Legend of the Alcantara Gorges
Maarten Sepp - CC3.0
The legend of the Alcantara gorges tells of the birth of the volcanetto di Mojo and the Alcantara gorges.
It is said that in ancient times, two peasant brothers cultivated the fields of the valley. One of the brothers was blind, the second, taking advantage of the situation, each year kept almost the entire harvest for himself and left only a paltry quantity to his brother, taking advantage of his blindness. Over the years, the crook brother had amassed a huge pile of grain. The gods, angry at the injustice suffered by the blind brother, threw a bolt of lightning that incinerated the sly brother and transformed his pile of wheat into the little volcano of Mojo. The mountain of brown earth began to erupt a large amount of lava that covered the entire valley and formed the famous gorges. From this moment, myth and reality meet. In fact, it is believed that the formation of the gorges is really due to the eruption of the small cone of Mount Mojo, an ancient volcano located between Etna and the Peloritani Mountains, which caused, around the third millennium BC, an imposing lava flow that pushed towards the sea crossing the valley.
