We spent several days in Palermo and its environs. I think it might be called the City of Mosaics. Its cathedrals, chapels, palaces, walls, everywhere were a mass of this ornamentation. We went from one to another till my brain was in a buzz. The gorgeousness and beauty and exquisite execution of the extraordinary subjects were beyond description. Only seeing can grasp such wonders. There was an English garden full of flowers and familiar and unfamiliar trees and shrubbery. Indeed, Palermo can boast many gardens. In our drives on the Marina, a very brilliant feature was the carts peculiar to the country. The body of the cart, the two wheels, the shafts and the trappings of the donkey were covered with pictures and designs in the gaudiest colors—blues, reds, greens, orange, etc. The peasants in them were arrayed in garb to match, with faces alight with the most good-humored smiles.
The palaces we were most interested in were those of La Zisa and La Cuba, of Saracenic origin. The feature of the former was its fountain bursting from the wall in the vestibule facing the entrance door, and descending over a succession of steps to the floor, where it took the form of a simple rectangular cross. Above the fountain was a painted arch, below which were three pictures in Mosaics. This was very curious. La Cuba had nothing but a discolored honey-combed vaulting in a small court. A pavilion formerly belonging to it had been removed to the center of a garden on the opposite side of the street. We tramped to it. It had a dome in the roof and an arched doorway, and was built of massive stones, but otherwise was not especially interesting.
To Monreale was a drive of several miles, to see its Cathedral and Abbey and fine views. Its Mosaics are celebrated, but I did not dream of anything like the wonderful Cloisters of the Abbey. The Mosaics on the walls of the Cathedral cover an area of 70,000 square feet,
representing scenes from both the Old and New Testaments. I could only look and exclaim.
The Cloisters are all that remain of the original Abbey; they are quadrangular and the pointed arches supported by 216 columns are covered with mosaics, all of their capitals and many of the shafts being different. I could not even faintly grasp the amount of labor required for the execution of such elaborate work. We had haze, showers and rain every day, but lost no time from our sight-seeing. One day we went in the rain to the Museum, where are the famous Metopes, “the most ancient of Greek sculptures except the lions of Mycene.” These are from the temple of Selinus, where we were to have gone, but a party of English, who had just returned, gave such a disenchanting account of the hardships of the trip, we gave it up. These Metopes are on a sublime scale representing the contests of gods and goddesses and heroes, and are indescribable. One is that of Perseus slaying Medusa.
Not tiring of beautiful Palermo, but of the rain, we left one afternoon for Girgenti, “the most beautiful city of mortals,” according to Pindar. The railway must have been the work of friendly genii, taste, labor and abundance of the “coin of the county,” for it ran for miles between triple hedges of roses, geraniums and cacti, planted in the order I have named them one above the other.