible thought of his never having any more of those beautiful lettings
out of the door by Maria,--“what! do you mean to say I may not hope to be
invited again, even by yourself?--that you yourself will never again
invite me, or come to see me?”
“Oh, we shall all come, of course, to the great Signor Giuseppe,” said the
old man, looking scornful,--“all cap in hand.”
“Nay, nay,” returned Giuseppe, in a tone of propitiation; “I’ll wait till
you do me the favour to look in some morning, in the old way, and have a
chat about the French; and perhaps,” added he, blushing, “you will then
bring Maria with you, as you used to do; and I won’t attempt to see her
till then.”
“Oh, we’ll all come of course,” said Antonio, impatiently; “cat, dog, and
all; and when we _do_,” added he, in a very significant tone, “you may
come again yourself.”
Giuseppe tried to laugh at this jest, and thus still propitiate him; but
the old man hastening to shut the door, angrily cried, “Ay, cat, dog, and
all, and the cottage besides, with Maria’s dowry along with it; and then
you may come again, _and not till then_.” And so saying, he banged the
door, and giving a furious look at poor Maria, went into another room to
scrawl a note to the young citizen.
The young citizen came in vain, and Antonio grew sulkier and angrier every
day, till at last he turned his bitter jest into a vow; exclaiming with an
oath, that Giuseppe should never have his daughter, till he (the father),
daughter, dog, cat, cottage, bee-hives, and all, with her dowry of
almond-trees to boot, set out some fine morning to beg the young
vine-dresser to accept them.
Poor Maria grew thin and pale, and Giuseppe looked little better, turning
all his wonted jests into sighs, and often interrupting his work to sit
and look towards the said almond-trees, which formed a beautiful clump on
an ascent upon the other side of the glen, sheltering the best of
Antonio’s bee-hives, and composing a pretty dowry for the pretty Maria,
which the father longed to see in possession of the flashy young citizen.
One morning, after a very sultry night, as the poor youth sat endeavouring
to catch a glimpse of her in this direction, he observed that the clouds
gathered in a very unusual manner over the country, and then hung low in
the air, heavy and immovable. Towards Messina the sky looked so red, that
at first he thought the city on fire, till an unusual heat affecting him,
and a smell of sulphur arising, and the little river at his feet assuming
a tinge of a muddy ash-colour, he knew that some convulsion of the earth
was at hand. His first impulse was a wish to cross the ford, and, with
mixed anguish and delight, to find himself again in the cottage of
Antonio, giving the father and daughter all the help in his power. A
tremendous burst of thunder and lightning startled him for a moment; but
he was proceeding to cross, when his ears tingled, his head turned giddy,
and while the earth heaved beneath his feet, he saw the opposite side of
the glen lifted up with a horrible deafening noise, and then the cottage
itself, with all around it, cast, as he thought, to the ground, and buried
for ever. The sturdy youth, for the first time in his life, fainted away.
When his senses returned, he found himself pitched back into his own
premises, but not injured, the blow having been broken by the vines.
But on looking in horror towards the site of the cottage up the hill, what
did he see there? or rather, what did he _not_ see there? And what _did_
he see, forming a new mound, furlongs down the side of the hill, almost at
the bottom of the glen, and in his own homestead?
Antonio’s cottage:--Antonio’s cottage, with the almond-trees, and the
bee-hives, and the very cat and dog, and the old man himself, and the
daughter (both senseless), all come, as if, in the father’s words, to beg
him to accept them! Such awful pleasantries, so to speak, sometimes take
place in the middle of Nature’s deepest tragedies, and such exquisite good
may spring out of evil.
For it was so in the end, if not in the intention. The old man (who,
together with his daughter, had only been stunned by terror) was
superstitiously frightened by the dreadful circumstance, if not
affectionately moved by the attentions of the son of his old friend, and
the delight and religious transport of his child. Besides, though the
cottage and the almond-trees, and the bee-hives, had all come miraculously
safe down the hill (a phenomenon which has frequently occurred in these
extraordinary _landslips_), the flower-gardens, on which his bees fed,
were almost all destroyed; his property was lessened, his pride lowered;
and when the convulsion was well over, and the guitars were again playing
in the valley, he consented to become the inmate, for life, of the
cottage of the enchanted couple.
He could never attain, however, to the innate delicacy of his child, and
he would sometimes, with a petulant sigh, intimate at table what a pity it
was that she had not married the rich and high-feeding citizen. At such
times as these, Maria would gather one of her husband’s feet between her
own under the table, and with a squeeze of it that repaid him tenfold for
the mortification, would steal a look at him which said, “I possess all
which it is possible for me to desire.”
[Illustration]