CHAPTER X.
RETURN TO SICILY AND MOUNT ÆTNA.
SUBJECT OF MOUNT ÆTNA RESUMED:—ITS BEAUTIES—ITS HORRORS—REASON WHY PEOPLE ENDURE THEM.—LOVE-STORY OF AN EARTHQUAKE.
In now emphatically returning to Sicily, though we have never been entirely absent from it, while discussing the pastoral poets of other countries, we shall round our subject properly by finishing the circle where we began it; and in order to render our plan as complete as possible, we have not been without a sense of chronological order. In resuming, therefore, the subject of Ætna, we proceed to regard the mountain in relation to the impression it makes on modern times and existing inhabitants.
The reader is aware that our Jar was not intended to be associated with nothing but sweets. Bees, it was observed, extract honey from the bitterest as well as sweetest flowers; and we only stipulated, as they do, for a sweet result;—for something, which by the fact of its being deducible from bitterness, shows the tendency of Nature to that dulcet end, and gives a lesson to her creature man to take thought and warning, and do as much for himself. In truth, were man heartily to do so, and leave off asking Nature to superintend everything for him, and take the trouble off his hands, which it seems a manifest condition of things that she should not (man looking very like an experiment to see how far he can develop the energies of which he is composed, and prove himself worthy of continuance), how are we to know that he would not get rid of all such evils as do not appear to be necessary to his well-being, and, in the language of the great Eastern poet, make “the morning stars sing for joy?”—sing for joy, that another heaven is added to their list. Mount Ætna, for instance, which is one of the safety-valves of the globe, does not force people to live within the sphere of its operations. Why, therefore, should they? Why do not the inhabitants of Catania and other places migrate, as nations have done from the face of an enemy or famine, and plant themselves elsewhere? When the convulsion comes, and destruction hovers over them, the saints are implored as the gods were of old, and everything is referred to the ordinances of Heaven. But the saints might answer, “Why do you continue to live here, in the teeth of these repeated warnings? Why cannot the earth have safety-valves, but you must needs plant yourselves right in the way of them, as infants may do with steam-engines?” This is the honey that might be extracted from the bitter past. On the other hand, if this be idle speculation, and the reason of the thing be on the side of continuing to implore the saints and perishing in earthquakes, then Nature, who is always determined to have no evil unmixed, suggests topics of consolation from the greater amount of good; from the far longer duration of the periods of serenity and joy around the mountain, compared with those of convulsion; and from all those images of beauty and abundance, which produce another honey against the bitterness of what cannot be altered. The bee himself, like the nightingale and the dove, and other beautiful creatures, is an inhabitant of Ætna. The fires of the mountain help to produce some of his sweetest thyme. The energetic little, warmth-loving, honey-making, armed, threatening, murmuring, bitter-sweet, and useful creature, seems like one of the particles of the mountain, gifted with wings. We might as well have brought our honey from Mount Ætna as Mount Hybla, and very likely it actually came thence; only the latter, like Mount Hymettus, is identified with the word, and its supposed district still famous for the product. In fact (though the name seems to be no longer retained anywhere) there were several Hyblas of old, one of them at the foot of Ætna; so that our Jar may come from both places. The word, which is older than Greek, was probably Phœnician, from a root signifying mellifluence; unless it originated in the sound of the bubbling of brooks, of the neighbourhood of which bees are fond.
We cannot quit Mount Ætna without saying something more of it, especially as it has lately been in action, not without hints of its operation as far as Scotland, where there have been many shocks of earthquake. Everybody knows that Ætna is the greatest volcano in Europe, some twenty miles in ascent from Catania, and with a circumference for its base of between eighty and ninety. All the climates of the world are there, except those of the African desert. At the foot are the palms and aloes of the tropics, with the corn, wine, and oil of Italy. The latter continue for fourteen or fifteen miles of ascent. Then come the chestnuts of Spain, then the beeches of England, then the firs of Norway—the whole forest-belt being five or six miles in ascent, interspersed with park-like scenery, and the most magnificent pastures. Singing-birds, and flocks and herds are there, with abundance of game. The remainder, a thousand feet high, is a naked peak, covered for the greater part of the year with snow, but often hot to the feet in the midst of it, toilsome to ascend, and terminating in the great crater, miles in circumference, fuming and blind with smoke—the largest of several others. The whole mountain, with an enormous chasm in its side four or five miles broad, stands in the midst of six-and-thirty subject mountains, “each a Vesuvius,” generated by its awful parent. Horror and loveliness prevail throughout it, alternately, or together. You look from mountain to mountain, over tremendous depths, to the most beautiful woody scenery. The lowest region is a paradise, betraying black grounds of lava, and beds of ashes, which remind you to what it is liable. The top is a ghastly white peak, shivering with cold, though it is a mouth for fire, but lovely at a distance in the light of the moon at night, and presenting a view from it by day, especially at sunrise, which baffles description with ecstasy. Count Stolberg, a German poet, who beheld this spectacle in the year 1792, when the mountain was in action, says, that by the dawning light of the day he saw nothing round about him but snow and black ashes, vast masses of lava, and a smoking crater, together with a huge bed of clouds, the darkening extremities of which the eye could not clearly distinguish either from the mountains or the sea, “till the majestic sun rose in fire, and reduced every object to order.—Chaos seemed to unfold itself, where no four-footed beast, no bird, interrupted the solemn silence of the formless void:
Wo sie keinen Todten begruben, und keiner erstehen wird,
as Klopstock says of the ice-encircled pole: