Later on, the character of the population was still further modified by French, Germans, Spaniards, and Aragonese, and all this helped to make them a people differing in appearance, manners, habits, and feelings from their Italian neighbours. These islanders look upon every inhabitant of the mainland as a foreigner. The absence of roads on the island enabled the different groups of its population to maintain their distinct idioms and character during a very long period. The Lombards whom the Romans transplanted to Benevento and Palermo spoke their native dialect long after it had become extinct in Lombardy. Even now there are about 50,000 Sicilians who speak this ancient Lombard tongue. At San Fratello, on a steep hill on the northern coast, this idiom is spoken with the greatest purity. Nor has the Italian wholly supplanted the vulgar Sicilian in the interior of the island. We meet with many Greek and Arab words. One of the most curious words is that of val, which is applied to various districts of Sicily, and is supposed to have been derived from vali, the Arab term for “governor.” The Sicilian idiom is less sonorous than the Italian. Vowels standing between consonants are frequently suppressed, and the o, and even the a and i (ee), are {321} changed into oo, which renders the speech hard and indistinct. The language lends itself, however, admirably to poetry, and the Sicilian popular songs are quite equal in natural grace and delicacy to the much-admired rispetti of Tuscany.
Of all the emigrants who have settled on the island the Albanians alone have not become merged in the general population. Locally known as Greci, they still form separate communities, speaking their own language and observing special religious rites, in several of the towns of the interior, and more especially at Piana de’ Greci, which occupies a commanding hill to the south of Palermo. Nor is the fusion amongst the other races as complete as it appears to be at the first glance. The population around Mount Etna, who are, perhaps, more purely Greek in blood than the Greeks themselves, are noted for their grace, gaiety, and sweetness of disposition. They are the most intelligent portion of the population of Sicily. Those of Trapani and San Giuliani are said to be the best-looking, and their women delight the stranger by the regularity and beauty of their features. The Palermitans, on the other hand, in whose veins flows much Arab blood, are for the most part unprepossessing in their appearance. They open their house but rarely to strangers, and jealously shut up their women in its most retired part.
The most ferocious usages of war, piracy, and brigandage have kept their ground longer at Palermo and its environs than anywhere else. The laws of the omerta, or “men of heart,” make vengeance a duty. A chi ti toglie il pane, e tu toglili la vita ! (“Take the life of him who has taken your bread !”) is its fundamental principle; but in practice Palermitan vengeance is far from possessing the simplicity of the Corsican vendetta, for it is complicated by the most atrocious cruelties. No less than four or five thousand Palermitans are said to be affiliated to the secret league of the maffia, whose members subsist upon every kind of roguery. Up to 1865 the brigands were masters in the environs of that town. They virtually laid siege to the town, separating it from its more distant suburbs. Strangers were afraid to leave lest they should be murdered or captured by bandits; and no farmer could harvest his corn or olives, or shear his sheep, without paying toll to these highwaymen. More than ten years have passed since then, but in spite of measures of exceptional severity the maffia still exists.
The history of this association, which dates its origin back to the time of the Norman kings, remains yet to be written. It has always flourished most in time of political troubles, and consequent misery. No doubt things have grown worse in the course of the last twenty years; taxes have been increased, the conscription established, and many abrupt changes, such as are inseparable from a new political regimen, have been introduced. The people, accustomed to put up with ancient abuses, have not yet learnt to bear the burdens imposed in connection with the annexation of the island to the kingdom of Italy. Nevertheless the Sicilians grow more Italian from day to day. Community of language and of interests attaches the island to the peninsula, and the time is not far distant when both countries will gravitate in the same orbit. Italy is most highly interested in establishing feelings of friendship with the inhabitants of the island, and in developing its resources. The rapid increase of the population, which is said to have {322} tripled since 1734, bears witness to the great natural riches of the country; and what might not be achieved if the barbarous processes now in force there were superseded by the scientific methods of our own time?
