The Knickerbocker | Page 5

with a
rude sickle only. It is seldom you meet either man or woman on foot
upon the roads; men scarcely ever. Donkeys are about as numerous as
men, and their ludicrous bray salutes your ear wherever the human
animal is to be seen.
The peasant-women through a great part of Sicily wear a semi-circular
piece of woollen cloth over their heads; it is always black or white, and
hangs in agreeable folds over the neck and shoulders. There is but little
beauty among them; and alas! how should there be? They are in general
filthy; the hair of both old and young is allowed to fall in uncombed
elf-locks about their heads; and the old women are often hideous and
disgustful in the extreme. The heart bleeds for the women: they have
more than their share of the labors of the field; they have all the toils of
the men, added to the pains and cares of womanhood. They dig, they

reap, they carry heavy burthens--burthens almost incredible. In the
vicinity of Ætna I met a woman walking down the road knitting: on her
head was a large mass of lava weighing at least thirty pounds, and on
the top of this lay a small hammer. Being puzzled to know why the
woman carried such a piece of lava where lava was so abundant, I
inquired 'the wherefore' of Luigi, our guide. He answered that as she
wished to knit, and not having pockets, she had taken that plan to carry
the little hammer conveniently. That piece of stone, which would break
our necks to carry, was evidently to her no more than a heavy hat
would be to us. It may be thought that I draw a sorry picture of these
poor Islanders; but I would have it understood that on the side of
Messina, and some other parts, there is apparently a little more
civilization; but they are an oppressed and degraded peasantry; ignorant,
superstitious, filthy, and condemned to live on the coarsest food. They
are as the beasts that perish, driven by necessity to sow that which they
may not reap. How applicable are the words of ADDISON:
'How has kind Heaven adorn'd the happy land And scattered blessings
with a wasteful hand! But what avails her unexhausted stores, Her
blooming mountains and her sunny shores, With all the gifts that
heaven and earth impart, The smiles of nature and the charms of art,
While proud oppression in her valleys reigns, And tyranny usurps her
happy plains? The poor inhabitant beholds in vain The reddening
orange and the swelling grain: Joyless he sees the growing oils and
wines, And in the myrtle's fragrant shade repines: Starves, in the midst
of nature's bounty curst, And in the loaded vineyard dies of thirst.'
But the Sicilians are naturally a gay, light-hearted people, like the
Greeks, their forefathers; and if the cloud which now rests upon them
were removed, and we have reason to think it is lifting, they would be
as bright and sunny as their own skies. The women of the better classes
wear the black mantilla when they venture into the streets, which they
seldom do, except to attend mass or the confessional. This robe is
extremely elegant, as it is worn, but it requires an adept to adjust it
gracefully. It covers the whole person from head to foot; in parts drawn
closely to the form, in others falling in free folds. But for its color, I
should admire it much: it seems such an incongruity for a young and

beautiful female to be habited in what appear to be mourning robes. I
was often reminded of those wicked lines of BYRON'S on the gondola:
'For sometimes they contain a deal of fun, Like mourning-coaches
when the funeral's done.'
But let us turn from the animate to the inanimate, and visit the famous
Ætna, called by the Sicilians Mongibello. From the silence of Homer
on the subject, it is supposed that in his remote age the fires of the
mountain were unknown; but geologists have proof that they have a far
more ancient date. The Grecian poet Pindar is the first who mentions its
eruptions. He died four hundred and thirty-five years before CHRIST;
from that time to this, at irregular intervals, it has vomited forth its
destructive lavas. It is computed to be eleven thousand feet high. Its
base, more than an hundred miles in circumference, is interspersed with
numerous conical hills, each of which is an extinct crater, whose sides,
now shaded by the vine, the fig tree, and the habitations of man, once
glowed with the fiery torrent. Some of them are yet almost destitute of
vegetation; mere heaps of scoriæ and ashes; but the more ancient ones
are richly clad with verdure. Let