have any such permanence as the Roman it displaced, nevertheless developed with a splendor and rapidity that shamed the backward Christians.

Last of all the great molders of Sicily came the Normans, knights who with their keen blades carved a slice out of the Byzantine Empire on the Italian mainland and, conquering the Sicilian Muslims, built up a kingdom for themselves. Sicily’s period of greatest glory dawned with their conquest. They developed a splendid fabric of feudalism; and all the arts as well as the more usual graces of civilization stamped the new kingdom for their own. The very Italian language, as Dante himself acknowledges, had its feeble beginnings in the court of the Emperor Frederick II at Palermo. The power of Frederick, who was Emperor of Germany as well as King of Sicily, was a thorn in the sides of the Popes, who at this period claimed the right to dispose of all the crowns of earth. So after Frederick’s death the Pope gave away the Sicilian crown to his own trusty defender, Count Charles of Anjou; and he, capturing the island from Frederick’s son, Manfred, turned it over to the shameful misrule of his lieutenants. Sixteen years later, in 1282, the French paid dearly for their oppression in the terrible massacre of the Sicilian Vespers, when they were exterminated throughout the island.

Then the Sicilians invited Don Pedro de Aragón, the son-in-law of Manfred, their last Norman king, to rule them; and the Aragonese dynasty, with varying fortunes, lasted until 1409, when it became extinct, and Sicily was attached to Spain and governed by Spanish viceroys. Never did a government care less for its subjects; and when the Spaniards evacuated at the beginning of the eighteenth century, they left the unhappy island almost destitute.

Sicily had long since ceased to be the center of the civilized world; and now, a mere appendage, she was tossed relentlessly from one sovereignty to another in the bitter struggle to maintain the balance of power. From this time onward her story is a complicated record in which France, Spain, Savoy, Austria, and even England herself are almost inextricably tangled. All this time, too, the common people, the backbone and life of the island, groaned under well nigh intolerable conditions. Gladstone, writing in 1851 of the Bourbon government, then ruling Sicily as a part of the Kingdom of Naples, said that its conduct was “an outrage upon religion, upon humanity, upon civilization and upon decency.”

But in this, her darkest hour, Sicily was not forgotten. Her insistent appeals for help, and the blood she had poured out in continual protest against the vicious Bourbons, were too loud a cry for the liberty-loving and adventurous spirit of Giuseppe Garibaldi to ignore. With his immortal “Thousand” he answered, and became not merely the liberator of Sicily, but the hammer under whose forging blows the discordant states of the Italian peninsula were welded together into the new and coherent Italy. Thus at last a single man put the period to the island’s troubled history, ended definitely her ambitions for individual greatness and made her an important part of a greater and more powerful whole.

So it is clear that there has never been a Sicilian nation, nor has there ever been even a Sicilian language; but every great race that dwells about the Mediterranean at some time has had a part in Sicily’s story, and each race in its turn has left an indelible imprint upon language and customs, upon architecture and people. Here one sees a pure Greek face of classic beauty; there a Saracen gazes calmly upon us out of features which could come only from the burning desert and the infinite starry night in the open; and yonder, a Roman, proud and silent, bends to toil the Romans of old never knew. On many a hill rises the matchless, mellow ruin of a Greek temple, lovely as anything Greece itself can show; and in the cities the architectonic genius and spirit of the races blend in structures dignified and massive, or light and airy almost to the point of being fantastic.

This is Sicily to-day, the home of all beauty, the abiding place of a people as picturesque in character as they are in face and costume; and the sympathetic traveler, living the joy of the moment, as do the Sicilians themselves, comes into possession of much of the unforgettable charm and perfume of this island of delights.

Vistas in Sicily

I

DISCOVERY

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.

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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