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 [Greek: Dôriz aoida]. 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?_
We are here high up amidst the mountains, where, we are to remember,
as the ancients came not to spend, like ourselves, an idle hour, but
to consume most of the day, _shelter_ would be wanted. Two large
lateral spaces, or as it were, side chambers, have received this
destination at the hands of the antiquary, and have been supposed
lobbies for foul weather or for shade at noon. We were made to notice
by our guide, what we should else have overlooked, how the main
passage described above communicates with several smaller ones in its
progress, and that a small stair was a subsequent contrivance or
afterthought meant to relieve, on emergency, the overcharged large
one; its workmanship and style showed it plainly to have been added
when the edifice had already become _an antiquity_. This altogether
peculiar and most interesting building has also suffered still later
interpolations: a Saracenic frieze runs round the wall; so that the
hands of three widely different nations have been busy on the
mountain theatre, which received its _first audience_ twenty-five
centuries ago! The view obtained from this spot has often been
celebrated, and deserves to be. Such mountains we had often seen
before; such a sky is the usual privilege of Sicily; these indented
_bays_, which break so beautifully the line of the coast, had been an
object of our daily admiration; the hoary side of the majestic Etna,
and Naxos with its castellated isthmus, might be seen from _other_
elevated situations; and the acuminated tops of Mola, with its
Saracenic tower, were commanded by neighbouring sites--Taormina
_alone_, and for its _own_ sake, was the great and paramount object
in our eyes, and possessed us wholly! We had been following _Lyell_
half the day in antediluvian remains; but what are the bones of
_Ichthyosauri_ or _Megalotheria_ to this gigantic skeleton of Doric
antiquity, round which lie scattered the sepulchres of its ancient
audiences, Greek, Roman, and Oriental--tombs which had become already
an object of speculation, and been rifled for arms, vases, or gold
rings, before Great Britain had made the first steps beyond painted
barbarism!
The eruptions of Etna have all been recorded. Thucydides mentions one
of them episodically in the Peloponesian war. From the cooled caldron
that simmers under all that snow, has proceeded all the lava that the
ancients worked into these their city walls. The houses of
Taurominium were built of and upon _lava_, which it requires a
thousand years to disintegrate. After dinner we walk to Naxos,
saluting the statue of the patron of a London parish, _St Pancras_,
on our way. He stands on the beach here, and claims, by inscription
on his pedestal, to have belonged to the apostolic times, St Peter
himself having, he says, appointed him to his bishopric. He is patron
of Taormina, where he has possessed himself of a Greek temple; and he
also protects the faithful of Giardini. Lucky in his _architects_ has
been St Pancras; for many of our readers are familiar with his very
elegant modern church in the New Road, modelled, if we have not
forgotten, on the Erechtheum, with its _Pandrosean Vestries_, its
upright tiles, and all the subordinate details of Athenian
architecture. We _met_ here the subject of many an ancient _bas
relief_ done into flesh and blood--a dozen men and boys tripping
along the road to the music of a bagpipe, one old _Silenus_ leading
the jocund throng, and the whole of them, as the music, such as it
was, inspired, leaping about and gesticulating with incredible
activity. It was a bacchanalian subject, which we had seen on many a
sarcophagus, only that the fellows here were not _quite_ naked, and
that we looked in vain for those nascent horns and tails by which the
children of Pan and Faunus ought to be identified. We always look out
for _natural history_. Walking in a narrow street, we saw a tortoise,
awake for the season, come crawling out to peep at the poultry; his
hybernation being over, he wants to be social, and the hens in
astonishment chuckle round him, and his tortoiseshell highness seems
pleased at their kind enquiries, and keeps bobbing his head in and
out of his _testudo_ in a very sentimental manner. Women who want his
shell for _combs_ do not frequent these parts, and so, unless a cart
pass over him as he returns home, he is in clover.
A bird frequents these parts with a blue chest, called _Passer
solitarius;_ he abounds in the rocky crevices. The notes of one,
which was shown to us in a cage, sounded sweetly; but, as he was
carnivorous, the weather was too hot for us to think of taking him
away. We saw two snakes put into the same box: the one, a viper,
presently killed the other, and much the larger of the two. Serpents,
then, like men, do _not_, as the _Satirist_ asserts, spare their
kind. We are disappointed at not finding any coins, nor any other
good _souvenirs_, to bring away with us. The height of Taormina is
sufficient to keep it from fever, which is very prevalent at Giardini
below. Its bay was once a great place for catching _mullet_ for the
Roman market. It seems to have been the _Torbay_ of Sicily. Some fish
love their ease, and rejoice not in turbulent waters. The _muræna_,
or lamprey, on the contrary, was sought in the very whirlpools of
_Charybdis_. The modern Roman, on his own side of Italy, has few
turbot, but very good ones are still taken off Ancona, in the
Adriatic, where the _spatium admirabile Rhombi_, as the reader will,
or ought to recollect, was taken and sent to Domitian at Albano by
_Procaccio_ or _Estafetta_. Juvenal complains that the Tyrrhene sea
was exhausted by the demand for fish, though there was no _Lent_ in
those times. If the Catholic clergy insist that there _was_, we beg
to object, that the keepers thereof were probably not in a condition
to compete with the _Apiciuses_ of the day, who bought fish for their
_bodies'_, and not for their SOULS' SAKE.