Whilst all this took place, Luis Herrera, unsuspicious of the efforts that were making for his rescue, sat alone in his room, which was dimly lighted by an ill-trimmed lamp. Twelve hours had elapsed since he had been informed of the fate that awaited him; in twelve more his race would be run, and he should bid adieu to life, with its hopes and cares, its many deceptions and scanty joys. A priest, who had come to give him spiritual consolation in his last hours, had left him at sundown, promising to return the next morning; and since his departure Herrera had remained sitting in one place, nearly in one posture, thoughtful and pre-occupied, but neither grieving at nor flinching from the death which was to snatch him from a world whereof he had short but sad experience. Alone, and almost friendless, his affections blighted and hopes ruined, and his country in a state of civil war—all concurred to make Herrera regard his approaching death with indifference. Life, which, by a strange contradiction, seems prized the more as its value diminishes, and clung to with far greater eagerness by the old than the young had for him few attractions remaining. Once, and only once, a shade of sadness crept over his features, and he gave utterance to a deep sigh, almost a sob, of regret, as he drew from his breast a small locket containing a tress of golden hair. It was a gift of Rita's in their happy days, before they knew sorrow or foresaw the possibility of a separation; and from this token, even when Herrera voluntarily renounced his claim to her hand, and bade her farewell for ever, he had not had courage to part. By a strong effort, he now repressed the emotion which its sight, and the recollections it called up, had occasioned him, and he became calm and collected as before. Drawing a table towards him, he made use of writing-materials, which he had asked for and obtained, to commence a long letter to MarianoTorres. This his confessor had promised should be conveyed to his friend.
He had written but a few lines, when a slight sound at the room window roused his attention. The noise was too trifling to be much heeded; it might have been a passing owl or bat flapping its wing against the wooden shutter. Herrera resumed his writing. A few moments elapsed, and the noise was again heard. This time it was a distinct tapping upon the shutter, very low and cautious, but repeated with a degree of regularity that argued, on the part of the person making it, a desire of attracting his attention. Herrera rose from his seat, and obeying a sort of instinct or impulse, for which he would himself have had trouble to account, masked the lamp behind a piece of furniture, and hastening to the window, which opened inwards, cautiously unlatched it. A man, whose features were unknown to him, was supporting himself on the ledge outside, his legs gathered under him, and nearly the whole of his thin flexible body coiled up within the deep embrasure of the window. Putting his finger to his lips, to enjoin silence, he severed, by one blow of a keen knife, a cord that encircled his waist, and then springing lightly and actively into the room, closed the shutter, since the opening of which, so rapid had been his movements, not ten seconds had elapsed.
Although the motive of this strange intrusion was entirely unknown to him, Herrera at once inferred that it boded good rather than evil. He was not long left in doubt. The esquilador pointed to Herrera's wounded arm, the sleeve of which was still cut open, although the wound was healed, and the limb had regained its strength.
"Have you full use of that?" said he.
"I have," replied Herrera. "But what is your errand here?"
"To save you," answered the gipsy. "There is no time for words. We must be doing."
And making a sign to Herrera to assist him, he caught hold of one end of the heavy old-fashioned bedstead, which had been allotted to the use of the wounded prisoner, and with the utmost caution to avoid noise, lifted it from the ground and brought it close to the window. Then, taking a rope from his wallet, he fastened it to one of the bed-posts. Herrera began to understand.
"And my companions," said he. "They also must be saved. My room door is locked, but the next window is that of their apartment."
"It is impossible," said the gipsy. "Youmay be saved, perhaps; but to attempt the rescue of more would be destruction. Look here."
The gipsy extinguished the lamp and, stepping upon the bed, reopened the shutter, and drew Herrera towards him.
"Listen," said he, in a low whisper.
The tread of the sentry was heard, and at that moment, the glare of a lantern fell upon the trees, bordering a field opposite the window. Beyond that field the ground was broken and uneven, covered with tall bushes, fern, and masses of rock, and sloping upwards towards the neighbouring hills. The light drew nearer; the sentry challenged. It was the relief. Their heads in the embrasure of the window, Herrera and the gipsy could hear every word that passed. The man going off sentry gave over his instructions to his successor. They were few and short. The principal was, to fire upon any one of the prisoners who should so much as show himself at a window.
By the light of the lantern which the corporal carried, Paco, who was still peering over the edge of the roof, distinguished the features of the new sentry. They were those of Perrico the Christino deserter. The relief marched away, the sentinel shouldered his musket, and walked slowly up to the further end of his post.
"Now then," said the gipsy to Herrera, "fix the rope round your waist. We will let him pass once more, and when he again turns his back, I will lower you. I shall be on the ground nearly as quickly as yourself, and then keep close to me. Take this, it may be useful."
And he handed him a formidable clasp-knife, of which the curved and sharp-pointed blade was fitted into a strong horn handle. With some repugnance,but aware of the possible necessity he might find for it, Herrera took the weapon. The rope was round his waist, and, with his hands upon the embrasure of the window, he only waited to spring out for a signal from the gipsy, who was watching, as well as the obscurity would permit, the movements of the soldier. The night was growing lighter, the wind had risen and swept away the mist from the fields, overhead the clouds had broken, and stars were visible, sparkling in their setting of dark blue enamel.
