g and a very different day from
yesterday, with bright sun and a clear sky. As a rule there is service
on board ship on Sundays, but to-day we are just going to pass through
the Straits of Messina, and the captain must be on the bridge the whole
time, and there is no clergyman to take the duty for him, so we can't
have it. But we could hardly pass a Sunday better than in admiring the
marvellous beauty which God has given to us in this world for our
delight.

It is about four hours after passing Stromboli that we enter the straits
which separate Sicily, the three-cornered island, from Italy, which
seems to be kicking it away with the toe of its foot. Land begins to
close in on us, and in the dazzling sunshine it appears radiant, while
the sea is a mirror of blue. On both sides we see houses and villages
built on the sloping shores, but the interest heightens when we come
close abreast the great town of Messina which, on the 20th of December
1908, suddenly became world-famous owing to the awful misfortune which
befell it. All educated people knew Messina by name previously, but it
was not until the Italian wires flashed the story of the earthquake
which had wrought destruction so swiftly and dramatically that it will
always be ranked as among the most appalling that ever happened, that
everyone with one consent turned their attention to Messina, and the
eyes of the whole world were focused on it. The suddenness of the
calamity was the most terrible feature of it. It was early in the
morning when the earth shook and heaved and raised itself, and in about
four minutes, what had been a happy prosperous town was reduced to a
smoking ruin, a shambles of dead bodies, and a hell on earth for the
miserable beings who lived in it! Almost all the houses fell together;
whole streets of them collapsed like a pack of cards, and the shock was
so tremendous that in many cases even the bricks and stone of which they
were made were ground to powder. Tens of thousands of people were
buried before they could get into the streets, and their own houses,
where they had been happy and miserable, had been born or married or
suffered, were turned into their tombs. Those who were killed outright
were not the most unfortunate, for others were caught by a limb beneath
falling stones, or crushed and held yet living, and their direful
shrieks of agony added to the horrors, for there was none to help them,
all were in the grip of the same misfortune. T