roads of Greece. A good deal of the way lay between Ætna and the sea over lavabeds of various ages, among them the identical stream which, coming down fresh and hot, turned Himilco from proceeding straight against Dionysius and Syracuse after the destruction of Messina, and obliged him to make the circuit of the awful mountain. Shortly after noon we passed, on the highest of these lava-beds, Acireale, the most important of several Acis, all of which commemorate Acis, who here, to his grief, associated with Galatea and Polyphemus. Near by are several jagged islands pointed out by tradition as the very rocks which the latter hurled at Ulysses with such poor results. From this point on Taormina lay clear before us in the distance, high up above the sea, though but a short horizontal distance from it. When we reached Giardini, the village on the seashore which serves as a railroad station for Taormina, parched with heat and thirst, we were reminded of the verse of Euripides, "The sea washes away all human ills," and we here began a series of

baths with which we encircled the island. Nemesis marked me when, in exuberance of spirit, I made the understatement, "This bath is worth a dollar," and made it cost me just that amount. Between the road and the shore was a railroad with a cactus hedge on each side of it. In passing this I hardly noticed that my wheel had lightly brushed against a cactus-plant. But we had hardly begun the ascent to Taormina before my wheel was in a state of collapse.

Well, the morrow must take thought for the things of itself. Here was Taormina for us to enjoy. We had planned to spend one night only here, because there was little material for archæological study except the famous theatre, which, in its present state, is Roman. It was indeed refreshing to see near the upper rim of the theatre, and partly covered by its massive but cheap-looking walls of brick, the foundations of a Greek temple in four courses with its perfect joints of stone. But while Syracuse and Girgenti and Selinus were our proper fields for study, Taor

mina was for pleasure. From this eyrie Ætna, which from Catania is in some degree disappointing, as is even Mont Blanc when seen from Chamonix, rises as grandly as does Mont Blanc when seen from the heights across the valley, Flégère or Brévent; and when the sun, rising over Calabria, gives a rosy color to the slope up to the snow-line, one gazes, forgetting the theatre in the glory of the mountain.

Although we had studied the theatre adequately on the first day, we were caught by the charm of the place; and a second sunrise in the theatre seemed so desirable that we broke our carefully drawn up itinerary at the very outset, the necessary two-thirds vote being easily obtained. About 1,000 feet above Taormina rises a height which once served as an acropolis to ancient Tauromenium, crowned with a village and castle called Mola. Having climbed this in the hot afternoon we saw, about another thousand feet above us, a point called Monte Venere, which seemed to dominate the whole region. We subsequently read in

Frances Elliot's "Travels in Sicily," "Certain misguided travellers have even been known to attempt Monte Venere." But not suspecting at the time that we were misguided, but only questioning whether the scaling of Monte Venere would cost us our table d'hôte dinner at the Hôtel Timeo we decided, by a rather doubtful two-thirds vote, to try it. We stormed it at a pace such as the Bavarian division struck at Speicheren when told that a fresh keg of beer was to be broached up there at ten o'clock, and that they must be on hand. As the result of our toil we got a superb view into the interior, including a peep in behind Ætna, which from this point seemed even grander than from Taormina. It was labor well spent.

During our whole stay at Taormina there was no spot on which my eye and my thoughts so frequently rested as on the little tongue of land just below us to the south, which we had passed in coming from Catania. On this vine-covered plain once lay Naxos, settled by men from Chalkis in 734 B.C. What a chain of con

sequences followed upon this small beginning! Leontini and Catania were founded from Naxos itself almost immediately afterward. Dorian Corinth, following hard after Ionian Chalkis, founded Syracuse, and with the birth of western Hellas the strife of Dorian and Ionian was made a part of its life. But before this strife brought ruin a period of expansion and prosperity followed which finds its only parallel in the two centuries and a half of the history of our own country.

Having no desire to traverse again a bad road, we took an early train, which brought us back to Catania at eight o'clock. Our first visit there was to the "divine artificer," who found eight punctures impartially distributed over my two tires. We thus learned to know the cactus in a new light. Hereafter we avoided even a dry piece of it lying in the road as cavalry would avoid caltrops. We took advantage of the necessary delay to visit the most interesting monument of Greek Catania, the theatre, covered by lava, on which rest the houses of the modern city. Enough underground excavation has been done to enable one to realize the appear

ance of the place when Alcibiades here harangued the Catanians to bring them over to the Athenian alliance, and had such drastic force lent to his lisping oratory by a body of Athenian hoplites, who, coming from their camp outside the city, broke down a weak spot in the wall and entered the city before he got to his peroration.

Again it was about noon when we mounted with intention to ride to Lentini, somewhat over a third of the way to Syracuse, across a level plain, and then take a train across the hill-country to within ten miles of Syracuse, there to resume our ride. For an hour or more we were passing through the famous "Campi Læstrygonii, which Cicero calls "uberrima pars Siciliæ, now known as the plain of Catania, the most extensive plain in Sicily. Then we crossed the Symæthus, and soon began a gentle climb, with the sun almost in the zenith. Now and then a turn in the road, or if not that, a look over the shoulder, gave us a fine view of Etna, which kept increasing in majesty as we receded from it. I was thankful that we had not climbed it. That would have in

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