Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/67

Rh M E T M E T 57 situated on the Straits of Messina (at this point about 4 miles wide), 8 miles north-west of Reggio and 130 miles east by north of Palermo, in 38 15 N. lat., 15 30 E. long. The town is built between the sea and a range of sharp and rugged hills, called the Dinnamare, 3707 feet at their highest point. It runs in a semicircle round the harbour, and presents a picturesque appearance from the sea, as the houses rise in tiers upon the slope of a hill, and behind are the wooded mountains. Messina is the second town of Sicily in importance and in size. Its population was 97,074 in 1850, 111,854m 1871, and 126,497 in 1881. It is an archiepiscopal see, and has a university, founded by the Jesuits in 1548, with a public library of 56,000 volumes. The excellence of its harbour makes Messina an import ant trading town. The harbour is formed by a tongue of low land which runs out from the shore in the form of a sickle, and encloses a round basin, open to the north only, where the entrance channel is about 500 yards wide. This basin is 11 miles in circumference, and is of such depth that the largest vessels are able to use it. It is estimated that 1300 steamers, with a total of 1,000,000 tons burthen, and 9000 sailing ships, with a total of 500,000 tons bur then, enter the port yearly. The exports of Messina consist chiefly of oranges, lemons, raisins, wine, oil, liquorice, and hides. There is no prominent manufacture; but silk stuffs are made in considerable quantities. Many of the inhabit ants are engaged in fishing, chiefly for tunny. Sword-fish also are captured with the harpoon in the Straits during July and August. Coral fishery is a trade of the people. The hills behind Messina produce a strong dark wine, inferior to that which is made in other parts of the island. Messina has few buildings of importance or antiquity. The sieges and earthquakes from which the town has suffered destroyed most of its monuments. After the great earthquake in 1783 the city was almost entirely rebuilt. The cathedral, the principal building, is a church of the Norman period. It was begun in 1098 by Count Roger I., and finished by his son Roger II. The church is in the form of a Latin cross, 305 feet long and 145 feet wide in the transepts. The lower half of the faQade is encrusted with slabs of red and white marble. It has three Gothic portals, with pointed arches and rich ornamentation, belonging to the period of the Anjou dynasty. The nave contains twenty-six columns of Egyptian granite, said to have been brought from an ancient temple of Poseidon which stood near the Faro. The mosaics of the apses date from the year 1330. In the choir are the sarcophagi of the emperor Conrad IV. (d. 1254), of Alphonso the Generous (d. 1458), and of Antonia, widow of Frederick III. of Aragon. In 1254 the cathedral was seriously damaged by fire; in 1559 the campanile was burned down; in 1783 the earthquake overthrew the campanile and the transept. The building therefore offers a mixture of styles, first Norman, then Gothic, then Early Renaissance, finally Barocco and Modern Gothic. The history of Messina begins very early. It is said to have been founded, on the site of a more ancient Sicilian town, by pirates from Cumse, in 732 B.C. It took its earlier name of Zancle (a sickle) from the shape of its harbour. The number of its inhabit ants was increased by an influx of Chalcidians under CratiBmenes ; and in 649 B.C. the town was sufficiently prosperous and populous to establish a colony at Himera. The Samians occupied Zancle for a short time after Miletus had been captured by the Persians in 494 B.C. In the following year the city fell into the hands of Anaxilas, tyrant of Rhegium, who introduced a population of Messenians, from Messenia in the Peloponnesus ; and they changed the name of the place to Messana, in the Doric pronunciation, to Alcantara. The chief towns are Messina, Castroreale, Mistretta, Patti, and Milazzo. The population in 1854 was 380,279, in 1871 420,649, and in 1881 467,233. remind them of their fatherland. The sons of Anaxilas were ex pelled from the government of Messina in 466 B.C., and a republic established ; and this government was continued until Messina fell into the hands of the Carthaginians during their wars with Dionysius the elder of Syracuse (396 B.C.). The Carthaginians destroyed the city ; but Dionysius recaptured and rebuilt it. During the next fifty years Messina changed masters several times, till Timoleon finally expelled the Carthaginians in 343 B.C. In the wars between Agathocles of Syracuse and