The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1847-10-12 00:00:00

Eittrature.

SKETCHES OF A TRIP TO THE CONTINENT,
ITALY, AND EGYPT.
BY EDWIN KEET, ESQ.
No. XVII.
(Written for the Liverpool Standard.)
The climate of Italy, to which the Rev. L. Sterne bore
testimony a hundred years since in the following eulo-
gium, must convince the most incredulous valetudinarian
what a blessed change it is from this cold, foggy island, to
sunny Italy. Sterne says—" I find myself infinitely bet-
ter than I was, and hope to have added at least ten years
to my life by the journey to Italy. The climate is hea-
venly, and I find new principles of health in me, which I
have been long a stranger to " Nor is this all ; for not
only is the air more balmy and congenial to delicate con-
stitutions, but you have more life-giving warmth and hap-
piness in one year there than you can have in two years in
this cold, wet, and ungenial island. As my time was
short, and I found it difficult to get to Syracuse or Cata-
nia without posting, I determined to see, if possible, the
ruined temples of Sigeste and Agrigentum. Having so
recently and in so novel a manner ascended Vesuvius, I
felt little disposed to go through the cold and fatigue of
climbing the snowy and cinder-crested Etna!

The island of Sicily, from its triangular form called
Trinacria or Triquetra, is 210 miles long, 133 miles broad
at its widest part, and 600 miles in circumference. The
strait of Messina varies in width from two to fifteen miles.
The rocks here, and the rapid violent currents, form the
ancient and fabulous Scylla tAid Charybdis. When the
Carthaginians took Messina, the Sicilians swam the pas-
sage over to Italy. What a theatre of change this island
has been from its first inhabitants, the powerful races of
Cyclopes and Lestrigones, who occupied the country
around Etna. Diodorus describes the Secani as the
most ancient inhabitants of the island. Among these set-
tled the Trojans, after the capture of their city. Then
came the Phocenses, followed by Greeks, Romans, Car-
thagenians, until the Saracens, who got footing on the
island, were expelled by the Normans. What a strange
medley of occupants : pirates from Cumw, Greeks, barba-
rians, Chalcidians, Samians, lonians, Rhodians, and Cre-
tans, the invincible warriors called Marmatini,--all by
turns got possession of parts of this fertile island, contain-
ing corn, wine, oil, fruit, mulberry trees, tobacco, cotton,
medicinal roots, and sugar-canes. But the Greeks built
most of the cities ; and their simple, grand, and sublime
temples yet exhibit ruins worthy profound admiration and
reflection from the traveller.
Six hundred years B.C. Phalaris the Tyrant got pos-
session of the city of Agrigentum, and every common-
wealth in the island felt the tyranny of the usurper. The
story of Phalaris is well known. Banished from Crete, he
took refuge in Agrigentum, and by craft got the supreme
power. His name is known only by his cruelty. Perillus,
a brass-founder from Athens, made the tyrant a new mode
of torture, in the shape of a brasen bull : the wretched
criminals were placed inside this bull, a fire kindled un-
derneath roasted them slowly to death, and their dying
cries, from the construction of the throat, caused a re-
semblance to the roaring of a bull. Tippoo Saib had a
tiger as ingeniously constructed, to punish English sol-
diers, prisoners in India, which tiger I have seen in the
India House. The inventor of Phalaris' bull was made,
for his skill and pains, to be the first victim ; and Ovid
relates that the tongue of Phalaris was cut out, and that
he was then roasted alive in the bull. But Cicero states
that he fell by the just vengeance of the Agrigentines.
Great names are associated with Sicily—Archimedes,
Theocritus, Gorgius, and Charondas : the learned, often
bore away the palm for learning and art from the mother
country. Gero, Hiero, and Dionysius, were remarkable
as princes and rulers. Agothocles, the tyrant of all Si-
cily, son of a common porter, thief, soldier, centurion,
general, and pirate, the defeater of the Carthaginians,
both in Sicily and Africa, forced to fly his camp by his
rebel soldiers, who cut the throats of his children ; he
then relieved:Corfu, burnt the Macedonian fleet, and after
ravaging the sea-coast of Italy, was poisoned by his grand-
son 290 years before Christ.
