ABSTRACT
IT WAS late in September when I reached Catania, on the eastern side of Sicily. The city lies at the foot of Mt. Ætna on the edge of the sea. Above it looms the vast bulk of the volcano, its slopes girdled with gardens and vineyards that mount, one terrace above the other, until they lose themselves in the clouds. A wide and fertile valley below the city to the south, through which the railway descends from the mountain to the sea, seemed, as did Mt. Ætna itself, like one vast vineyard.
