4 RAMBLES OF A NATURALIST. 



mains of the conqueror of Lepanto*, is crumbling 

 to ruins, with all its treasures, unheeded ; while, at 

 a distance of six miles, lie the colossal ruins of 

 Selinontef, the ancient rival of Carthage and of 

 Syracuse. At Salerni and at Calatafimi, the old 

 Saracenic and Norman castles have opened their dis- 

 mantled keeps to a ragged population, in whom our 

 presence seemed to excite the most indescribable 

 astonishment. At Alcamo, a town containing 20,000 

 inhabitants, and having broad well-paved streets, 

 which is situated on the only high road of Sicily, 

 and is one of the principal places of resort of the 

 Palermo grandees when they do chance to travel, 

 we were obliged, as everywhere else, to lend the 

 landlord of the hotel money to buy our dinner. 

 Through the whole of our journeyings, along unbeaten 

 tracts as well as in the high road, every traveller 

 we met had a loaded carbine slung across his saddle 



* Amongst the other curiosities contained in this church I may 

 instance, in addition to the tomb of Don John of Austria, the four 

 Sibyls, which are placed side by side with the four Evangelists in the 

 Choir. 



f The town of Selinonte, which was almost always at enmity 

 with Segeste, and often in alliance with Syracuse, continued for a 

 long time to prosper in its wars. It succumbed for the first time to 

 Hannibal ; but the inhabitants, having been brought back to the 

 charge by Hermocrates, re-took the town. Although Selinonte was 

 almost always a tributary of the Carthaginians, it promptly revived, 

 until, being successively besieged by the Syracusans and the 

 Carthaginians, it called the Romans to its aid, and soon fell to rise 

 no more. No ancient city in Sicily affords so high an idea of the 

 religious feeling and of the wealth of its inhabitants, as Selinonte 

 Accumulated in a vast solitude, bounded by distant mountains and 

 the neighbouring sea, these colossal ruins and memorable sanctuaries 

 strike the imagination with astonishment. 



