For a Sicilian city of second rate, my accommodations at Cefalù were very good. I could have stayed there two or three days with pleasure, but I was unwilling to risk the loss of the packet. On the 12th therefore, I retraced my way to Termini, where I had more daylight than on the former occasion. The country here also is very beautiful, but the mountains are not so woody as at Cefalù. The baths which have given a name to the place, seem to rise in a breccia containing rounded pebbles of grit and limestone. They are salt, and merely tepid, as the hand may be held in them without inconvenience. The base of the rock on which the castle stands is of a gray limestone, with nodules of a yellowish brown colour, and veins of white; it is topped with a coarse grit in thin strata. Beyond Termini I noticed a white, argillaceous rock, and I was told that gypsum is dug about half-way between Termini and Cefalù; nearer the latter city the soil is of grit, but the hills at that place consist of a fœtid limestone abounding in shells. It will take a polish, and is used as marble.
J. Hawksworth Sculp.
Cyclopæan Wall at Cephalù.
London. Published by J & A. Arch. Cornhill. March 1st 1828.
The next morning I resumed my post in the diligence from Termini to Palermo. One of the company was a young citizen of Palermo, who complained frequently that he had not sufficient respect paid to him on that account. “One would think all here were cavaliers, a Palermitan is not worth attention.” He did not seem to obtain his object by these complaints, but they were made without ill-humour, and nobody denied his claims or laughed at them. The Sicilians are a vain people. They are frequently telling you how much the Sicilians have done, even if they are obliged to go back to Archimedes to find it out, and to remind you that the Syracusans defeated the forces which the Athenians sent against them; forgetting that it could be no great praise for a city which, according to their own account, contained two millions of people, to defeat the forces of one of eighty thousand. They also frequently refer to the Sicilian vespers; an event of which I trust we should be far from proud in England.
The passage in the packet from Palermo to Naples cost nine ounces, an ounce being two Sicilian dollars and a half; and for this the passenger is spesato, i. e. provided with as much food as he pleases, and each has a little room to himself which is numbered, and on taking his place he may secure any unoccupied number he pleases. We were ordered on board at half-past five on the 16th, and as I did not learn this till near five, on returning from a walk, my things were packed up in a great hurry. I soon found, however, that there was no reason to be uneasy, and went to the play to see Lappanio once more. A little after midnight the passengers went on board, and at about three o’clock on the morning of the 17th we left the harbour. The packet would have entered the bay of Naples on the 18th, if the captain had not made a mistake of ten miles in his position, which threw us to the south, while a strong wind from the north-west prevented us from recovering the consequence of the error, and it was not till about noon on the 20th, that we entered the port. The quarantine regulations had been repealed, a few petty fees carried us through the custom-house, and I resumed possession of my old quarters at the Locanda della Speranzella.
LETTER LVI.
POMPEI.
Naples, 9th November, 1818.
I have been so long accustomed to watch for opportunities of sending letters, and to feel disappointed on missing any, that I do not know how to reconcile myself to the power of sending them twice a week, when I have neither time nor matter for such frequent correspondence; but my feelings are altogether different from what they were when I was here a year ago. The novelties of my journey are over, and what remains for me to do, is merely to revisit cities I have already seen, or others very similar to them, and inhabited by people whose manners and language are grown familiar to me. Returning to Naples seemed in some degree like coming home; the shops, the streets, the buildings, and many faces I recollected at once, and found that many persons recollected me. I received at my inn the welcome of an old acquaintance.