SICILY in spring appeared to us like water in the desert. That we knew nothing of the island was a misfortune we shared in common with most Americans. Such vague ideas as we had were derived mainly from long-past schooldays of wearisome geography, and from newspaper accounts of the Mafia, whose members seemed always to be Sicilians. But when, after a stormy fortnight among the volcanic dust-clouds of a great Vesuvian eruption, we determined to escape that choking atmosphere, the royal Road to Rome chosen by the tourists—terrified by the belchings of the volcano—did not appeal to us. Instead, with some trepidation, as explorers entering a wild and dangerous unknown land, we decided upon Sicily. Our baggage packed and in the hallway, we came out to Gregorio, the cabman we had patronized through many a day of work and danger around Vesuvius.

“Where now, milords?” he smiled at us cheerily, noting the hand baggage.

“To the steamer, Gregorio—to Sicily.”

“To Sicily!” he exclaimed, dropping his whip in sheer amazement. “Santo Dio!—why?”

The haze of volcanic cinders still hanging thickly over Naples was answer enough, with the added explanation: “We must breathe; we must rest.”

“Yes, but—” His emotions choked him. Here was Naples deserted by the thousands of foreigners whom a few days of Vesuvian bellowings had frightened into abject panic. Cabs rusted at the street corners by scores; and now he, too, was to be idle. It was too much! Not even the promise of engagement upon our return could dispel the gloom that had wiped away his smile.

“Gia!” he grunted darkly, shaking his head. “If the Signori ever return. Who knows, per Baccho! Sicilians are mala gente, brigands, murderers—”

It was too late to withdraw, notwithstanding Gregorio’s cheerful prophecy, and he drove us to the wharf, a mournful figure drooping upon his box—and we sailed on Friday the 13th, at thirteen minutes past six! But whether it was because of lack of respect for either fateful numbers or hoary nautical superstition, or because of skill upon the bridge, the swift and trim little Galileo Galilei brought us pleasantly in the glorious dawn to Sicily, and an hour later Palermo—the capital—shimmered through the smoky mists veiling its Golden Shell.

Map of Sicily
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It was an easy and a delightful voyage, the steamer clean, the sea smooth. But if one is sea-fearing instead of sea-faring, he may go comfortably from Naples by train, via Reggio and the Strait of Messina, only two miles across by ferry. Or, if he be a sea-roving globe-trotter, he may take one of the numerous Mediterranean liners leaving New York the year round, and make the trip without a single change all the way to Palermo; and these vessels are so large and so steady that the trip is robbed of half its terrors to the most timid soul.

But if money is an object, it is better to go by way of Italy, where little commutation books for Sicilian travel, called tessere, are to be obtained. Each tessera is a small pocket coupon-book sold in every large city, from Rome southward, from February to June. The books contain detachable coupons which entitle the holder to a discount ranging all the way from ten to seventy-five per cent in the cost of transportation, food, lodging, merchandise and amusements in the theaters. They cost ten lire (two dollars) apiece; and it is necessary only to fill out a given leaf with the date, the names of the stations to and from which the holder wishes to travel, and to present it at the station to obtain the discount on accommodations in any class desired on railway trains and steamers. A saving so large may be effected by its use that the transportation cost of the trip melts almost into insignificance.

Palermo, “the Panormos of old ... looks straight out toward the rising sun.”
Palermo, “the Panormos of old ... looks straight out toward the rising sun.”

It seems too good to be true, but there is a reason for it. Count Florio, of the Florio-Rubattino Steamship Company, one of the most public-spirited men in Sicily, to popularize the island as a place of resort, to stimulate local travel in the best months of the year, and so to augment the revenues of both people and island, persuaded the Government to grant special rates on its railways by giving a sixty per cent discount on his own private steamers. Various large stores, theaters, cafÉs and hotels perceived the reason in his argument, and quickly followed his example. Moreover, as the Annual Sporting Reunion is held in Palermo during the late winter, it was felt—as proved to be the case—that inducements in the way of discounts on the cost of everything would considerably increase the patronage and make the annual games and races much more a feature of the island than ever before.