"Now!" said the gipsy, who held the slack of the rope gathered up in his hands. "No, stop!" cried he, in a sharp whisper, checking Herrera, who was about to jump out, and drawing hastily back. "Hell and the devil! What is he about?"
The window of the room was nearly at the extremity of the sentinel's post, so that, during one period of his walk, the soldier's back, owing to the slow pace at which he marched up and down, was turned for a full minute. It was upon this brief space of time that the gipsy had calculated for accomplishing his own descent and that of his companion. He had allowed the soldier to proceed twice along the whole length of his post, meaning to avail himself of the third turn he should take. But to his surprise and perplexity, when the man passed for the third time, he left his usual track, moved some twenty paces backwards from the house, and gazed up at Herrera's window. Apparently he could distinguish nothing; for, after remaining a few moments stationary, he again approached the wall of the house, looked cautiously around him, and, giving three low distinct coughs, continued his walk. Without pausing to consider the meaning of this strange proceeding, the esquilador caught Herrera's arm.
"Out with you," said he, "and quickly!"
Herrera darted through the window, hung on for one instant by the edge, and let himself go—the gipsy, with a degree of strength that could hardly have been anticipated in one so slightly built, holding the rope firmly, and lowering him steadily and rapidly. The moment that his feet touched the ground, the gipsy sprang out of the window, and, grasping the rope, began descending by the aid of his hands and feet, with the agility of a monkey or a sailor boy. Before he was half-way down, however, the sentinel, who had reached the end of his walk, began retracing his steps. Hererra's heart beat quick. Hastily cutting the noose from round his waist, he pressed himself against the wall and stood motionless, scarcely venturing to breathe. The sentinel approached. Dark though it was, it seemed impossible that he did not already perceive what was passing. Gliding along close to the wall, Herrera prepared to spring upon him at the first sound uttered, or dangerous movement made by him. The soldier drew nearer, paused, let the but of his musket fall gently to the ground, and clasped his hands over the muzzle. Herrera made a bound forward, and clutching his throat, placed the point of his knife against his breast.
"One word," said he, "and I strike!"
"At the heart of your best friend," replied the soldier, in a voice of which the well-known accents thrilled Hererra's blood.
"Mariano!" he exclaimed.
"Himself," replied Mariano Torres.
Just then the gipsy, who had reached the ground, sprang upon the disguised Christino, and made a furious blow at him with his knife. Torres raised his arm, and the blade passed through the loose sleeve of his capote. Herrera hastened to interfere.
"'Tis a friend," said he.
The gipsy made a step backwards, in distrust and uncertainty.
"I tell you it is a friend," repeated Herrera—"a comrade of my own, who has come to aid my escape. And now that you have rescued me, act as our guide to the nearest Christino post, and your reward shall be ample."
The mention of reward seemed at once to remove the doubts and suspicions of the esquilador. Returning to the rope which dangled from the window, he cut it as high up as he could reach.
"They may perhaps miss the sentry and not the prisoner," said he.
At that moment a dark form turned the corner of the house.
"Who goes there?" exclaimed a voice.
"This way," cried the gipsy, and springing across the road, he dashed down a bank, and with long and rapid strides hurried across the fields.
"Who goes there?" repeated the deep hoarse tones of Major Villabuena "Sentry, where are you? Guard, turn out!"
The flash and report of Mariano's musket, which he had left leaning against the wall, and which Don Baltasar found and fired, followed the words of alarm. The bullet whistled over the heads of the fugitives. In another instant all was noise and confusion in the village. The rattle of the drum was heard, lights appeared at the windows, and the clatter of arms and tramp of man and horse reached the ears of Herrera and his companions. Soon they heard a small party of cavalry gallop down a road which ran parallel to the course they were taking. But in the darkness, and in that wild and mountainous region, pursuit was vain, especially when one so well skilled as the gipsy in the various paths and passes directed the flight. In less than half an hour, the three fugitives were out of sight and sound of the village and their pursuers.
After six hours' march, kept up without a moment's halt, over hill and dale, through forest and ravine, the intricacies of which were threaded by their experienced guide with as much facility as if it had been noonday instead of dark night, Herrera and Torres paused at sunrise upon the crest of a small eminence, whence they commanded a view of an extensive plain. On their right front, and at the distance of a mile, lay a town, composed of dark buildings of quaint and ancient architecture, surrounded by walls and a moat, and on the battlements of which sentries were stationed; whilst from the church tower the Spanish colours, the gaudy red and gold, flaunted their folds in the morning breeze.
"What place is that?" said Torres to the guide.
"It is the Christino town of Salvatierra," replied the gipsy, turning into a path that led directly to the gate of the fortress.
