Part 3 (2/2)

Paterno, the second largest town on the flanks of Etna after Catania and Aci Reale, stands in the very heart of the Regione Coltivata, and possesses more than 16,000 inhabitants. According to Cluverius, it is the site of the city of Hybla Major (~Hybla Megale~), a Sikelian city which was unsuccessfully attacked by the Athenians soon after they first landed in Sicily. During the second Punic War, the inhabitants went over to the Carthagenians, but the city was speedily recovered by the Romans. Pliny, Cicero, and Pausanias allude to it, but its later history has not come down to us. An altar was lately found in Paterno dedicated to _Veneri Victrici Hyblensi_. Several towns in Sicily were called Hybla, probably--according to Pausanias--in honour of a local deity. Paterno was founded by Roger I. in 1073: it was once a feudal city of some importance, and possessed a cathedral and castle, and several large monasteries. Although much fallen to decay, it still possesses a good deal of vitality, and the population is on the increase.

On leaving Paterno the road turns to the North-west, and pa.s.ses through the village of Ste. Maria di Licodia. Here originally stood the Sikelian City of Inessa (~Inessa~), which, after the death of Hiero I., was peopled by colonists from Katana (then called ~Aitne~). The new occupants of the city changed its name from Inessa to Aetna, which it retained. The town later fell into the hands of the Syracusans, and in 462 B.C. the Athenians in vain attempted to take it. During the Athenian expedition both Aetna and Hybla were allies of Syracuse. In 403 B.C. Aetna was taken by Dionysius, who placed in it a body of Campanian mercenaries. Sixty-four years later (B.C. 339) the town was taken by Timoleon. For many succeeding years we find no further mention of it.

Cicero speaks of it in his time as an important place, and the centre of a very fertile district; it is also mentioned by Pliny and Ptolemy, and Strabo says that it was usually the starting point for those who ascended the mountain. Of its later history we know absolutely nothing.

Six miles to the north-west of St. Mariah di Licodia, the road pa.s.ses through Biancavilla--a town of 13,000 inhabitants, and the centre of a cotton district.

The road continues in the same direction until the town of Aderno is reached; and here we arrived late in the evening, and gained our first experience of a Sicilian inn in an out-of-the-way town. After many enquiries we were directed to the only inn which the place could boast, kept by a doctor. No one appeared at or near the entrance, of course there was no bell or knocker, and we made our way up a dark stone staircase till we arrived at a dimly-lighted pa.s.sage. A horrible old Sicilian woman now appeared, and showed us with great incivility the only room in the house, which its inmates were willing to place at our disposal. It was a fairly large room, with a stone floor which apparently had not been swept for weeks, and walls that had once been whitewashed; the furniture consisted of three beds placed on tressels, a plain deal table, and some primitive chairs. As to food they had neither bread, meat, wine, eggs, macaroni, fruit, or b.u.t.ter in the house; neither did they offer to procure anything. Even when some eggs had been obtained, and (after an hour's delay) cooked, there was not a single teaspoon to eat them with. The people of the town appear to subsist chiefly on beans and a kind of dried fish. If our courier had not been a very handy fellow and a tolerable cook, we should have been obliged more than once to go to bed supperless. As it was, the best he could do on this occasion was to get some bread, eggs, and wine, and--best of all--some snow, for the heat was intolerable. In a town of the same size--15,657 inhabitants--in England, we should have at least two really comfortable inns ready at any moment to receive and entertain the weary traveller.

[Ill.u.s.tration: View of Etna from Bronte]

Aderno stands on the site, and has preserved the name, of the ancient Sikelian city of Adranum (~Adranon~). According to Diodorus there existed here, from very early times, the temple of a local deity named Adra.n.u.s. The city was founded by the elder Dionysius in 400 B.C.; it owed its importance to the renown of its temple, which was guarded by a thousand dogs. In 345 B.C. the city fell into the hands of Timoleon, and it was taken by the Romans at the commencement of the first Punic War.

After this we cease to hear of it. The modern town was founded by Roger I. in the 12th century. The fine Norman tower--now used as a prison--and the monastery, were both built by King Roger.

After leaving Aderno the base-road ascends, turns nearly due north, and leads us past a number of lava streams, notably those of 1610, 1603, and 1651. A good view of Monte Minardo, and the minor cones in its more immediate neighbourhood, is obtained on the left, while on the right we see the Valley of the Simeto, and Centorbi high upon the hills.

Nearly due west of the great crater is the town of Bronte, which is 2,782 feet above the sea, and has a population of more than 15,000. It is a very primitive place, and several centuries behind the age; it reminded us forcibly, in one or two particulars, of Pompeii: the streets are narrow and tortuous, and the roadway very uneven. Awnings are sometimes hung across the street from side to side to provide shade. The shops are exactly like those at Pompeii; and in the main street we noticed an open-air kitchen, to which the would-be diner repairs, purchases a plateful of food, and eats it standing in the public way.