Curiously enough, for a people so fond of red tape, the Sicilians have not smothered the tessere with senseless regulations. The concierge of your hotel can fill out and present the book for you when you wish to leave a city; the railroad ticket agent is not concerned with anything but your signature; and there are no difficulties about photographs as identification. But woe to the person who gives his tessera to a careless concierge! Half a dozen others may have done the same thing at the same time, and the tessere have become mixed. Unless one wishes to forge the usually almost indecipherable Italian name on the little green leaves, no ticket is forthcoming, no matter how fluent the explanation given; and a new book becomes a necessity.

These winter and spring months are ideal for travel in this Mediterranean isle. In every age Sicily’s climate has been sung as halcyone, and in the days when Cicero was quÆstor under the Roman rule, he did not exaggerate greatly when he said that there is never a day when the sun does not smile at least once. Not even Mentone or the other resorts along the Riviera can boast of a warmer or more sensuous charm than Sicily. January, which is the worst and rainiest month of the Sicilian winter, is very like the first two weeks of May in the northern part of Europe; and a short time later, when travel begins to waken the island, the sun shines clear and hot, an overcoat is wholly unnecessary except in the evening.

Ripe and green fruit and blossoms are to be seen at the same time on the orange and lemon trees, and by April the scraggy old olive trees bend beneath the weight of their dull green fruit, just beginning to blush with purple. The air is full of the scent of myriad flowers, and the railway tracks, sometimes for miles, run between hedges of geraniums—six to eight feet high—whose pungent fragrance fills the flying trains. The summer climate is as mild and salubrious as that of the winter, for even in July and August the average is not more than seventy-seven or seventy-eight degrees Fahrenheit; about the same as in our own Atlantic States. Occasionally, during one of the African siroccos that sometimes sweep across the island, the mercury rises to an hundred or so; but the sirocco is a rare occurrence, fully as apt to occur in mid-winter as in summer.

In a climate of this sort the jaded city-dweller, searching for health and rest, finds an ideal environment, and while the hotels are not the equals of the fashionable New York and London hostelries, they are comfortable and moderate in price; and many of them have splendid gardens attached, where one may have tea, or rest and wander at will among the scented bowers. One boasts a considerable aviary, and another, perched at the very edge of a precipitous crag, serves refreshments upon a stone promenade with the blue African Mediterranean right below, and the peaks of the Dark Continent faintly suggesting themselves through the mists of the horizon. Many of the best-known of these hostelries are located at historic spots, where history and imagination can conjure up the past vividly—aided, perhaps, by a too generous dinner. More than one traveler has fought the siege of Taormina all over again in his post-prandial dreams, and gone tumbling down the nine-hundred-foot slopes with the Greek tyrant, to wake up on the stony floor of his own bedroom!

Notwithstanding, the food is good, except in the more remote districts, where goat’s flesh is usually the literal piÉce de rÉsistance. In many of the hill centers the wine of the country, the vin ordinaire, as the French put it, is remarkably pure and good, while for general attractiveness and cleanly condition, the hotels as a class rank very well indeed. Not so much can be said for the servants, for the Sicilian accepts dirt as a thing given of God and therefore not to be too severely quarreled with under any circumstances; yet he does his best to live up to the finicky notions of the foreigner who, to his unprejudiced eye, is so jaundiced. And the Sicilian’s best, in his efforts to please the stranger, is a very warm-hearted and genial best indeed, full of cheery smiles, of the utmost willingness to fetch and carry, of entire devotion, sometimes to the point of doing actual violence for his patron.

It is characteristic of the people, indeed, that, having so long served for nothing, they should welcome the chance to serve for their own profit and pleasure combined; and the service is as pleasant to reward as it is to receive. Furthermore, the reward need not by any means always take the form of cash. In Italy everywhere one goes it is always tip! tip! tip! But in Sicily it is a delight to learn that one often secures as much for a smile and a gracious word of thanks as for a cash gratuity. In fact, tips are not infrequently refused. I shall never forget the expression that crossed the face of a schoolboy to whom I once offered half a lira, ten cents, for some trifling service. There was hurt pride in the rich brown eyes upturned to mine as the dirty little paw waved away the coin without a word. Another time, in the course of a detailed exploration of a prominent agricultural school in Palermo, the young priest in charge remonstrated with me, half in amusement, half in indignation, because “you offered my mÁma money!” To the apologetic remark that it is very hard to know when not to offer money, since everyone elsewhere in Italy expects it, the young philosopher, as cordial and proud as he was abjectly poor, helped himself to one of my cigarettes with a neat word of thanks and replied: “Ah, but here it is different! We are a simple, kindly folk in Sicily, always ready to do whatever we can for the well mannered foreigner. And, friend, when you go out, do not try to corrupt my boys with money,” was his parting admonition regarding tips for any of his pupils.