After three hours' steaming from Catania, we were in the harbour of Syracuse; but it was at two in the morning, and we could not go ashore. A little scuttling takes place overhead while the Mongibello litters her two hundred and forty horses for the night; and, when this is accomplished, all is silent, and we sleep in the moonlit mirror. In two hours more the last star had dropped out of its place; and in another, rosy morn found us all in activity, and on deck, examining a most unprepossessingpaysage, and contemplating, for many a league, the wretched coast road which must have been our doom if we hadnotcome by sea—so, for once, we had chosen well! Our alternative would have consisted in two days' swinging in alettiga, in facing malaria in the fields, with nothing but famine and fever-stricken hamlets to halt at, and even these at long intervals. There were, to be sure, places enough of ancientname, in D'Anville's Geography, along the coast, but nothingbeyondthe name itself. This is so exactly the case, that even with the beautiful and authentic money ofLeontiumbefore us, we did not land atLentini! There is nothing so utterly confounding as the contemplation ofmoney, every piece of which is agem, on spots where no imagination can conceive the city that coined it. We are not long before we begin to cater for new disappointment, in the desire to be conducted without delay to the fountain ofArethusa. Accordingly, a quarter of a mile's distance from ourlocanda, under the rampart of the oldOrtygia, and in the most uncleanly suburb of modern Syracuse, the far-famed spring is pointed out to our incredulity; and we are at once booked with the many who, having got up a suitable provision of enthusiasm to be exploded on the spot, are obliged to carry it away with them. A vile,soapy washing-tankis Arethusa, occupied by half-naked, noisy laundresses, thumping away with wooden bats at brown-looking linen, or depositing the wet load that had been belaboured and rinsed on the bank, gabbling, as they work, like the veryAdonizousœof Theocritus, (himself, as he informs us, a native of Syracuse.) A man lay sleeping with his dog beside him; a number of mahogany-coloured children, quite naked, were sprawling on the parapet-wall, covered with flies, but fast asleep! A poor bird, a descendant of the Αδονες Σικελικαι, a nightingale of the soil,with his eyes put out, that he might not know day from night, and so sing unconsciously, sang to us as we passed! But the affair was destined, in a single moment, to become ludicrous as well as disappointing. Our guide, Jack Robertson, (so named by an English man-of-war's crew that had, as he said, kidnapped him during the war,) quite mistaking thenatureof our disappointment, said, consolingly, "You comedisway, sir; down here I show youmore gals' feet, wash more clothes;" on which intimation we certainly followed him down a few steps, when, pushing back a wooden door, we entered at once into a large roofed washing-house, along the floor of which still ran the sadly humiliated Arethusa! We praised the beauty of the young washerwomen, and departed—Jack Robertson having considerably more to say on the subject than would interest the reader to know; and which, in fact, we could not tell, without violating what was evidently imparted in confidence.
Under the guidance of the aforesaid Jack Robertson, we had visited two rival collections of coins, the property of two priests, and certainly the finest we had seen in Sicily. Those ofSyracusein silver, of thefirstor largest module, (medaglionias they are technically called,) are for size and finish deservedly reputed the most beautiful of ancient coins; and of these we saw a full score in each collection. We might indeed have purchased, as well as admired, but were deterred by the price asked, which, for one perfect specimen, was from 45 to 50 crowns, (£7 or £8 sterling.) These coins are among the largest extant. On one side, the head of Arethusa is a perfect gem in silver, (thehairespecially, treated in a way that we have never seen elsewhere;) on the other, is aquadriga. One of these ecclesiastics dealt like any other dealer. The other consulted the dignity of the church, and employed a lay brother to impose upon strangers who buy in haste to repent at leisure; for even among the picked, select, andwinnowedcoins of the man who knows what he is about, there are always false ones. Having shown that we areau faitboth as to thethingand the market-price—that we had read Myounet, and were acquainted with the sharp eyes ofde Dominicisat Rome, we pass immediately for an Englishdealer; and suspicion becomes conviction, when, taking up a gold Philip, we remark that "all trades must live," and that our price must depend upon his "quanto per il Filippo?" "You will not scruple, I suppose, to pay forty-seven dollars!" "Thirty-seven is plenty."—"Pocket Philip." "Sir," said we to our employé as we went home, "you are arogueto have brought us to that cheating priest." "Not so, sir," said the Siculo-Inglese Jack Robertson, "they tell here priestnotcheat, always dealsquare—have that character indeed, sir;" and he proceeded to conduct us to another priest-collector, who, in this instance, had gone out to dine with a friend. Jack, however, said he would soon bring him back, dined or undined; and in ten minutes he returned in high spirits at his success. "Always trustme, sir! Me no fool, sir! As soon as I see him, sir, I say, you gotcoins?He say 'yes.' Den you show what you gotdirectlyto English gentlemen. 'No, I won't,' he tell me—'I take my dinnerhere wid my friends, and after dat I come see English gentlemen.'" Rather a cool thing we thought for adealerto keep his customers waiting; but, whenever one wants any thing, one can always afford to wait a little, and Jack informed us that he had learned from the padré's servant that his master always dines in a quarter of an hour. The quarter of an hour up, we send again, but our messenger comes back empty-handed. "Well, where is your friend?" "He no friend of mine, sir! He very angry! Not my fault, sir," "Angry? what is he angry about?" "Because I say to him only this, sir—'Otherpriest ask gentlemantoo much—hope you notvery dear too, sir;' to which he say, 'You damn fool, I don't sell coins!'DenI beg his pardon, and he ask me sharply, 'Whosay I sell coins?' 'Sir,' I say, 'all the whole world say so.' Den he say, 'D—n all the whole world; and when any body tell you this again, say AbateRizzicall him a d——d fool, and say he may go to h-ll!!!'" "Abate Rizzi!! why, that is theProfessor of Eloquenceto whom we were to be introduced yesterday." "Yes, sir," says Jack, "and here he comes," glancing up the street. We now see a personage, whose staid deportment and gait declare him to be much beyond the age when it may be thought allowable to swear. "You rascal, you have been telling us a lie; that gentleman could never have said, damn the whole world." "He did not speak it inEnglish, sir." "Not speak it in English? why, what did he say?" "Sir, he say, 'Cazzo! questa é una minchioneria!' that means 'damn fool,' sir,—'dettia tutti d' andare al diavolo,' that be the same as tell every body go to h-ll!!" (the translation in this case we thought notsobad;) we had not, however, time to discuss the matter, for the Professor of Eloquence, who had indulged our servantpro re natawith so very unusual a specimen of his art, was at our elbow. We saluted him courteously, but offended dignity was apparent in a grave face of considerablechurchpower; we therefore subjoined to the ordinary salutation much regret at the awkwardness of our guide, and apologised for intruding on his repose; which apologies, and further explanations, immediately changed the current in our favour. Jack, too, regretted he had been so indiscreet as to be misled bycurrent reports; butthiswas to rouse the calmed resentment into a new explosion. "Who," he demanded, in very Demosthenic accents—"whohad dared to affirm that he had ever sold a coin?" We went in, saw his very beautiful collection, the Professor himself doing the honours with so much obligingness, that we left him convinced that he neither sold coin nor dispensed anathemas.
