TO the northwest of Girgenti the country is honeycombed with sulphur pits and it is not very hard to credit the ancient myth that the gates of Hades opened here. After the train leaves the trunkline of the railway at Aragona-Caldare, tunnels and sulphur mines make up most of the scenery. This entire district has a smitten look, and on the bleak rolling plains and rugged hills are dreary towns whose chief charm, as they flit past in a continuous gray motion picture, lies in their historical suggestions. The most important and flourishing city we pass is Caltanisetta, the center of the sulphur industry, which produces more than half a million tons annually. The mines are most of them primitive in the extreme, and machinery is practically unknown, while in many of them fuel is so scarce and costly that the operators burn the raw sulphur itself in their calcaroni or smelters.

Shortly before reaching Santa Catarina Xirbi, the junction town where the tracks join the Palermo line, we have our first glimpse of Mt. Ætna, its snowy cap hanging in the distance like a low white cloud. Small gorges and tunnels follow in rapid succession, and the train pants upward in tortuous curves through the barren valleys, until we look up at Castrogiovanni, the Enna of the ancients. It lies in an almost perfect horseshoe on a precipitous rock, and so surrounded by nearly perpendicular approaches, so walled in by Nature with beetling crags, that none of its innumerable ancient besiegers was ever able to storm it. Treachery—and once starvation—did for it what armed assault never could. Livy rightly called it “a city inexpugnable,” and it probably is so yet, for it has recently been strongly fortified after the most approved modern style. The ascent is by a road which—well, try it for yourself. But the town, once reached, pays for the climb in its magnificent views. It is the navel (umbilicus SiciliÆ) of Sicily, and from the loftiest tower of the former citadel there sweeps away a mountain cyclorama such as not even Switzerland can excel—Ætna, peaks without number, range on range and tier on tier, melting into the haze of heaven. Towns, thousands of feet in the air, cling desperately to the steep, unfriendly sides, or perch precariously on the tops of needle-pointed mountains. And on the South, beyond hills and plain, dimples the ultramarine of the African sea.

For centuries before the adventurous Greeks colonized the hill, Enna was the principal home of a Sicilian goddess, the patron of natural fertility and of the harvest, whom the Greeks identified with their own Demeter, and the later Romans with Ceres. Not a stone of her temple is left, and we can do little more than speculate upon its site, said to have been where the old citadel now stands. About two hours to the south by carriage is that once lovely little lake of Pergusa, where Pluto met and straight-way stole the lovely Proserpina to be the queen of his dark realm. It was then a district so fair that Diodorus said the hounds often lost the scent of their quarry, so rich was the fragrance of the flowers. But alas! the spot is blasted now. Gone are the splendid shade trees in whose branches the singing messengers of spring carolled; gone all the beauty of Pergusa, now but a dirty little pond, where peasants steep their flax. But at least we can think of it still in Ovid’s words: “A spot at the bottom of a shady vale, watered by the plenteous spray of a stream that falls from wooded heights; where Nature decks herself in all her varied hues, where the ground is beauteous, carpeted with flowers of many tints.”

Ætna appears again soon after the entrance to the valley of the Dittaino is passed, and beckons with such insistence that the train hesitates only a moment—at the station for Valguarnera Assoro—right before the railway restaurant. It is a tumbledown little shack with a big sign: Ristorante G. Galliano. If you are on good enough terms with the Signor Conductor, he may wait long enough for you to have a sip of the excellent country wine and a taste of the “beautiful goat” the redoubtable Galliano purveys to such as can pay his very modest price. A few miles farther on is the station for Agira, which occupies the site of one of the very oldest Sikelian cities, lying back from the railroad, up in the hills. Later it was the birthplace of the historian Diodorus, who gives a picturesque account of his native village.

Half an hour later the railway emerges from the hills upon the plain of Catania—so productive of grain that from the very beginnings of local history it has been known as the granary of Sicily—and leaving the main line at Bicocca, puts Catania and the great volcano behind, heading southward for Syracuse. Fine crops appear around the famous Lake Lentini, Sicily’s largest inland body of water, varying from about nine to twelve miles in circumference, according to the season. It is a dreary tarn, looking so like a big mud puddle or a meadow overflowed by stagnant salt water that it is easy to credit the tales of the mephitic vapors and exhalations and fevers which have made it the scourge of the neighborhood.

