Geologically, Sicily has been as restless as it has been politically and socially. At least twice it was connected with Italy, and once probably with Africa, so that African animals entered it. The Straits of Messina, only two miles wide, and one hundred and fifty fathoms deep, are Nature’s record of an earthquake rupture between Italy and Sicily. Mount Etna, the most impressive thing in the island, has been there since early tertiary times--before the days of the ice-age, when the mammoth and cave-bear roamed through the woods of Europe. It is probably a younger mountain than Vesuvius, but long before the dawn of history Sicily and Calabria were the prey of the earthquake and the volcano. The Straits of Messina and Mount Etna are both the results of earthquake activity. The Straits are a gigantic crevice in the earth; the volcano is only a tear in the earth’s crust, so deep that the hot steam of the interior of the earth rises from the ever open rupture. Etna, therefore, is not the cause of earthquake, but is itself the child of an earthquake. It sprang, a full-grown mountain, from the breast of earth, as Pallas from the brain of Zeus. Etna was probably far larger once than it is now. The present cone rests on a volcanic plateau, that appears to have been the base of a larger cone, which was blown to atoms. The old mountain is full of cracks which are filled with hard basalt that cements it together. Its explosive tendency causes it to give rise to a great many little cones upon the sides, called parasitic cones, which burst forth suddenly almost anywhere. Historian, poet, geologist, each tells his story, but the poet tells it best of all. There is no better description of Sicily and its people than the one you will find in the Odyssey. “They all their products to free Nature owe, The soil untilled, a ready harvest yields, With wheat and barley wave the golden fields, Spontaneous wines from weighty clusters pour, And Jove descends in each prolific shower. By these no statutes and no rights are known, No council held, no monarch fills the throne; * * * * * Each rules his race, his neighbor not his care, Heedless of others, to his own severe.” --_Homer’s Odyssey, translated by Pope._ CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. MESSINA DESTROYED 1 II. THE STRAITS OF DEATH 39 III. AMERICA TO THE RESCUE 77 IV. THE CRUISE OF THE “BAYERN” 116 V. ROYAL VISITORS 161 VI. AT PALAZZO MARGHERITA 191 VII. BUILDING THE NEW MESSINA 217 VIII. THE CAMP BY TORRENTE ZAERA 248