really a popular spontaneous outbreak which began at the vesper hour on
Easter Tuesday. The church of the Santo Spirito was then a favorite
place for worship, and the people on this occasion were moving quietly
between it and the city when some two hundred Frenchmen appeared among
them, and alarmed the natives greatly by their more than usually
offensive remarks and bearing. In the throng was an attractive young
Sicilian woman with her lover. Unprovoked, a French soldier addressed an
insulting remark to her. Her escort naturally resented this, and
instantly all the bitter ignominy and the wrongs the patient islanders
had endured at the hands of their French oppressors boiled over. Though
practically unarmed, the Sicilians attacked the French so fearlessly
that of the two hundred present, not a single one escaped. The church
bells sounded a wild alarm, and yelling “_Morte ai francesi!_ Death to
the French!” the blood-maddened mob streamed back into town, killing on
sight, storming palaces and houses, and dispatching even those Sicilians
known or suspected to have friendly relations with the Angevins. Brief
as the struggle in Palermo was, no less than two thousand French
perished; and the brand the Palermitans had kindled swept its fiery way
through the island until every Frenchman was either dead or a fugitive.
And though the War of the Vespers that followed this summary vengeance
lasted for years, the rule of the House of Anjou was over so far as
Sicily was concerned.
Farther out from the city the beautiful precincts of the old Minorite
monastery and church of Santa Maria di Gesù ramble along the steep side
of one of those emerald hills that bound the Conca d’Oro. Long pebbled
paths lead up from the gate through cool green vistas dotted with
stately trees and headstones; and, with a pride which is the more
curious in a Minorite--whose pledges are of humility and poverty--the
monk who lets one in explains that this cemetery has never been used by
any except the wealthiest of Palermo’s noble families. Many of the
graves are decorated with huge wreaths of artificial flowers in
dishpan-like tin cases, glass-covered and frequently containing faded
photographs of the deceased, the men appearing very stiff and
uncomfortable in their best clothes, tall collars, and derby hats. Some
of the “pans” are a yard in diameter by about eight inches deep, the
wreaths draped with plentiful streamers of black upon which are stamped
in gold letters suitable inscriptions and the names of the departed.
The monks were chanting sleepily in a choir gallery as we entered the
sacristy of the little church, to examine some interesting unfinished
cartoons upon the walls for frescoes never executed--our guide an
amazing friendly young brother whose face was a replica of Giotto’s
unforgettable fresco of Dante in the Florence Bargello. Fra Giacomo, he
called himself; and his interest in the world generally, his simple
attitude of dangerous curiosity in everything not connected with the
cloistered life, made us think of Hichens’ sorry hero--if hero he could
be called!--in the “Garden of Allah.” Neither he, nor any of the other
monks with whom we came into contact anywhere in either Sicily or Italy,
had the spiritual austerity that is so marked a characteristic of the
Spanish monk; nothing at all of the bearing or atmosphere that instantly
stamps a man as either genuinely consecrated or fanatic--according to
the eye with which he is seen.
This lack of spirituality came out strongly when, wholly ignoring the
service going on, Fra Giacomo dragged a confessional with a dreadful
clatter across the tiled floor to serve as a camera-stand from which he
insisted that I photograph the poor, bare little altar with its tawdry
image beneath in a glass case. At each outburst of the rasping din, the
monks aloft--seemingly quite undismayed by the sacrilege--kindly sang
with greater zeal that they might not hear our profane noises.
From the monastery a zig-zag path leads to the very top of the hill,
where two once highly venerated female saints had an altar and a
hermitage on a fine bit of bluff overlooking the Conca d’Oro. Here the
country unfolds below like a huge military map, the roads written with
white ink, the sea in sapphire, the Conca d’Oro in emerald and topaz,
and the city in agate. Far in the distance, beyond Palermo, Monte
Pellegrino looms soft and vague, its square shoulders half hidden in
bluish haze, with the sea fading so delicately into the sky that often
the horizon line is lost. Nestling among the lemons in the foreground
are large chimneys, the sign visible of an irrigation system nearly a
thousand years old, of Saracenic origin. Hills and plain alike murmur
with flowing water, for wherever the Arab went he turned barrens into
gardens, planted and tended and improved, and devised irrigation systems
so complete and permanent that--considering his resources and the
times--our own watering schemes in the West seem puerile and scattering.
