Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: n PALERMO MOST of the passenger steamers come into Palermo shortly after dawn, and in the pleasant, vernal weather of late winter, or in the real spring, the great bay is a waveless sheet of gilded beryl, dotted here and there with small boats so still they seem sculptured, in strong relief against the purple outlines of the cliffs at either horn of the bay. On the right, Monte Pellegrino looms square and massive; on the other horn's tip Monte Zaffarano peers through the vapors, and the bay between their rugged shoulders is pent off from the sea by the slender arms of moles springing outward from the shore. Inside these breakwaters, solemn, black trans-Atlantic liners await their passengers, and flocks of rakish small boats, with queer, high, projecting cutwaters and painted in every dazzling, garish color that fancy can suggest, hop about like so many water-beetles. Prosaic fishing smacks full of rich, soft colors and melting lines idle along to lazily lifted sweeps, or linger beside the mole. And rusty little " cargo-boats that 'aven't any 'ome" contrast sharply with the trim white Florio-Rubattino liners. Early as the hour is, half of male Palermo seems to come to the dock to shout a cheery welcome as the boat comes in. Throngs of hotel runners and porters crowd the wharves, all clamoring for recognition, each trying to drown out his neighbor's voice; their queer, staccato cries, combative and challenging, sound as if projected from a huge phonograph to float loosely upon the jangling air. Yet for all this eagerness it is hard to find a man not too busy shouting to attend to the baggage. When one is secured, however, he vanishes like a gnome, to return a few moments later with the pleasing intelligence that he has smuggled your trunk through the customs guards, and is ...