And the I'm going to be. Welcome to Snuscast, the the podcast designed to help you fall asleep. On

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This episode is supported by blocking out time to plan a vacation.

Tonight I'll be reading the opening to the 1912 travel memoir Vistas in Sicily by Arthur Stanley Riggs.

Riggs was an American writer and historian.

In 1898, he served in the Navy for the Spanish-American War,

and decades later served as a librarian for the Office of Censorship

during World War II. Let's get cozy. Close your eyes. Relax your body into the softness of your bed.

Now, take a few deep breaths.

Chapter 1, Discovery.

Discovery in Spring appeared to us like water in the desert. That we knew nothing of the island was a misfortune we shared in common with most Americans.

Such vague ideas as we had were derived mainly from long past school days of wearisome geography and from newspaper accounts of the mafia whose members seemed always to be Sicilians.

But when, after a stormy fortnight among the volcanic dust clouds of a great Vesuvian eruption, we determined

to escape that choking atmosphere, the royal road to Rome chosen by the tourists,

terrified by the bellchings of the volcano did not appeal to us. Instead, with some trepidation as explorers entering a wild and dangerous unknown land, we decided upon

Sicily.

...