Vistas in Sicily Part 12

One of the things that brought disaster upon Messina was its location upon the line of contact between the primary and secondary formations of aetna and Vesuvius, where the shock of earthquake is necessarily the most violent and frequent. And during the last two centuries or so every misfortune that could befall a city has befallen it--siege, bombardment, fire, inundation, cholera, plague, earthquake. Yet through it all, however severe the visitation, the city has been great and undaunted, rising heroically from every catastrophe to begin anew; great in commerce, too, as well as in the heroic spirit of its citizens.

Notwithstanding its tragic story, of late years it was a dusty, commercial town, eminently set upon minding its own business and giving little heed during business hours to anything but business.

In the evening, however, the whole town was out of doors, gathering in a dense throng to listen to the band concert in the Piazza di Municipio.

Grave and reverend seigniors puffing at black Italian cheroots, fat wives on their arms or waddling behind under the weight of their wonderful jewelry; young sparks who wore their hats rakishly and eyed the daughters of families with roguish airs of expert judgment in petticoats; flashy corner loafers whose visages betrayed their character--or lack of it; solemn family parties to whom this open air concert was the diversion of the week; and scores of impish little ragam.u.f.fins whose specialty seemed to be vociferous appeals to smokers for cigarette stubs. But the crowd was very Italian, very good-natured, very indolently happy. _Dolce far niente_ ruled, save for the industrious bandsmen, and everybody enjoyed himself in his own way.

In the eighteenth century the wide and handsome promenade along the clear waters of the Strait was named _La Palazzata_, because the stately _palazzi_ of the n.o.bility lined its entire length, and each palace was equal in height, style and construction to all its neighbors. But slowly there crept into the city the sneaking spirit of commercialism. The haughty n.o.bles fell upon evil days and died. Their palaces became shops, hotels, stores; the old glory was fading fast, and the new was a tawdry imitation. The splendor of the _Palazzata_ waned before the vigor of expanding trade that filled the wharves with casks of spoiling lemons for the manufacture of acids and essential oils. The very air of Messina became impregnated, redolent of the pungent essence of fruit turning into gold.

But that was not the end. The _Palazzata_--aye, all Messina--was doomed to fall in the crowning misfortune of the centuries. The terrible earthquake predicted almost to the minute by Mr. Perret of the Vesuvius Observatory, smote the city while it slept, on the morning of December 28, 1908. The earth became a shaken old carpet, ripping, tearing, rending apart hideously, crumpling upon itself. The sea receded and heaped itself in mountains of waters, the beach lay bare. The grim G.o.ds of the nether world smiled; they piled the sea and the waves higher into an Olympian bolt, hurled it resistless and foaming upon the helpless town, again to take toll of man's rashness. Palace and hotel, shop and church trembled--vacillated--crashed down into agonizing ruin, burying half the city in their debris. In the city alone 77,283 persons perished. Humanity stood aghast before a catastrophe so tremendous that the intelligence could not grasp its full significance of horror. And when the final relief work was completed, the last reports tabulated, the toll of aetna on both sides of the Strait--in Calabria as well as in Sicily--mounted up to two hundred thousand--nearly a quarter of a million lives!

Sleeping and praying, weeping and cursing, unconscious and paralyzed with terror, Messina died in the murdering cruelty of the most appalling of all the disasters the heroic city had ever known.

The Cathedral, which was begun in 1098 and finished by King Roger, had shared the misfortunes of the city. Earthquake and fire and the still more vandal hand of the restorer had robbed it long before of almost all semblance to the plans of King Roger's architects. And the G.o.ds of the earth, being no respecters of buildings, hurled it down into ruin like the commonest hut in the city. Not all its ma.s.siveness and splendor could save it from the common fate; not all its treasures of goldsmith's work and sculpture and art. But though it fell, the people of the dauntless city did not blench. Crushed and dazed as they were, one of the first buildings they put up was a new house of prayer. Hastily knocked together of rough boards, the triumphant symbol of hope and faith nailed firmly above it, that pitiful church spoke dramatically of the spirit that defies defeat and honors victory.

