400

LETTER OF SIR RICHARD HILL.

girl was discovered in man's clothes in one of the apart

ments!

"We left Palermo on Thursday last, the 17th, (by the bye you will see how long ago I had begun my letter) and arrived at Messina yesterday evening, viz. Tuesday the 23rd, and are now eye-witnesses of the dreadful havoc made here by the earthquake just eight years since. Oh what an awful sight! Whole streets, palaces, churches, and sumptuous buildings all thrown down and now lying in ruins! The number of the persons killed in Messina and its environs, and on the opposite coast of Calabria, amounted to about forty thousand in all. They are rebuilding the city with vigour and splendour, though seldom a month together without having two or three shocks of the earth, the last of which was no longer ago than Friday last. Yesterday night our landlord came into the room, and desired we would go to bed and sleep without fear, as the house was built with reed, so that if it should be overturned in the night, there would be no danger of being killed. On Friday morning (D. V.) we shall leave this scene of desolation to visit Mount Etna and Syracuse. To give you any account of what are called roads and inns in this country, would take up much more time and room than I can allot. In the latter, nothing is to be found but filth and vermin; neither fire, candle, meat, bread, wine, in short nothing but what you bring with you, and dress yourself, with a gridiron and fryingpan, which we carry about with us. Yet the whole island abounds with everything; corn, wine, oil, silk, and almost all the productions of the West Indies, manna trees, and lemon-trees, with hedges for miles together of Indian figs and aloes, which here blossom every five or six years. The common shrubs on the moun

tains are myrtles, wild pomegranates, lavender, rosemary, and a multitude of plants which we cultivate with great care in hothouses. Turtles are found here in abundance: we bought one a few days ago for less than two shillings. Morris and I were cooks; and really, considering our want of materials, it was not bad. I have no more room. God bless you. Pray for us. Send Love to all. Yours affectionately, RICHARD HILL.

this to

and

P. S. I have just place to add, that the mode of travelling here is in a kind of sedan-chair carried between two mules; and the safest conductors are those who have belonged, or do belong, to some gang of robbers!"

Before Sir Richard Hill and his brother proceeded on their expedition, they heard the most alarming accounts of bad inns, and worse banditti; but they were not persons to be daunted by such rumours, nor by the very uncomfortable mode of travelling to which they were obliged to submit. Their conveyance was called a litiga, a sort of sedan-coach supported by two poles and carried by mules. It had no glass in the windows, but thick curtains in case of rain, and the apertures they covered were the only entrances to the vehicle, which had no doors. Through these windows they were lifted out and in by their conductors. The sides were painted with all sorts of devices to act as charms against dangers. Among them were the virgin and child, saints in friars' habits, and the souls in purgatory. One of their party being young and active, enjoyed the privilege of escaping the litiga, and travelled on horseback accompanied by servants, and a soldier with a gun and cutlass.

402

KING OF SICILY. MACARONI, CHASSE.

They were enchanted with the novel scenes through which they passed, and with the natural productions of a country, the character of which is now well known to every reader of modern travels. There were, however, abundant checks to their gratification in the shape of rooms without windows, mattrasses of straw as hard as boards instead of beds, and legions of fleas which threatened to devour them. To add to their comfort, they were surrounded by starers on all sides, who followed them wherever they went. They found the old Doric temple at Segesta repaired in very bad taste by the king of Sicily. His taste, Sir Richard observed, was much more for macaroni than for architecture or antiquities. This luxury he was accustomed to devour in vast quantities, even with the lazzaroni in the streets, cramming it into his royal mouth with his fingers till it overflowed that capacious receptacle on either side. So fond was his Majesty of performing and seeing performed these macaroni operations, that he had pictures in his palace at Procita, of boys glutting themselves with it in the public places where it was purchased hot, ready-dressed, and very good, all day long. Next to this, his great delight was in shooting. The mode of his Majesty's chasse was much ridiculed by the English visitors; though in fact it was nothing else but the same thing as a modern fashionable battue. Not long before the Hills arrived in his dominions, he had ordered all the cats at Procita to be killed, upon the pretence that they destroyed his pheasants; and the bloody sentence was executed with such rigour, that the inhabitants were obliged to petition him to spare the feline race, as they were in as much danger from the rats, as the game was from cats. Sir Richard Hill and his companions were honoured with beds in the king's palace; but to their surprise found

THE PALACE. DOGS. PICTURES.

403

their bed-rooms on the ground floor, and the kitchen at the top of the house at least five stories high. The precincts of the royal chateau were by no means forbidden to intruders of the pidocchi, cimici, and pulci da vero species, who made most unpleasant bedfellows for the travellers, and probably often interfered with the royal repose. Besides pheasant shooting, the king often indulged himself with a battue of boars, and sometimes killed fifty or a hundred in a day, always registering his sport in a book, as our country gentlemen do now their lesser achievements in their "Game Book." When some of his dogs went mad, he caused his whole kennel to hear mass, and then put his hands in their mouths. and declared no hurt could befal him or them! Besides his paintings of the macaroni eaters, his palace was hung with pictures of his hunting and shooting feats, in which his own figure was always prominent. His principal artist, Mr. Hackert, was, however, terribly fettered by his order, that all the colours should be bright and glaring without any kind of shade whatever! To do his Majesty justice he was, notwithstanding these foibles, idolized by his people, and invariably after an absence, he was met by thousands of his subjects who drew him without tumult or confusion, in triumph to his capital. Both himself and his queen also were most obliging to strangers.

The kind of entertainment the travellers had to put

up with has been already mentioned, but may still better be conceived from Mr. Brian Hill's description of a Sicilian landlady. She was "between fifty and sixty years of age, very plain, and immensely fat." Her dress was "a garment once white, then abominably dirty, without stays, and her clotted hair hung over her eyes like the snakes of a Medusa's head." She was " very vociferous,

404

LANDLADY. HER PORTRAIT. CHATEAU.

full of action, and extremely indelicate ;" and a bottle of Syracuse wine she stole and swallowed, made her so drunk one evening, that she frightened one of the servants into most humble submission. In Sir Richard Hill's apartment hung her picture with her head dressed high, with a feather and a blue bandeau ; and at one corner of her mouth, which was drawn smiling, there was a black patch, while her hand held, with an elegant turn of the little finger, a full blown rose intended as the emblem of her charms. She is not the first fine lady, whose portrait has been wonderfully at variance with the every day appearance of the original. One night, after keeping her customers waiting four hours for their supper, she told them the old cock was not boiled half tender, and the old hen, its companion, was not put down to roast; so they went fasting to bed, afraid to wake the dormant spirit of the Amazon.

The palaces of the Sicilian nobility are described as singular enough. One of the most curious, was that of Palagonia, kept up with grotesque taste by a principe of this name. Behind the château was a semicircular court, covered with statues of the most whimsical description. They represented men and women, some playing on fiddles, and some on flutes and violoncellos. Others had enormous heads and bodies with distorted countenances, while here and there an ass's head was set upon human shoulders, and a bird's neck and beak upon a lady's waist, besides every other monstrosity man could conceive. The interior was as odd as the outside. One apartment was fitted up with china pots, little images, bits of coloured glass, and gilded ornaments. Its cieling was coved, and covered with looking-glasses. In another room were marble statues of the members of the family, placed in niches of the wall, dressed in long flowing