Evidently the Sicilian railroads provide no drinking water for the employÉs in wayside stations, for as we stopped the combination telegraph operator, baggage smasher, ticket agent and general utility man ran out to the locomotive and tapped the brass faucet in the tender for a drink. There is a big water-wheel a few miles farther on, arranged exactly like an Egyptian sakiyeh, and no doubt a survival of the Moorish wheel installed in that very well centuries ago. The apparatus is very simple. A horizontal wheel is geared loosely into a vertical one by big, clumsy wooden teeth. Over it projects an arm to which some patient draft animal is hitched. A long grass rope carrying an endless series of pottery jars or buckets completes the outfit by running over the vertical wheel, and all the water that does not splash back into the well flows into an irrigating pool and the ditches. The mule who worked this particular wheel acted as if he too were a Moorish survival, unaccustomed to modern inventions. Anyway, he tried to bolt when the engine shrieked. His plunging blindfold gallop sent the water flying in all directions, giving his peasant master a much-needed bath and earning the poor beast a beating, the blows of which could be distinctly heard as the train sped on. Around a curve Mt. Ætna appears again in all its majesty, filling up the entire background, looming more than twice as large as familiar Vesuvius. Its lower slopes are green and the upper reaches snow covered, split like a sore lip, with dark curves, queer bumps and sharp little corners of uplifted skin. Above them poises the soft black, slightly indented cone, canopied by a ridiculous tuft of cottony smoke no bigger than a handful at such a distance.

Agnone is a hedge of yellow daisies, a deep pasture full of reddish brown kine, a farmhouse of stone with thatched shelters for the animals in the midst of rich cultivated lands. A mile away gleams the sea, a dull turquoise green flecked with windy ripples and dotted here and yon with white—“Silver sails come out of the west.” The tall timothy on both sides of the track, and other fields planted with oats and spiky cactus, seem mere picturesque settings for countless fiery poppies. Sheep by the hundred bolt in terror from the wild shrieks of the locomotive, preferring to run straight ahead on the track as long as they can possibly keep out of the way of the engine. Bold headlands here and there lower their stubborn crests for a few yards to give the flying train instantaneous vistas of wet sand gleaming far below, like blades of golden sickles edged with silver filigree.

In rapid succession these rugged scenes slip behind, and we run along the shore past salt farms and their windmills; then a boldly jutting island, brave with forts and churches, rising out of the sea like Venice—Augusta the picturesque, modern survivor of Xiphonia, scene of many a fierce battle and bloody conquest.

Augusta was founded in a most picturesque way by Emperor Frederick II. The town of Centuripe up in the hills, having roused the imperial ire by its sedition, was effectually razed. Then Frederick punished its people still further by driving them all into this spot and commanding them to stay there and be good. Perhaps its stormy birth in a measure accounts for Augusta’s stormy history. The most spectacular affair it ever witnessed was the tremendous naval duel between the fleets of France and Holland in 1676, when Admiral Duquesne defeated the Dutch Admiral De Ruyter, who afterward died of his wounds in nearby Syracuse. Following the coast closely, we flit swiftly past the HyblÆan Hills, eager to stop for some of their historic honey, but relentlessly carried onward by the insensate iron horse, that knows not nor cares for the sweets that rival the product of Hymettus.

All the way from Augusta the track borders the shore of the Bay of Megara, where anchored Nicias, Alcibiades and Lamachus, the Athenian generals who came to attack Syracuse in 415 B. C. with a fleet so vast that men paled merely to see it whiten the horizon. But to-day, instead of the tents and sails of invading hosts, you see evaporating-tanks and windmills, and snowy piles of salt dotting the rugged shore in serried ranks. Rushing across the neck of the promontory of Thapsus—now called Magnisi—we skirt Trogilus Bay, where the conquering fleet of Marcellus the Roman lay two centuries after the Athenian dÉbÂcle, cross the old Dionysian wall, sweep around the bold headland, and stop at Syracuse.

Don’t be disappointed in Syracuse by what you see of the dirty little provincial town that yawns sleepily at you between the railroad station and your hotel. Suspend judgment until you reach the Greek Theater, and from the top row of seats carven into the eternal rock, look out over the gracious panorama below. Beyond the sparsely settled vineyards and groves covering what was once the Greater Syracuse, lies the city of to-day on Ortygia, an oyster-shell full-heaped with pearls, in a sapphire setting of twin harbors and glittering sands. The alchemy of golden sunshine transmutes whitewashed tenements into Greek palaces, fishing luggers into stately galleys of war, and prosaic modern peasants into the soldiers and citizens of a happier and more stirring day. And as you stand breathless with the wonder of it, history unfolds itself in memory, with something at every step to drive that history home, be it Sikel, Greek, Roman, Saracen or Norman. The ruins of the mighty fortress atop the inland hill breathe of the Age of Tyrants, and to follow the herculean walls of Dionysius around the deserted plateau fills one with awe and wonder anew, for the work seemingly has been performed by a race of giants. Below, yawning in the seacoast of Achradina, dim caverns invite the explorer’s rowboat. There are the Street of Tombs to search for relics—though most likely you will find only a few scattered bones; the Castello Maniaces on the tip of Ortygia, full of Byzantine memories; charming walks to and through the quarries, the famous Latomie; the astonishing catacombs and the Anapo trip. A score of other delightful excursions the visitor can take, providing he is not driven forward by the exigencies of a cut-and-dried itinerary, that wickedest and most specious of all excuses for not seeing enough of a country really to enjoy it!