This Agrigentum, now called Girgenti, I was most an-
xious to see, because of its many ancient Greek and
Etruscan antiquities, and its celebrity on the page of his-
tory ; and there beinc, no steamer for several days to go
round to Messina, Syracuse,b and Catania, our Bostonian
hired horses to go direct from Palermo to Girgenti. I
must here acknowledge the kindness of Doctor Barlow,
who finding me complain of feverishness, want of sleep,
and headache, gave me a little prescription, and mildly
dissuaded me from venturing across the island without go-
ing in a Latiga, particularly, as he looked at the Bostonian
(whose brusque manners struck him as not very compa-
nionable), he added, with a stranger. Still, however, fate
ordered it so to be ; for after one or two vain attempts to
get seats to Catania in the diligence, the horses were
brought to the door of our hostelry. Upon coming slowly
down to the door, Ratkins was mounted upon the best
horse, with the easiest saddle, well and comfortably pad-
ded with goatskin ; the muleteer guide lashing our luggage
on to the next best horse, soon mounted, and the wretched
back, badly caparisoned, was left for me, or none. What
" cannot be cured must be endured," says the proverb.
Off we set ; and, oh ! what a journey ! Tife heat was ex-
cessive, the roads intolerable, my wretched horse con-
stantly stumbling ; it was just the merest shade better than
walking. The guide kept with his Yankee companion,
from a quarter of a mile to half a mile a-head. Thus in
misery I travelled—no halt, no refreshment—until two in
the afternoon, when weary, fevered, exhausted, we sat
down to nothing but cold meat, bread, and wine ; and,
after one hour's repose, onward was the word. Again we
traversed, up hill, down dale, through half-cultivated and
barren fields ; one dried-up river, with glaring, hot, huge
smooth white stones, we crossed eleven times : this hot,
pebbly bed in the winter contains a rapid, foaming stream,
and the travellers are guided with long poles and athletic
guide.s over the fordable parts of this river, called the
Passa Fondata.
We came to pass the night at a miserable village. I was
so restless, had such a dread of the night, that I begged,
for God's sake, my American fellow-traveller to go and
buy me a little laudanum ; to protect himself from
disturbance he did so, but my sleep was unnatural and fe-
verish, dreamy and restless. No coffee in the morning—
to horse at daybreak—" we should meet with some on the
road." In vain did I beg on the way a little milk or tea,
or anything to assuage my burning thirst ; they were both,
guide and Bostonian, obdurate to my calls, to my distress.
Many times did I alight to drink at wells of water covered
with insects, to lead my horse down steep declivities, with
scarcely strength to remount. On the unfeeling brutes
went, regardless of my cries for a little delay, or help to
tie my broken reins, girth, &c. And thus was I compelled,
pale as a ghost, and all but dead, to follow the Sicilian and
the Bostonian into the city of Girgenti, to a beggarly pub-
lic-house. Never shall I forget their barbarous conduct :
the Sicilian might have got something by my death—my
watch, my rings, my purse, my clothes ; but nothing can
ever palliate the conduct of this little hare-lipped Bosto-
nian, when he must have thought I was in the arms of
death. When the muleteer came and whined over me,
smoothing down my limbs as Mrs. Gamp might those of
a departing patient, even then did that American come
and taunt me for not paying the whole of my journey,
when the first half to all appearance was costing me my
life. Oh ! I have heard of slave-captains, the callous
hearts of traders in human blood ; but that cold-blooded,
hare-lipped little man, or demon of Boston, would have
out-lago'd them all. I pray God his fellow-townsmen
may see this relation of his conduct, and that it may pre-
vent his recommittal of such atrocious cruelty as he dis-
played to me in that memorable crossing on horseback
from Palermo to Girgenti, by the longest and most diffi-
cult route, in two days.
