GARDEN OF EDEN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 August 1943, Page 4

GARDEN OF EDEN

RICH CATANIA REGION BY MT ETNA. SCENERY AND CULTIVATION. Foot-slogging through the grey dust or churning it up in billows with the wheels of their transport the British forces reaching Catania have left behind them the orange groves they saw nearer Syracuse and are entering a world of lemon trees. Ahead of them they will see Mount Etna dominating the sky and the whole countryside, its aspect from their line of approach being so similar to that of Rangitoto seen from the Auckland waterfront as to make it appear like a giant, cloudpiercing twin of Auckland’s landscape feature. There will be differences, however. If the summer has been an early one Etna, for a third of the way down : from the summit, will be bare and forbidding, a grey, rocky mass against the brilliant blue of the sky. There , may be a column of heavy black smoke rising for thousands of feet from the crater or beaten down by a wind not felt on the sunny plain and drifting a\yay to the Italian mainland. There may be only a brown smoky plume or a crest of steam —or nothing—for this fiery mountain has many moods and they change day by day. TERRIFYING RED GLOW. Sometimes the restlessness of Etna finds voice in a rumbling that echoes across the sky like distant thunder. Sometimes the ground shakes. The night is lighted by a terrifying red glow that slowly grows brighter. The threat recedes and the sky turns black again, like a burned-out coal. If the summer has been late the snow will still be covering the barren lava slopes with a soft white cap that rests upon the green line where vegetation begins. From this region, whether the summer be early or late, down into the warm air and over the sun-baked foothills to the sea, billow the dark green waves of growing things; trees, shrubs and vines that, on the lowter levels, yield their fruits with the profusion of paradise. For mile after mile the invading army will march past plantations of lemons and past vineyards where grapes hang in white or purple clusters. They will see cultivated patches ,of rich, volcanic earth, irregular in shape and studded with dark grey outcrops of lava rock which falls in terraces to the blue water of the Mediterranean. Here are no boundaries set in conventional, geometrical design. Wherever a pocket of earth is found among the ever-present rock it is cultivated. Rocky walls turn and twist as no post and wire fence has ever been seen to do. Water from the mountain sparkles along stone irrigation channels which meander without obvious direction. TRADE IN LEMONS. If any one of the dark-eyed peasant girls who works bare-footed in the sunshine or drives her donkey along the rocky by-ways were to pause and toss a stone she might hit any one of a multitude of exotic things good to eat —almonds, grapes, olives, pepe or pepper plant, great purple-headed cauliflowers, prickly pears, oranges or lemons —especially lemons. Britain alone in 1938 imported over £500,000 worth of lemons from Sicily and more than £300,000 worth of almonds. The spectacle greeting the troops as they enter Catania, city of 250,000 people, following the Allied air attacks and bombardments, is something that only they will discover. There is little doubt that Catania will not look like the busy commercial port which, in 1938, handled 2158 ships carrying 622,000 tons of goods. COAST ROAD TO ACIREALE. Yet the men of the Eighth Army will not find everything dull when the smoke of battle has rolled away. Dullness is not found in a city where the chief sanitary inspector wears a sword, spurs and kid gloves. If the tram service to Acireale is resumed, the troops will be able to make the changing, swaying trip along the coast, sea on their right and railway line on their left. | The tram takes the traveller on past the villages of Aci Castello, Aci Trezza and Capo Molini until it reaches the town of Acireale, in several ways a smaller version of Catania itself. Whatever changes the war has brought to the towns and villages of this sunny countryside it cannot greatly have altered the scene as nature made it, and it was surely made in the same mould as the Garden of Eden. Many now seeing it for the first time as military invaders will not rest un-1 til they have returned as men of | peace.