s of the eternal snow glows like a silver shield on the
breast of the giant peak. Far below are vineyards, olive groves,
orchards, and orange and lemon groves, for Sicily is celebrated for
these fruits. Above them are beech-woods, so deep and dark that they are
seldom penetrated even by the peasants; beautiful as the beech is, it is
a poisonous tree and nothing can live beneath its shade.

It is all so smiling and peaceful on this serene Sunday morning that we
can hardly believe that in Etna too there lies the raging demon of
mighty force. Even as we watch a faint puff of pure white smoke, so thin
that it might be mistaken for a wisp of cloud, floats away from the peak
into the infinite blue, and we know by his breath that the demon is not
dead but only sleeping.

"Lucky indeed to get Etna clear of clouds," says one of the passengers
near us. "I've been through the Straits a score of times and I've hardly
ever seen it as you are seeing it for the first time to-day."

Volcanoes and earthquakes are closely connected. There lies within this
world of ours an imprisoned power of vital heat, which now and again
bursts through at weak places in the crust. Geologists tell us that
these weak places may be traced in long lines on the earth's surface,
and along one of them lie the volcanoes we have seen. But the laws which
govern the earthquake and the volcano are hardly yet understood, even
to-day.

After calling at another little Italian port for the mails, we do not
stop anywhere for the next few days, but steam along steadily, making up
for lost time. We have seen something of the southern part of our own
continent of Europe. We have landed in Spain at Gibraltar, we set foot
on French soil in Toulon, where the steamer called to take on passengers
from across France, we have visited Italy at Naples, and these are the
principal countries which line the huge land-locked sea. In old times
the whole civilised world centred around the Mediterranean, and Rome,
which is now the capital of Italy, dominated it all, making one mighty
empire. The dominion of Rome reached far northward to our own islands,
and she was so secure and supreme in her power that it never entered the
heads of the Romans then living that some day the whole empire would be
split up and distributed. Their dominion reached even to Egypt, where we
are now going, and to the Holy Land, which we shall visit afterwards;
their fleets covered the sea, their armies strode