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too, that the volcanic crack which here traversed the southern tip of Sicily passed also through the Ionian Sea, under Xante and a part ofGreece near Corinth, and finally through Cyprus where it usually tore Paphos apart. Twice during my years there I had been woken by its passing during the night—with the mad roar of an underground train, seeming to pass under my very bed, while the dust rose in clouds and the timbers of my old house groaned in their sleep. Earthquakes, I have experienced quite a number! The premonitory signs too are strange if you are on the seacoast. The water becomes still and lifeless and almost opaque; a few little involuntary waves spin up, as if the sea was trying to be sick. And then the dead leaden hue of the horizon! Birds stop singing suddenly and dogs lope back to their kennels full of an inexplicable uneasiness. And then, when it does come, at first one only notices the eccentric behavior of solid objects, like an electric wire swinging like a pendulum or an armchair mysteriously airborne. Then comes the roar like a thousand avalanches. And the small birds in the orchard fall to the ground and chirp.… “If you drew a line along the earth crack, the long fault which ends somewhere in Persia I suppose—Could one find similarities of temperament and outlook in the inhabitants who live along it?” Deeds shook his head; “The sort of question I distrust,” he said, “unless you would say that they were all a little cracked. Revolutionary secessionists—Sicily is as much that as Crete and Cyprus.”
    The islands of the mid-channel are the earthquake ones, and they tend to be somewhat boisterous. Never accuse a Sicilian of being a Roman, nor a Cretan ofbeing from anywhere else. It was true; but somehow this kind of argument never led far enough. Deeds went on, as we started to swoop down on to the airstrip : “My troops were convinced for some weird reason that one’s toenails grow faster in Sicily than anywhere else on earth. It was a strange thing to believe, but they did. They didn’t believe in circumcision or the Ten Commandments. All their faith went into toe-nails and their rate of growth in Sicily. I had a toenail inspection once in my battalion just to test the matter out. There were a lot of misshapen toes and ingrowing nails and bunions, but nothing really definitive emerged except that I got ticked off by the general for not occupying myself more with the enemy.”
    â€œPerhaps it was German propaganda?”
    We were prevented from pursuing this congenial theme by the fastening of safety belts and the smooth run in. The small and chaotic airport of Catania was rather reassuring after the ruins of the Roman one. It was homely and provincial and it was clear that when any Sicilian arrived or departed from the island the entire family, down to the sixth degree of consanguinity, felt obliged to come and see him off or meet him coming in. It was just like Corfu where people would walk right across the island as a pure courtesy to shed a farewell tear with one. And here they all were eating ice cream and shrieking at each other in the strange Italian they affect which is somehow heavy and almost guttural. The airy-fairy lilt of the Roman line hadgiven place to something which reminded one faintly of the dialect of Trieste or the Ticino. But the air was fine; everything had a candid and fresh smell and feel. Landscape addicts can in the space of this first sniff—not at the actual odor but at the spiritual whiff—detect the fruitful and blessed spot instantly. Unfruitful places, however superficially beautiful, smell either dead or simply odorless and without character. Sicily smelled fine, though a purist might have said it was only the smell of floor polish which the cleaners were rubbing into the lounge floors.
    But the struggle to claim our bags and disentangle ourselves from the airport authorities took a bit of time. I could