Vistas in Sicily

by Arthur Stanley Riggs

The agricultural system is very old. It had its inception as long ago as the days when Pope Gregory the Great was one of the most important proprietors in the island, in the name and person of the Church. He was a good and careful landlord, but others are the opposite, and the system, always unjust, has degenerated. At the present time an estate is nominally managed on behalf of the owner by a factor, who most often re-rents it to someone else. This third person in turn, not wishing to cultivate it personally, leases it in small patches to the farmer at exorbitant rates, or to a fourth factor, who repeats the operation. Thus when the peasant finally comes into possession of his acres, he is paying so heavy a rental that it is practically impossible to do more than make his actual expenses.

Driven to desperation by such a condition and often in actual need, he has recourse to the money-lender, who loans readily—and collects with grim certainty, practically enslaving the wretched farmer. The usurers grow rich, but they hoard up their evil fortunes, keeping the money out of circulation, and the country is the poorer. Naturally the steamship office becomes the most important place in towns where discontent prevails. The companies have men ready to answer all questions, and more than willing to encourage the peasant to give up his hardly earned savings, providing he is physically sound. Indeed, they even send glib and persuasive agents about to drum up trade in likely districts by painting glowing pictures of the golden streets of America.

“Signor Atenasio,” I said, “you are a steamship agent yourself. Do you go about and make trade this way?”

“The holy Saint Pancratius forbid!” he exclaimed, piously calling upon his patron. But he spoiled the effect by adding instantly: “No, I do not have to. I get all the trade there is in Mola anyway. It is very little,” he shrugged, and turned the subject.

This Mola, the tiny town on the hilltop above Taormina, may be cited as a typical example of what taxes, lack of education, usury, and as a consequence, emigration, are doing for Sicily to-day. Though Mola lies only about a thousand feet higher up in the air than Taormina, it is ten times as far away by foot—and by foot you must go, “either your own or another donkey’s!” as one weary but none the less enthusiastic visitor put it on returning. The road—a good part of it is low stone steps, the round, flat pebbles set on edge in mortar—winds along the uncertain sides of the little valleys, and since not a single tree of any size shades it from an almost tropical sun at full power, it is sufficiently trying. Here and there a female beggar pops up most unexpectedly to demand an alms “for the love of the blessed Christ who walked thus to Calvary!”

The town curves in a semi-circle around the top of the hill, behind the battered remains of stout old walls which even to-day are massive and in places almost perfect, and might be turned to excellent account in defense. Just where the road skirts the base of the cliff, one night in December of 1677, forty stout-hearted native soldiers scaled the wall—when you look up at it, it seems an impossible feat—with ropes, and surprised and captured the French garrison then in possession. The highly picturesque entrance by a carved archway under a bit of wall leading outward at right angles from the overhanging cliff is commanded by an equally picturesque evil-looking iron smooth-bore cannon.

So still is Mola that the old lines fit it perfectly:

“Sunk are thy bowers in shapeless ruin all,
And the long grass o’ertops the moldering wall;
And, trembling, shrinking from the spoiler’s hand,
Far, far away, thy children leave the land.”

It is literally the “Deserted Village.” Half an hour suffices to explore the Corso—even tiny Mola has its highway named for the King!—and all the silent high- and by-ways from end to end; mere gradini, crooked and steep, slits between out-of-plumb houses whose only occupants seem to be pigs. The biggest, blackest, dirtiest and leanest razorbacks imaginable march solemnly up and down the front steps of the best houses, or snore comfortably inside on the parlor floor. Occasionally a savage mother with her little shoats takes up a good share of the way, snapping viciously at anyone who ventures too close. Our “guide,” a mere baby, offered to go and stir up such a family when he saw me about to take its picture, and nearly lost a leg for his pains.

But in all these streets not a man is visible of adult years and able to work. Only at the “Cathedral” can vigorous men be seen, the verger and the priest. The whereabouts of the others are told in the single magic word that spells so much to all Europe—“America!” It is literally true. Of all the male inhabitants only those too poor, too feeble to make the long trip, or too young to be acceptable as toilers, have remained at home. Even the exceptions, the verger and the priest, gaze seaward with longing eyes.