Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-04-12

truly stands appalled, by a sublimity
of extortion before the city's gates
are passed. Fortunately was
an observer of, rather than a victim to,
this manner of plucking. had lived at q
little Sicilan lodging house in Algiers.
Its landlord, half Moor and half Italian,
had a Sieilian cousin at Catania, who
also kept an alberghetto or small lodging
house in the Gambayita quarter. He
was thin as stick of maccaroni, brown
as piece of lava, tender as a Sicllian
fig, and his name was Balbino. He had
been guides attendant; then guide;
had saved so many Napoleons as would
purchase his tiny alberghetto; and hav-
ing arrived at ease and competence,
could now and then indulge kindly
impulse, or enjoy. an unselfish act. We
were good friends at once. Constant
talk about Etna and his adored Sicily
brought the old mountaineer spirit back
to Balbino; and shortly, not as a service
but a delight, he became my guide for
the ascent of the volcano.
AS everybody who has visited Etna
knows, there are three dreary stages in
the ascent; the first from Catania to
Micolosi, thence to Casa degli Inglesi,
and thence to the cone; and that the
traveller is forced by custom to make an
afternoon and evening of it to and at
Nicolosi; to be routed out of the inn
there for an all-hight journey of terror
to the Casa; and then, while it is still
dark, to be hauled up the final ascent
more dead than alive, to become trans
cendently elated over the bowling furies
of the crater or sunrise from Etna, even
if one needs to be supported upright to
see them. Balbino said that was bar
barrie, as it is; and that we should go as
Christians, as we did. We set ont on
foot, encountered by no impedimenta
whatever. Flung over Balbino's
shoulder was an ancient hide
double pouch, similar to our
old-time saddle-bags. These were
filed with oranges, with which, as we
sat and rested by the way, we refreshed
ourselves. Balbino was like chatuering
schoolboy, and his tales of eruptions,
lava floods and loss of life and property
were appalling. The landmarks of his
simple old memory famed along reaches
of liquid fire. The present, the langor
and ecstacy OF the budding year, the sea
of flowers coming old Etna's base, the
maze of vineyards and olive groves on
every hand the cascades leaping from
the mountain sides and bounding melo-
dlously to the sea, as Aeis once leaped,
changed into a stream, from the same
spot to sport in the lonian waters with
his mermaid love, Galatea, and the
matohless threnodies of Sicilian birds
from every covert, copse and grove, he
neither saw nor heard. Etna is said TO
have
THREE CLIMATIC ZONES,
the torrid, the temperate and the frigid.
The troOic land Iias at its evtren,a hosa
The Sicllians call this the Piedimontana.
1t reaches almost to Nicolosi, where,
after vagarious lettering, we ar
rived toward evening. For about
eight miles further stretches III
Bosco, the wooded region, forming the
temperate zone. From the upper edge
Of this to the crest OF the cone lies eternal
solitude in the frigid zone. This they
term Discoparta, the uncovered; Meta,
the barrens; and Dlse-ta, the desert.
In the little white mountain village of |
Balbino took me to the house |
Of his friends. Some of the family were |
goat herders around the bases of the |
lesser craters on Etna's side; one was /
the village musician, ne 'er-do-well |
who piped at mountain weddings and |
and three were stalwart |
guides who contemplated sl3albino's |
strange freak of permitting Any straniero /
to escape plucking with m6urnful and /
depreeatory faces. In the morning |
necessary provisions for the ascent were |
These were interesting to me, /
for they were only those which an old |
guide would provide for actual needs.
Each were given an extra wooden waist
coat. These would be needed higher up. |