To-day in the Conca d’Oro about an hundred steam engines pump up water
from artesian wells and subterranean rivers, while conduits and
water-wheels utilize every drop that issues from the springs. So fertile
is the soil that this irrigation has increased the yield from seven to
one hundred and fifty dollars an acre.
There seems to be something in the atmosphere of the Gesù, some subtle
ether of sympathy, perhaps, that makes the visitor’s presence on the
hill known to all the children round. At any rate, they pop out of the
earth, and as you come down from the hermitage at the very top of the
step to the main buildings, you are pretty certain to hear a scratching
noise on the low stone wall at one side of the road. Naturally you look
over. At the cleft upper end of a long pole a spray of lemon blossoms
scrapes along the rough wall; at the lower end, some twenty-five feet
below in a grove, an attractive child clamors to you for “_Due soldi
mangiare_--Two cents, to eat!”
As we were leaving the monastery, “Dante’s” interest in worldly affairs
came out strongly once more. Pointing to my camera, he asked
plaintively: “Have you a plate left for me?”
I let him choose his own pose and his own background. With the skill of
an artist he selected a stone step flanked by lofty cypresses, and
taking out his breviary immediately lost himself in meditation which
required some imagination to consider holy. The photograph made, he
spoke again, his wistful expression intensified.
“Now will you please register the package? Many tourists have been here
and taken pictures, several of myself. They all promised to send me
copies. I know they did so,” he sighed regretfully, with a charity which
would have been ludicrous had it not been so childishly unaffected and
sincere, “but I never got a single one. Oh, but the mails are bad here!”
Genial Gualterio, for all his eagerness to serve us to our best
advantage, could not forget his own advantage once in a while, and
cheerily singing on his box, drove us far out of our way, at last
drawing rein before the mouth of a large cavern which appeared to be
full of very dirty children whose hands were full of very dirty bones.
On the other side of the road lay a pool covered with green slime. I was
getting out with my camera when Gualterio stopped me abruptly. “Oh, no,
_signore_, there is nothing worth examining; but I thought you might
like to see the Giants’ Cave, which is full of old fossils, and the Mar’
Dolc’!”
No visitor is likely to be thirsty enough to drink of the “sweet water”
that reminds him of Gunga Din and his goatskin bag. It is to be hoped,
moreover, that the slimy pool is only the overflow of the Mare Dolce
(Sweet Water), most famous of the Conca d’Oro’s innumerable springs.
Neither is one likely to speculate in bones of doubtful authenticity. So
the only thing to do under the circumstances is to be just as cheerful
as the cabman, and drive back to the ruins of the old Saracen-Norman
stronghold of La Favara, whose splendor was famous during the Middle
Ages, for there Frederick II, greatest of all kings of Sicily, held
royal court. The brilliant court has vanished, and the castle itself is
a crumbling wreck, a mere dank stable and storehouse, dark and ill
smelling. Yet merely to see it recalls Frederick’s striking personality
and character. And it is to be remembered that he was not merely
Emperor of Germany and King of Sicily, but King of Italy, Sardinia,
Apulia, Burgundy and for a while of Jerusalem. His connection with that
city and with the Sixth Crusade forms one of the most picturesque and
pleasant incidents of that fierce and warlike age. Speaking Arabic
fluently--besides several other languages--he was able, through sheer
force of character and winning personality, to negotiate treaty after
treaty with the Saracens peacefully, winning the Holy City itself
without striking a blow, and remaining its king for a decade during
which peace instead of bloodshed was the rule. His army even contained a
picked body of Saracen troops which he made his personal bodyguard.
There was nothing, in fact, in either the intellectual or the political
life of his age which this man, described by the Latin chroniclers as
_stupor mundi_, “wonder of the world,” failed to grasp and master
thoroughly. And in all the whirl of his incessant activities at home and
abroad he found time to be a poet and scholar, to encourage learning in
all its branches, and, most important of all, to articulate and reduce
to written form the crude Italian speech of the day.