"Lautumias Syracusanas omnes audistis; plerique nostis. Opus est ingens magnificum regumac tyrannorum. Totum est ex saxo in mirandam altitudenem depresso, et multorum operis penitus exciso. Nihil tam clausum ad exitus, nihil tam septum undique, nihil tam tutum ad custodias, nec fieri nec cogitari potest."
"Lautumias Syracusanas omnes audistis; plerique nostis. Opus est ingens magnificum regumac tyrannorum. Totum est ex saxo in mirandam altitudenem depresso, et multorum operis penitus exciso. Nihil tam clausum ad exitus, nihil tam septum undique, nihil tam tutum ad custodias, nec fieri nec cogitari potest."
Half an hour's shaking in alettigabrings us without a stumble, by the old forum of Syracuse, to the Ear of Dionysius, and those other stone quarries so well described in the above passage from Ciceroin Verrem. We alight at the embouchure of these most striking excavations, and, descending a very steep short hill, wind through a small garden of exquisite vegetation, and are in the firstlautumiaof the series. Here, deeply embayed in a colossal cave, we behold the marks of the ancient pick-axe, and the niches, as it were, in which the labourers sat while they chiselled out the extraordinary work, fresh as if they had been done yesterday! Shapeless and half-fashioned masses,ebauchesof columns for temples which never came into the possession of capitals, or the support of entablatures—unborn Dorics of the Greek portfolios are here. The sun striking obliquely from the mouth into the interior of the cavern, made the green vegetation all hoary in the slanting light. Fires in dark caverns are favourite subjects with some painters. We admire them not, but we would have liked to take a sketch of one here for the sake of poor Nicias and his fellow captives. A party of men is collected round a caldron with afire blazing beneath it; another group is seated at a long table eating; some feed the immense boiler with new supplies from a heap of dirty-looking earth-stainedsalt. Others test the quality from time to time of that which has been purged and crystallized. It was the native nitre of the country on which they were occupied, and the test was its deflagration. In passing out of thefirstof the line of quarried caverns to go to theEar, which is the last, we are struck with the beauty of the garden into which it opens, which is found in possession of many unfrequent flowers and plants, such as had not prospered even here, but for the singularly sheltered disposition of the spot. Against the wall there grew a magnificentSmilax sarsaparillain full maturity. A decoction of the twigs of that tree cured the gardener, as he assured us, of an obstinate pain in both shoulders that no other medicine would touch; which testimony in its favour made us look with an added interest on the cordate leaf, and small white verbena-looking flower, of certainly the first, and in all probability the last,Smilax sarsawe should ever seegrowing. We cut off from the main stem an arm about the thickness of an ordinary-sized bamboo, and, like it, knotted, for a souvenir of the place and the plant. In this same garden the tea-plant thrived; the proprietor, Count S——, makes an annualracolteof its leaves, which he keeps for his own teapot. Another curiosity is theCeltis australisorfavaragio, a tree that bears fruit of the size of a pea, with a stone kernel; a trumpet-flower of spotless white, belonging to theDatura arborea, measured a whole foot and a half from lip to stalk! But it were vain to dwell on the novelties of a garden which isallnovelty to an English eye, and full of variety to the Italian himself; a garden equally unique in its position and productions. TheEaris probably the most wonderful acoustic contrivance in existence; and that it was the work of studious design, is proved by asecondonecommencedin a neighbouring quarry—commenced, but not further prosecuted, evidently because it would not answer, from the soft, chalky material of the wall on one side. Itsexternalshape of the conch is that of the ass's ear. The aperture, through which the light now enters from its further end, and from a height of one hundred and twenty feet, was till lately not known to exist; it not being supposed that theEarhad anymeatus internuscorresponding with theexternal one. The accidental removal of a quantity of loose stones from above, revealed a narrow passage of from twenty to thirty feet in length, and opening directly into the cave. This internal opening is situated almost immediately over the amphitheatre, one hundred and twenty feet above thefloorof the cavern, and (measuring in a plane) is one hundred and eighty feet from the external opening.
