THE COASTS OF SICILY. 21 



chant ceased^ and the oars were drawn in and laid 

 along the side of the boat, while our men, stretched 

 upon their benches, resumed their interrupted slum- 

 bers, and the light splash of the water round our 

 prow was the only sound that broke upon the si- 

 lence of the sea, which is at all times deeper than 

 that on land. We continued for a long time to 

 admire this scene, whose grandeur was due to its 

 calm simplicity, and then stretching ourselves upon 

 our mattresses, which were screened by a slight 

 awning, we too fell asleep, soothed to rest by the 

 scarcely perceptible oscillations of our boat. 



By break of day we were all again on the alert. 

 The Cape of Milazzo was very far behind us, and 

 yet Stromboli seemed to be scarcely any nearer. In 

 these warm regions the extreme transparency of the 

 air for a long time deceives the northern traveller as 

 to the actual length of distances. We had thought 

 when we left Milazzo that we were not more 

 than twelve or fifteen miles from Stromboli, instead 

 of which these two points are in reality separated by 

 about forty miles. We had scarcely made half the 

 distance since the preceding evening, but at this 

 moment the wind freshened, and the dark moun- 

 tain seemed to grow before our eyes as we ra- 

 pidly approached it, and we were soon able to distin- 

 guish its rugged sides, its lava and trachyte beds, its 

 strangely twisted rocks with its beach of fine sand, 

 which was black like the rest of the island, excepting 

 where the waves as they broke seemed to leave a line 

 of milky foam in their wake. 



Stromboli, properly speaking, is only a volcanic 

 c 3 



