MALTA AND SICILY. 
*261 
peaks are still covered with snow. The 
streets of Messina are wide and clean, and 
there are several fine churches and other 
buildings. The city has been almost en¬ 
tirely rebuilt since the earthquake of 1783. 
The harbour is safe and capacious, and is 
sheltered by a long narrow point of land of a 
semicircular shape. This natural pier was 
fabled by the ancients to have been formed 
by a sickle which some deity threw into the 
sea. 
You have read of the once terrible Scylla 
and Charybdis, and have heard that they are 
no longer numbered among the perils of the 
deep. The former is a rock close to the 
Calabrian shore, a few miles from Messina, 
and the latter nothing more than an inconsi¬ 
derable eddy, occasioned by the current 
through the straits. If the descriptions we 
have received of this dreaded whirlpool have 
