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.
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.
JOURNEY TO TAORMINA
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 Δωριζ αοιδα. 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.
