PALERMO

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 101, 1 May 1930, Page 22

PALERMO

mountain;; or ..gold

They call Palermo the town of Golden Shell. To understand what it meaus, you should1 go'there in the late autumn. Then you will .see something that will stay in your memory f.or ever, writes a correspondent of" The Leader." Along the way to'Monrcalc, some four miles to the soutli-west from Ja)cnno, beyond thefhedges. of giant cactus and equally gigantic, scarlet geraniums, there runs a height; from which you may seethe whole, of Palermo, and get a-generous glimpse ,of the, Mediterranean, rwhich is .never blue—as'poets would! have-.it ..be—but something between topaz and emerald. That height, as it wer.e, makes a circle round Palermo arid as far-as the eye can reach, is'covered witli lemon and orange trees. It is called'the Coiica dOro —or the Golden Shell. ; Late in the autumn, almost running into winter, on the very eve of the oi'ange and lemon harvest—when every single tree stands heavily laden with ripened,,fruit,, when, the autumn. winds have stripped them of their leafage— that grove, from- a distance,- appears like a mountain of sheer gold. It nearly blinds you, should you look at it with the sun beating down mercilessly over your head. And, as you got nearer, that, blurred golden mass impression gives way to something even more beautiful. It is only after having seen1 a 'laden orange tree that you realise that no single orange is quite like its fellows, . ev.eri those on the same branch. Their gold, can boast of an infinite scale of shades and nuances. Now it looks deep, deep, almost unto fierce redness. Again,;if will be pale—as pale as a sun-kissed gladiolus on the Sicilian coast. And sometimes it is mellow, warm, yet definite, like a freshly dug on1; nugget of gold. And, as you watch it, the southern wind rustling softly through the laden branches, you fancy that every one of these ia hung over with golden bolls, and yon may be whimsical enough to remember some old song or an old legend of Sicily—"the island gold-girt"—or a line of some Greek chorus about "trees, the singing and the gold." You know that the harvest is-getting nearer and nearer, when the luxurious golden spoil will'bo poured into the street.1; and markets of- Palermo, and when tho trees will'stand up, bare-and dark against tho ele«fr sky. * But somehow, you feel that the Conea d'Oro will justify its name.even in its very barrenness. Por tho memory of those trembling golden bells will surely stay with it until tho'next year, even as you 'know that it -will nestle 'in your "own memory for all the years to conic

Woods lireut ■ Peppermint Cure toi Oouchs and Uolcß never fails —Adv*