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Updated: May 10, 2025
The child sat without moving, her eyes taking in the whole scene, and all around was a great stillness, only broken by soft, light puffs of wind that swayed the light bells of the blue flowers, and the shining gold heads of the cistus, and set them nodding merrily on their slender stems. Peter had fallen asleep after his fatigue and the goats were climbing about among the bushes overhead.
The track crawls in and out of valleys, mounts upwards to heights of sun-scorched bracken and cistus, descends once more into dewy glades hemmed in by precipices and overhung by drooping fernery.
Meanwhile, we were leaving the millet-fields behind us stubbles, an occasional stalk three feet high, no lying for birds and were in a country of wild lavender and stunted bushes: these consisted chiefly of cistus or else palmetto, a little dwarf palm, the fruit of which is eaten by goats, and the root by natives as a vegetable, while its fibrous leaves make rope and baskets and a hundred things.
Everywhere there is an odour of cistus and of burning broom, which comes from the ovens where the bread is baked, and an odour of lavender that comes from the house entries. The town yawns and awakes; some priests pass, on their way to church; pious women come out of their houses; and market men and women begin to arrive from the villages nearby.
Their depths are filled with orange and lemon trees, mingled with sable spires of cypress and the tall forms of bays, which here bear jet-black berries, such as are rarely seen in our northern clime; whilst the edges of the cliffs are clothed with a serried mass of wild flowers; red valerian, crimson snap-dragon, tall blue campanulas, the dark green wild fennel, white-blossoming cistus, and a hundred other plants, gay with colour and strong with aromatic perfume.
The way lies through an avenue of cork trees, past which the great hills slope seaward, clothed with evergreen oak and heath, and a species of sundew, with here and there yellow broom, gum cistus, and an unfamiliar plant with blue flowers. Trees and shrubs fight for light and air, the fittest survive and thrive, sheltering little birds from the keen-eyed, quivering hawks above them.
I remember a night in September of 1908, a Sunday night, fragrant with the odours of withered rosemary and cistus and fennel that streamed in aromatic showers from the scorched heights overhead a starlit night, tranquil and calm. Never had Messina appeared so attractive to me.
"How precious these moments: fair freedom expands Her pinions of light o'er the desolate lands; The waters are flashing as bright as thine eye, Unchained as thy motion the breezes sweep by, Delicious they come, o'er the flower-scented earth, Like whispers of love from the isle of my birth; While the white-bosomed Cistus her perfume exhales, And sighs out a spicy farewell to the gales.
We passed clump after clump of white narcissus in full bloom, and marigolds in yellow patches; but as we neared the hills the country grew wilder, and short scrub, palmetto, and cistus took the place of coarse grass. At last we were at the foot of the pass, and the end of our march was all uphill, steep in places, the scrub turning into respectable bushes, with almost a "jungly" aspect.
He sees men and things, in his own light way, truly; and he describes them simply, honestly, with little careless touches of pathos and humour, while he floods his whole scene with that gorgeous Sicilian air, like one of Titian's pictures; with still sunshine, whispering pines, the lizard sleeping on the wall, and the sunburnt cicala shrieking on the spray, the pears and apples dropping from the orchard bough, the goats clambering from crag to crag after the cistus and the thyme, the brown youths and wanton lasses singing under the dark chestnut boughs, or by the leafy arch of some
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