We fondly expected to pass the Messina Straits by daylight, and to cast another glance upon old Etna, Scylla and Charybdis, the Liparis and Stromboli. And all looked well, as about noon we were abreast of Cape Spartivento, the ’Split-wind’ which divides the mild northers and southers of the Straits from the raw Boras and rotting Sciroccos of the Adriatic. But presently a signal for succour was hoisted by a marvellous old tub, a sailer-made-steamer, sans boats, sans gunwales; a something whose dirt and general dilapidation suggested the Flying Dutchman. I almost expected to see her drop out of form and crumble into dust as our boys boarded her. The America, of Barletta, bound from Brindisi to Genoa, had hurt her boilers. We hauled in her cable–these gentry must never be trusted with a chance of slipping loose–and tugged her into Messina, thereby losing a valuable day.
The famous Straits were almost a replica of Ionian Island scenery: the shores of the Mediterranean, limestone and sandstone, with here and there a volcanic patch, continually repeat themselves. After passing the barren heel of the Boot and its stony big toe, the wady-streaked shores become populous and well cultivated, while railway trains on either side, island and continent, toss their snowy plumes in the pride of civilisation. The ruined castles on the crags and the new villages on the lowlands told their own story of Turkish and Algerine piracy, now doomed to the limbo of things that were. In the evening we were safely anchored within the zancle (sickle) of Messina-port, whose depth of water and circular shape have suggested an old crater flooded. It was Sunday, and we were greeted with the familiar sounds, the ringing of cracked bells, the screaming of harsh, hoarse voices, a military band and detached musical performances. The classical facade of the Marina, through whose nineteen archways and upper parallelograms you catch a vista of dark narrow wynd, contrasts curiously with Catania: the former is a ’dicky,’ a front hiding something unclean; while the latter is laid out in Eastern style, where, for the best of reasons, the marble palace hides behind a wall of mud. The only new features I noted were a metal fish-market, engineer art which contrasts marvellously with the Ionic pilasters and the solid ashlar of the ’dicky;’ and, at the root of the sickle, a new custom-house of six detached boxes, reddest-roofed and whitest-walled, built to copy children’s toy cottages. Croatian Fiume would blush to own them. Of the general impurity of the town and of the bouquet de Messine the less said the better.