There comes a town; a queer, quaint, smelly little fishing village—Ali—whose distinct perfume wafts in through even closed windows. Every house in it possesses atmosphere, character, a certain uncouth distinction all its own. Farther on goats—a big herd of them—munch their way along the beach undisturbed by our noisy passing, walking in the cool water up to their fetlocks, eating seaweed and wagging their cronish old heads over the salty feast. What must be the flavor of their milk! But the goats are forgotten as up the Strait from Reggio steams the great car-ferry Scylla, since six miles away along the sweeping curve of the Italian shore to the north, the ugly gaunt rock of Scylla herself crouches against the dun background of iron shore.
Scylla and Charybdis, those fabled monsters of early Hellenic legend, apparently had no terrors for the pirates of Kymé who, Thucydides tells us, planted the first nursling settlement of Zankle, later Messina, in one of the most splendid natural locations ever utilized by man—a long, narrow strip of flat shore along the Bay, where the mountains stand well back, and only the foothills come near the water. Before the town shimmers one of the finest harbors in the world, a big circular bay fenced in by a low and sandy strip curved like the sickle the Sicilian Greeks called Danklon or Zankle. The site was a natural emporium at the point where the East and the West meet and are one; an ideal location for a great strategic, commercial and social center.
It has always been a notable city. Now we see it in the scarlet page of history as the home of the pirate, the prey of the Carthaginian, the bandit stronghold of the Mamertine, the first glorious conquest of the dashing Norman; then glorying in the wealth the Crusades poured into its lap as the kings of the earth passed by in their search after the impossible and unattainable. Now we hear of it as the prey of a despot, an absentee monarch; now as the favorite of a king who loaded it with privilege; now as the bulwark of all Sicily against incursion from the mainland when Charles of Anjou, after the Vespers, came down upon Messina like Byron’s Assyrian. Every man became a soldier, every woman in the city—ladies accustomed to ease and luxury as well as their less fortunate sisters—a worker. A song still popular in Sicily runs:
Deh com’ egli è gran pietate
delle donne di Messina,
veggiendo iscapigliate,
portando pietre e calcina!
“Oh, what a pity ’tis to see the ladies of Messina carrying stones and chalk!”
One of the things that brought disaster upon Messina was its location upon the line of contact between the primary and secondary formations of Ætna 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 ragamuffins 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 nobility 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 nobles 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 gods 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 débris. 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 Ætna 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!