If you care for an experience out of the usual in this smiling island,
stop on the Bagheria road at the church of San Giovanni dei Lebrosi or,
as some Americans call it, “The Leprosy,” in the midst of a settlement
of tanners. Here you are attended by three women, each flourishing a
large key, all dirty and unkempt, and a barking, snapping, currish crowd
of begging children. One of the three women unlocks the door of the
alley at whose inner end the church stands. The stench is almost
stupefying, the air thick with vapors. The second woman opens the door
of the church, one of the oldest Norman structures in the island, now
painfully restored with obtrusive brick and whitewash, and the third
proves to be the keeper of the sacristy. Still another huge key now
appears--this time in the hands of a surly man, who insists on showing
you out another way, through an orange grove, though your carriage is in
plain sight at the foot of the lane. These evil-looking children and
caretakers are the most pertinacious and insolent you will encounter
anywhere in the island. Has the fetid atmosphere anything to do with
their crabbed humor?
In this plain of ancient Panormos, as both city and district were once
known, there comes vividly to mind a curious battle scene. To-day we
experiment with automobiles and aeroplanes as instruments of war: more
than two thousand years ago disaster overtook the arms of Carthage
because General Asdrubal placed his reliance in the then new-fangled
elephant auxiliaries. Rome, for all she was conquering the world,
trembled before these “great gray oxen,” as the legionaries called
them.
However, the Consul Metellus, who commanded inside the city, directed
his attention effectually first of all to these splendid targets moving
ponderously and disdainfully up against him. Pain-maddened by a
ceaseless shower of darts and arrows, the great beasts shook off their
helpless drivers and charged furiously to and fro, trumpeting, goring,
trampling, wild engines of destruction which did more mischief to the
Carthaginians than to Rome; and before night fell over the field of
slaughter, the Romans led captive more than half of the hundred and
twenty once dreaded Titans that had been Asdrubal’s reliance, but which
had cost him the battle.
Continuing toward the city along the road called the Corso dei Mille,
over which Garibaldi and his immortal Thousand marched to victory, we
pass close beside the old Ponte d’Ammiraglio, built some eight hundred
years ago by King Roger’s Grand Admiral Giorgios Antiochenos. In those
days it spanned the swift Fiume Oreto, but now the fickle water has
chosen another bed, leaving the massive stone bridge high and dry, and
looking very useless and absurd in an open field.
Entering the town by the Garibaldi Gate--the liberator is even more
frequently honored than the first King--we follow Garibaldi Street to
the Piazza della Rivoluzione, in which a queer, old, bent, apparently
half-intoxicated figure of the crowned Genius of Palermo marks the spot
where the first revolutionists gathered twelve years before the
Thousand captured the city. Near by in the Piazza della Croce dei Vespri
is the monument in memory of the French massacred in 1282, and buried
here beneath a single marble column surmounted by a cross and surrounded
by a railing of lances and halberds. At the corner of the square, built
in a housewall, is a single fifteenth century column, marking the site
of the palace in which Governor St. Remy, who was the lieutenant of
Charles of Anjou at the time of the massacre, lived and is said to have
been besieged.
From the railroad station a broad street, the Via Lincoln, leads to the
bay. Gualterio volunteered the information that the street, “la Via
Lin-col-ni,” was named for a “great Sicilian patriot who was shot long
before we were born!” It would have been a pity to disillusion him and
rob Sicily of so great a figure, so we kept a smiling silence.
Beside the bay is an exquisite little park with broad lawns, splendid
trees and paths laid out like the spokes of a huge floral wheel; one of
the most perfect gardens in Sicily. It is called Villa Giulia, in honor
of Donna Giulia Guevara, wife of the viceroy, Marcantonio Colonna, who
founded it in 1777. The gardener’s little boy, a cherub of soft black
eyes and winsome smile, afforded another striking proof of the
beneficent effects of education upon the children. Announcing proudly
that he was learning to be a gardener himself, he flitted from flower
to flower like an amorous bee, fondling, smelling, praising each burgeon
in turn, and naming the plants with a perfect flood of Latin botanical
terminology.
[Illustration: “The ‘Poor Man’s Promenade’ stretches away toward Mte
Zaffarano, dim and misty.”]
It was in this lovely park that Goethe spent a great deal of time during
a Sicilian sojourn in 1789, reading Homer and seeing the Villa’s
beauties with so sympathetic an eye, he wrote of it that it looked like
fairyland and transported him into ancient times. His _Italienische
Reise_ is particularly enthusiastic on Sicily, and he sums up the
island’s importance with a glowing tribute: “Italy without Sicily leaves
no image in the soul--Sicily is the key to all.”