Having rent paper, which made an incredible noise, and let off a Waterloo cracker, which reverberated along the walls like thunder, and done other deeds of the same kind below, we ascended, and walking over thebackof the cavern, presently came upon the passage which leads to itsinneropening; and there, leaning over a parapet wall, (in doing which we almost exclude the feeble light that penetrates into the cavern from behind,) we are startled by a very audible but faint whisper, which comes from our friend below, asking us to declare our present sensations. We reply in the same faint whisper; and are immediately apprised of its safe arrival byanother. One hundred and eighty feet separate the parties. In the stillness of that half-lit cavern, not only were our faintest whisperings conveyed, but we could hear each other breathe! This was a place to come and see!
Some Franciscans told us that Saint Lucia was stabbed close to a granite column, in a subterranean chapel in their church, in thefourth century, andunder Nero!—so ignorant are these men even about what it concernsthem to know. They show a silver image, which a dozen men can, they assure us, scarcely lift. The body of the saint is not, however, here, but at Venice. "No; we have but one rib and a thumb," said the padré! "but we have two very handsomedresseswhich she wore—one red, the other blue." Cast-off clothes, then, will do for relics! In returning to the church, they tell us of a blind old general who came hither on purpose to obtain the intercession of: Santa Lucia, (who had her own eyes put out,) to remove this calamity; with success of course, for they never record failures in churchclinique. "Do you believe the cure?" we ventured to ask. "Why not? il miracolo eautenticato." "No!" said his companion, "autorizzato!" The distinction is, that the churchauthorizesthe declaration of some lies as miraculous, but declines to make herself responsible for the reality of others!" Round the Capucian church certain stanzas are written, under what are called the fourteenstazionior stations of the cross, (places where our Saviour is supposed to have halted, or fainted under his load, on his way to Calvary.) Stanzas we were at first profane enough to attribute to Metastasio, but afterwards found that it was only themetastasisof his metre adapted to the use of the church. They are much better than most of our sacred poetry, as it is strangely miscalled, which is frequently neither poetry nor common sense:—
"Il sol si oscura,E in fin la terraIl sen disserraPer grand dolor;Morto è il Signore!O Peccatore,Se tu non piangi,Sei senza cuor!"Deh, madre mia,Con quant' afflitto,Piangendo, al Petto,Stringi Gesù!Io, l'ho fer ito,Ma son pentito—Non più peccati,Non più, non più!"Dal tuo sepolcro,Non vo partire,Senza morire,Ma qui starò;Finchè 'l doloreM'uccida il core,L'alma piangendoQui spirerò!" &c. &c.
"Il sol si oscura,E in fin la terraIl sen disserraPer grand dolor;Morto è il Signore!O Peccatore,Se tu non piangi,Sei senza cuor!
"Deh, madre mia,Con quant' afflitto,Piangendo, al Petto,Stringi Gesù!Io, l'ho fer ito,Ma son pentito—Non più peccati,Non più, non più!
"Dal tuo sepolcro,Non vo partire,Senza morire,Ma qui starò;Finchè 'l doloreM'uccida il core,L'alma piangendoQui spirerò!" &c. &c.
The Capucins live on a hill in the only good air in the vicinity of Syracuse; in their precincts we found ourselves fairly attacked onLuther'squarrel, and expected to take up cudgels ecclesiastic on that worn-out controversy—one of our Capucins vaunting himself ready and able to bleed for thetruth. Liberal ideas are not common in the cloister. "You aver," said he, "that Roman Catholics may be in a way of salvation; we by no means return the compliment—but as both Lutherans and Calvinists agree in believing thus charitably ofus, and not of one another, it seems a pretty strong argument in our favour." With such high subjects did our apparently very much in earnest friends entertain us, in a garden planted amidst those quarried prisons of the captive Athenians. A man attempted to-day to put off some bad coins upon us, which we recollected to have had offered to us by another hand—still we only hinted that they were forgeries, and declined purchasing. While this was in progress, another person came up properly introduced, with anenlarged spleen, which wascertainlyauthentic. We tell him that such indurations of viscera require avery long timeindeed for removal: and that malaria is their origin This convent possesses one of those revolting vaults, which dry up and preserve the corpse in the form of mummy; a huge trap-door flapped its wooden wings, and gave us admission into a large subterranean apartment, wherein we presently stood in the midst of defunct brethren arranged along the walls, as if they stood in chapel at their devotions! On the floor thirty or forty light boxes looked like orange chests, with custom-house hieroglyphics on their lids; but they were marked with proper and even high-sounding names, and were in fact the coffins of barons, counts, and prelates, transported here to have thebenefit of the air, and there accordingly they lay unburied, to profit by the antiseptic qualities of the soil. We looked at a baron or two, andsaw something like a huge caterpillar beginning to change into a chrysalis; a grub mummy dressed out in old Catanian silk, and so enveloped in cobwebs, that you could with difficulty make out the central nucleus of shrivelled humanity. "Questo," said our cowled conductor, "è il Barone Avellina, morto di cholera, anno ætatis fifty-six; he loved our order! here is another equally good-looking personage," said he, exposing a corrugated face and dark hair, frightfully at variance with a blue silk handkerchief, and all the funeral gear of twenty years ago. This was another victim to that awful visitation; his feet and hands were covered with faded herbs, rosemary, and lavender; first placed in the coffin at the time