After three days' confinement to my little room, attended
only by an old Sicilian guide, who nursed me as if I had
been his brother—(he was the good Samaritan after my
Bostonian Pharisee had left me, with threatenings of re-
venge for fancied grievances and imaginary insults ; the
little malevolent cur barking at the dying lion was gone
for ever, and I breathed more freely)—l was led out and
helped to dress by my old white-haired Sicilian guide. I
crawled down to the Consul, who, with his lady, shewed
me great kindness. He invited me to spend an evening,
when better, at his beautiful mansion, which I accepted ;
he also recommended me to a very kind, excellent man, a
Mr. Williams, who got me medicine, paid every attention
in his power, and, as he was coming to Palermo, we joined
i n a Litiga together as fellow-travellers. How happy, how
grateful to God was I when I met with this good man ; so
truly humane, so kind, so considerate, and he was only
engineer and superintendent of a sulphur mine, and Rat-
kins was an American gentleman. It was in very deed
Hyperion to a satyr. Daily I gained strength, and often
looking from Mr. Williams' apartment, situated on the
highest part of the lofty Girgenti, I inhaled the life-giving
breeze from the glittering sea, looked at the ruined tem-
ples that studded the plain leading down to the sea
through his telescope, and was soon, by Mr. Williams'
attention and kindness, able to walk down personally to
inspect and thoroughly examine those vast relics of ancient
tombs, temples, and altars. The modern town of Gir-
genti contains 15,000 inhabitants, and but one street fit
for carriages to pass. There are but few antiquities in the
town : a Latin inscription of the time of the Antonines—
part of the old Roman wall, now built upon, once part of
the temple of Jupiter. In the cathedral down in the val-
ley is a font made out of a sarcophagus, the basso-relievos
of which are still beautiful. There is also in this cathe-
dral an Etruscan vase of rare size and beauty ; also two
antique gold paterw. Near the monastery of San Nicolo
is part of the palace of a Roman praetor. It is a most
lovely stroll down the mountain upon which Girgenti
stands, amongst wild fig and almond trees, into the vast
plain, like another but more fruitful Compagna of Rome,
and to have your fevered brow fanned by the sea-breeze,
as you examine, gaze upon, and measure the spoils yet
left by all-destroying time. Here is the tomb of Thero !
the Temple of Concord ! that also of Castor and Pollux,
and the vast one to the Olympian Jove ! with its gigantic
statue prostrate on the grass. Large columns only remain
of the once-beautiful temple of Juno Lucina ; that of Her-
cules is yet more huge and fragmentary. Out of these
ruins, where wild foliage flourishes on the decayed archi-
tecttire, the hawk now flits forth, and wild birds scream.
Sublimely yon ocean rolls ; the wind rustles among the
trees, reclining among fallen columns, once supporting
lofty temples, crowded with worshippers. How frail do
all the works of mortal man appear ! how lasting, true,
sublime, and beautiful the works of God Talk of anti
quities left by mortal men, why they are in comparison
but things of yesterday. The sun, moon, stars, moun-
tains, oceans, rocks—these are the only true antiques !
The eternal yesterday, to-day, and for ever, sweep away
all other frail memorials of monarchs, cities, temples,
tombs and altars : great names indeed are nonentities.
" Pyramids, arches, and obelisks, are but the irregularities
of vain glory and wild enormity of ancient magnanimity.
'Tis all one to lie in St. Nicholas' church-yard as in the
sands of Egypt—to be content with six feet anywhere as
if covered by the moles of Hadrian. The Egyptian mum-
mies which Cambyses bath spared, avarice now consumeth.
Mummy is become merchandise, Mizraim cures wounds,
and Pharoali is sold for balsams. Darkness and light di-
vide the course of time. Oblivion shares with memory.'