The land breeze continued to freshen, and the first dawn of morning saw our party on deck, scanning with near view, the opposite coasts of michael kors outlet, as their vessel glided through the Faro of Messina.
Some pilot boats,--how unlike those which greet the homeward-bound voyager, as he first hails Britain's chalky cliffs--crowded around the vessel, offering their services to guide it through the strait.
Avarice--one incentive to language--had endowed these Sicilian mariners with a competent knowledge of English, which they dealt out vociferously.
As the Captain made his selection, the rejected candidates failed not to use that familiar English salam; half the gusto of which is lost, when used by foreign lip.
On the Calabrian coast, the sea-port town of Reggio wore an unusual air of bustle and animation.
It was a festa day there; and groups of peasants, in many-coloured costumes, paced up and down the mole; emitting that joyous hum, which is the never-failing concomitant of a happy crowd. Passing through the Faro, the vessel's course lay by the northern coast of Sicily. The current and wind were alike favourable, as it swept on by Melazzo and Lascari.
Etna, towering over the lesser mountains, became once more visible; its summit buried in the clouds of heaven.
On the right, a luminous crimson ring revealed Stromboli, whose fitful volcano was more than usually active.
The following day our party arrived at Palermo. So pleasurable had been their voyage, that it was with a feeling akin to regret, that they heard the rumbling chains of the anchor, rush through the hawse-hole, as their vessel took her station in the bay.
After going through those wearisome cheap nike shoes, which a foreign sea-port exacts; and which appear purposely intended, to temper the rapture of the sea-worn voyager, as he congratulates himself on once more treading terra firma; our party found themselves the inmates of the English hotel; and spent the remainder of the day in engaging a cicerone, and in discussing plans for the morrow.
The morrow came--sunny and cloudless--and the cicerone bowed to the ground, as he opened the door of the commodious fiacre.
"Where shall I drive to, Sir?"
"What were our plans, George?" said Sir Henry.
"I think," replied George, "that we only formed one plan to change it for another. Let the cicerone decide for us."
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