of his decease, and renewed every year by friends, when the cobwebs of the year preceding are brushed away. One elder, the pride of the collection, had lain in his court-suit for nearly a hundred years, the aforesaid aromatics having kept off the moths all this time. The room felt dry, and, except for thecompany, what one callscomfortable. Knee-buckles and shoe-buckles, and steel-hilted swords, do not rust here, and white cravats and embroidered waistcoats might almost return to the world! The Capucins themselves are disposed in niches, and each has a text from Scripture over his cowl. "Do youpreparethese mummies?" we enquire "Nienti preparati, signor!We only lay them to dry in yonder room over a sink, and when they have lain four months, we take them out and complete the process in another room, where the sun comes; after which we dress them and place them here." These Capucins, they tell us, are the strictest of all sects of Franciscans. From the sights of the mummy chamber, we see at least that they are not idle, and must always have a job on hand. Females, ifnotCatholic, are here admitted to see the grounds, and they offer wine and bread for our refreshment, which we, thinking of theirwallets, decline on the plea ofanorexia. Near the Capucins is the Church ofSan Giovanni, a singularly wild spot, in the midst of bad air, and within reach of the Ear of Dionysius. We descend with a fellow filthier than the filthiest Capucin, calling himself a hermit, to guide us in the vast catacombs over which the hermitage stands. It was a trial to follow him—the rank woollen dress, uncleansed till it falls to pieces, diffuses an odour which, in such confined passages, is particularly unpleasant. Cleanliness, says an English proverb, is next to godliness; but, in cowled society, it assuredly forms no part of it. Catacombs, in general, are called interesting—we never saw one in which we did not pay heavy penalty for gratifying curiosity. Those of Syracuse are vast indeed; spacious arcaded streets intersect each other in all directions, and your walk throughout lies between lengthening files of niches, cut into the walls for coffins, tier above tier, like berths in a steamboat, conducting here and there into a circular apartment, with a cupola and a central aperture, looking out upon the wild moor above.
We form to-day the acquaintance of an intelligent medical practitioner and collector in natural history, from whom we learn that there are eight different species of dog-fish (Squalus) along the Syracusan coast. This animal, to the popular fame of whose injurious exploits we had hitherto yielded unabated confidence, appears fully to justify his West Indian character. An "ancient mariner" told us, that full forty miles from Syracuse, a shark, which had been following him for a long time, thrust his head suddenly out of the water, and made a snap at him; and if the boat had not been athunnyboat, high in the sides, there is no saying how much of him might have been extant! A pair of trousers drying in the sun over the side of the boat should have small attraction for a shark, but hetookthem onspeculation. At one of the principal thunny fisheries near Catania, the fishermen have fixed upon poles, like English kites on a barn-door,pour encourager les autres, two immense sharks' heads as trophies—the jaws at full gape, exhibiting four sets of teeth as sharp as harrows, and as white and polished as ivory. They always wish to decline any dealings with this formidable foe, though his flesh is in repute in the market, and he weighs from two thousand five hundred to four thousand pounds. But Syracuse has no reason to complain of scarcity, or to eat shark's flesh from necessity; most of theScomberfamily,—thealatorya, thepalamida, and a fine gray-coloured fellow which the fishermen callserra, frequent her coast; then there is theCefalo—the ancientmugilis, our gray mullet—and the sea-pike,Lucedimare, whose teeth and size might well constitute him lieutenant to the dog-fish,—all these came to table during our stay; but we did not meet with one very superior fish known to the ancients as theLupus, (labraxof the Greeks,) which abounds when in season, and is known in every comfortableménagealong the Sicilian coast; his Linnæan name issparus. On the shore are to be picked up occasionally two small kinds of shellspeculiarto Sicily, of which our intelligent acquaintance is so obliging as to give us specimens. We never saw or heard of a firefly in Sicily. Professor Costa of Naples, though he doubted the fact of there being none, had never seen any in his frequent entomological trips to that island. This beautiful insect, so common about Florence and Rome, and in central Italy, is extremely rare about Naples; nor does this seem to be from their disliking the sea, for we never saw somanyas atPesaro, on the Adriatic;—no insect, then, is morevolage, or uncertain as to place, than the firefly. The only poisonousreptileof Sicily is theviper, of which there seem to be several varieties. A beautiful blue thrush (Turdus cyaneus), a greattalker, much prized, andhigh-pricedtoo, when he has been taught to speak, is found in the rocky clefts about Syracuse. The heat and brilliancy of the sunshine render it extremely difficult, we are told, to preserve collections in natural history. All the water drunk here israin water. The butter, fruit, and vegetables of Syracuse are, in the month of May at least, bad, very bad; but itsMuscatwine, itsHyblahoney, and its fish, are all of superior quality.
The honey of that hill needs not our praise,
——"quæ nectareis vocat ad certamenHymetton,Audax Hybla, favis."
——"quæ nectareis vocat ad certamenHymetton,Audax Hybla, favis."
For ourselves, after tasting the confection of the Attic as well as of the Sicilian bee, we know not which is the greater artist, or which operates on the finer material; but thebesthoney in Europe, in our opinion, comes from the apiaries of Narbonne.
