Numerous examples of Greek pottery, black figures on red clay, include a bowl rescued from the sea, as is proved by the coral that has grown into it.

We arranged for a week's excursion by automobile, the stipulated price, 7,000 lire, covering the cost of travel and hotel accommodations, that is, all expenses save wines and tips, one fairly large tip being the 400 lire to the driver. The arrangement, made with the hotel manager, was carried out most fairly and satisfactorily. On April 18, early in the morning, a start was made for Girgenti, a journey of 85 miles. We were hopeful that the rain of the previous day had spent itself; and in this hope we were not disappointed. When we were leaving Palermo the distribution of milk was in progress; the goats march along the sidewalks and are halted at the door to yield their toll, which is squirted into various containers, including wine-bottles. The washing of lettuce in the brown water of the river suggested to us an abstention from salad. Our comfortable automobile sped quietly over a rolling country, the road a yellow thread over the green plain. Brown scarps and ridges were crowned here and there by ruined monasteries or old forts, and the villages perched among the rocks were so like them in color and shape that they blended with the landscape. A peach orchard was fringed with gnarled olive trees that bespoke a venerable age. Eastward a glimpse of snowy peaks indicated the mountainous interior of Sicily and the haunts of former brigandage. At noon, we reached Ancara and its sulphur mines, now idle, in consequence of American competition. A punctured tire gave us a chance to do some botanizing and to recognize many old friends among the Sicilian flowers: vetches, poppies, buttercups, penstemons, gladioli, and scarlet pimpernels. Beyond Roccapalumba we looked down upon the valley of the Platani and passed more abandoned sulphur diggings, together with outcrops of white gypsum. On the hill above Comitini a smell of sulphur, like a whiff from hell, indicated that all the sulphur mines were not idle. At last crossing a ridge, we caught a glimpse of the sea and of Girgenti.

To the mining engineer Girgenti is associated with sulphur deposits, to the mineralogist with beautiful crystals of celestite, and to the scholar with lovely relics of Greek architecture. Girgenti was the Acragas of the Greeks and the Agrigentum of the Romans. Pindar called it "the most beautiful city of mortals". We sojourned at the Hotel des Temples, which looked across a charming old garden to the Greek ruins and the sea over which the Dorians came in 582 B.C. The ancient city, built by the Doric settlers, stood on a hill overlooking the ridge upon which the temples were built, largely by the servile labor of the Carthaginians that were captured in battle at Himera in 480 B.C. We walked through the hotel garden and past the little Gothic church of San Nicola to the old south wall of the city, where on the edge of a rocky mesa stand the exquisite ruins that have made Girgenti famous. First we approached the temple of Concord, in excellent preservation, because in the Middle Ages it was converted into a Christian church dedicated to St. Gregory of the Turnips. The thirty-four columns are original, but parts of the pediment are of late origin.

Half a mile eastward is the temple of Juno, not nearly so well preserved, but more beautiful, because it is unspoiled by conversion to alien use. Twenty-five columns survive, all of them weathered on their south-eastern side by the sirocco, the hot wind that blows across the sea from the Sahara. Earthquakes also have had a hand in ruining this edifice, which belongs to the best period of Doric style, in the fifth century B.C. The stone was hewn from the quarries that can be seen in the hillside two miles away; it is a tuff, now so weathered as to disclose its lamination; the color is yellowish red, and when fresh it must have glowed gloriously in the sunlight. It glows still with poetry. The temple stands in a peaceful setting, on a grass-topped ridge, which slopes gently on the land side to the almond groves that rise to the ramparted heights of the modern town, and falls away precipitously on the seaward side to the velvety green pastures of the foreshore, lapped by the African sea. A few gnarled olive-trees, so old as to suggest comradeship

with the ruins, stand near the temple, and over the green sward a shepherd, pipe to mouth, is tending his goats as in the days of Theocritus. The late afternoon sun warms the rich tints of the ruined columns, the tinkle of the goat bells charms the serenity, and the murmur of the wine-dark sea tells of the old heroic days when the world was young and life an epic.

West of the temple of Concord are the ruins of the temple of Hercules, which was destroyed by the Carthaginians and restored by the Romans. The red stains at the base perpetuate the marks of Carthaginian fires, and the interior Roman walls record the similar savagery of the Normans. Near this, the oldest of the temples, is the ancient city gate, the Porta Aurea, through which the Romans entered in 210 B.C. They came along the road from the harbor of Empedocles, from which now the sulphur of Girgenti is shipped to the wine-growers of other lands. North of the old gateway are the ruins of the temple of Jupiter, which next to that of Diana at Ephesus is the largest of its kind; the length is 372 ft. and the width 182; the columns are 1434 inches in diameter and 55 ft. high, including the capitals. This temple was built by the servile hands of the Carthaginians captured at Himera, and it was the Carthaginians, not inappropriately, that destroyed it when they returned victorious over the Greeks. The temple was never finished; some of the columns were overturned by an earthquake in 1401, and what remained was further despoiled in 1810 by the bishop of Girgenti, who removed many of the stones to construct the mole of the modern harbor. The U-shaped grooves in the masonry indicate how the ropes were attached when raising the stones into place by means of pulleys and windlasses. To facilitate this work the part already built was covered with earth so as to make an inclined plane. Among the ruins is a recumbent caryatid, of which there were 38, placed between the columns to support the architrave. We saw one of these gigantic figures being disinterred in the course of the excavations that are now in progress.

The Doric temple, at first only a hut meant to give shelter to a god, was developed to the stone structure that embodies the poetic conception of the earliest Greek art. As it grew in size the walls did not suffice to carry the weight of the wooden roof, so a beam was borne upon props, the columns, at the top of which was the capital. The Doric column had no pedestal; the shaft was five times as high as its diameter, and it tapered slightly. It was fluted, the parallel grooves varying from 16 to 24 in number. The outer collonade, or peristyle, had 13 to 17 columns along its length and six along its width. The sanctuary within was enclosed in stone walls and lighted through the roof, which was supported by wooden beams. When the Carthaginians set to work to destroy the temples they cut the base of the columns to the shape of a cone and set the roof on fire.

We chatted with the architect in charge of the excavations, and then walked a little way to the fragment of a temple in honor of Castor and Pollux, four columns, a cornice, and a pediment only, a forlorn but beautiful survival from human savagery. On one of the stones we saw the stuccoed figure of a lobster, the symbol of maritime commerce. The stucco is a reminder of the fact that the carved stone of these temples was covered with tinted plaster. Near this bit of Doric architecture is the enormous excavation made to serve as a fish-pond by Theron in the sixth century B.C. From the orchard in the bottom of this hole came the perfume of orange blossoms. It was time to go; we left with a sigh and a backward look.

In the afternoon we resumed our motor pilgrimage, to Castrogiovanni, 78 miles distant in the centre of the island. The road had dried and the going was good, except in our passage through the small towns, where the streets are narrow and roughly cobbled, besides being cluttered with goats, poultry, donkeys, and children. The small boys seemed to think it funny to throw stones as we passed, and others would drop their caps in the way, for no obvious reason. We met donkeys so heavily laden with grass, usually vetch, that only the rider, on top, could be seen. The rain of