This picturesqueness of character extends to face and costume as well, and in the remoter places the dress and faces of the ancients may be observed, striking a curious note of contrast with the exceedingly modern and well appareled folk of the larger centers. Only fifteen miles by carriage from Palermo, back in the mountains at Piana dei Greci—an Albanian colony founded during the latter part of the fifteenth century—the peasants still hold during festival time to their rich and exceedingly beautiful costumes of embroidered silken gowns and breeches heavily picked out with gold. And a costume wedding can usually be arranged for the benefit of the interested visitor, who is expected to pay the officiating priest and make a modest gift to the newly married young couple.

But ancient or modern though the costume be, the demeanor of the wearer is almost invariably the same, courteous and respectful—one might even say eager—to give nothing but pleasure to the stranger. And this is true even of the cab-drivers. We had come to Sicily weary to exasperation of the importunities and rascality of the Neapolitan jehus—Gregorio was a smiling exception. To our delight we found ourselves able to take a ride in Palermo, of half a mile or more, in a clean, well-kept barouche, drawn by a well-fed little Arab stallion, for ten cents—and no tip necessary or expected.

The prices for longer excursions were on the same basis, and for weeks we had the services of a cab, a magnificent horse, and the peerless Gualterio, for about two dollars a day, including what to the Sicilian mind was a generous gratuity. And the carriage “ran sweetly,” as Gualterio assured us it would; nor was it—in his own words—“dirty, like some!” Of course, the Sicilian cabman, for all his courtly manners and engaging smile, his soft voice and his continual appeal to the ladies, with the set phrase “La Signora vuol’ andare—The Lady would like to ride?” (as she usually did, to the enrichment of the cabby) is not much more to be relied upon for facts, or as a guide, than his brethren in Naples or anywhere else in the world. The first time we saw one of the numberless slender stone towers that dot Palermo from end to end, rising to a height of about twenty feet, covered with fine vines and dripping countless tiny streams of water, Gualterio smiled angelically when asked what it was.

“It is very simple, Signore,” he replied instantly. “It is one of the watch towers, built to enable the guards of the royal ChÂteau of La Favorita to keep watch over the entire estate at once.” It seemed a curious thing that royal guards should combine duty with the pleasures of a cooling showerbath; but when I appeared to doubt it, Gualterio simply pointed at the iron ladder leading from top to bottom outside. “Behold,” he said. “Are not the ladders still there by which the guards climbed up and down?” Later we found the structures to be irrigating towers, as useful as they are picturesque, which is saying a good deal. How to make a cab-driver truthful is a recipe one seldom or never learns. Perhaps there is a way, but his fictions are so harmless and amiable, so entirely diverting and ingenuous, that it seems a pity to spoil a child of Nature with ironclad rules for veracity.

Nor is the cabman the only Sicilian given to hyperbole or metaphor. The tendency is marked in all primitive peoples—a large part of the Sicilians are still primitive—to tell an inquirer the thing they suppose he most wishes to know; and the Saracenic blood in the Sicilian has doubtless left him a certain heritage of poetic imagination and exaggeration for the most utter commonplaces of life. At any rate, this inclination is found throughout the island, and it does not, except to the flustered tourist-in-a-hurry, seem a peculiar drawback or fault. Indeed, it rather adds to the fascination of the people, who appear to fit perfectly into their environs. Wild looking young girls, cherry-and-olive of skin, gossiping about the central fountains of their home towns, bear huge replicas of red Greek amphorai upon their well poised heads with all the grace of Greek maidens. Sprightly little goatherds, whose heads are the heads of fauns, and whose half naked and ruddy bodies are often clad in skins, ramble over the precipitous hills with nimble herds able to crop a living from mere stone-piles; and the fauns, Pan-like, pipe to their goats strains Theocritus might have loved. Swart mountaineers dress like their own rough hills in shaggy clothes topped off by big rough shawls; and seamen clump about, afloat and ashore, in boots and “oilers,” or barelegged. The city folk are equally artless, with their tiny marionette theaters, their homeless meals in the open air markets, their goat-blessings, their innumerable other feste.

