Taormina is a fascinating town, with little Saracenic touches everywhere. The architecture is of a dozen different styles and epochs, the prevailing impression that remains is of Sicilian Gothic. Many façades are inlaid with a pretty diaper pattern of black and white lava stone. The Palazzo Corvaia has a quaint relief of the creation of Eve, the Fall, Adam digging and Eve spinning with a distaff. “When Adam delved and Eve span, Where was then the gentleman?” Taormina clings like a gray limpet to the gray rock; the town is built on a narrow crescent, on one side a precipice, on the other [Illustration: TAORMINA. EXAMPLE OF SICILIAN GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. _Page 324._] [Illustration: MT. ETNA FROM TAORMINA. _Page 315._] [Illustration: TAORMINA. CHOIR STALLS, SAN DOMENICO. _Page 331._] [Illustration: TAORMINA. FRIAR JOSEPH’S MISSAL. _Page 332._] an abrupt mountainside. The old Greek theatre stands at one point of the crescent, the Dominican convent at the other. The two face each other; between them runs the main street, perhaps a mile long. In the people we meet, there is the same bewildering contrast of types as in the architecture. Ciro is a Greek; his profile is classic as the head of Apollo on a coin fresh from the mint of Taormina; Assunta is a Roman, coarser, heavier, but with a certain force that has its charm. We gravitated naturally to the cathedral of San Nicolò, pausing outside to look at the fountain surmounted by the oddest figure of a Minotaur, with the head of a man and the body of a bull. The fore legs are missing; the quaint emblem balances perilously on its hind legs. The old name of Taormina was Mount Taurus, so called because the two points of the hill on which it stands, from a distance, look like the horns of a bull. Later it was called Tauromenium, the abiding place of the bull. One of the architectural details that delighted us was a sort of Saracenic rose window, repeated over the main door of several of the churches. We entered the cathedral by an enchanting door, encircled by a vine, covered with bunches of grapes, boldly carved in stone; the vine springs from a classic vase on either side the portal. Later we found this same design in other Sicilian churches. There are several at Palermo, none, however, that compare with the grape-vine at Taormina. An old dame, who had loitered in the offing, hobbled ahead to lift the leathern curtain and earn her two sous. She was bent, wrinkled, wise looking. Of course Patsy annexed her; for him the people, no matter how dirty or dull, are always of greater interest than the place.