The city has arisen anew in a metropolis of more than 65,000 souls, with suitable churches now. Moreover, the commercial spirit of the people a.s.serted itself almost immediately, and exports began with scarcely any delay. In the new Messina that has sprung up--a little to the south and a trifle farther inland--away from the chaos of wrecked buildings and blasted hopes, there is at least a measure of safety. It is largely a wooden city; the buildings are restricted in height, and no fires are permitted expect in the kitchens, which are built of brick.

The American relief work is especially interesting to us. No less than 1336 two-room-and-kitchen houses were put up by American hands and with American materials and money in the new Messina, and five hundred more across the Strait in Reggio di Calabria, a total of 1836, capable of housing more than 12,000 people. Each family is bound under pain of expulsion to observe stringent rules for public safety and sanitation, approved by Queen Elena herself. In places these low, white clapboarded cottages, shaded by mulberry trees, have a decidedly New England town appearance. Beside these, American funds built an hotel with seventy-five rooms and thirteen or fourteen baths; a church where some 350 people can worship; two schools that care for eighty children each, and the Elizabeth Griscom Hospital, in which every available resource of modern sanitary engineering in design and construction was employed.

White-walled and red-roofed, it stands high on the hillside, a very attractive sight from the Bay, its windows commanding a sweeping view which is a tonic in itself.

During the reign of horror that followed the fall of the city, fire and snow, rain and pestilence added their agonies to the already overflowing tragedy. But British and American, Russian and French bluejackets toiled heroically, regardless of personal danger from falling ruins or infection from the stench of thousands of unburied corpses, to help their Italian brethren succor the wounded and rescue the dying. King Victor Emmanuele himself, disregarding comfort and personal safety, hurried to the scene and risked his life in superintending the work of rescue, endearing himself to the Nation by his cool bravery and resourceful tenderness to the sufferers. And not only the King, but Queen Elena, who accompanied him, struggled through the ruins day after day, braving hardships and danger, aiding the wounded and dying with her own hands. All Italy arose and called her blessed. They gave her a new name. She was no longer merely _Regina d'Italia_--Queen of Italy--but _Regina di Pieta_--Queen of Pity.

XVI

THE NORTHERN Sh.o.r.e

Along 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 sh.o.r.e s.e.xtus Pompey was annihilated by Agrippa in the battle of Naulochus in B. C. 36. Milazzo, sixteen miles from Messina, is the site of ancient Mylae, Messina's first colony, which had a stirring time of it through all the centuries. The last big event in her history was Garibaldi's victory over the Neapolitans, freeing the city from the hated Bourbon rule.

The train runs over _fiumare_ after _fiumare_--riverbeds dry in Summer, rushing torrents in Winter--and vineyards stretch beside the track in vast expanses of low, bushy vines, ripe with promise. Then, with a shriek, the engine drags us in a cindery cloud of smoke through the promontory on which stood Tyndaris, the Greek colony founded by Dionysius I. The town stood nine hundred feet above the black hole into which we plunge. What would be the sensations of this swash-buckling Greek could he see the rock to-day, with the trains, black worms darting through the solid rock he never dreamed of penetrating! More tunnels follow fast, then another cape, and a stretch of glad, open, smiling country that makes one think of the orchards at home.

Picturesque towns, groves of oleanders, battered old Roman bridges and medieval castles in which life is still of the Dark Ages, flit by rapidly until Caronia is reached. Here, nearly 2,600 years ago, a Sikel settlement called _Kale Akte_--Beautiful Sh.o.r.e--was made under an ambitious leader named Ducetius, who hoped to save the remnant of his people who were still free in the interior, from absorption by the Greeks. A single defeat, however, crushed this native rising, and all hope of Sikel independence vanished in 444 with the death of Ducetius.

"Beautiful Sh.o.r.e" withered away until to-day Calacte is a commonplace Sicilian town with even a commonplace name, and only its memories to save it from utter insignificance.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Cefalu, across the fields from a car-window of the fast Palermo express.]