In clear weather a large raised terrace at the southeast corner of the
Villa affords a peep at distant Ætna’s hoary crown. But if the weather
be too hazy to see the Titan, the nearer view compensates in great
measure for the invisible volcano. To the southeast the “poor man’s
promenade” stretches away in a misty vista toward Monte Zaffarano. The
fishing boats tie up here, and the fishermen and their families make
merry over their early suppers at open-air tables in the dusty, unpaved
square that extends inland from the broad and level beach. In the other
direction the broad Foro Italico or Marina, a handsome, tree-lined
esplanade circumscribing the edge of the bay, with Monte Pellegrino
rising massive and dominant at the other end of the town, miles away,
affords a striking contrast. This is the “rich man’s promenade,” and
here, in summer, Fashion makes its evening _corso_. Half Palermo sits in
its iron-bottomed chairs sipping at the ices and cool drinks for which
the cafés are noted, and smoking countless _sigaretti_, while the other
half rolls lazily by in its carriages of state.
From the Villa Giulia a line of old palaces marks the landward side of
the Marina all the way down to the foot of the Corso, at its other
extremity. Many of them belong to nobles whose names are woven deep into
some of Sicily’s most important history. Down near the Porta Felice--the
Happy Gate--a little wooden pavilion juts boldly out into the sea, a
combination library and tearoom, whose presiding genius is an English
gentlewoman, charming of speech and manners. No pleasanter way of
resting after a hard day’s work sightseeing can be found than to sit
here over cups of steaming Ceylon, while the sea shimmers an iridescent
opal, ruffled with streaky little ripples of protest for the approaching
night. And afterward what more fitting than to reënter Eden by the Happy
Gate--the Porta Felice--named as a memorial of the Lady Felice Orsini,
wife of the Viceroy who built it. Happy Lady Felice, to have such a
monument--and _porta felice_ in truth, looking one way out over the
sparkling sea and the other upon the city beautiful.
VII
AROUND THE ISLAND
Fascination and Palermo are synonymous; the subtle charm of the city
works into one’s very blood. Day after day and week after week roll by,
until with a start of surprise that is akin to consternation one
realizes that unless he has a year to devote to the island he must seek
fresh vistas soon or leave Sicily, having seen nothing but the capital.
Regretting is as vain as it is foolish. The only thing to do is to go!
Until you do, you have no idea of what the _tessere_--those amazing
little bargain books--do for the Sicilians. Not only do they bring
foreigners with money to spend, but natives of every class and station,
unable to travel at other seasons of the year, flock to the ticket
window with the _tessere_ in their hands; and many of them who
ordinarily would travel third class make a _festa_ of their trips by
buying first-class accommodations with the aid of the rebate.
There is no Pullman system in Sicily. The first arrivals at the station
take the best seats, and hold them against all comers. If you do not
like cheap tobacco, and do like air, it is a good plan to reach the
station early. All this we learned by experience; so we were ready to
leave Palermo some time before the train was, and secured a little
stateroom called a _berlina_, in the front of the car, whence an
unobstructed view on both sides is to be had.
Scarcely is the capital left behind than it is completely forgotten in
the astonishing floral display that flashes past--an unending
motion-picture in vivid colors. For miles the track runs close beside
the sea between deep floral hedges. Crimson geraniums from five to eight
feet in height blazing with color, pink wild roses, sweet-scented white
locust blossoms, spiky prickly pear, the yellow striped spears of the
agave, and pink and lavender morning glories vining among and over them
all give one the impression of being hurled through a giant hot-house.
But here is no cultivation. Sicilian Nature, with prodigal lavishness,
is alone responsible for the brilliant pageant. At the feet of the
taller plants burgeon scarlet poppies, low, earth-nestling lavender
cactus blossoms, and legions of dazzling buttercups. More poppies among
the grass and grain contrast with whole acres of heavy-headed deep
crimson clover, in which the hungry cattle wade to their knees.
On the landward side of the railroad undulate the hills in soft nuances
of green, speckled and flecked with ever-changing light and shade.