“From the top row of seats in the Greek Theater look out over the gracious panorama below”—Syracuse.
“From the top row of seats in the Greek Theater look out over the gracious panorama below”—Syracuse.

The mother colony was founded in 734 B. C. on the little island of Ortygia, named for the quail the Greeks found there in great coveys. From its very beginning the benignant gods smiled upon Syracuse, and it prospered so rapidly that within seventy years it was founding colonies of its own. Under the tyrant Gelon, son-in-law of the great and good Theron of Akragas, and later practically co-ruler with him of all Greek Sicily, the era of Hellenic supremacy began, with Syracuse in the van of progress. Indeed, Syracuse was of such paramount importance that sometimes its history is mistaken for the history of Sicily. Tyrants good and bad rose and fell; democracy overthrew tyranny, and tyranny overthrew democracy. Demagogues—the word means literally “popular leaders”—rose to stir the people to action against the government or the tyrant—and sometimes threatened to become tyrants themselves. Seeing how easy it was to sway the rabble with hot words, men of every class began to practice public speaking; no young man’s education was complete without it; and oratory first became an art in Sicily.

From the island of Ortygia the city spread up the hilly mainland in four new boroughs—Achradina, Tyche, Neapolis and Epipolai—making a mighty pentapolis; a community which was not only the foremost of all the Greek cities in the island, but much the greatest in physical extent of all the Greek cities in the world, and for a time the greatest city of Europe as well as of Greece. This naturally made Athens jealous, and in 415 B. C. the pent up force of Attic wrath loosed itself in a tremendous blast against Syracuse. But Athens’ traditional enemy, Sparta, sent the island city help, and the Athenian arms went down in one of the most appalling defeats of all history. After this vivid chapter, governments and tyrants rose and fell again as before, deliverers came and conquered in the name of the people, and passed, and at last the young giant Rome stepped in with brazen legionaries and put a period to the brilliant story.

To-day, as in the beginning, the city is on Ortygia, the houses crowding together behind the old walls like birds on a roost, and you wonder why, when there was such ample space on the shore, the people huddled together so. The streets, moreover, are amazingly shifty. On foot you set out to explore the town and encircle it by keeping as close to the walls as possible—a matter of a mere hour and a half, with plenty of time to idle by the way. According to the maps this should be no great feat, but try as you may, it seems impossible to lay a true course, and becoming discouraged after slipping off one street four or five times, you abandon yourself to the vagaries of these astonishing high and byways—they fade into one another without sign or signal, they vanish on front doorsteps, end after half a block in blind alleys, terminate in bastions which lead one to suppose that the sea must be below on the other side, only to turn up somewhere else in most mysterious fashion, and not always running in the same direction as their beginning.

There is little that is up-to-date about Syracuse. To a great extent it lives in medieval seclusion and its people are simple, genial folk so wholly out of touch with the world that whatever is essential for comfort or convenience is proper in public. On one street, for instance, I saw the economical wife of a small shopkeeper wash her baby’s only frock—a slim little red calico—and button it to dry over the bulgy part of a lamppost, which looked choked and uneasy as the tiny slip fluttered in the wind. Meantime the piccola signorita disported herself amiably in the street—and all her frolicking in the dust could not hurt what she wore.

Near the center of the city stands the Cathedral, a queer combination of battlemented Moorish castle, ancient Greek temple and modern Christian structure. Nearly thirteen centuries ago Bishop Zosimus of Syracuse began the work of turning the ruined temple—built early in the sixth century B. C.—into a Christian church, filling in the peristyle with a solid wall in which some of the Doric columns are still visible. The Saracen invaders turned it into a mosque in the year 878, and for two centuries muezzins chanted the names of Allah and Muhammad from its walls. With the Norman conquest in the eleventh century the building again became a Christian house of worship, and though the earthquake of 1693 destroyed a part of it, the damage was soon repaired and it has ever since remained the diocesan church of Syracuse. Like many of the often restored cathedrals of Meridional Italy, its interior is barren and uninteresting, but its exterior, with Greek entablature and columns, Saracenic frieze and battlements, and hideous Renaissance faÇade and portico is unique among Christian churches.

