The Knickerbocker | Page 2

short time after their establishment in Sicily, the magnificence of their cities, the grandeur of their temples, equalled if they did not surpass those of their fatherland. About the year 480 before Christ, a fierce enemy landed on the coast of Sicily with two thousand gallies: this was the warlike Carthaginian, whose altars smoked with the sacrifice of human victims. This formidable invader was defeated under the great Gelon of Syracuse, who was called the father of his country; but the Carthaginians, returned again and with better fortune, at length became masters of the island. The Romans next conquered Sicily, and held it for several centuries. The Saracens in the ninth century were in the full tide of successful conquest. They landed first in the bay of Mazara, near Selinuntium, and after various conflicts and fortune, finally subjugated the whole island in the year 878. The crescent continued to glitter over the towers of Sicily for about three centuries, when the Normans, a band of adventurers whom the crusades of the Holy Sepulchre had brought from their northern homes, after a conflict of thirty years under Count Roger, expelled the Saracen in the year 1073, and planted the banner of the cross in every city of the land. Soon after that time it came under Spain and Austria; France and England have severally been its rulers. It is now under the crown of Naples.
Such is a brief outline of the eventful history of Sicily; a land formed by nature in her fairest mould; but which the crimes and ambition of men have desecrated by violence, oppression, and bloodshed; and with the substitution of a word, one might exclaim with the poet:
'SICILIA! O SICILIA! thou who hast The fatal gift of beauty, which became A funeral dower of present woes and past, On thy sweet brow is sorrow ploughed by shame, And annals graved in characters of flame. Oh GOD! that thou wert in thy nakedness Less lovely or more powerful, and couldst claim Thy right, and awe the robbers back who press To shed thy blood, and drink the tears of thy distress!'
Her brightest age was when the Greek threw the light of his genius around her; when rose those mighty temples which now, even in their ruin, call forth the wonder and admiration of the traveller; her greatest degradation was in the age just passed away. As an exemplification of this, it is sufficient to say, that from the time of the Norman until the accession of the present monarch, a space of seven hundred years, not a single road has been constructed in the island. But we have reason to believe that a brighter day now dawns, and that ere long the sun of civilization will dispel the clouds that have so long overshadowed the mountains of Sicily.
He who would make a tour through this magnificent land, must make up his mind to submit to much fatigue, some danger, and innumerable annoyances; such as filth, bad fare, the continual torment of vermin; lodgings, to which a stable with clean hay would be in comparison a paradise; knavish attempts at imposition of various kinds, etc. He must mount on a mule whose saddle is of rude and of abominable construction; whose bit is a sort of iron vice, which clasps the animal's nose and under-jaw, and every day wears away the flesh; and whose bridle is a piece of rope fastened to the bit on one side only. He must ford rivers of various depth; he must fear no ascent or descent, however precipitous, if there appears to be a track; and at times he must have a careful eye to the priming of his pistol; and above all, a patient and enduring temper is a great comfort.
The aspect of Sicily is widely different from that of this country; its beauty is dependent on other forms and associations. Here, we have vast forests that stretch their shady folds in melancholy grandeur; the mountain tops themselves are clad in thick umbrage, which, rejoicing in the glory of the autumnal season, array themselves in rainbow dyes. There, no wide forests shade the land; but mountains more abrupt than ours, and bearing the scars of volcanic fire and earthquake on their brows, are yet clothed with flowers and odoriferous shrubs. The plains and slopes of the mountains are now but partially under cultivation; vineyards and olive-groves generally clothe the latter, while over the gentler undulating country, or the plains, fenceless fields stretch far away, a wilderness of waving grain, through which the traveller may ride for hours nor meet a human being, nor see a habitation, save when he lifts his eyes to some craggy steep or mountain pinnacle, where stands the clustered village. The villages and larger towns are generally set