Farmhouses massively built of rough unshaped stone, because the stone
is there and mortar is cheap and the labor costs nothing, stand at long
intervals among the golden grain square and squat, each with a heavy
Normanesque battlemented tower. The poorer houses barely show their
roofs or towers above the dense groves of lemon or orange. Sometimes
part of a white wall appears through the bushy tree foliage, which is
varied by occasional wide stretches of vines on low, far-reaching
trellises, over which stands a slim-bodied palm, an alert, lonely
sentinel.
The sea shimmers like glass in the gay sunlight, and even from the
rapidly moving train the bottom is visible, sometimes ten or fifteen
feet below the surface. White stones and deep purple patches of weed lie
like pearls and amethysts imbedded in the heart of the cool emerald.
Tiny reefs, far from their islets, and big, jagged rocks show their
teeth at the ragged coast line through fringes of snowy foam. Ever
shifting car-window prospects float by on the wing, and before you can
fairly appreciate one, you pass another.
Around a curve, the train dashes into a big fishing village, a sturdy
hamlet of nets and boats, of men in bare legs and knitted caps with
tassels, of houses packed together on the side of a steep hill,
struggling upward like lame sheep; a town of tiles and whitewash huddled
together under the protection of a dozen stalwart-steepled
belfries--Termini Imerese, busiest of Sicily’s provincial towns, famous
for its macaroni. Here were the celebrated hot springs of Himera, where,
legend says, Hercules bathed after his great wrestling match with King
Eryx. It is said that the water from these springs gives the macaroni
its characteristic flavor. And here Agathocles, the Peter the Cruel of
Greek Sicily, was born.
A few miles east of Termini the railroad leaves the shore, and turning
southward enters the valley of the Torto, to begin climbing the rugged
backbone of Sicily; the watershed between the ancient African and
Tyrrhenian Seas. We might be in another country and clime, so different
is the scenery as we puff on southward, the way bordered on either hand
by the ruins of medieval castles and by little mountain towns still
living in the Bronze Age. Near Lercara, forty-eight miles from Palermo,
the sulphur mining district begins, where the mephitic gases from the
smelting furnaces have poisoned and stunted vegetation and herbage,
giving everything a ghastly mummified look, besides polluting the keen
mountain air with an unmistakable brimstone flavor.
At Aragona-Caldare Girgenti first appears, seven miles away, surely “a
city set upon a hill that cannot be hid.” Yet to-day it is no more like
the ancient Greek Akragas, founded twenty-five centuries ago, than the
dried sponge is like the live one. All that is left of this richest and
most splendid of Sicilian metropoli is huddled within the confines of
its former acropolis, high on the top of the hill. The greater city,
which spread clear down to the temples that fringe the abrupt southern
edge of the plateau, has vanished completely, and the bright homes of
the gods, crumbled into mellow ruin, stand alone beside the shattered
wall, in the midst of the everlasting beauty of hill and plain.
In its palmy days--which began after the battle of Himera and lasted
until the Carthaginian siege--Akragas was so wealthy and so filled with
splendor that the record is almost incredible. The Akragantines’ flasks
and body-scrapers, for use in the baths, were of gold and silver, their
beds of ivory, their feasts and celebrations magnificent. At the wedding
of the daughter of Antisthenes, one of the two leading citizens, there
were eight hundred chariots in the wedding procession, every single
citizen was feasted, and the whole city seemed ablaze from the smoke and
flame of the innumerable bonfires. Even more noted was the hospitality
of Gellias. His slaves stood always at every gate of the city, to bid
all who came thither welcome as his guests. Once, indeed, he even
entertained--clothed, lodged and fed--five hundred cavalrymen and their
horses. And, as Freeman says, these men, Antisthenes and Gellias alike,
were neither tyrants nor lords nor oligarchs, but simple citizens of
the democracy.
The main source of the city’s wealth was her trade with Carthage,
especially in the grape and the olive, neither of which grew in Africa
at that time. Evidently, though, the grapes were not all sent to
Carthage, for Timæus tells us that a house in the city was nicknamed the
“Trireme” because some young men of fashion got very drunk there one
night, and imagining they were in a reeling, rolling ship at sea, began
throwing the furniture overboard to lighten the laboring craft. When the
generals of the Commonwealth came rushing in to quiet things down, the
drunken boys mistook them for gods of the raging sea, and prayed them to
calm the storm!