And then we come to Cefalu, a town whose reputation depends on its dirt, its beggars, and its Cathedral. And there is no excuse for either dirt or mendicants, since it is a thriving commercial and manufacturing city with ample resources to keep itself clean, and purged of begging pests. The name tells its location--_Kephale_, in Greek, meant head; that is, promontory in this case, and the old Sikel city occupied the crest of the big jutting headland thrusting straight out into the sea and rising over 1,200 feet in height. On this elevation--seventy minutes now of stiff climbing it takes to reach it, over boulders and the detritus of centuries--the Sikels built them a safe city, and swept it about with ma.s.sive battlemented walls, carried clear down to the sea.

Parts of them are still in very good condition; no doubt through the centuries they have been restored again and again.

The "Head" is bald now--a snowy pate with only a sprinkling of gra.s.s--and but one building of uncertain age remains to testify to the different races that have ruled upon this lofty spot. After its acquisition by the Greeks it was important as their western outpost on the northern sh.o.r.e of the island. The one small ruin still standing seems to be that of a Sikel building, of unique structure and great interest. The huge irregular stones in part of it indicate its original appearance, while all about them the decently cut and shaped blocks show an h.e.l.lenic restoration. From this height the view is all-embracing--Pellegrino towering above Palermo forty miles to the west; the gaunt black fire peaks of most of the Lipari Islands--once the windy isles of aeolus--straight out to sea in the northeast; and behind us fertile stretches of rolling country checkered with farms and vineyards; town after town set upon impossible rugged peaks, mountains whose tops tear ragged holes in the mist clouds.

In the near distance is the Punto della Caldara, where the shrewd and wily sons of Tyre and Sidon, full of the instinct of commerce, not combat, beached their frail craft and sat down at the feet of the Sikel natives for barter, within easy eyeshot of this eyrie. No doubt from the battlements the natives peered down with less of an eye for the splendid view than for the marketplace of the swarthy, black-bearded Canaanites; and thither they were lured by tempting displays of the royal purple of Tyre, the gold of distant Tarshish far to the west, and the gla.s.s and ornaments and statuettes that the Phnician tempters knew how to make and to market so much better than their uncouth selves.

As we came down from the desolate heights, it began to rain. Within a few hundred yards of the town we pa.s.sed the house of an old _contadino_ who sat calmly inside his jute-walled goatpen meditating. In the kitchen door stood his brawny wife, feeding the unkempt, shrewish looking old goat with soup full of green onions from her husband's bowl, and diverting herself betimes by lashing the gentle philosopher vigorously, after the fashion of Mrs. Caudle.

In 1129 King Roger was returning from the Italian mainland--whither he had gone to whip into docility sundry recalcitrants among his unruly barons--when his vessel was overtaken by a violent storm of the sort that so often lashes the Mediterranean into fury. The King, greatly alarmed, vowed a fine church in honor of the Christ and the Twelve Apostles if he and all his company were permitted to land unharmed. The ship made Cefalu head, and everyone came ash.o.r.e safely. Two years later King Roger fulfilled his vow, by establishing a town at the foot of the cliff, and beginning to rear the most magnificent sanctuary that had been built in Sicily since the Greeks constructed their ma.s.sive Doric temples.

Tremendous and ma.s.sive are the only words that fit this building, and the enormous hewn stones upon which the facade rests seem to indicate that here must once have stood some ancient fortification which offered the Norman architects a permanent base upon which to build their shrine.

The twin spires, the play of the interlacing arches, the round-headed portal--it is especially worthy of notice, by the way--all spell the cool and coherent genius of the northern French architect. Indeed, it is, like King Roger himself, of the Norman brood, but thoroughly adapted to its Sicilian environment.

Within, one realizes how royally Roger fulfilled his vow. What miracles were wrought by these hard-living, hard-fighting, hard-worshiping souls who took their religion with such mighty seriousness that it became an integral part of themselves and their daily lives! The main body of the Cathedral is plain white and generally barren. But no pen can describe in detail the blazing mosaics in the tribune without heaping color upon color, design upon design. The colors of the pictures were executed by artists who were almost tone impressionists, so delicate are the soft shades they used to set off the more primitive hues of the borders.

From the floor of the chancel the flying ribs of the roof seem sections of delicate enameled work. The farther away one stands the more perfect the illusion becomes, to the point where the designs lose their ident.i.ty. Indeed, no master jeweler could produce a more harmonious effect with his intricate interweaving of colors and blending of tones.

