We were bound at last for the mountain village of Gualtieri-Sicamino, where lived Antonio Squadrito’s family, and as we contemplated the island across the straits it seemed that they must live in a very Elysium indeed.
A cool wind swept down from the north, barely ruffling the wonderfully colored water of the six-mile-wide channel; English colliers were ploughing up “light” from the south; scores of boats fishing for sardines were in sight; directly opposite was Messina, with its sickle-shaped arm that protects its harbor; and against the abrupt purple hills the creamy white houses of the town piled themselves up for more than a hundred feet in places. In the grand distance to the south lay the huge shape of Mount Ætna, the crater appearing like a bite out of the skyline.
As the steamer neared the shore, we could see that to the south of the city extended miles of fruit orchards very thickly set, and to the north an excellent road ran out to the Point of Faro, where rose the light that marks the entrance to the Straits of Messina.
As we entered the harbor, steaming in close by the forts, and so near to the water-front street that we could read the shop signs, we were interested to observe a large steamer lying at anchor taking on emigrants, who were being brought from the quay in rowboat loads. We could see a large group in and about the offices of the La Veloce Line, and everywhere along the water front great posters announcing the departures of emigrant ships, for the United States for the most part, though some were for Australia and some for South America. Those for Australia were the ships that sail from Brindisi and have their principal patronage from the Adriatic coast villages.
The posters were the same, and the general character of emigrant-departure bustle the same, that we had seen in the Boot, but over Messina there seemed to be a spell of greater prosperity and activity than over any of the other southern Italian towns. The streets were strikingly clean. The people walked almost as rapidly as Americans. The pretentiousness of Naples and Rome was missing. Business houses seemed to be built and used for business houses only. On the water front three American emblems were visible,—one over the door of the consulate where I knew Mr. Charles M. Caughey of Baltimore to preside, and the other two over wide-open doors decorated with huge white signs “American Bar.”
I learned later that the two wine-shops where they really can set out a good dry cocktail and a standard gin rickey are owned, one by a father and the other by his son. The father emigrated to New York about the time of the Civil War, and according to reports boasts of having jumped the bounty three times, and amassed a fortune in the saloon business in New York. The son is also keeping bar, because it is the only thing he knows how to do, and is waiting for his father to die, when I fancy there will be one less American flag on the water front of Messina. Both father and son are American citizens, and are much in demand with the emigrants; and from all I could gather they and their operations could be very well dispensed with.
We stopped in Messina only long enough to get fed, freshened, and in some small degree rehabilitated, and then took train for Gualtieri-Sicamino, intending to use that place as a base of observations in Sicily.
Having heard from Italians of the north that the people of southern Italy were for the most part low-browed swine, and having found the people in the Boot to be decent, kind-hearted and hard-working, though ignorant and poor, we were prepared to doubt the Sicilians to be the bloodthirsty, stiletto-using banditti, such as they are popularly supposed to typify. It was a real gratification to find the first representatives we met to be of a thoroughly desirable type considered from the standpoint of good raw material for a great growing nation.
Nor did we have occasion thereafter to change our first estimates.
As our train roared through the tunnels and toiled around the bold faces of the mountains the greater portion of that mid-afternoon, we were talking anxiously of what Gualtieri must be like, for it was set down in the books as a town of 5,000 people, and we feared that it would be much too large a community to yield the typical country family such as we had found made up the great mass of Italian emigrants. Soon we left the heights and the narrow defiles, and came down to the sea in plain view of the island volcano Stromboli, belching great volumes of vapor into the azure dome, and finally pulled up at Santa Lucia, bracketed in the time-table as the station of the town of Gualtieri. When we stepped out of the compartment the only building near at hand was the square, squat, stuccoed station, while a few houses straggled away in the distance. We were for climbing aboard again, but the guards were calling “Santa Lucia-Gualtieri-Sicamino, Pagia, San Filippo,” and even as we hesitated the capo blew his horn and the train crawled away towards Milazzo, in view on the far blue cape, and left us standing there.