MESSINA, mes-senii, Sicily, town and sea port, capital of the province and on the strait of the same name. Messina is walled, flanked by bastions and defended by a citadel on the south and several forts both on the east and west. The harbor is one of the best in the Mediter ranean and so much resembles a sickle that the town took its original Greek name from that implement, called zancle. Fronting the harbor is a broad quay called the Marina, adorned with statues and fountains and forming a favorite promenade. The streets of the old town are narrow and dirty, but the modern town, built since the earthquake of 1783, is'generally com posed of houses of two stories and has spacious streets, well paved with blocks of lava. Among the public edifices are included nearly 50 churches, many of them of great beauty and adorned with fine sculptures and paintings. The cathedral is a Gothic structure, with a some what heavy exterior, but supported within by vast pillars of granite, supposed to have be longed to a temple of Neptune. The viceroy's palace, the archiepiscopal palace, the senate house, grand seminary, college, large and well endowed hospital, numerous convents, two theatres, lazaretto and arsenals arc some of the other buildings worthy of notice. The manu factures consist chiefly of silk goods. The trade, both transit and general, is extensive. The principal exports are silks, olive oil, linseed and other seeds, oranges, lemons and other fruits; corn, wine and spirits; salted fish, licorice, lemon-juice, shumac, essences, rags, brimstone, etc. The tunny and other fisheries
are carried on to a considerable extent. A de structive earthquake visited the locality 28 Dec. 1908 destroying about half of the buildings and causing the loss of more than 77,000 lives, prob ably more than half of them residents of Mes sina. The principal shock was at 5.21 A.M., and the tidal wave that followed, 10 feet in height, swept all before it on the low shore. Notwithstanding this frightful casualty, the city so far recovered that in 1910 the exports were $11,000,000 and the imports about $5,000, 000. Messina has a government university, founded in 1549, which had 692 students in 1901. It has departments of law, medicine, science and classics. It has also a naval seminary and a number of elementary schools. Messina, un der the name of Zancle, is said to have been founded 1004 n.c.; the Messenians obtained possession 668 it became a free city of Rome 241 B.C. ; the Saracens captured it in 831; Richard I of England with his crusaders spent six months there in 119.1, sacking the town on leaving; from 1282 to 1713 the Spaniards ruled, though the French held it briefly 1676-78; in 1743 a plague killed 40,000 of the inhabitants; in 1783 an earthquake caused large loss of life; in 1854, 15,000 died of the cholera; in 1860 the city came under Italian rule, and was peaceful and prosperous until the 1908 tragedy. The population before the earthquake was 150,000, but in 1911 was reduced to 126,557.