Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/597

Rh which by a gradual ascent of ten miles ends in Nicolosi, whence tourists start for the ascent of Etna. Passing beyond the city limits, past the lava stream of 1669 on the left, through villages and hamlets surrounded by vineyards and orange trees, we finally not long after sunset drew up at the door of the Hôtel d'Etna in Nicolosi.

It was Good Friday, and as we stepped out of our carriage a festal, torchlit procession issued from a church near by, and passed up a street parallel to ours amid blazing red lights and the explosion of noisy fireworks, toward another church at the upper end of the village. A gamin eagerly accosted us, gesticulating and shouting in our ears, "Jesu Cristo morte!" and appealing to us to follow on with him. Hastily leaving our traveling bags in the hotel, we walked up the street in the gathering gloom and by a short cut entered the church just before the procession reached the door. To the beat of muffled drums and amid glaring, smoking torches entered a priest, followed by a company of men bearing a rude image of the body of Christ stretched on a bier; then poured in a motley crowd of men, women, and children, each wearing a crown of thorns, to be succeeded by a standing image, life-size, of the Virgin dressed in black, and borne by women, also in mourning garb. Not waiting to witness the final ceremonies, we left the church resounding with the music of the brass band, reeking with the lurid smoke of pitch-pine or tar torches, and betook ourselves to the hotel.

It was a jovial company assembled in this wayside inn. Half a dozen German teachers and physicians were making merry over the wine of the country, and cordially invited us to ascend the mountain with them the next day. But we had heard of the new volcano, and had made our plans to visit that. At a late hour, all the rooms having been taken by them, we slept on cots in the dining room.

The morning of the 20th was light and clear, and the unclouded summit of the volcano was like polished alabaster. After an early breakfast the guide and myself, mounted on mules, took the road for Monte Gemellaro. Leaving on our left the old lava stream of 1669, which looked like an unused railway embankment rising about twenty-five feet in height, we soon came to the forked end of the stream, or sciarra, of 1886. To our left towered the double-headed cone of Monte Rosso with its retinue of monticles around its base. The vines were still in full leaf, and the apple trees in blossom; but we soon rode into a cooler zone, where the vines had just begun to leaf out, and they formed the only vegetation except clumps of yellow-flowered broom, with copses of leafless, slender chestnuts. Over the reddish volcanic soil ran nimble lizards—not the beautiful green ones of the