II The Beatcty of the Mediterra7iean 33 



with the white sails of the feluccas — a scene to be 

 everlastingly remembered. We seemed to be in a 

 great river, and neither the Rhine nor the Danube 

 could show anything to be compared with it. We 

 left Syracuse, the evening before last, in a diligence, 

 and lumbered along all night to Catania, where we 

 caught our steamer, and in her came on here. Half 

 the day we spent sailing along under Mount Etna, 

 which, half covered with snow, soared up into the 

 blue, far above all. Every mile opened up some 

 lovely valley planted with lemon-trees on its sides, 

 and with its floor covered with the debris brought 

 down from the hills by the torrents which, in bad 

 weather, fill it with a mass of raging water. We 

 must have passed at least twenty ridges running down 

 from the higher mountains to the sea, most of them 

 terminating in an abrupt crag with a little town 

 blinking white in the sunshine at its foot, and an 

 old ruin standing on its summit ; while, high up on 

 the mountain side, hung other villages perched on 

 the most fantastic crags. Inland, a wild, serried 

 mass of broken peaks, sprinkled with fresh -fallen 

 snow, — which added immensely to their apparent 

 height, — formed a background which was really 

 grand. In fact, we had the three great requisites 

 for a perfect landscape — snow mountains, beautiful, 

 broken, green foreground, and deep blue sea. This 

 coast of Sicily is, indeed, immeasurably finer than 

 anything that I have ever yet seen or ever expect to 

 see : every mile of it is picturesque. Etna was 



D 



