“Excellency has just had his luncheon,” opportunely interposed the driver. “Snails are not good for dessert.”
Within the acropolis again, we dismissed the landau out of pity for the wretched horses, and rambled about on foot. Before reaching the Cathedral we passed Alfonso’s home, where he introduced us to his family with all the éclat of a noble presenting friends at court; and poor as these Sicilians were, we found among them all—father, mother, aunt, cousin, three sisters and a brother—no lack of that inborn courtesy which distinguishes the Latin peasant.
Collectively the family showed us the church of Santa Maria dei Greci, in which are supposed to be incorporated the scanty remains of the principal sanctuary of either Zeus Atabyrius or Minerva, while some urchin, locked out and so deprived of all opportunity for tips, playfully stoned the church door. The Cathedral is more interesting, though the apse is over richly stuccoed, covered with scrolls and cherubs in gold and white. One of its chief treasures is a madonna, painted by Guido Reni, though not comparable to his best work. In the sacristy is a really fine old white marble sarcophagus of the Roman period, bearing reliefs of the myth of Hippolytus and Phædra.
But nothing within is comparable to the view from one of the windows at the sunset hour. It recalls the Biblical prophecies of Canaan with the chalky roads for the milk, and the gold of the daisies, mustard and marigolds for the honey of this Promised Land. The chief charm of the scene as the hills lie weltering under the fading glory of the sinking sun are these same milky roads, flowing through the verdant swards and vales. In the background the ugly, prosaic sulphur pits, dumps and chimneys make splashes of harsh modern color in this world-old landscape. It is a scene unforgettable. Slowly, gently, the soft rosy-bluish evening haze creeps up the hillside; bit by bit the purple shadows deepen, the soft harmonies of tender green melt into the blur of the background, and only the creamy highways stand out distinct.
Not so very many years ago this entire region was unsafe because of the brigands. Now one may go anywhere about Girgenti with perfect security. Nevertheless, a pair of Carabinieri—they always travel in pairs, by the way—gorgeous in all their glory of black and scarlet, with cockaded cocked hats, were always somewhere within range when we were outside the city proper. They seemed to take as keen an interest in the ruins as we did, though temples must have been an old story to them.
Alfonso spoke to one of these kindly familiars whom we passed, struggling to make his greeting as careless as the familiar “Hello!” of the American streets. Good humoredly the Carabiniero answered him, and as we went on, the boy remarked with innocent egotism: “You saw him, signore? He is my friend. You are with me, and he would let nothing happen to you. It is good to know the police—as I do!”
VIII
THE ROAD TO SYRACUSE
TO 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 suggestions. The most important and flourishing city we pass is Caltanisetta, the center of the sulphur industry, which produces more than half a million tons annually. The mines are most of them primitive in the extreme, and machinery is practically unknown, while in many of them fuel is so scarce and costly that the operators burn the raw sulphur itself in their calcaroni or smelters.
Shortly before reaching Santa Catarina Xirbi, the junction town where the tracks join the Palermo line, we have our first glimpse of Mt. Ætna, its snowy cap hanging in the distance like a low white cloud. Small gorges and tunnels follow in rapid succession, and the train pants upward in tortuous curves through the barren valleys, until we look up at Castrogiovanni, the Enna of the ancients. It lies in an almost perfect horseshoe on a precipitous rock, and so surrounded by nearly perpendicular approaches, so walled in by Nature with beetling crags, that none of its innumerable ancient besiegers was ever able to storm it. Treachery—and once starvation—did for it what armed assault never could. Livy rightly called it “a city inexpugnable,” and it probably is so yet, for it has recently been strongly fortified after the most approved modern style. The ascent is by a road which—well, try it for yourself. But the town, once reached, pays for the climb in its magnificent views. It is the navel (umbilicus Siciliæ) of Sicily, and from the loftiest tower of the former citadel there sweeps away a mountain cyclorama such as not even Switzerland can excel—Ætna, peaks without number, range on range and tier on tier, melting into the haze of heaven. Towns, thousands of feet in the air, cling desperately to the steep, unfriendly sides, or perch precariously on the tops of needle-pointed mountains. And on the South, beyond hills and plain, dimples the ultramarine of the African sea.
For centuries before the adventurous Greeks colonized the hill, Enna was the principal home of a Sicilian goddess, the patron of natural fertility and of the harvest, whom the Greeks identified with their own Demeter, and the later Romans with Ceres. Not a stone of her temple is left, and we can do little more than speculate upon its site, said to have been where the old citadel now stands. About two hours to the south by carriage is that once lovely little lake of Pergusa, where Pluto met and straight-way stole the lovely Proserpina to be the queen of his dark realm. It was then a district so fair that Diodorus said the hounds often lost the scent of their quarry, so rich was the fragrance of the flowers. But alas! the spot is blasted now. Gone are the splendid shade trees in whose branches the singing messengers of spring carolled; gone all the beauty of Pergusa, now but a dirty little pond, where peasants steep their flax. But at least we can think of it still in Ovid’s words: “A spot at the bottom of a shady vale, watered by the plenteous spray of a stream that falls from wooded heights; where Nature decks herself in all her varied hues, where the ground is beauteous, carpeted with flowers of many tints.”