when, however, I can recollect nothing but a very faint idea of it.
Tuesday, May 8, 1787.
On the road to Messina.
High limestone rocks on the left. They become more deeply coloured as you advance, and form many beautiful caves. Presently there commences a sort of rock which may be called clay slate, or sandstone (graywacke). In the brooks you now meet pebbles of granite. The yellow apples of the solanum, the red flowers of the oleander, give beauty to the landscape. The little stream of Nisi brings down with it mica-pebbles, as do also all the streams we reached afterward.
Beaten by a stormy east wind, we rode between the raging sea on the right, and the wall of rocks from the top of which we were looking down yesterday; but this day we have been continually at war with the water. We had to cross innumerable brooks, of which the largest bears the honourable title of river. However, these streams, as well as the gravel which they bring down with them, were easier to buffet with than the sea, which was raging violently, and at many places dashed right over the road, against the rocks, which threw back the thick spray on the travellers. It was a glorious sight, and its rarity made us quite ready to put up with all its inconvenience.
At the same time there was no lack of objects for the mineralogical observer. Enormous masses of limestone, undermined by the wind and waves, fall from time to time; the softer particles are worn away by the continual motion of the waves, while the harder substances imbedded in them are left behind; and so the whole strand is strewn with variegated flints verging on the hornstone, I selected and carried off many a specimen.
