The manufacture of salt is one of the chief industries of Trapani and one of the chief causes of its wealth. In Sicily it practically never rains during the summer; the sea water is collected in large, open pans, being raised by means of the screw which has been in use all over the island for nearly twenty-two centuries, ever since Archimedes invented it to remove the water from the hold of one of Hiero’s ships at Siracusa. All through the summer the heat of the sun evaporates the moisture, leaving the salt which is afterwards exported to Newfoundland, Norway, the North of France and many other countries and used for salting fish and other purposes.
The road continues to ascend and the horizon appears to ascend also, so that the sea takes up with it the Ægadean islands till, presently, Marettimo looks over the top of Levanzo, while Favognana lies away to the
left. The Isola Grande (S. Pantaleo), the fourth island, is not a prominent object, being low and near the land, a good deal to the south towards Marsala; but in former times, when it was Motya, it was the most important of them all. The sea extends right and left till it is lost in the haze which so commonly obscures a Sicilian horizon.
The road goes more and more inland and, still rising, diverges from the shorter road taken by the old horse bus and passes through Paparella. Presently the mountain shuts out Trapani and the sea, and then the country lying inland about the base of the mountain comes into view bounded by a distant amphitheatre and, as the road completes the circuit of the mountain, and still rising joins the other shorter road at the Trapani gate of the town, the sea comes into sight again, with the horizon high above Trapani and the promontory of Capo S. Vito bounding it on the right.
This mountain, formerly world-renowned as Mount Eryx, and still often called Monte Erice, is now Monte S. Giuliano and gives its name both to the town on the top and to the comune of which that town is the chief place. The highest point of the town is
towards the east of the mountain-top, and here are several towers, some belonging to the Castello, a Norman fortress, and others to Le Torri, the summer residence of Count Pepoli. On the north, east and south sides of the summit the mountain is precipitous, but towards the west it slopes from the towers through a public garden called the Balio, and then through a maze of narrow, winding streets, down to the Trapani gate. The normal population of the town is about 4000, but in the summer and autumn this is largely increased, inasmuch as the great heat of Trapani and the low country drives as many as can afford it to live on the summit where it is seldom too hot.
The rest of the comune lies dotted about on the plain at the foot of the mountain and consists of a dozen small villages, all visible from the summit. These have mostly grown up within the last hundred years or so as colonies from the chief town, for when the country was less secure the women and children were left within the town walls while the men went down to work in the fields and to fish in the sea, returning for Sundays and festas, and gradually, as it became possible, settlements were formed below to which
the women and children could safely be moved. Custonaci, however, one of the villages of the comune, did not spring up in this way and is of older date than the others.
The peculiar charm of the mountain cannot be fully realized unless one visits it at all seasons and in all weathers. I have been there in the winter; the summit was hidden in a cloud which, as we drove up into it, obscured the view and chilled the marrow. It was before the days of the motor, when a horse bus did the journey by a shorter route in about three hours. I was on the box with the coachman who gave me a spare cloak with a hood to keep me dry and warm. Two of my friends, natives of the mountain, one a doctor and the other the accountant to the Municipio, were at the Trapani gate to meet me, both in hooded cloaks, so that I did not recognize them till they spoke. The wind was tremendous. The narrow sloping streets were running with water as we walked up through the town to the albergo, where Donna Anna received us. There was no blazing fire or warm room as there would have been in an English inn, only semidarkness and dampness. The damp had
patched the painting on the ceiling and disfigured the whitewashed walls, on which were hung a few pictures—a lithograph of the Madonna di Custonaci, a cheap Crucifixion, a reproduction of the design for the monument to Vittorio Emmanuele in Rome, three shiny chromolithographs of English country scenes, representing the four seasons minus one, an absurd French engraving, Education Maternelle and S. Francesco da Paola, with a shell for holy water. S. Francesco belongs to South Italy, but he is a favourite in Sicily because he walked across the Straits of Messina to carry the Last Sacraments to a dying man. On the undulating tiled floor were a few of the rugs peculiar to the neighbourhood. They are made by the natives on looms, the length being thin, strong string and the width white, black and coloured cotton rags—old petticoats, shirts, aprons and so on, washed clean and torn into narrow strips. With a little ingenuity they make the colours go in simple patterns, chiefly diamonds and zigzags; but sometimes they are more daring and attempt drinking-cups, etc.: the most effective are made by running the strips in rows without any regard to pattern.