BY ARTHUR STANLEY RIGGS F. R. G. S. colophon NEW YORK McBRIDE, NAST & COMPANY 1912   Copyright, 1912, by McBride, Nast & Co. Published, November, 1912 TO MY WIFE The acknowledgments of the author are due to the editor of The Travel Magazine, for his courteous permission to reprint some of the chapters which follow. A. S. R. Massy-Verrières, France, June 5, 1912....

Sicily is the rarest flower of the great midland sea. Built up on the North in a series of beetling cliffs, the island slopes gently down through mountain chains and undulating plains to the golden Southern shore. An enormous triangle it is, spiny with lofty peaks—Ætna towers more than ten thousand feet in the air—spangled with flowering meads and dells where Nature loads the air with fragrance; pierced with infernal caverns, whence choking workers extract a large part of the world’s sulphur fro

S ICILY in spring appeared to us like water in the desert. That we knew nothing of the island was a misfortune we shared in common with most Americans. Such vague ideas as we had were derived mainly from long-past schooldays of wearisome geography, and from newspaper accounts of the Mafia, whose members seemed always to be Sicilians. But when, after a stormy fortnight among the volcanic dust-clouds of a great Vesuvian eruption, we determined to escape that choking atmosphere, the royal Road to R

M OST of the passenger steamers come into Palermo shortly after dawn, and in the pleasant, vernal weather of late winter, or in the real spring, the great bay is a waveless sheet of gilded beryl, dotted here and there with small boats so still they seem sculptured, in strong relief against the purple outlines of the cliffs at either horn of the bay. On the right, Monte Pellegrino looms square and massive; on the other horn’s tip Monte Zaffarano peers through the vapors, and the bay between their

P ALERMO is chimneyless. Hovels and palaces alike have no fires, except for cooking, and among the poorer classes very little of that is done at home, the people being steady patrons of the cucine economice , or “economical kitchens,” especially of those in the vicinity of the great public markets. Anxious to see these typical aspects of city life in tabloid form, we had our own dinner early one evening, and told Gualterio to take us through the poorer quarters, to show us the people getting the

I T has already been pointed out that the Easter season is an especially good time to be in Palermo. On Easter morning the great Court of the Lord before the Cathedral is a surprising picture. Upon the heavy stone balustrade enclosing it sixteen massive saints meditate benignly in the scented air. The great gray cement yard, flowers all colors of the rainbow, marble Santa Rosalia—patroness of Palermo—the huge church itself: all are bathed in the most brilliant sunshine imaginable. Words and pict

“P ALACE” in Italian is a flexible and generic term, and the examples of “palaces” one sees in Sicily give an entirely new sense of the elasticity of the Italian language, and the freedom with which the people use it. Palazzo means really any building or structure of any sort where wealthy, a noble, or a royal family lives now, or ever has lived; and some of these structures are as remarkable for their disreputable appearance as others are for their beauty and richness, resembling nothing in the

A SHORT distance outside the Porta Sant’Ágata—one of the southern gates—on the edge of the rolling Conca d’Oro, is the Campo di Santo Spirito or cemetery, a lovely greensward full of curious tombs and graves and vaults. Its chapel is old and bare, a relic of the Cistercian monastery established on the same spot in 1173 by Archbishop Walter of the Mill, the English mentor of King William the Good. Doubtless the Archbishop had much to do with the King’s goodness, since his father was William the B

F ASCINATION 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 barga

T O the northwest of Girgenti the country is honeycombed with sulphur pits and it is not very hard to credit the ancient myth that the gates of Hades opened here. After the train leaves the trunkline of the railway at Aragona-Caldare, tunnels and sulphur mines make up most of the scenery. This entire district has a smitten look, and on the bleak rolling plains and rugged hills are dreary towns whose chief charm, as they flit past in a continuous gray motion picture, lies in their historical sugg

A NOTHER of the beautiful legends with which the history of Syracuse is deeply interwoven is the story of Kyana—Cyane—and Aidoneus or Pluto. To run it to earth take a stout green and blue rowboat across the Porto Grande, about two kilometers wide, to the river Anapo. The snapping breeze blows briskly, and the boat tumbles about in lively fashion upon the sparkling sapphire, past the big motionless yachts at anchor and the slow-curtseying sailing craft coming into the docks from the saline or sal

