on either side the nave, King Roger crowned by our Lord, and the admiral of King Roger dedicating his church to the Virgin, are the only ones that were saved when the western end was taken down in the seventeenth century. Scaffolding was erected all over the interior, and apparently the ancient mosaics were being rather knocked about. The pictures from the legend of the Virgin in La Martorana (Santa Maria del Ammiraglio, founded 1143) were completed, according to an inscription in the apse, A.D. 1148. The semi-dome of the apse is here again filled with the bust of Christ; on the wall immediately below appears the Virgin between angels, and two lower bands contain the apostles, while the walls and arches of the presbytery are decorated with busts and figures of Old Testament personages and saints. The old square tower with four stories, each smaller than the one below it, stands apart from the church.

We drove thence to the Hotel des Palmes. This and the Trinacria at the other end of the town are kept now by the same landlord-Ragusa. He bought the house from Ingham, the wine merchant. It contains numerous rooms opening on to a flat roof and looking out into a pleasant garden, and on to the English church close by. We had a regular Sicilian lunch, and tasted many sorts of native wine. In the afternoon we drove out to La Favorita, a Chinese palace built by King Bomba. We went over this, saw the room painted to resemble the interior of a damp and mouldy cavern; even mildew and slimy fungi on the roof were imitated. We saw also the room in which the dinner was served without attendants, the table sinking beneath the floor at the end of each course, and then rising again. The best thing in the palace was the view from the summit, with its two glimpses of the sea, one by Capo di Gallo at the northern end of the valley, and the other beyond Palermo at the southern. Returning we visited the Villa Whitaker and its fine gardens, after walking in which some time we drove back in the dusk and then went off to the ship.

On Monday the 27th the Bacchantes had their first cricket match, it was played between two elevens of officers and men: first half of the Alphabet against the second; the latter winning, their score being 124 against 118. We had lunch on the ground, which was the plateau at the foot of Monte Pelegrino, from which a wide view over the town. Some of the party besides set up lawn-tennis nets. Before going off to the ship visited the

preserved fruit shop in the centre of the town, where there was a glorious collection; took a box on board and sent another home to England to sisters.

Oct. 28th.-Had a good bathe from the ship's side before morning drill. After sending our mails ashore we left the anchorage off Palermo under steam at about 4 P.M., proceeding thirty revolutions, draught of water forward nineteen feet six inches, and aft twentyfour feet three inches. When we weighed the whole bay happened to be covered with small boats, the men in which were shooting larks. These birds were making for the shore in great numbers, migrating southwards from Europe, and were thus welcomed on their arrival. For some time after we had got under way we could hear the imitation bird-calls, used by the Sicilians to lure

them to destruction, and the almost incessant popping of the scatter-guns. It was a beautiful moonlight night. Before turning in we had passed Alicudi.

Oct. 29th.-Up at 5.30 A.M. to see Stromboli and found we were steaming slowly along its northern side which rose in a dark triangular mass in the dusk of dawn, over 3,000 feet high. The cone on the summit was only smoking, but halfway down the side towards us three flames in succession broke out and played about like will-o'-the-wisps. About 7 A.M. we heard a rumbling as of a discharge of cannon. As you look up at the jagged edges of the crater with a little imagination it would be easy to believe they were figures of demons or anything else. We steamed slowly all round the island, on the east side of which is a small village and landing place, and then shaped course for the Straits of Messina. After breakfast we saw Volcano, the most southerly of the Lipari group smoking in the distance to the westward. Shortly after 11 A.M. passed Italian fleet, two ironclads and a gunboat steering north. We saluted the rear-admiral's flag with thirteen guns as we passed, which was returned by his flagship the Venetia. It was afternoon when we steamed slowly down the straits and had our first sight of the Scylla Rock on the Italian shore, and of Charybdis the small whirlpool formed by the tide under the opposite shore of Sicily close to the Faro. The winds and currents are, and must always have been, uncertain in these straits, and their navigation for small sailing ships, especially when there is very little wind and consequently a great deal of drifting, difficult. The high table-land of Italy seemed to tower up on our port-hand, and its mountain-perched towns, yellow-walled, flatroofed, and tiled, were exactly like the pictures we had seen of them in Turner's illustrations. We anchored off Messina outside the harbour at 2.40 P.M.: and received here a despatch from Admiral Hornby Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean squadron recommending us to proceed to Catania as it was the best place from which to ascend Etna as he himself had lately done. He stated that he would be unable to meet or inspect the Bacchante, but wished her a very pleasant cruise when she left his station.

Oct. 30th.-Left the ship at 4 A.M. and landed, a party of seventeen, in two boats at the quay, drove to the station and took the train which left at 5 A.M. for Taormina. The railway runs.

along the coast within sight of the sea most part of the way, and crosses several broad watercourses, at this time of the year dry and filled with boulders; it is only in the spring that they are torrents; the old forests have for the most part been cut down and burnt, but the cactus hedges stretch away on all sides, as well as the olives, some of the cactus trees of great thickness and age. The monasteries have all been secularised and their lands sold by the Government for two million pounds, those who first purchased them have since resold them at much profit. The depreciation in the currency so that twenty-eight francs of paper money is equal to one pound English, tells its own tale. On arriving at Taormina we walked up the hill, 700 feet above the sea, taking three-quarters of an hour about it, to the Hôtel de Belle Vue. Some of the party rode on donkeys and a few went in the carriage, those who walked were able to cut off the corners of the winding road. We breakfasted at the hotel and afterwards walked through the town by the Saracenic palace in the market-place and in front of the church, with its painful statues of souls enduring the tortures of purgatory, up to the peak of Mola, two thousand and eighty-three feet, with the village of the same name at its summit. It was a fine climb and the view looking down over the mountainous valleys covered with vines and olives, and away to the sea, was magnificent. We were to have gone up Monte Venere, but it was too wet and its summit was covered by a cloud. The top of Etna too is cloud-covered to-day but the long and grand slope of its eastern side stretching away up to the spot whence the recent eruption took place and from which smoke is still issuing, is clearly visible. We then walked on to Santa Maria della Rocca, where the Saracenic ruin on the summit is finer than that on Mola. All the soil hereabouts is volcanic, and we gathered specimens of the three several kinds of lava that have been ejected from Etna at various times, and which are very distinct the one from the other. We then went back and up to the Greek and Roman theatre which was the most interesting thing we saw that day. It is difficult to say whether the view off the terrace on its very summit looking away towards the north, or that to the south looking out across the ruined stage, is the more extensive and impressive; below on the left is the sea, blue and smooth, on the right the mountain ranges green and brown, in front the red Roman brick, and the grey marble of the older Greek building;

all these colours contrast and harmonise together in the foreground, while in the distance rises Etna in its majesty. We were shown, amongst other antiquities, the torso of what is said to be the Eros of Praxiteles. We walked down to the station past a number of Saracenic tombs on the hillside; they are hollow plastered receptacles, each just large enough to contain a human body, and arranged above each other in tiers, but have lately been cut through by the road; the bones of many Saracens are still lying in them. We got into the train at 4 P.M., and were on board the Bacchante again at Messina by 6.30 P.M.

Oct. 31st. We left Messina at daybreak 6.30 A.M. and steamed back up the straits, and after we passed Faro fell in with a nice breeze to which we made all possible sail, steering to the westward. The breeze, however, after breakfast died away entirely and we remained under steam all the day. After evening quarters, usual