, and have learned to trim the boat in which you have
embarked, it is long before your ear becomes accustomed to the stunning
sound of a hundred little bells fastened to the mules' heads. "_Do_ take
them off," said we, after half an hour's impatience; "do, pray, remove
these infernal bells!" "And does the signor imagine that _any_ mule
would go without falling asleep, or lying down, were it not for the
bells?" We arrived safe and stunned, in about an hour and a half, at the
foot of a tower of no Roman or Sicilian growth, but a bastard
construction upon the ancient foundations of Epipolae. We saw, however,
some fine remains of a wall, which might have been called Cyclopian, but
that the blocks which composed it were of _one_ size. Our guide, a
mason, and, of course, an amateur of walls, insists upon our calling
this a _capo d'opera_, as, no doubt, it is. On the spot itself there is
nothing antique to see; but the drive or ride is one of the most
remarkable in all the world! It takes you over from four to five miles
of a rocky table-land, by a very gradual ascent, abounding with
indelible traces of human frequentation, else long forgotten. The deep
channelling of those wheels is still extant that had transported million
tons of stone out of those interminable lines of quarries, to raise
buildings of such grandeur as to give occasion to Cicero to say, that he
had "seen nothing so imposing as the ancient port and walls of
Syracuse!" The scene is altogether wild and peculiar; you pass for miles
amidst excavated rock, and on the flagstones of ancient pavement,
between the _commissures_ of which wild-flowers, principally of the
_thistle_ kind, spring up into vigorous life, and look as if they grew
out of the very stone itself. The small conduit-pipe of an underground
aqueduct still serves to carry from the same sources the same water; but
the people who used it are gone. In the wildest parts of the way, the
large flat stones, that formed a continuous road, serve for
_barn-floors_--or rather _threshing_-floors that require _no barns_--on
which long-horned cattle tread out, without any chance of bad weather to
injure, the golden grain of the Sicilian harvest. Here lives the
blue-breasted _hermit bird_ in unmolested solitude; and, careless of
solitude, the _Passer solitarius_ utters her small twitter in the
hollows--a few goats browse amongst the scanty thistles, and one or two
dogs protect them. Snakes, hatched in vast number unde