Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-04-12
SdCfLIAN SCENES.
The Ascent of Etna, How it is Made
How the Foreigner is Lee
gallY Skinned.
The Ascent Costs Him About s10O-The Land
of the Gods Land of Beggers Who
Feast on the Traveller.
fCopyrighted 1891

copyrighted $780,
CATANIA, SICILY, March 1l.-One has
TO resist the strongest possible tempta-
ton to classic musings at Catania. In
the pagan and Christian, history of the
eastern shore of the island of Sicily, or
that portion extending from Messina at
its northeastern extremity past Catania,
about midway between, to Syracuse, in
a nearly direct north and south line, one
can almost read the history of the world i.
Exactly half way between Messina and
Syracuse, its summit about the same
distance from that part of the IOnian
sea known as the strait of Messina,
as it lies tribe west of north of Catania
stands that origin of countless mytho-
logic furies and incalculable actual de-
structiOn, the most majestic and fearful
volcano of all Europe, Mount Etna.
From any of the tiny lava peaks in the
suburbs of Catania, within ones range
OF vision the fancy can summon to their
Olden places the myth-wraiths of Jove s
most powerful helpers, frowning from
Etna g smoky crest; the wrath of Empe-
docles wandering on Etna s side, clothed
IN purple and bearing a Delphio crown
five centuries before Christ; of Dionysius.
the Elder, 200 years later, after destroy
ing Naxos, scaling the walls of little
Mola above, like a ferocious beast to
butcher its defenders; of the silver
tOngued Alcibiades, down there in the
amphitheater built between 400 and 500
years before Christ, which you can to-
day see beneath ages of lava, enthralling
the Catanians with his loving speech,
WhllR the Athnnional
ously entering the city along the shore;
of the demigod warriors and phi
losophers, flashing like meteors within
the scenes of the Roman amphitheater,
scarcely less majestic than the coliseum,
whose fragments still exist beneath the
street Of Slesichoros; of that old law
maker We ought TO have st Washington,
CEarondas, who decreed that legislators
should only make, or unmake, laws
while standing with a halter around their
necks before the people,
READY FOR HANGING,
should their propositions fail to prevail;
of st. Paul fervidly preaching a simple
faith in a simpler way than Christianity
now enforces its unyielding and aggres-
sive oreeds, down there among the lowIy
upon the Iouian shore; away TO the
south, the wTaiths OF countless
hosts Of invaders who persisted upon
the Catanian PLAINS, once the granery
Of the. world, where Ceres, with her
own divine hands, sowed the first wheat
and taught men to till the soil; and be-
yond, sRirting the Ionian blue, those
myriad wralths of myths and humans
that knew the birth, acme, decay, de-
spair and destruction of that most
magnificent of all Hellenic cities,
glorious, sad, trsnscendent, pitiable,
Syracuse. For trnly all this and a
thousand-fold more are seen with the
eyes Of sense and thought, while the
lightning flashes of fancy course the
realms Of mythology and history. There,
al Etna, Enceladus, bound beneath
Jupiter g earthly throne, turning upon
his fiery bed every century
or so, shakes the world with
his earthquakes. Here, at Catania,
twenty centuries Of stored treasure and