We had given advice, and were preparing to go, when another candidate comes forward, and, with suitable gesticulation,soplaced his hands that we could not help saying, "Liver, eh?" "Eccelenza, si!" "Dopo una febbre?" "Illustrissimo, si!"—Folk now beginning to wink approvingly at our sagacity, we were looking exceeding grave, when a pair of Sicilian eyes set in a female head put us quite out by evidently taking us for a conjurer, and so setting at once our ethics, our pathology, and our Italian dictionary at fault. Still the surgeon congratulates the room on the "lumi" brought to it by the strange doctor, approves of the prescription, and corroborates our opinion that the "SignoreDon Jacomo"Somebodywas the incontestable possessor of a "flogosè chronica del fegato!" We now said we must go; andtwochildren ran for our hat, the man with the liver kisses our hand, others seize our coat-skirts, and the guide, Jack Robertson, carries the mace and leads the way, and puts himself at the head of the procession homewards; and glad were we to escape the embarrassment of curtsies and courtesies, to which we are unused, and far too extravagant ones to admit of reply. Come! the best offees is a poor man's gratitude; but from poor or rich, at home or abroad, it is seldom that medical men walk off so magnificently.
The country about Syracuse is neither grand nor beautiful; but the ground isclassic ground, and Sicily has not been brought within the reach of an intercourse which, while it polishes and confers substantial benefits, removes the sacred rust of antiquity. The Hybla hills, as hills, are not equal to the Surrey hills as one sees then from one's window at Kensington; but Hybla is Hybla, and here we eat the honey and sip the wine of the soil. Yonder plain before our breakfast-table is plain enough, and promises little; but that small insignificant stream is theAnapus, those columns belonged to a temple of Jupiter, that white tower, five miles off, marksEpipolæ, the snow-capped Etna is the background of the picture, and the bay at our feet once bore that Athenian navy which left the Piræus to make as great a mistake as we did in our American war. We rowed across that bay to the mouth of the Anapus, and penetrated up the stream to the paper manufactory, from real papyrus, on its banks. The vestiges of a temple of Diana, converted into a monastery, and the nearly perfect remains of that amphitheatre which Cicero pronounced the largest in the world, are not to be seen in every morning's walk! Of Archimedes, without being able to fix his proper tomb among so many, thenamehere is enough. One ought to be able to conjure with it; the genius that concentrated the sun of Syracuse on the hostile anchorage, was of no common measure. We spent our day on a visit of the deepest interest, up atEpipolæ(i.e., the positionon or over the city, as Thucydides expresses it,) the acropolis, in fact, of Syracuse, and at about the same distance from the town itself as Athens is from Piræus. In order to do this commodiously, we allowed ourselves to be suspended between two mules in a very narrow watchman's box,lettiga, (the ancientlectiga, you will say—no: here there is nothing for it but an erect spine.) The see-saw motion is unpleasant as well as unusual; the mules, though docile, have not thesavoir faireof a couple of Dublin or Edinburgh chairmen. You must sitquitein the middle, or run the perpetual chance of capsizing. A little alarming, also, is it to look out on the stone-strewn furrow, over which the mules carry you safely enough; and when you have become reconciled to the oscillation, and have learned to trim the boat in which you have embarked, it is long before your ear becomes accustomed to the stunning sound of a hundred little bells fastened to the mules' heads. "Dotake them off," said we, after half an hour's impatience; "do, pray, remove these infernal bells!" "And does the signor imagine thatanymule would go without falling asleep, or lying down, were it not for the bells?" We arrived safe and stunned, in about an hour and a half, at the foot of a tower of no Roman or Sicilian growth, but a bastard construction upon the ancient foundations of Epipolæ. We saw, however, some fine remains of a wall, which might have been called Cyclopian, but that the blocks which composed it were ofonesize. Our guide, a mason, and, of course, an amateur of walls, insists upon our calling this acapo d'opera, as, no doubt, it is. On the spot itself there is nothing antique to see; but the drive or ride is one of the most remarkable in all the world! It takes you over from four to five miles of a rocky table-land, by a very gradual ascent, abounding with indelible traces of human frequentation, else long forgotten. The deep channelling of those wheels is still extant that had transported million tons of stone out of those interminable lines of quarries, to raise buildings of such grandeur as to give occasion to Cicero to say, that he had "seen nothing so imposing as the ancient port and walls of Syracuse!" The scene is altogether wild and peculiar; you pass for miles amidst excavated rock, and on theflagstones of ancient pavement, between thecommissuresof which wild-flowers, principally of thethistlekind, spring up into vigorous life, and look as if they grew out of the very stone itself. The small conduit-pipe of an underground aqueduct still serves to carry from the same sources the same water; but the people who used it are gone. In the wildest parts of the way, the large flat stones, that formed a continuous road, serve forbarn-floors—or ratherthreshing-floors that requireno barns—on which long-horned cattle tread out, without any chance of bad weather to injure, the golden grain of the Sicilian harvest. Here lives the blue-breastedhermit birdin unmolested solitude; and, careless of solitude, thePasser solitariusutters her small twitter in the hollows—a few goats browse amongst the scanty thistles, and one or two dogs protect them. Snakes, hatched in vast number under the warm stones, show you their progress, by the motion they impart to the thin light grass; and an endless variety of new lizards present themselves in a soil not untenanted, though barren. From a plain, justly called Bel Veduta, we seeCataniaandLentini, (Leontium,) famous once for its coinage, infamous now for its malaria. A little bay bears the great name ofThapsus; and, opposite, a small mass of nearly undistinguishable houses, the ambitious distinction ofPort Augusta.