The inn was even worse than that of Aderno, and apparently had never before received guests. We were offered one miserable room, without a lock to the door, and unprovided with either table or chair. Of course the bare idea of offering to procure, or furnish, or cook, any kind of food was too monstrous to be entertained for a moment. With difficulty the courier obtained some eggs, macaroni, and fruit, on which we dined in a small barn attached to a wine-shop.

At Bronte we are only nine miles from the crater, on the steepest side of the mountain, and near the Tertiary sandstone which underlies this portion of the mountain. A short distance outside the town we saw great beds of the lava of 1832, piled up fantastically in all sorts of forms, and excessively rugged and uneven. It is quite bare of vegetation, and does not appear to have even commenced to be decomposed.

Bronte gave its name to Lord Nelson, who was created Duke of Bronte by Ferdinand IV.:--an appropriate name for a great warrior ([Greek: bronte], thunder). The Nelson estates are scattered around the town.

On leaving Bronte the road conducted us past several high hills of sandstone and quartzite near Monte Rivoglia; then we pa.s.sed near Maletto, and, leaving the malarious lake Gurrita on our left, we soon after arrived at Randazzo. Near Maletto the road reaches it highest point--3,852 feet.

The town of Randazzo was founded by the Lombards in the 10th century; during the Middle Ages it appears to have been a prosperous, populous, place; at present it possesses more than 8,000 inhabitants. The Emperor Frederick II. created his son Duke of Randazzo, and added to the name of the town, _Etnea_. It contains several very interesting architectural remains; a church of the 13th century, a mediaeval palace--the Palazzo Finochiaro,--and a ducal palace now used as a prison. The houses are for the most part built of lava, and some of the shops have ma.s.sive lava counters extending half across their open front, while the door occupies the remainder, as at Pompeii. The view from Randazzo is very fine in every direction; the crater of Etna appears near, and Monte Spagnuolo--many hours distant--just outside the town. The town is 2,718 feet above the sea, just above the Valley of the Alcantara--of which it commands a fine view, and also of the limestone hills on the other side.

We were obliged to pa.s.s the night in the town, in an inn scarcely superior to that of Aderno, but distinctly better than the miserable Albergo Collegio at Bronte. At least the people were civil, and did their best. The one room of the inn had a bed in each corner, and a deal table in the middle. Three of the beds were occupied by engineers who were surveying in connection with a new line of railway; the fourth was made over to the courier. I slept in a small kind of ante-room on a bed chiefly composed of deal boards placed on tressels. Here again the courier was invaluable, in fact it would be simply impossible to make the circuit of Etna without a courier. He procured some eggs, macaroni, fruit, snow, tomatoes, and even meat, and cooked everything well, without a trace of garlic. He also took care that the linen was clean, and the general arrangements as comfortable as they could be under the circ.u.mstances. Let us also admit that neither at Aderno, Bronte, nor Randazzo were we troubled with musquitoes or any worse species of insect. These, we were a.s.sured, would appear in full force in the following month (September). Our only inconvenience of this nature arose from swarms of flies. The inns of these out-of-the-way towns probably receive scarcely a dozen travellers in the year, and these are Sicilians, who are not used to better accommodation. Evidently a _forestiare_ is quite a novelty: the people of these small towns used to look at us with great curiosity, and crowded round the carriage when we started. At Bronte we had a good example of this curiosity: owing to the hardness of the lava of 1832 the head had come off the handle of our hammer, and we went into a carpenter's shop to have it put on again.

Presently we noticed that eleven people, including a priest, were looking on, apparently with intense and absorbing interest.

From Randazzo the base-road descends, until at Giarre it is near the sea-level. This road is one of the most beautiful in Sicily; it is part of the old military route from Messina to Palermo, and it was traversed by Himilco in 396 B.C.; by Timoleon in 344 B.C.; and by Charles V. in 1534. After leaving Randazzo the valley of the Alcantara becomes visible, while beyond it rise the lofty mountains of the Nebrodes. The road pa.s.ses near Monte Dolce, and soon reaches Linguaglossa, a small town from whence the craters of 1865 may be reached in about four hours.

The rapidly descending road pa.s.ses through Piedemonte and Mascali, in the heart of an extraordinarily fertile region. Mascali, a village of 3050 inhabitants, was considered by Cluverius to be the site of the Greek town of Callipolis, founded by a colony from Naxos as early as the fifth century, B.C. A full view of the coast line is obtained from the Capo di Taormina on the north, to a point below Riposto on the south. We descended through plantations of nuts, and groves of oranges and lemons, to gentle slopes covered with vineyards.

