fr:Mathias Sandorf - III,7
CHAPTER X.THE CASA DEGLI INGLESI.
day, about one o'clock in the afternoon, the doctor
and Pierre Bathory completed their preparations to
go ashore.
The gig received its passengers; but before he left, the
doctor ordered Captain Kostrik to watch for the arrival
of “Electric No. 2,” then hourly expected, and to send
her out beyond the Farrighonis, otherwise known as the
rocks of Polyphemus. If the plan succeeded: if Sarcany, or even Zirone and Carpena, were taken prisoners, the launch would be ready to convey them to Antekirtta, where he would have them in his power.
The gig put off. In a few minutes she reached the
steps at the wharf. Dr. Antekirtt and Pierre had assumed
the usual dress of tourists ascending the mountain, who may have to endure a temperature of fourteen degrees below freezing, while at the sea level it stands at fifty degrees above that point. A guide was in waiting with the horses, which at Nicolosi were to be replaced by mules, as more untiring and surer of foot.
The town of Catania is of little width, compared to
its length, and was soon crossed. Nothing occurred to
show that the doctor was watched and followed. Pierre
and he, after taking the Belvidere road, began to ascend
the earlier slopes of the mountain to which the Sicilians
give the name of Mongibello, and of which the diameter
is not less than twenty-five miles.
The road is uneven and winding. It turns aside frequently
to avoid the lava streams and basaltic rocks solidified
millions of years ago, the dry ravines filled in the
spring-time with the impetuous torrents, and on its way
it cuts through a well-wooded region of olive-trees, orange-trees, carob-trees, ash-trees and long-branched vines. This is the first of the three zones which gird the volcano, the “mountain of the smithy,” the Phœnician translation of the word Etna—“the spike of the earth and the pillar of the sky” for the geologists of an age when geological science did not exist.
After a couple of hours' climbing, during a halt of some
minutes more needed by the horses than the riders, the
doctor and Pierre beheld at their feet the town of Catania, the superb rival of Palermo. They could look down on the lines of its chief streets running parallel to the quays, the towers and domes of its hundred churches, the numerous and picturesque convents, and the houses in the pretentious style of the seventeenth century—all inclosed in the belt of green that encircles the city. In the foreground was the harbor, of which Etna itself formed the principal walls in the eruption of 1669 which destroyed fourteen towns and villages and claimed 18,000 victims, and poured out over the country more than a million cubic yards of lava.
Etna is quieter now, and it has well earned the right to
rest. In fact there have been more than thirty eruptions
since the Christian era. That Sicily has not been overwhelmed
is a sufficient proof of the solidity of its foundation. It should be noted, however, that the volcano has not formed a permanent crater. It changes it as it pleases. The mountain falls in where one of the fire-vomiting abysses opens, and from the gap there spreads the lavic matter accumulated on the flanks. Hence the numerous small volcanoes—the Monte Rossi, a double mountain piled up in three months to a height of 400 feet by tho sands and scoriæ of 1669, Frumento, Simoni, Stornello, Crisinco, arranged like the turrets around a cathedral dome, to say nothing of the craters of 1809, 1811, 1819, 1838, 1852, 1865, 1875, whose funnels perforate the flanks of the central cone like the cells of a bee-hive.
After crossing the hamlet of Belvidere the guide took
a short cut so as to reach the Kamertieri road near that
from Nicolosi. The first cultivated zone extends almost
from this town to 2,120 feet above. It was nearly four
o'clock in the afternoon when Nicolosi appeared, and the
travelers had not met with a single adventure along the
nine miles from Catania, and had seen neither boars nor
wolves. They had still twelve and a half miles to go before
they reached the Casa degli Inglesi.
“How long will your excellency stop here?” asked the
guide.
“No longer than necessary,” answered the doctor; “let
us get in to-night about nine o'clock.”
“Forty minutes then?”
“Forty minutes be it.”