ittle headland jutting into the sea; above,
and in front of the town itself, stands the castle built by Charles V.,
with immense battlements looking over the harbour. From a road skirting
the shore around the base of the fortress one views a wide bay, bounded
to the north by the dark flanks of Sila (I was in sight of the Black
Mountain once more), and southwards by a long low promontory, its level
slowly declining to the far-off point where it ends amid the waves. On
this Cape I fixed my eyes, straining them until it seemed to me that I
distinguished something, a jutting speck against the sky, at its
farthest point. Then I used my field-glass, and at once the doubtful
speck became a clearly visible projection, much like a lighthouse. It
is a Doric column, some five-and-twenty feet high; the one pillar that
remains of the great temple of Hera, renowned through all the Hellenic
world, and sacred still when the goddess had for centuries borne a
Latin name. "Colonna" is the ordinary name of the Cape; but it is also
known as _Capo di Nau_, a name which preserves the Greek word _naos_
(temple).

I planned for the morrow a visit to this spot, which is best reached by
sea. To-day great breakers were rolling upon the strand, and all the
blue of the bay was dashed with white foam; another night would, I
hoped, bring calm, and then the voyage! _Dis aliter visum_.

A little fleet of sailing vessels and coasting steamers had taken
refuge within the harbour, which is protected by a great mole. A good
haven; the only one, indeed, between Taranto and Reggio, but it grieves
one to remember that the mighty blocks built into the sea-barrier came
from that fallen temple. We are told that as late as the sixteenth
century the building remained all but perfect, with eight-and-forty
pillars, rising there above the Ionian Sea; a guide to sailors, even as
when AEneas marked it on his storm-tossed galley. Then it was assailed,
cast down, ravaged by a Bishop of Cotrone, one Antonio Lucifero, to
build his episcopal palace. Nearly three hundred years later, after the
terrible earthquake of 1783, Cotrone strengthened her harbour with the
great stones of the temple basement. It was a more legitimate pillage.

Driven inland by the gale, I wandered among low hills which overlook
the town. Their aspect is very strange, for they consist entirely--on
the surface, at all events--of a yellowish-grey mud, dried hard, and as
bare as the high road. A few yell