We have been all day among the Lipari islands. It is pleasant to look up at the shaded and peaceful huts on their mountainous sides, as we creep along under them, or to watch the fisherman’s children with a glass, as they run out from their huts on the seashore to gaze at the uncommon apparition of a ship-of-war. They seem seats of solitude and retirement. I have just dropped the glass, which I had raised to look at what I took to be a large ship in full sail rounding the point of Felicudi. It is a tall, pyramidal rock, rising right from the sea, and resembling exactly a ship with studding-sails set, coming down before the wind. The band is playing on the deck; and a fisherman’s boat with twenty of the islanders resting on their oars and listening in wondering admiration, lies just under our quarter. It will form a tale for the evening meal, to which they were hastening home.
We run between Scylla and Charybdis, with a fresh wind and a strong current. The “dogs” were silent, and the “whirlpool” is a bubble to Hurl-gate. Scylla is quite a town, and the tall rock at the entrance of the strait is crowned with a large building, which seems part of a fortification. The passage through the Faro is lonely—quite like a river. Messina lies in a curve of the western shore, at the base of a hill; and, opposite, a graceful slope covered with vineyards, swells up to a broad table plain on the mountain, which looked like the home of peace and fertility.
We rounded-to, off the town, to send in for letters, and I went ashore in the boat. Two American friends, whom I had as little expectation of meeting as if I had dropped upon Jerusalem, hailed me from the grating of the health-office, before we reached the land, and having exhibited our bill of health, I had half an hour for a call upon an old friend, resident at Messina, and we were off again to the ship. The sails filled, and we shot away on a strong breeze down the straits. Rhegium lay on our left, a large cluster of old-looking houses on the edge of the sea. It was at this town of Calabria that St. Paul landed on his journey to Rome. We sped on without much time to look at it, even with a glass, and were soon rounding the toe of “the boot,” the southern point of Italy. We are heading at this moment for the gulf of Tarento, and hope to be in Venice by the fourth of July.
LETTER X.
The Adriatic—Albania—Gay Costumes and Beauty of the Albanese—Capo d’Istria—Trieste resembles an American Town—Visit to the Austrian Authorities of the Province—Curiosity of the Inhabitants—Gentlemanly Reception by the Military Commandant—Visit to Vienna—Singular Notions of the Austrians respecting the Americans—Similarity of the Scenery to that of New England—Meeting with German Students—Frequent Sight of Soldiers and Military Preparation—Picturesque Scenery of Styria.
The Doge of Venice has a fair bride in the Adriatic. It is the fourth of July, and with the Italian Cape Colonna on our left and the long, low coast of Albania shading the horizon on the east, we are gazing upon her from the deck of the first American frigate that has floated upon her bosom. We head for Venice, and there is a stir of anticipation on board, felt even through the hilarity of our cherished anniversary. I am the only one in the ward-room to whom that wonderful city is familiar, and I feel as if I had forestalled my own happiness—the first impression of it is so enviable.