with our mechanical means,
were indeed a great feat. The columns were not of single pieces, but
composed of several, and they now lie, to use an unpoetical phrase, like
rows of enormous cheeses. The great temple was three hundred and
thirty-four feet long, one hundred and fifty-four wide; its porticoes at
each end were four columns in depth, eight in width; a double row on the
sides of the cella or interior edifice, which in all Grecian temples was
the sanctum sanctorum. In _all_, there must have been eighty columns.
There is one remarkable feature about this temple, which is, that none of
the columns were fluted except those of the eastern end. About thirty
paces from this ruin, which the Sicilians call the Pileri di Giganti, or
Pillars of the Giants, are the remains of another temple which was about
two hundred feet long: its entablature was supported by thirty-six fluted
columns of seven feet in diameter and thirty-five feet long, each of a
single piece of stone. Only a few fragments of the columns remain standing
in their places. Treading another thirty paces, you come to a temple which
is of rather larger dimensions than the one last mentioned. The columns of
this were also fluted, but no part of the edifice is standing, except a
solitary pilaster, which was probably a portion of the cella. These
temples were built of a hard but porous stone, of a light color, and were
probably covered with a thin coat of cement. They command an extensive
view both of sea and land, and in their primal days must, with their
tower-like columns, their sculptured entablatures and pediments, have
risen above the scene in majestic grandeur.

Three quarters of a mile from these temples was the ancient port, now
choked with sand, and near it are the remains of edifices supposed to have
been the magazines. On an adjoining hill are remnants of three temples and
two towers, in almost undistinguishable ruin. We left Selinunte with a
lasting but melancholy impression, and were reminded of the lines:

'Two or three columns and many a stone,
Marble and granite, with grass o'ergrown:

* * * * *

Remnants of things which have passed away,
Fragments of stone rear'd by creatures of clay!'

Girgenti, anciently called Agragas and Agrigentum, is situated on the
southern coast of Sicily, in a delicious country; the modern city was
built by the Saracens on the summit of a hill upward of eleven hundred
feet above the lev