A RAILWAY UP MOUNT ETNA.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3825, 19 October 1883, Page 4

A RAILWAY UP MOUNT ETNA.

Some Sicilian engineers arc about to construct a railway Avhieh is to bo something more important than a pleasure line. Ihe sides of the highest of the Italian mountains arc cultivated by a large though scattered population. Tho area includes as many as seventy-five villages, with a population of littlo less than-100,000 inhabitants. This district, extending up the mountain Bide to an altitude of over 1000 metres, is planted Avith oranges, lemons, and vines. No soil in Sicily is more rich and productive, and Avhero tho vines cease to grow tho woods begin stretching up the mountain side to within 100 metres of its summit. Tho first object of tho now lino will bo to connect all those neighboring villages Avhieh have between them voted the sums necessary for the launching of tho venture. Tourists who decide to look into a crater and to arrive at their object by steam power must still confine themselves to the slope of Vesuvius, unless Mount Hecla should have some more practical association with .steam than those geysers which Dr. Johnson begged a traveller who had seen them never again to mention, unless he Avished to make a very poor figure amongst educated people.