BAYARD TAYLOR.
[It is not Etna in one of its gigantic throes of eruption that we propose to describe. The traveller whose story of the mountain we append was not fortunate enough to witness such a spectacle. But he saw it in a minor phase of activity, and describes the vision so well that his account is well worth repeating. It was on his way from Malta to Sicily that he first caught sight of the volcano, ninety miles away, rising in solitary state behind the nearer mountains. He continued his course till abreast of Syracuse, “with Etna as distant as ever.”]
The fourth morning dawned, and—great Neptune be praised!—we were actually within the Gulf of Catania. Etna loomed up in all his sublime bulk, unobscured by cloud or mist, while a slender jet of smoke, rising from his crater, was slowly curling its wreaths in the clear air, as if happy to receive the first beam of the sun. The towers of Syracuse, which had mocked us all the preceding day, were no longer visible; the land-locked little port of Augusta lay behind us; and, as the wind continued favorable, ere long we saw a faint white mark at the foot of the mountain. This was Catania.
The shores of the bay were enlivened with orange-groves and the gleam of the villages, while here and there a single palm dreamed of its brothers across the sea. Etna, of course, had the monarch’s place in the landscape, but even his large, magnificent outlines could not usurp all my feelings. The purple peaks to the westward and farther inland had a beauty of their own, and in the gentle curves with which they leaned towards each other there was a promise of the flowery meadows of Enna....
Catania presented a lovely picture as we drew near its harbor. Planted at the very foot of Etna, it has a background such as neither Naples nor Genoa can boast. The hills next the sea are covered with gardens and orchards, sprinkled with little villages and the country-places of the nobles,—a rich, cultured landscape, which gradually merges into the forests of oak and chestnut that girdle the waist of the great volcano. But all the wealth of southern vegetation cannot hide the footsteps of that Ruin, which from time to time visits the soil. Half-way up the mountain-side is dotted with cones of ashes and cinders, some covered with the scanty shrubbery which centuries have called forth, some barren and recent; while two dark, winding streams of sterile lava descend to the very shore, where they stand congealed in ragged needles and pyramids. Part of one of these black floods has swept the town, and, tumbling into the sea, walls one side of the port.
[What shall we say of Catania? It has not dwelt at the foot of Mount Etna with impunity, but has been more than once destroyed. During the week of Mr. Taylor’s visit the centennial festival of St. Agatha, the miracles of whose martyrdom had here their scene, took place. This saint still performs miracles, “and her power is equally efficacious in preventing earthquakes and eruptions of Mount Etna.” The festival was brilliant in illuminations and pyrotechnic displays.]
Truly, except the illumination of the Golden Horn on the Night of Predestination, I have seen nothing equal to the spectacle presented by Catania during the past three nights. The city, which has been built up from her ruins more stately than ever, was in a blaze of light, all her domes, towers, and the long lines of her beautiful palaces revealed in the varying red and golden flames of a hundred thousand lamps and torches. Pyramids of fire, transparencies, and illuminated triumphal arches filled the four principal streets, and the fountain in the cathedral square gleamed like a jet of molten silver, spinning up from one of the pores of Etna. At ten o’clock a gorgeous display of fireworks closed the day’s festivities, but the lamps remained burning nearly all night.
On the second night the grand Procession of the Veil took place. I witnessed the imposing spectacle from the balcony of Prince Gessina’s palace. Long lines of waxen torches led the way, followed by a military band, and then a company of the highest prelates in their most brilliant costumes, surrounding the bishop, who walked under a canopy of silk and gold, bearing the miraculous veil of St. Agatha. I was blessed with a distant view of it, but could see no traces of the rosy hue left upon it by the flames of the saint’s martyrdom....
To-night Signor Scava, the American vice-consul, took me to the palace of Prince Biscari, overlooking the harbor, in order to behold the grand display of fireworks from the end of the mole. The showers of rockets and colored stars, and the temples of blue and silver fire, were repeated in the dark, quiet bosom of the sea, producing the most dazzling and startling effects....
Among the antiquities of Catania which I have visited are the Amphitheatre, capable of holding fifteen thousand persons, the old Greek Theatre, in which Alcibiades made his noted harangue to the Catanians, the Odeon, and the ancient baths. The theatre, which is in tolerable preservation, is built of lava, like many of the modern edifices in the city. The baths proved to me, what I had supposed, that the Oriental bath of the present day is identical with that of the ancients. Why so admirable an institution has never been introduced into Europe is more than I can tell. From the pavement of these baths, which is nearly twenty feet below the surface of the earth, the lava of later eruptions has burst up, in places, in hard black jets. The most wonderful token of that flood which whelmed Catania two hundred years ago is to be seen at the grand Benedictine convent of San Nicola, in the upper part of the city. Here the stream of lava divides itself just before the convent, and flows past on both sides, leaving the buildings and garden untouched. The marble courts, the fountains, the splendid galleries, and the gardens of richest Southern bloom and fragrance stand like an epicurean island in the midst of the terrible stony waves, whose edges bristle with the thorny aloe and cactus....