And the Sicilians are not the only entertaining characters one meets. Sometimes our own countrymen—more often countrywomen!—are not far behind them. At a little mountain hotel, one evening at dinner a vivacious, black-haired, sloe-eyed, young woman with the air of one who comes, sees and conquers, told me in a breath her name, place of residence, father’s occupation, and asked for my credentials. I was rather stunned, but one of her companions—there were five of them in all—reassuring me by “Oh, don’t mind Dulcie! She’s all right,” I admitted my identity.

With characteristic American energy the trippers “did” the town in one day, and long before we were ready for breakfast the next morning, drove away in an ancient barouche crammed to the guards with luggage, and drawn by three horses so rickety we wondered at the daring of the five women in accepting it. Dulcinea—have I her name right?—perched beside the grinning driver, her agile hands full of guidebooks, umbrellas and so on, gesturing with the fluency of Sicilian temperament itself, took in everything with a last comprehensive glance, and commanded the triumphal equipage to move. The hotel manager stood by the door blinking and dazed. Drawing a hand across his brow as the chatter died away in the distance, his lips moved in something that doubtless was a tribute to the “wonderful Americans!”

In another dining room a weighty German, seating himself ponderously, drew from his pocket a sort of dog-chain which he carefully threw around his neck and attached by a spring clasp at either end to his napkin, spread carefully under his expansive chin. By the way, many Germans travel in Sicily; they seem especially interested in its classical history. The caretaker in one of the latomie in Syracuse complained: “Most of the people who have been here this year were Germans. Me, I do not like the Germans. They have no pockets! Now Americans are grand. They are all pockets.” After we left he may have concluded that some Americans are very German. There are many English, too, for they are everywhere; sometimes interesting, sometimes not.

Besides these folk of to-day, legend and fable have peopled the island with myriad nymphs and goddesses, gods and dÆmons and heroes, equally interesting. Here in the smoldering caverns of Ætna dwell the grim Sikel gods of fire. There in the lofty central plateau is the very pool beside which Proserpina was weaving her daisy chain when stolen by Pluto and carried away to be queen of the nether world. High on the peak of an ancient western hill is the dueling ground where Hercules wrestled with King Eryx. And off the eastern shore are the very rocks the Cyclops Polyphemus hurled in his impotent rage at the escaping Odysseus.

But song and story are not necessary to invest the natural scenery with its full share of beauty and importance. The Sicilian Apennines, like forked lightning, zig-zag sharply down from the northeast corner to the central southern shore—the rugged, cloud-piercing backbone of the island. Greek temples, great golden honeycombs of myth and history, tower up from hilltop and swale of emerald spangled with the gold of spurge and buttercup, splashed with the impish fiery tongues of countless poppies; bright groves of orange, lemon, citron, almond and carob trees in both fruit and flower scent the air with almost overpowering sweetness; broad brown fields bear acres of the dull green prickly pears; an occasional huge plot of ground newly plowed, with moist red furrows, waits open-lipped, to receive seed or shoot; and everywhere, acre upon acre, extend the vineyards, low-trellised and green, till from a height the country that the gods loved looks like a huge crazy quilt, folded and rumpled and vivid, dropped from the finisher’s hand and left lying where it fell.

Picturesque towns on the very tips of inaccessible crags, walled about and defended by Nature, give perfect pictures of isolation. Other towns, white cities springing up from the golden sands of the African sea, coquette with the emerald waves that lap hungrily at their very doors. And the dashing tunny-fisheries off-shore—the brilliant sunshine glinting on the flapping white sails—the water boiling about the frantic monsters as they plunge and struggle to escape the stabbing gaffs of their captors; the water red and green and black at last, and the long line of huge, gleaming bodies—like titanic Spanish mackerel varnished an opalescent black—strewn upon the white and sparkling beach!

What more could man wish to see?

Monte Pellegrino looms square and massive at one tip of Palermo’s crescent harbor.
Monte Pellegrino looms square and massive at one tip of Palermo’s crescent harbor.