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_.[17] 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.
[Footnote 17: "Virroni muræna datur, quo maxima venit Gurgite de
Siculo: nam dum se continet Auster, Contemnunt mediam tem eraria lina
Charybdim." JUVENAL, _Sat._ v. 99.]
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.