Island of Sicily—Palermo—Saracenic appearance of the town—Cathedral—The Marina—Viceroy Leopold—Monastery of the Capuchins—Celebrated Catacombs—Fanciful Gardens.
FRIGATE UNITED STATES, _June 25_.—The mountain coast of Sicily lay piled up before us at the distance of ten or twelve miles, when I came on deck this morning. The quarter-master handed me the glass, and running my eye along the shore, I observed three or four low plains, extending between projecting spurs of the hills, studded thickly with country-houses, and bright with groves which I knew, by the deep glancing green, to be the orange. In a corner of the longest of these intervals, a sprinkling of white, looking in the distance like a bed of pearly shells on the edge of the sea, was pointed out as Palermo. With a steady glass its turrets and gardens became apparent, and its mole, bristling above the wall with masts; and, running in with a free wind, the character of our ship was soon recognised from the shore, and the flags of every vessel in the harbour ran up to the mast, the customary courtesy to a man-of-war entering port.
As the ship came to her anchorage, the view of the city was very captivating. The bend of the shore embraced our position, and the eastern half of the curve was a succession of gardens and palaces. A broad street extended along in front, crowded with people gazing at the frigates, and up one of the long avenues of the public gardens, we could distinguish the veiled women walking in groups, children playing, priests, soldiers, and all the motley frequenters of such places in this idle clime, enjoying the refreshing sea-breeze, upon whose wings we had come. I was impatient to get ashore, but between the health-officer and some other hindrances, it was evening before we set foot upon the pier.
With Captain Nicholson and the purser I walked up to the Toledo, as the still half-asleep tradesmen were opening their shops after the _siesta_. The oddity of the Palermitan style of building struck me forcibly. Of the two long streets, crossing each other at right angles and extending to the four gates of the city, the lower story of every house is a shop, of course. The second and third stories are ornamented with tricksy-looking iron balconies, in which the women sit at work universally, while from above projects, far over the street, a grated enclosure, like a long birdcage, from which look down girls and children (or, if it is a convent, the nuns), as if it were an airy prison to keep the household from the contact of the world. The whole air of Palermo is different from that of the towns upon the continent. The peculiarities are said to be Saracenic, and inscriptions in Arabic are still found upon the ancient buildings. The town is poetically called the _concha d’oro_, or “the golden shell.”