But the crowning wonder of the Cathedral--as in the Cathedral of Monreale and the Cappella Palatina--is the enormous mosaic bust of the Christ which fills the vault of the tribune. Built up like its fellows of the brilliant bits of colored gla.s.s that adorn the rest of the apse, it seems a portrait of encrusted gems, a human conception of the G.o.dhead that flashes inspiration from myriad delicate facets.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "One realizes how royally Roger fulfilled his vow in this magnificent Cathedral."]

Nevertheless, Cefalu Cathedral fails to impress the beholder as do the other two in which there is not a jarring or inconsistent note from pave to rooftree. Here in Cefalu the bare and dingy plaster walls of the main body--adorned with dubious figures of saints of both s.e.xes, covered with dirt and cobwebs and minus certain of their limbs--make a contrast so glaring as to strike dismay to the most appreciative spirit.

Old as the Cathedral is, the beach at Cefalu is strewn with curious craft that seem even more ancient: queer old feluccas, cask-like smacks with barrel bows and truncated sterns swept by huge tillers, bottle-nosed xebecs with staring painted eyes for hawse-holes and central sideboards in lieu of keels. And nowhere else in the island are the different types of the forefathers more numerous and distinct: here a distinctly Semitic type, with the swart face, black beard and piercing eyes of the Phnicians; here a pure Greek face worthy of the sculptor; there a burnt-up son of the desert, and yonder a Roman beside a Gaul. Busy and prosperous they seem, for all their dirt and indifference to squalor and evil smells; and moreover, contented. Their fishing smacks bring in tons of herring which by euphemy go out of Cefalu in cans of oil as the best sardines. The chief industries of the town, after the selling of clothes and notions, seemed to be the manufacture and sale of cheap perfumes and footgear, so far as I could see.

From Cefalu westward the railway runs beside acres upon acres of artichokes and whole fields of crimson sumac, while the "donkey ears" of the p.r.i.c.kly pear form spiky hedges and great pin cushions everywhere.

For these are the _Campi Felici_, the Happy Fields of Fertility, whose fruitful farms give back rich returns for the labor spent upon them, and which murmur always with the creaking music of huge wooden wheels over which run the endless strings of irrigating buckets introduced ages ago by the Arabs. Another of their importations is manna. On the slopes of Angels' Peak--otherwise Gibilmanna, or Manna Mountain--these trees still grow, as they did in Africa and Araby, and the people gather considerable quant.i.ties of their exudations of gum.

Ten miles down the line we come to the site of Himera. Here two of the greatest events in Greek history transpired, battles both, one a glorious victory, the other a frightful defeat and disaster. The good tyrant Theron of Akragas secured his vast number of able-bodied slaves here after the first battle, when in 480 B. C., with his son-in-law, the tyrant Gelon of Syracuse, he defeated the Carthaginians. It is said that Hamilcar himself took no part in the battle, but that all day he stood alone on a hilltop overlooking the fight, watching the Greeks driving back his picked troops. All day he prayed and sacrificed in vain, and at evening, his own army little more than a disorganized rabble streaming pellmell across the field, he threw himself into the altar fire as a supreme sacrifice to the b.l.o.o.d.y G.o.ds of Carthage. When Hamilcar's grandson, Hannibal Gisgon, was sent over in another campaign against the Sicilian Greeks--this warfare was practically continuous--he wasted no time--though he destroyed Selinus by the way--but hurried to Himera, urged on by the spirit of filial vengeance. Baal and Ashtaroth were more gracious to him than they had been to his grandfather, and he wiped Himera from the map, literally leaving not one stone upon another in the fated city. At the end of the day he made his sacrifice to the G.o.ds--three thousand of the men of Himera, all who were left alive after the battle, on the very spot where the Shophet Hamilcar seventy-one years before had offered up himself.

