APPROACH TO MESSINA.

The Italian morning presents a beautiful sight on deck to eyes weary
and sore with night, as night passes on board steamers. We pass along
a coast obviously of singular conformation, and to a geologist, we
suppose, full of interest. We encounter a herd of classical dolphins
out a-pleasuring. We ask about a pretty little town perched just
above the sea, and called _Giocosa_. By its side lies
_Tyndaris_--classical enough if we spell it right. The snow on Etna
is as good as an inscription, and to be read at any distance; but
what a deception! they tell us it is thirty miles off, and it seems
to rise immediately from behind a ridge of hills close to the shore.
The snow cone rises in the midst of other cones, which would appear
equally high but for the difference of colour. _Patti_ is a
picturesque little _borgo_, on the hillside, celebrated in Sicily for
its manufacture of hardware. In the bay of _Melazzo_ are taken by far
the largest supplies of thunny in the whole Mediterranean. From the
embayed town so named you have the choice of a cross-road to Messina,
(twenty-four miles;) but who would abridge distance and miss the
celebrated 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