Sicily was the favourite haunt of Ceres, and in the plain of Catania this beneficent goddess taught man the art of cultivating the soil. The Sicilians have not forgotten this teaching, for nearly half the area is covered with corn-fields; but they have not improved their system of cultivation since those fabulous times, and improvements can hardly be effected as long as the restrictions imposed by the feudal tenure introduced by the Normans are allowed to exist. The agricultural implements are of a primitive kind, manure is hardly known, and the fate of the crops depends entirely upon nature. When travelling through the country districts of Sicily, we are struck by not meeting with isolated houses. There are no villages, for all the cultivators of the soil live in towns, and are content to travel daily to their fields, which are occasionally at a distance of six miles. Sometimes they pass the night there, in a cavern or a ditch covered with boughs, and at harvest-time the labourers sleep in improvised sheds. This absence of human habitations imparts an air of solemn sadness to vast corn-fields covering valleys and slopes, and we almost fancy we are wandering through a deserted country, and wonder for whose benefit the crops are ripening.
Corn-fields cover a greater area than that devoted to the cultivation of all other objects put together; nevertheless the latter articles represent a higher pecuniary value. The orchards, vineyards, and gardens near the towns are a far greater source of wealth than the distant corn-fields. In former times wheat was the principal article of export; now Sicily is no longer a granary, but promises to become a vast emporium of fruit. Even now the crop of oranges grown there, which consists of seven kinds, subdivided into four hundred varieties, represents a value of £2,000,000 a year. The marvellous gardens which surround Palermo are steadily increasing at the expense of the ancient plantations of ash, and ascend the hills to a height of 1,150 feet. Hundreds of millions of oranges are exported annually to Continental Europe, England, and America, and the inferior sorts are converted into essential oils, citric acid, or citrate of lime. The last is used in printing stuffs, and Sicily enjoys a monopoly in its manufacture.
Sicily likewise occupies a foremost place as a vine-growing country, and supplies more than a fourth of the wine produced throughout Italy. The cultivation of the vine, which is carried on to a large extent by foreigners, is much better understood there than on the neighbouring peninsula, and the wines exported from Marsala, Syracuse, Alcamo, and Milazzo are justly held in high estimation. Excellent wine is also grown on the southern and western slopes of Mount Etna, to which the heat of the sun imparts much fire. England and non-Italian Europe are the great consumers of the wines of Sicily, as they are of its oils, almonds, cotton, saffron, sumach, and manna, extracted, like that of the Calabrias, from a kind of ash. Raw silk, which Sicily was the first to produce in Europe, is likewise exported in considerable quantities.
Sulphur is the great mineral product of the island. The beds vary much in {323} richness, but even where they contain only five or six per cent. a light brought to the walls of the mine will cause the sulphur to boil like pitch. The blocks extracted from the mine are piled up in the open air, where they remain exposed to the destructive action of the atmosphere. The fragments are then heaped up over the flame of a furnace, which causes the stones to split, the melted sulphur flowing into moulds placed beneath. By this primitive process only two-thirds of the sulphur contained in the rock are extracted, but it proves nevertheless most remunerative. About 200,000 tons of sulphur, or more than two-thirds of the sulphur required for manufacturing purposes throughout Europe, are annually exported from Sicily, and the known deposits of the island have been computed to contain from 40,000,000 to 50,000,000 tons. To the north of Girgenti and in other parts of Sicily sulphureous plaster has been used in the construction of the houses, and the atmosphere there is at all times impregnated with an odour of sulphur.
Rock-salt is met with in the same formations as the sulphur, and in quantities almost inexhaustible, but salt is not a rare article, and even the Sicilians prefer to gather it from the salt swamps extending along the coast, the most productive of which are near Trapani, at the western extremity of the island. At the same spot the sea yields the best coral of Sicily. The tunny fishery is carried on mostly in the great bays between Trapani and Palermo, while most of the swordfish are captured in the Strait of Messina. The seas of Sicily abound in fish, and the islanders boast of being the most expert fishermen of the Western Mediterranean.
Until recently communications in Sicily were kept up almost exclusively by sea. In 1866 the only carriage road of the island, which connects Messina with Palermo, was hardly made use of by travellers, and even now the most important mines of sulphur and salt communicate with the seashore only by mule-paths; and the inhabitants are actually opposed to the construction of roads, from fear of their interfering with the existing modes of transport. The road which connects the harbour of Terranova with Caltanissetta has been under construction for twenty years, although it is the only one which joins the interior of the country to the sea-coast. Railways to some extent supply this deficiency of roads, but are being built very slowly, hardly more than 250 miles being at present open for traffic.