There seems some doubt among the archÆologists as to the deity worshiped here in pagan days. It was formerly ascribed to Diana, but the authorities now generally believe it was the shrine of Minerva, though Cicero’s glowing description of the Temple of Minerva (Athena) places that structure in a location apparently different from the site of the present Duomo. The orator says he saw a temple on whose apex was “...a great brazen shield overlaid with gold, which served as a landmark to sailors on entering the port. The folding doors of ivory and gold were also adorned with a marvelous golden head of Medusa.” Most of these magnificent treasures were stolen. The Roman prÆtor Gaius Verres, a gentleman with a highly cultivated taste in works of art, stripped Syracuse—and all Sicily, in fact—absolutely bare of everything the Roman armies had overlooked. And when at last he was brought to book for his crimes, he fled into voluntary exile with his plunder rather than face the scathing invective of Cicero.

The archÆologists’ dubiety regarding the name of the temple has no room in the minds of the street arabs, however, who vociferously proclaim it the “Tempio di Diana,” and will not suffer you to leave until you have paid for this volunteered information.

Diagonally across the Piazza Duomo is the externally unimposing Museum. Its collection, however, is both interesting and intelligently arranged. It covers the civilization of Sicily from the bone and flint implements of the extinct prehistoric Sikels, through the transitional Greek period of the metopes from Selinus, to the splendid coins and vases of the city’s supremacy as an Hellenic center of culture and art. In fact, the profile of Arethusa, on coins signed by Evanetus and Kimon, is considered the most exquisite Greek head known to us. In those days coin-makers were artists of the foremost rank, accustomed to signing their work, like painters and sculptors, and these two, Evanetus and Kimon, have left us a noble set of coins in which the Greek conception of divinity appears at its best. The most beautiful marble is a Venus Anadyomene, discovered in 1804, and preserved almost intact save for the head and one arm.

Not very far away there are ruins of another and very remarkable Greek temple, formerly called for Diana, but now generally considered to have been dedicated to Apollo—the archÆologists seem to have a grudge against the virgin huntress! There is not much else that is Greek, but as you wander through the narrow streets, scattered bits of mediÆval architecture appear in the most unexpected places, like the splendid Sicilian-Gothic and Saracenic windows of the Montalto and Lanza palaces, all the richer and more wonderful because of the surroundings from which they look down upon the squalid streets and out-at-heel people. The later Palazzo Municipale, or City Hall, is a fine example of the architectural spirit of the seventeenth century, its type that of a private palace, a baronial mansion rather than a public building. During this period great attention was paid to ornamental ironwork for decorative purposes upon the faÇades of buildings; and all about us are delicate and satisfying window balconies, some of which plainly testify to their Spanish origin.

“In those days coin-makers were artists of the foremost rank, and signed their works.”
“In those days coin-makers were artists of the foremost rank, and signed their works.”

The first of the Greek settlers brought their home legends with them to Sicily, where they found a friendly soil, attaining their fullest perfection in the sympathetic hands of the Latin poets. Some of the most beautiful weave through the story of Syracuse, and the most delightful walk in the city—one you will want to take often—leads you straight along the edge of the Great Harbor, on a wide, tamarind-bordered esplanade, with the town wall rising behind, to the picturesque, papyrus-fringed little pool accounted for by one especially gracious tale, and called the Fountain of Arethusa.

Long centuries ago—so runs this immemorial fable—there bubbled up out of the beach of the Great Harbor a crystal spring. And close by, in the briny waters themselves, another little fount gushed forth, pure and sweet. The airy Greek fancy could not pass by so remarkable a coincidence, and the Syracusans quickly came to believe that the twin springs were the gentle nymph Arethusa, the well-beloved of Artemis (Diana), and her river-god lover Alpheus; that Arethusa, too impetuously wooed by Alpheus on the island of Ortygia in Old Greece, had been graciously changed by Artemis into a spring, and taking the long, dark journey under the Ionian Sea, had escaped to the sunlight again in the newer Ortygia in Sicily; that Alpheus, not faint-hearted, had changed himself to her own watery shape, and following hard and fast, had missed her by the merest trifle only, bubbling up in a second spring in the waters of the harbor close beside his beloved. But Poseidon of the sea was mightier than nymph or river-god. Shaking his mighty bed one day, he burst open the wall about fair Arethusa.—To-day her water is salt, not sweet, and no more does her lover Alpheus bubble up beside her in the Bay.