und her dying in the grotto, they had received her
last breath and the world would never be the same to them again. A voice
that can do this is rare and, like the power of a giant, rarely found in
the possession of one who knows how to use it worthily.

MOUNT ERYX

CHAPTER VIII--MONTE SAN GIULIANO

Three or four miles inland from Trapani, at the north-west corner of
Sicily, rises a precipitous solitary mountain, nearly 2500 feet high,
with a town on the top. A motor bus makes a circuit of the mountain,
taking one up to the town in about an hour. It proceeds inland, past the
church of the Annunziata, the famous shrine of the Madonna di Trapani,
and the ascent soon begins. As one looks back towards the sea, Trapani
gradually assumes the form that gave it its Greek name of Drepanum, for
it juts out towards the island of Levanzo like a sickle "with the sea
roaring all round it." Marsala is usually visible beyond the innumerable
salt pans and windmills. One of these windmills is especially pleasing;
it consists of five or six dummy ships with real sails on a pond; these
ships form, as it were, the rim of a wheel lying on its side, the spokes
being poles which attach the ships to the axle, an island in the middle
of the pond. The wind blows and the ships race after one another round
and round the pond, causing the poles to work the mechanism which is
inside the island.

The manufacture of salt is one of the chief industries of Trapani and one
of the chief causes of its wealth. In Sicily it practically never rains
during the summer; the sea water is collected in large, open pans, being
raised by means of the screw which has been in use all over the island
for nearly twenty-two centuries, ever since Archimedes invented it to
remove the water from the hold of one of Hiero's ships at Siracusa. All
through the summer the heat of the sun evaporates the moisture, leaving
the salt which is afterwards exported to Newfoundland, Norway, the North
of France and many other countries and used for salting fish and other
purposes.

The road continues to ascend and the horizon appears to ascend also, so
that the sea takes up with it the AEgadean islands till, presently,
Marettimo looks over the top of Levanzo, while Favognana lies away to the
left. The Isola Grande (S. Pantaleo), the fourth island, is not a
prominent object, being low and near the land, a good deal to the south
towards Marsala; but in former times, wh