Carthage, Messina took the side of the Carthaginians. Agathocles s mercenaries, the Mamertines, treacherously seized the town in 288 B.C. and held it. They came to war with Hiero II. of Syracuse, after Agathocles s death ; and Micro s allies, the Carthaginians, helped him to reduce Messina. The Mamertines appealed for help to Rome, which was granted, and this led to a collision between Rome and Carthage, which ended in the First Punic War. At the close of that war, in 241 B.C., Messina became a possession of the Romans. During the civil wars which followed the death of Julius Cresar, Messina held with Sextus Pompeius ; and in 35 B.C. it was sacked by Octavian s troops. After Octavian s proclamation as emperor he founded a colony here ; and Messina continued to flourish as a trading port. In the division of the Roman empire it belonged to the emperors of the East ; and in 547 A.D. Belisarius collected his fleet here before crossing into Calabria. The Saracens took the city in 831 A.D. ; and in 1061 it was the first permanent conquest made in Sicily by the Normans under Roger d Hauteville. In 1190 Richard Co2ur de Lion with his crusaders passed six months iu Messina. He fell out with Tancred, the last of the Hauti-ville dynasty, and sacked the town. In 1194 the city, with the rest of Sicily, passed to the house of Hohenstaufen under the emperor Henry VI., who died there in 1197. At the time of the Sicilian Vespers (1282), which drove the French out of Sicily, Messina bravely defended itself against Charles of Anjou, and repulsed his attack. Peter I. of Aragon, through his commander Ruggiero di Loria, defeated the French off the Faro ; and from 1282 to 1713 Messina remained a possession of the Spanish royal house. In 1571 the fleet fitted out by the Holy League against the Turk assembled at Messina, and in the same year its commander, Don John of Austria, celebrated a triumph in the city for his victory at Lepanto. Don John s statue stands in the Piazza dell Annuziata. For one hundred years, thanks to the favours and the concessions of Charles V., Messina enjoyed great prosperity. But the internal quarrels between the Merli, or aristocratic faction, and the Malvezzi, or democratic faction, fomented as they were by the Spaniards, helped to ruin the city (1671-78). The Messinians suspected the Spanish court of a desire to destroy the ancient senatorial consti tution of the city, and sent to France to ask the aid of Louis XIV. in their resistance. Louis despatched a fleet into Sicilian waters, and the French occupied the city. The Spaniards replied by appealing to Holland, who sent a fleet under Ruyter into the Mediterranean. The French admiral, Duquesne, defeated the combined fleet of Spain and Holland, but, notwithstanding this victory, the French suddenly abandoned Messina in 1678, and the Spanish occupied the town once more. The senate was suppressed, and Messina lost its privileges. This was fatal to the importance of the city, and it never recovered. In 1743 the plague carried off 40,000 inhabitants. The city was partially destroyed by earth quake in 1783. During the revolution of 1848 against the Bourbons of Naples, Messina was bombarded for three consecutive days. In 1854 the deaths from cholera numbered about 15,000. Garibaldi landed in Sicily in 1860, and Messina was the last city in the island taken from the Bourbons and made a part of united Italy under Victor Emmanuel. Messina was the birthplace of the following celebrated men : Dicrearchus, the historian (dr. 322 B.C.); Aristocles, the Peri patetic ; Euhemerus, the rationalist (dr. 316 B.C.) ; Stefano Protonotario, Mazzeo di Ricco, and Tommaso di Sasso, poets of the court of Frederick II. (1250 A.D.) ; and Antonello da Messina, the painter (1447-99), five of whose works are preserved in the university gallery. During the 15th century the grammarian Constantino Lascaris taught in Messina ; and Bessarion was for a time archimandrite there. METALLURGY, a branch of applied science whose object is to describe and scientifically criticize the methods used industrially for the extraction of metals from their ores. Of the large number of metals enumerated in the handbooks of chemistry, the vast majority, of course, lie outside its range ; but it is perhaps as well for us to point out that in metallurgic discussions even the term &quot;metallic,&quot; as applied to compounds, has a restricted meaning, being exclusive of all the light metals, although one of these, namely aluminium, is being manufactured industrially. The following table enumerates in the order of their importance the metals which our subject at present XVI. 8