When we reached the summit, during the night, we saw the immense crater at our feet, several thousand yards round, full of fire and smoke, out of which huge stone monoliths towered, of every shade of colour, black and green and red and yellow.  Then the rising sun fell on us, leaving all the horizon around us in darkness, and when at last its light had spread everywhere, save on the giant shadow of the mountain itself, we saw all Sicily and Calabria lying at our feet like a great map, with the blue sea surrounding it on every side.  It was a grand and striking spectacle.

We descended the mountain rapidly, ten yards at a jump, down the crumbly pumice slopes of the Val de Bove, to Giarre, where one of the steamers of the squadron was to take us on board; and while we waited for her we took a delicious sea bath.  We swam out to meet the ship, and I was much tickled by the astonishment of the commander, enthroned upon his bridge, when he heard himself hailed out of the sea by a well-known voice, telling him to stop.

The squadron happened to be at Messina on the 15th of August, the day of the Barra Festival, which takes place in honour both of the Assumption of the Virgin and of the entry of Count Roger into Messina, after he had defeated the Saracens.  As far as concerned beauty and local colour, the festival, which in those particulars yields to none save that of St. Rosalia at Palermo, was most interesting.  But one detail there was which filled me with horror—­the sight of an immense car, dragged along by a crowd of, wild enthusiasts, laden from top to bottom with saints, virgins, and angels, represented, for the nonce, by young people of both sexes, the whole thing surmounted, at a great height above it, by a huge sun with gilded rays.  So far there was nothing to complain of.  But when the car moved along, the rays of the sun, by an ingenious mechanism, turned as well; and at the end of each of these rays a poor little brat, dressed like a cherub, and crowned with roses, had been hung, in a sort of fireman’s belt, by its barbarous parents.  The tortures of the poor little creatures, hanging thus by their middles, under a burning sun, and shaken up by every jolt the machine gave as it turned, may be imagined.

By the time the abominable thing came past my window, amidst singing and band-playing and cheering, most of the poor children were swinging unconscious from the rays of the great sun which jolted heavily at every turn it made.  It was a disgusting sight; but we were the only people to notice it and be shocked by it.

While at Naples, I was ordered to go to Rome to congratulate the new Pope, Pius the Ninth, whose election had just taken place, in the name of France.  I started off at once, by Civita Vecchia, and reached the palace of our embassy at Rome at night.  At dawn a great noise made me hastily open my window, anxious to know the reason of the uproar, and also to get a first look at the Eternal City, where I was for the first time in my life.  It was raining, and the inhabitants of all the adjacent houses, as well as the soldiers in the barracks over the way, were all shouting at the top of their voices Acqua!  Acqua!  Acqua!  It sounded as if every cockatoo in Australia had settled upon the papal city.