Incidents of the Journey , 
25 
farther away, and in the dnsk I could make out that the matter was ap¬ 
parently settled by the Italians sturdily rowing the boat toward the 
shore. Before they had reached it a warning whistle sounded from the 
vessel; again commotion in the boat and soon a change in its direction. 
This time my friends reached the vessel, but only by submitting to the 
extortion. We must have passed near Stromboli in the night, but we were 
too tired from our tramps around Vesuvius to watch for the “ Light¬ 
house of the Mediterranean.” After various contacts — more or less 
agreeable— with the Sicilians, and after watching them prepare maca¬ 
roni or load oranges on British vessels bound for America, we embarked 
on the little steamer which leaves Messina semi-weekly for Lipari, and 
at midnight passed between Scylla and Charybdis. 
At six o’clock the next morning, the 7th of April, we cast anchor in 
the harbor of Lipari. Hurrying to the deck, I saw a picture I shall long 
remember. Before me were the quaint town, the fertile slopes about it 
and the sombre but picturesque CasteXlo , the whole hemmed in by frown¬ 
ing crater walls. A few miles south rose the wide-mouthed cinder-cone 
of Volcano, the most beautiful and symmetrical of all cinder-cones. 
Around our small steamer were numerous yawls manned by natives, who 
were quarreling for position at the landing stairs and vociferating in a 
manner only possible to Italians. We submitted to be taken ashore by 
them, and found them far less disagreeable than we were led to expect 
from acquaintance with their Neapolitan brothers. An experience of 
two months in Italy, spent as much in the country off the lines of 
tourist travel as in the cities, taught us that the most troublesome 
Italians are in the cities, but especially in Naples. One needs to stop in 
Naples to understand how Mark Twain could spend two weeks “studying 
human villainy.” Before I had reached the shore I had seen three grand 
explosions of Volcano accompanied by a loud rumbling and the sending 
up of a great cloud of dust and ash, and followed by the rattling of the 
projectiles as they fell back in the crater or rolled down the outer slope 
into the sea. After a moment the outburst would be over, and the only 
visible remnant would be a dense black cloud floating away under the 
light breeze to the eastward. At greater distances in the same direction 
could be seen similar clouds due to earlier explosions. Between explo¬ 
sions a large fumarole sent out a volume of white vapour resembling the 
’scape of a locomotive. We were soon housed at the one rather primitive 
Locanda or hotel that the town supported, and hastened to make the 
acquaintance of our guide, Bartolomeo Nicotera, who was to serve us 
in our trip to Volcano. That day and the one following were spent on 
Lipari in examination of the old craters and acid lava streams, and col¬ 
lecting from the obsidian, pumice and liparite so abundant in the 
vicinity. But Volcano was an attraction that outweighed others in our 
minds, and to it I shall direct attention. I shall therefore interrupt my 
narrative to give something of its history. 