From the town of Giarre, (17,965 inhabitants), we get a view of the Val del Bove, which, however, is almost always obscured by thin white clouds, while the summit of the mountain is clear. We noticed, indeed, every day that the summit, which had been absolutely clear all the day and night, became covered with clouds shortly before sunset, while about an hour later the clouds cleared off, and the mountain was sharply defined against the sky during the starlit night. Some of the effects of sunset behind clouds resting on the summit, while all the rest of the sky was bright blue, were exceedingly beautiful, and were quite untranslatable into any known language, save that of painting, and of music. Perhaps Turner could have done justice to them.

After leaving Giarre we pa.s.sed through a good deal of highly cultivated land belonging to Baron Pennisi, the largest landholder and richest man in Sicily. He makes good use of his wealth, and seems to be very popular among all cla.s.ses. He possesses three palaces in Aci Reale, and has done a great deal to beautify the town. Archaeologists will remember him as the possessor of the finest collection of Sicilian coins in the world. Many of these have been found on his own estates, but he never scruples to give large sums of money for any coin which he covets.

Aci Reale, one of the prettiest towns in Europe, is situated in the midst of a very fertile region 550 feet above the sea. To the east it faces the Ionian sea, while on the west towers Etna. The town is full of wealthy inhabitants, and the houses are large, lofty, and well built. It contains 24,151 inhabitants, and possesses celebrated sulphur baths, and one of the best hotels in Sicily. The wealth of this small town is well shown by the following fact: Since its foundation in the tenth century, till within a year or two of the present time, the town had been under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Catania. It happened, however, a few years ago, on the occasion of a religious procession in Catania, that the people of Aci considered that their patron Saint, S. Venera, was slighted. In fact the image of S. Agata, the patron Saint of the Catanese--whose veil has so often averted the lava-streams from the city--was put in all the prominent parts of the procession, while the image of S. Venera was comparatively neglected. The people of Aci at once returned home, and sent a pet.i.tion to the Pope, praying that they might have a Bishop of their own directly subject to the Holy See, in order that they might no longer be subjected to such slights. The Vatican having duly considered the question consented to raise Aci to the dignity of a Bishopric, and to pay the Bishop a yearly stipend of 10,000 lire, (about 400, but equal to 600 in Sicily), on condition that 200,000 lire were paid at once into the coffers of the Vatican.

This was promptly done, and now Monsignore Gerlando Genuardi, Bishop of Aci Reale, may snap his fingers in the face of Monsignore Giuseppe Benedetto Dusmet, a Benedictine of the Congregation of Monte Ca.s.sino, and Archbishop of Catania.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Island of Columnar Basalt off Trezza]

Six villages in the neighbourhood of Aci Reale bear the name of Aci: Aci Castello, Aci Sant' Antonio, and so on, but Aci Reale claims to stand upon the very site rendered memorable by the story of Acis and Galatea.

The river Acis (now called _Acque Grande_) rises from a bed of lava, and falls into the sea a mile from its source. Aci Reale stands on seven different beds of superposed lava, having layers of earth resulting from decomposed lava between. The Canon Recupero calculated from observation, that a lava requires at least 2000 years to form even a scanty layer of earth, consequently he inferred that the lowest of the lava streams upon which Aci rests must have been formed 14,000 years ago. These views he stated to Brydone a hundred years ago; the latter says, ”Recupero tells me he is exceedingly embarra.s.sed by these discoveries in writing the history of the mountain. That Moses hangs like a dead weight upon him, and blunts all his zeal for enquiry; for that really he has not the conscience to make his mountain so young as that prophet makes the world. What do you think of these sentiments from a Roman Catholic Divine? The Bishop, who is strenuously orthodox--for it is an excellent See--has already warned him to be upon his guard, and not to pretend to be a better natural historian than Moses; not to presume to urge anything that may, in the smallest degree, be deemed contradictory to his sacred authority.” The Canon Recupero lost his church preferment on the publication of Brydone's book, and the whole body of clergy of Girgenti received a reprimand on account of a capital story which Brydone told of a dinner at which the Bishop presided, during which several of the reverend Canons suffered severely from the effects of English punch, which Brydone had brewed for them. We quite agree with Admiral Smyth when he says, ”It is a pity that Mr. Brydone laboured under such a cacoethes, as to sacrifice a friend for the sake of a good story.” Of course we now know that Recupero's estimate of the age of Etna was far within the true limits, but we derive this information from other sources. No true estimate can be obtained from the observation of the decomposition of lavas, for it has been often observed that two lavas will decompose at very different rates.

A little to the north of the village of La Scaletta, at the base of the rocks upon which Aci Reale stands, there are two small caverns in the abrupt face of the basalt, which can only be approached in a boat. They consist of columnar basalt bent very curiously, and capped by amorphous basalt.

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