n all weathers. I have been there in the
winter; the summit was hidden in a cloud which, as we drove up into it,
obscured the view and chilled the marrow. It was before the days of the
motor, when a horse bus did the journey by a shorter route in about three
hours. I was on the box with the coachman who gave me a spare cloak with
a hood to keep me dry and warm. Two of my friends, natives of the
mountain, one a doctor and the other the accountant to the Municipio,
were at the Trapani gate to meet me, both in hooded cloaks, so that I did
not recognize them till they spoke. The wind was tremendous. The narrow
sloping streets were running with water as we walked up through the town
to the albergo, where Donna Anna received us. There was no blazing fire
or warm room as there would have been in an English inn, only
semidarkness and dampness. The damp had patched the painting on the
ceiling and disfigured the whitewashed walls, on which were hung a few
pictures--a lithograph of the Madonna di Custonaci, a cheap Crucifixion,
a reproduction of the design for the monument to Vittorio Emmanuele in
Rome, three shiny chromolithographs of English country scenes,
representing the four seasons minus one, an absurd French engraving,
_Education Maternelle_ and S. Francesco da Paola, with a shell for holy
water. S. Francesco belongs to South Italy, but he is a favourite in
Sicily because he walked across the Straits of Messina to carry the Last
Sacraments to a dying man. On the undulating tiled floor were a few of
the rugs peculiar to the neighbourhood. They are made by the natives on
looms, the length being thin, strong string and the width white, black
and coloured cotton rags--old petticoats, shirts, aprons and so on,
washed clean and torn into narrow strips. With a little ingenuity they
make the colours go in simple patterns, chiefly diamonds and zigzags; but
sometimes they are more daring and attempt drinking-cups, etc.: the most
effective are made by running the strips in rows without any regard to
pattern.

Some winds blow some clouds away, but the roots of this cloud were so
firmly wedged in among the narrow streets and through the cracks of the
doors and windows, which would not shut close, that this wind could do
nothing with it but blow it more deeply in and the house was full of mist
like the Albert Hall in a winter fog. The natives consider it more
healthy to keep the same temperature indoors and out, so there is