What is the relation between street cries and criers? Do certain words or names necessarily draw to themselves vendors whose characters can be influenced by the sounds they utter in selling their wares; or do natures of a given sort instinctively select only those things whose names have a corresponding spirit to their own? Some Max Mueller can perhaps answer the question; but anyone can observe the facts. They apply especially to newsboys in the Latin countries. Pa.s.sing Termini again--the hot springs of Himera--the papers were just out, and the voice of the little fellow at the window of the compartment with copies of _The Hour_ was a long, musical drawl--"_L' Oh-oh-oh-oh--raaaa! L'

Oh-oh-oh-oh--raaa...!_" Very different from this cry was that of the lad selling _Life_. He cried in a sharp staccato recitative, repeating very rapidly: "_La Vita-Vita-Vita-Vit'-Vit'-Vit'!_" Most lackadaisical of all was the older boy who had _Sicilia_. From scarcely opened lips and with dreamy eyes, he slowly intoned each syllable of the name, extending and amplifying and sweetening it, as a tender morsel of which he could not get enough, softening his c's and making his l's most liquid and mellifluous--"_Seee-sheeeeee-lll-ly-aaaaah!_"

About the time that the Phnicians founded Panormos, their greatest city, in the bosom of the rich plain at the water's edge, they also founded another city upon the crest of a lofty rock at the other side of the bay, and called it Solous, probably from the Hebrew or Phnician word _sela_, meaning rock. It was a border fortress, a watch tower from which the Semitic traders could keep an eye on the ever encroaching Greeks. But when the heyday of Phnician power was fading, the Soluntines invited the conquering Romans in, so the meager ruins to be seen are not the wreck of Phnician Solous, but of the Roman Soluntum in which its ident.i.ty was swallowed up. No greater contrast can be imagined than that which exists between these two cities--Palermo living, Solunto dead beyond any power to infuse life into its stony veins.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Solous was ... a border fortress, a watch-tower from which to eye the encroaching Greeks."]

There are three ways to reach Solunto--that is its modern Italian name--by express train to the station for Bagheria; by accommodation to Santa Flavia, which is within five minutes' walk of the Antichita di Solunto; or by carriage from Palermo, a ten- or twelve-mile drive each way. Luncheon should be taken. If you enjoy a lively time, by all means go by express to Bagheria on a _festa_ or feast-day. As you step from the station platform you are immediately the center of a howling mob of peasants and hackmen, all behaving like enraged lunatics and grabbing at you from every side. When this happened to me, I called into play all the football tactics I had ever learned, charged through the thickest of the ma.s.s, and pelted down the road in exceedingly undignified fashion, the whole pack yelling derisively at my heels.

As I trudged ahead, I heard the squeak of ungreased wheels, and was hailed by the driver of a skeleton stage capable of holding four uncomfortably--five were already in it.

"Hai--get in and ride!" he called cheerily. "Where are you going?"

"To Bagheria. I like walking!"

The driver laughed; so did his inconsiderate fares. "It is a very long walk by this road to Bagheria--all the way around Sicily!"

I stopped walking. He went on: "But if you want to go to Solunto, I'll take you there for three _lire_. You can walk to Bagheria from there."

"But your stage is too full now," I objected.

"Never! Plenty of room. Come--I'll take you for two _lire_, if you can't afford to pay me three."

Crowding uncomfortably together, the other occupants, decent young peasants, made room for me, and we creaked slowly on behind the half-starved horse whose best pace was a walk. Here a huge brown villa of the soap-box type deflected the road to one side; there fresh young vegetables sprouted thickly from clay pits which had all the seeming of prehistoric stone ruins; yonder a meadow full of drying brick and loose straw proclaimed the brickmaker at work. Turning and twisting, the road wandered on leisurely until we neared the Antichita di Solunto, the rest house where visitors may stop to eat luncheon and buy the sour red wine the custodian has for sale. A sudden ominous sagging of the rear of the stage made everyone seize something. But a cheery voice rea.s.sured us, and Gualterio's beaming face peered in over the tailboard.

"I am here, _signore_!" he cried delightedly. "Behold, if you need me."

I crawled out with some difficulty while everybody laughed but the driver, who was demanding four _lire_ instead of two. Promptly Gualterio took command of the situation.

"You go on--I will pay him!" and he turned on the fellow with a fervid exposition of his complete ancestry of thieves and jailbirds, threw him two _lire_, and started him off again.