Macadamised road in his comfortable carriage, but mounted on his mule,
leaves him to choose his own track among the numerous ones that form what
is called the _strada-maestro_, or master-road, between city and city.
Here and there he will come to a stone fountain, constructed perhaps
centuries ago, which still furnishes a delightful beverage for himself and
beast. Oftentimes the road leads through a country entirely waste, and
covered with tall bunches of grass or the dwarfish palmetto; sometimes in
the cultivated districts the road is bounded by the formidable
prickly-pear, which grows to the height of twenty feet, or by rows of the
stately aloe, and not unfrequently by wild hedges of myrtle, intertwined
with innumerable climbing plants, whose flowers the traveller can pick as
he rides along. Generally the road-side is perfectly enamelled with
flowers of various hue and fragrance. No majestic river, like the Hudson,
spreads before him, with all its glittering sails and swift steam-boats;
but ever and anon the blue and placid Mediterranean bounds his vision, or
indents the shore, with here and there a picturesque and lazy barque
reflected in the waves.

I have before said that the towns and villages are generally perched like
eagles' nests in high places. This is particularly the case with those of
the interior: many of them are inaccessible to carriages, except the
_Letiga_, a sort of large sedan-chair, gaudily decorated with pictures of
saints, and suspended between two mules, one of which trots before and the
other behind, to the continual din of numerous bells and the harsh shouts
of the muleteers. I never saw one of these vehicles, which are the only
travelling carriages of the interior of Sicily, without thinking that
there might be a _land-sickness_ even worse than a sea-sickness; for the
motion of the letiga in clambering up and down the broken steeps must be
far more tempestuous than any thing ever experienced at sea. Between
village and village you see no snug villa, farm-house, or cottage by the
road-side, or nestling among the trees; but here and there a gloomy
castellated building, a lonely ruin or stern Martello tower, whose
dilapidated walls crown some steep headland, against whose base washes the
ever-murmuring waves. Now the traveller descends to the beach, his only
road; the mountains are far inland, or dip their broad bases in the
sea-foam, or impend in fearful masses over his head. He ascends again, a