We have seen our sights, and are returned, and waiting to go on shore. Our paddle-wheels are once more at rest in the harbour of Messina! They have let down the windows of the long room on deck, in which we had taken shelter from the vermin below, and wake we must, though it is not five o'clock. The sun breaks cover to-day, magnificently, behind Messina; but the Health-office having no inducement to open its eyes prematurely, will not, for some time, send its delegates on board, to announce our liberty to land. We have nothing for it but to look over the boat, or study haggard faces reflected in the unflattering mirror of a beautiful sea. The hauling about of things on deck is always pleasant, as a signal of voyage over! The sun still shines full upon the long row of houses on the quay—fishing boats are entering with abundance of fresh fish for our dinner, and shoals of silvery sardines, untaken, are leaping out of the water near our prow, to escape from a large body of mackerel which is pursuing them. The authorities are coming! We don't want any cards to hotels, but cram a dozen into our pockets, and ask if there are any more here? We are sorry to take a new guide. Jack Robertson has spoiled us for some time. When he pocketed our supplementary piece, as we were coming off, he told us, "haud sine lacrymis," it should buy a linen shirt for his youngest child. "I good Christian, sir, I no tell you lie, sir! I love my children, upon my word! When they go to bed, my wife not able to attend them, sir! They cry, father. I say, yes!Bread, says little Bill—I get up; give him some bread. Mary say,water, and I get up for water six times every night!—no story, sir!" "How many hours do you work?" "When sun get up, sir, till it be mid-day; I go see childer till three, den work hard atbuild walltill sun go down; den I go home. I wish I could speak English better; but you understand me, sir." We rowed off with manyvivas, and this poor mason's "hopes" that we "mightfind all square at home." At home! Oh, that we had a home!!—an unassuming wife—placens et tacens uxor; an unpretending house, with a comfortable guest-chamber; and no noiseless nursery,unfenderedand uncared for! But the bells of Messina, all let loose together, interrupt our pleasing reverie, and our friends, who have been hovering round us in a boat, are now permitted to approach, and to land with us at our hotel. 'Tis our last day!—in the evening, we go to hear Sicilian vespers for the last time; and the next day we are off for Naples!
On deck!—off!—Stromboli is already veiling himself in the rapidly encroaching shades of darkness, and it is time to say good-night to thisfair night, and to go to our cabin. Beautiful Sicily! may thisnotbe our final leave-taking! We found no poetry below, and in a short time are driven back from the cabin by its complicated nuisances, to moonlight contemplation, and catching cold. An hour elapses—a town not to be forgotten by the Neapolitans is just ahead. The moon shines brightly on its high-perched castle, and we have scarce stopped the paddles, when our deck is invaded by a new freightage of passengers, already far too many. Twenty boats full of noise and animation, with all the exaggeration that attends both in these latitudes; every pair of oars fighting for a fare, and knocking one another over board in contention for passenger or parcel destined to land at Pizzo. They ship about with the wildness and alacrity of South-Sea islanders; some are all but naked, and every quarrel is conducted in such a Calabrian brogue, that the very men of Messina profess not to understand them, and to treat them as savages rather than as countrymen. The small fort in front was disgraced by the nocturnal trial and prompt execution of the unfortunate Murat. It is long ago; but of these noisy disputants for the things to be landed, some probably had been eyewitnesses of the last bloody act of a blood-stained throne. A poor sick horse, confined in his narrow crib on deck, blinks at the moonlight, and can neither sleep nor eat his corn; he drops his lower lip, and presents an appearance of more physical suffering than we should have thought could have been recognized in face of quadruped; but pain traces stronger lines, and understands the anatomy of expression better than pleasure. We wished to land for half an hour, but this being impossible,addio Pizzo!Our vessel is quickly off, and our Cyclopean stokers are already mopping off their black sweat in the dreadful glare of the engine-room. Some cages, full of canaries and parrots, just become our fellow-passengers, are all in a fluster at the screaming and bustle to which they are unused, and a large cargo of turkeys, with fettered legs, and fowls that can only flap their wings, do so in despair at the treatment threatened them by the dogs on deck—second and third class passengers are fighting for prerogatives in misery, amidst the clatter of unclean plates, and the remains of the supper of the fore-cabin. The space for walking, is encumbered with coils of cordage, and the empty water-barrels are all taken possession of for seats. Bad tobacco, even among theélite, and garlic every where, drive us to the fore-deck, or to the neutral ground between it and ours. A passage, which promised fair when we started, begins, now that we are half over, to look suspicious; and a preliminary lurch or two, as the breeze freshens, converts many from an opinion they had begun topromulgate, that the steamer on the Mediterranean afforded,on the whole, the most eligible mode of traversing space. We looked at each other piteously enough, on seeing that we were fast going to face a magnificent specimen of a wave, of which our piston was determined to try the valour, and if possible abate the confidence. When Greek meets Greek, said we, as we dashed through it, and gave a warning to old Neptune to take care of his interests below! Other huge parcels of water hit us obliquely, or come down upon us with a swoop like a falchion; steam hisses, and chimney gets red-hot; but though the vessel yields not, there be those on board whodo: an Anglo-Sicilian pleasure party is quenched in twenty blanched faces at once; conversation is over, women retire, and the deck is deserted. Against suchups and downs as these, the very philosophy of the Stoics were powerless!—even thou, O moon! seemest alittledisconcerted, and hast withdrawn thypaleface from thy whilom plate-glass,the Mediterranean, so often, for weeks together, like the inland lake of the north,