194 KAMBLES OF A NATURALIST. 



to offer his services to the travellers for the honour 

 of the thing, as he expressed it, and probably also 

 a little in consideration of the recompense which our 

 cook did not fail to promise in our names. After a 

 considerable amount of talking, gesticulating, and 

 bargaining, we were installed in a room, which was 

 cleared for our accommodation of a pile of half-rotten 

 onions, which had impregnated the air with such 

 a sharp and nauseating smell, that we would almost 

 have preferred the dreadful nuisance of the cock- 

 roaches. I need scarcely observe that we were left 

 to furnish our apartment as we could. As at our 

 preceding halting place, we were readily supplied 

 with planks and tressles, while our mattresses and 

 capes, brought from the Santa Kosalia, supplied us 

 with all we needed for beds and bedding. 



Castellamare is the only point along the whole 

 extent of the gulf which bears its name in which 

 ships can find a safe haven in case of storms; 

 a circumstance which readily explains the degree 

 of importance attached to this little port. Every 

 precaution had indeed been taken, in past ages, 

 for the defence of the place, and the old town was 

 originally built upon a promontory of calcareous 

 rock, which projects far into the sea. A broad and 

 deep trench was interposed between it and the main 

 land ; high walls, which were in part cut out of the 

 solid rock, surrounded it on every side ; whilst, at its 

 extremest seaward point, a formidable donjon rose 

 threatening on high, upreared on foundations which 

 had been laid far below the level of the waves. A 

 low vaulted chapel, decorated with the Cross of the 