The noises of the festival had not ceased when I closed my eyes at midnight. I slept soundly through the night, but was awakened before sunrise by my Sicilian landlord. “Oh, Excellenza! have you heard the Mountain? He is going to break out again; may the holy St. Agatha protect us!”
It is rather ill-timed on the part of the Mountain, was my involuntary first thought, that he should choose for a new eruption precisely the centennial festival of the only saint who is supposed to have any power over him. It shows a disregard of female influence not at all suited to the present day, and I scarcely believe that he seriously means it. Next comes along the jabbering landlady: “I don’t like his looks. It was just so the last time. Come, Excellenza, you can see him from the back terrace.”
The sun was not yet risen, but the east was bright with his coming, and there was not a cloud in the sky. All the features of Etna were sharply sculptured in the clear air. From the topmost cone a thick stream of white smoke was slowly puffed out at short intervals, and rolled lazily down the eastern side. It had a heavy, languid character, and I should have thought nothing of the appearance but for the alarm of my hosts. It was like the slow fire of earth’s incense burning on that grand mountain altar.
I hurried off to the post-office to await the arrival of the diligence from Palermo. The office is in the Strada Etnea, the main street of Catania, which runs straight through the city from the sea to the base of the mountain whose peak closes the long vista. The diligence was an hour later than usual, and I passed the time in watching the smoke, which continued to increase in volume, and was mingled, from time to time, with jets of inky blackness. The postilion said he had seen fires and heard loud noises during the night. According to his account, the disturbances commenced about midnight.
At last we rolled out of Catania. There were in the diligence, besides myself, two men and a woman, Sicilians of the secondary class. The road followed the shore, over rugged tracts of lava, the different epochs of which could be distinctly traced in the character of their vegetation. The last great flow (of 1679) stood piled in long ridges of terrible sterility, barely allowing the aloe and cactus to take root in the hollows between. The older deposits were sufficiently decomposed to nourish the olive and vine, but even here the orchards were studded with pyramids of the harder fragments, which are laboriously collected by the husbandmen. In the few favored spots which have been untouched for so many ages that a tolerable depth of soil has accumulated, the vegetation has all the richness and brilliancy of tropical lands. The palm, orange, and pomegranate thrive luxuriantly, and the vines almost break under their heavy clusters. The villages are frequent and well-built, and the hills are studded, far and near, with the villas of rich proprietors, mostly buildings of one story, with verandas extending their whole length. Looking up towards Etna, whose base the road encircles, the views are gloriously rich and beautiful. On the other hand is the blue Mediterranean and the irregular outline of the shore, here and there sending forth promontories of lava, cooled by the waves into the most fantastic forms.
We had not proceeded far before a new sign called my attention to the mountain. Not only was there a perceptible jar or vibration in the earth, but a dull, groaning sound, like the muttering of distant thunder, began to be heard. The smoke increased in volume, and, as we advanced farther to the eastward, and much nearer to the great cone, I perceived that it consisted of two jets issuing from different mouths. A broad stream of very dense white smoke still flowed over the lip of the topmost crater and down the eastern side. As its breadth did not vary, and the edges were distinctly defined, it was no doubt the sulphureous vapor rising from a river of molten lava. Perhaps a thousand yards below a much stronger column of mingled black and white smoke gushed up in regular beats or pants from a depression in the mountain-side, between two small extinct cones. All this part of Etna was scarred with deep chasms, and in the bottoms of those nearest the opening I could see the red gleam of fire. The air was perfectly still, and as yet there was no cloud in the sky.
When we stopped to change horses at the town of Aci Reale, I first felt the violence of the tremor and the awful sternness of the sound. The smoke by this time seemed to be gathering on the side towards Catania, and hung in a dark mass about half-way down the mountain. Groups of the villagers were gathered in the streets which looked upward to Etna and discussing the chances of an eruption. “Ah,” said an old peasant, “the Mountain knows how to make himself respected. When he talks, everybody listens.” The sound was the most awful that ever met my ears. It was a hard, painful moan, now and then fluttering like a suppressed sob, and had, at the same time, an expression of threatening and of agony. It did not come from Etna alone. It had no fixed location; it pervaded all space. It was in the air, in the depths of the sea, in the earth under my feet, everywhere, in fact; and as it continued to increase in violence I experienced a sensation of positive pain. The people looked anxious and alarmed, although they said it was a good thing for all Sicily; the last year they had been in constant fear from earthquakes, and an eruption invariably left the earth quiet for several years. It is true that during the past year parts of Sicily and Calabria have been visited with severe shocks, occasioning much damage to property. A merchant of this city [Messina] informed me yesterday that his whole family had slept for two months in the vaults of his warehouse, fearing that their residence might be shaken down in the night.