N EVER make the blunder of trying to study the Greater City when any of the big “tourist yachts” are in port. You will know soon enough when they are—cloop! cloop! cloop! go the hoofs under your windows long before you have thought of breakfast. An endless string of carriages plods out of the island full of gesticulating, noisy, Baedekering enthusiasts who make up in cheery adjectives what they lack in knowledge. When they are back at evening, white with dust and happily weary, and the launches

C ATANIA is the second city of the island in importance, and has a far reaching trade in oil and wine, sulphur and grain and almonds, and the other products of the rich and fertile plain at whose edge it stands guard. It is a city of humdrum, a town which, like Milan, reminds one strongly of some American manufacturing center with a large foreign population, and surely nothing could be further from presenting an historic visage at first sight. Yet its history is a picturesque and vivid tapestry

S ICILIAN railroad trains have the very amiable—or would some people spell that word exasperating?—habit of never running according to schedule. One is tempted at times to wonder why they have a time-table at all! Express or local, the train is always either too late or too early. You may take your choice of reaching the station well ahead of the “due” time, and vegetating until the little locomotive sniffles shamefacedly in, away late, or going on time and finding the carriage doors locked, the

T HE ignorance and illiteracy to which reference has already been made are the chief misfortunes of the Sicilians. Since schools are few and far between, little girls are taught only to sew, knit and cook. The boys, more unfortunate, receive little or no instruction at all—there is work for them as soon as they are old enough, and they are useful in the fields and about the stables and goatpens at six or eight. The children of wealthy or noble families seem to be regarded as superior beings who

F OUNTAINS in Sicily occupy much the same place in the life of the people that the forum occupied in a Roman community of old. That is, the fountain and its piazza are the center for exchanging news and gossip, for recreation, for all the varied diversions the people have in common. Taormina’s principal fountain lies just outside the old wall, not far from the Porta Catania, the gate facing toward Catania. About the cool and dripping basin gather the graceful young peasant girls, balancing incre

F ROM Taormina to Messina the train hurries along at what seems breakneck speed—through vine and olive yards; past broad shallow, dry fiumi , dusty in summer but heavily walled on both sides against the coming of the winter and spring freshets. Now the hills rise bold and sheer, as we dash into and out of innumerable little smoky tunnels, like a firefly flashing through tangled brush. High on one hillside an old cemetery looks down—an enormous file of dusty old pigeon-holes tossed out from a Tit

A LONG the northern coast from Messina westward to Palermo, almost every foot of the way has some historic interest. High among the precipitous cliffs above the present station of Rometta, the Christians held out against the invading Saracens—who had entered the island in 827—until 965. Rometta was the last place to fall. A little farther along the rocky shore Sextus Pompey was annihilated by Agrippa in the battle of Naulochus in B. C. 36. Milazzo, sixteen miles from Messina, is the site of anci

G OING westward from Palermo, the railroad cuts inland behind Monte Pellegrino, crossing the Conca d’Oro past many villas, and does not again touch the coast until, ten miles away, it reaches Sferracavallo, whose main street is so atrociously paved as to give the town its merited name—Unshoe-a-Horse. The line then skirts the shore for some distance, and the early morning scenes on the water to the right are more than lovely. Fishermen flit about in their white-winged boats or toil at launching t

I N Sicily all roads lead to Palermo. And if they do not, you manage to make them. And no matter how many times you return to that city of splendid light, you always find that there is some pleasant or interesting or profitable trip out from the city that you have missed before: perhaps to the picturesque Albanian colony of Piana dei Greci; or up in the hills to the suppressed Benedictine monastery of San Martino, founded by Gregory the Great in the sixth century; or to the village of Acquasanta

F REEMAN, Edward A.—History of Sicily, 3 vols. A tremendous unfinished work covering Sicily from prehistoric days to the reign of Agathocles. Very heavy and redundant, but precise and accurate. Story of the Nations: Sicily. By the same author, but a complete, very compact history in one moderate volume. Paton, W. A.—Picturesque Sicily. Very good. Sladen, Douglas.—Sicily. A huge two-volume narration of the author’s personal experiences. Humorous, informative, slangy, and hastily done but superbly