he order in which they were
visited. The first are those of Egesta, or Segeste, as it is sometimes
called; a city said to have been built in the remote age of the Siculi,
and which was destroyed by Agathocles, the potter's son, who reduced all
Sicily two hundred and eighty years before the Christian era. It lies
about forty or fifty miles from Palermo, among the mountains which cluster
round the famed Mount Erix, on which once stood a temple dedicated to
Venus. On leaving Alcamo, which may be called a city of convents, midway
between Palermo and Segeste, the broad slopes of an ample valley lie
before the traveller, which though almost treeless, are waving with beans,
and grain and grass. In the depth, is a river meandering among fragrant
oleanders; on the left, the valley is intersected by a range of distant
mountains; on the right is a beautiful bay of the Mediterranean. Across
the valley the mountains form a green amphitheatre, and high in its
remotest part is seen the Temple of Segeste, but merely as a point of
light and shade upon the bosom of the mountain. The next view, if he takes
our route, is from the ancient Grecian city of Catafimi, itself perched on
a mountain's top. He looks down a deep luxuriant vale, and on a grassy
knoll about three miles distant, lifted from the depths of the valley by
precipitous crags, stands the solitary temple; and if seen as we saw it,
receiving the last golden rays of the setting sun while all below is
wrapped in shade. The next day, would he visit the temple, his road lies
through the valley of which I have last spoken. And surely he never passed
through such an Arcadian scene as this. Almond and orange trees fill the
air with fragrance; his path struggles through the tangled flowers, the
cistus and the blue convolvulus, and he disturbs the nightingale in her
pleasant haunt. At length, emerging from the valley, and climbing the
steep side of a mountain, he stands before the temple. It is a majestic
pile, about two hundred feet in length and eighty-eight in breadth, having
fourteen columns on each side and six at each end, in all thirty-six
columns, of about six feet in diameter; not fluted, as is usual in Grecian
Doric temples, but having a very peculiar form. It stands on a platform
raised on three gigantic steps. All the columns are standing; the
entablatures and pediments are in pretty good preservation, but it is
roofless, and flowers and weeds are now waving where once trode th