As we rode along from Aci Reale to Taormina, all the rattling of the diligence over the rough road could not drown the awful noise. There was a strong smell of sulphur in the air, and the thick pants of smoke from the lower crater continued to increase in strength. The sun was fierce and hot, and the edges of the sulphureous clouds shone with a dazzling whiteness. A mounted soldier overtook us, and rode beside the diligence, talking with the postilion. He had been up to the mountain, and was taking his report to the governor of the district.
The heat of the day and the continued tremor of the air lulled me into a sort of doze, when I was suddenly aroused by a cry from the soldier and the stopping of the diligence. At the same time there was a terrific peal of sound, followed by a jar that must have shaken the whole island. We looked up to Etna, which was fortunately in full view before us. An immense mass of snow-white smoke had burst up from the crater, and was rising perpendicularly into the air, the rounded volumes rapidly whirling one over the other, yet urged with such impetus that they only rolled outward after they had ascended to an immense height. It might have been one minute or five, for I was so entranced by this wonderful spectacle that I lost the sense of time, but it seemed instantaneous (so rapid and violent were the effects of the explosion), when there stood in the air, based on the summit of the mountain, a mass of smoke four or five miles high, and shaped precisely like the Italian pine-tree.
Words cannot paint the grandeur of this mighty tree. Its trunk of columned smoke, one side of which was silvered by the sun, while the other, in shadow, was lurid with red flame, rose for more than a mile before it sent out its cloudy boughs. Then parting into a thousand streams, each of which again threw out its branching tufts of smoke, rolling and waving in the air, it stood in intense relief against the dark blue of the sky. Its rounded masses of foliage were dazzlingly white on one side, while, in the shadowy depths of the branches, there was a constant play of brown, yellow, and crimson tints, revealing the central shaft of fire. It was like the tree celebrated in the Scandinavian sagas, as seen by the mother of Harold Hardrada,—that tree whose roots pierced through the earth, whose trunk was of the color of blood, and whose branches filled the uttermost corners of the heavens.
The outburst seemed to have relieved the mountain, for the tremors were now less violent, though the terrible noise still droned in the air, and earth, and sea. And now, from the base of the tree, three white streams slowly crept into as many separate chasms, against the walls of which played the flickering glow of the burning lava. The column of smoke and flame was still hurled upward, and the tree, after standing about ten minutes,—a new and awful revelation of the active forces of nature,—gradually rose and spread, lost its form, and, slowly moved by a light wind (the first that disturbed the dead calm of the day), bent over to the eastward.
We resumed our course. The vast belt of smoke at last arched over the strait, here about twenty miles wide, and sank towards the distant Calabrian shore. As we drove under it, for some miles of our way, the sun was totally obscured, and the sky presented the singular spectacle of two hemispheres of clear blue, with a broad belt of darkness drawn between them. There was a hot, sulphureous vapor in the air, and showers of white ashes fell from time to time. We were distant about twelve miles, in a straight line, from the crater, but the air was so clear, even under the shadow of the smoke, that I could distinctly trace the downward movement of the rivers of lava.
This was the eruption, at last, to which all the phenomena of the morning had been only preparatory. For the first time in ten years the depths of Etna had been stirred, and I thanked God for my detention at Malta, and the singular hazard of travel which had brought me here, to his very base, to witness a scene the impression of which I shall never lose to my dying day. Although the eruption may continue, and the mountain pour forth fiercer fires and broader tides of lava, I cannot but think that the first upheaval, which lets out the long-imprisoned forces, will not be equalled in grandeur by any later spectacle.
After passing Taormina, our road led us under the hills of the coast, and although I occasionally caught glimpses of Etna, and saw the reflection of fire from the lava which was filling up his savage ravines, the smoke at last encircled his waist, and he was then shut out of sight by the intervening mountains. We lost a bolt in the deep valley opening to the sea, and during our stoppage I could still hear the groans of the mountain, though farther off and less painful to the ear. As evening came on, the beautiful hills of Calabria, with white towns and villages on their sides, gleamed in the purple light of the setting sun. We drove around headland after headland, till the strait opened, and we looked over the harbor of Messina to Cape Faro and the distant islands of the Tyrrhene Sea.