November the whole
vast flank of Etna glows with the deep-blue tone of steel; the
russet woods are like a film of rust; the vine-boughs thrust living
carbuncles against the sun. To this season, when the peculiar
earth-tints of Etna, its strong purples and tawny browns, are
harmonised with the decaying wealth of forest and of orchard, I
think the palm of beauty must be given in this land.

The sea is an unchangeable element of charm in all this landscape.
Aci Castello should be visited, and those strange rocks, called the
Ciclopidi, forced by volcanic pressure from beneath the waves. They
are made of black basalt like the Giant's Causeway; and on their top
can be traced the caps of calcareous stone they carried with them in
the fret and fury of their upheaval from the sea-bed. Samphire, wild
fennel, cactus, and acanthus clothe them now from crest to basement
where the cliff is not too sheer. By the way, there are few plants
more picturesque than the acanthus in full flower. Its pale lilac
spikes of blossom stand waist-high above a wilderness of feathering,
curving, delicately indented, burnished leaves--deep, glossy, cool,
and green.

This is the place for a child's story of the one-eyed giant
Polyphemus, who fed his flocks among the oak-woods of Etna, and who,
strolling by the sea one summer evening, saw and loved the fair girl
Galatea. She was afraid of him, and could not bear his shaggy-browed
round rolling eye. But he forgot his sheep and goats, and sat upon
the cliffs and piped to her. Meanwhile she loved the beautiful boy
Acis, who ran down from the copse to play with her upon the
sea-beach. They hid together from Polyphemus in a fern-curtained
cavern of the shore. But Polyphemus spied them out and heard them
laughing together at their games. Then he grew wroth, and stamped
with his huge feet upon the earth, and made it shake and quiver. He
roared and bellowed in his rage, and tore up rocks and flung them at
the cavern where the children were in hiding, and his eye shot fire
beneath the grisly pent-house of his wrinkled brows. They, in their
sore distress, prayed to heaven; and their prayers were heard:
Galatea became a mermaid, so that she might swim and sport like foam
upon the crests of the blue sea; and Acis was changed into a stream
that leapt from the hills to play with her amid bright waters. But
Polyphemus, in punishment for his rage, and spite, and jealousy, was
forced to live in the mid-furnaces of Etn