brated straits towards which we are rapidly approaching, or lose
one hour on land and miss the novelties of volcanic islands, and the
first view of Scylla and Charybdis? It is but eight o'clock, but the
awning has been stretched over our heads an hour ago. As to
breakfast--the meal which is associated with that particular hour of
the four-and-twenty to all well regulated _minds_ and _stomachs_--it
consists here of thin _veneers_ of old mahogany-coloured thunny,
varnished with oil, and relieved by an incongruous abomination of
capers and olives. The cold fowls are infamous. The wine were a
disgrace to the sorriest tapster between this and the Alps, and also
fiery, like every thing else in this district. Drink it, and doubt
not the old result--_de conviva Corybanta videbis_. (Oh, for muffins
and dry toast!) Never mind, we shall soon be at Messina. And now we
approach a point from which the lofty Calabrian coast opposite, and
the flinty wall of the formidable Scylla, first present themselves,
but still as distant objects. In another half hour we are just
opposite the redoubtable rock; and here we turn abruptly at right
angles to our hitherto course, and find ourselves _within_ the
straits, from either side of which the English and the French so
often tried the effect of cannon upon each other. It is now what it
used to be--fishing ground. The Romans got their finest muraena from
the whirlpools of _Charybdis_.[17] The shark (_cane di mare_)
abounding here, would make bathing dangerous were the water smooth;
but the rapid whirlpools through which our steam-boat dashes on
disdainfully, would, at the same time, make it impossible to any
thing but a fish. A passenger assured us he had once seen a man lost
in the Vistula, who, from being a great swimmer, trusted imprudently
to his strength, and was sucked down by a vortex of far less
impetuosity, he thought, than this through which we were moving. From
this point till we arrived at Messina, as every body was ripe for
bathing, the whole conversation turned naturally on the Messina
shark, and his trick of snapping at people's legs carelessly left by
the owners dangling over the boat's side. We steam up the straits to
our anchorage in about three-fourths of an hour. The approach is
fine, very fine. A certain Greek, (count, he called himself,) a great
traveller, and we afterwards found not a small adventurer, increases
the interest of the approach, by telling us that the hills before