Elfie in Sicily (Volume 1) baixar o livro de graça

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1860. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER III. On Monday morning the Certoranos called in their carriage at the hotel, to take the Rodys over the city, and show and explain to them a few of its beauties. Now Palermo is a very fine city, but the bird's eye view usually taken of it gives a very inadequate idea of the place. It lies in a luxuriant valley, of gardens, fields, orange-walks, and olive-groves, --throughout well wooded and well watered, the water being brought down from the hills, and deposited in water-towers erected here and there, which are picturesquely covered with ivy and ferns; from thence the water is conveyed into the houses. The city is entered by two colossal and magnificent gates of sculptured stone, ornamented with statues, fountains, and marble columns, and surmounted by high and wide balconies, whence the prospect is grand and striking. You look over an old time-worn city of palaces, with a multitude of streets, almost choked with churches and convents; beyond which is an extensive panorama of brilliant green country scenery, bounded by sublime mountains and the blue ocean--conveying at once a just idea of its name in Sicilian poetry, of the " Concha d'ora" (golden shell). Amidst a maze of noisy, disagreeable streets, there are two great thoroughfares, or high-streets, named the Toledo and the Macqueda, each a mile in length, and almost as straight as an arrow. They run transversely, crossing each other in the centre, where they form a handsome, octangular square, and dividing the city into four quarters, the square being called the Quattro Cantoni. The aspect of the streets is here very striking: each end of the Macqueda opens out upon the verdant mountains, which appear to rise abruptly at both ends of the street, although they are three miles distant from the cit...