18–24 February 1833

Shall I count it, like the Berber at Rome, the greatest wonder of all to find myself here ? I have this day drank the waters of the fountain Arethusa and washed my hands in it. I ate the very fragrant Hyblaean honey with my break- fast. I have been into the old Temple of Mi- nerva, praised for its beauty by Cicero, and now preserved and concealed by having its pillars half buried in the walls of the cathedral. A modern facade conceals the front, but the severe beauty of a Parthenon peeps from the sides in projecting flutes and triglyphs. It was seven in the morning, and I found the priests saying mass in the oratories of the church. The Amer- ican consul called upon our party in the fore- noon, and we rode with him into the country. We stopped at a crumbled arch, reputed as the spot where Cicero found the globe and cylin- der, the tomb of Archimedes. Did I hold my breath for awe ? Then went we to the catacombs, old enough, nothing else, mere excavations in the living rock for cemeteries, but the air was soft and the trees in bloom, and the fields cov- ered with beautiful wild flowers to me unknown, and amidst ruins of ruins Nature still was fair. Close by, we found the aqueduct, which once supplied the magnificent city of Hiero, now turning a small grist-mill. Then we went to Dionysius' Ear; a huge excavation into the hard rock which I am not going to describe. Poor people were making twine in it, and my ear was caught on approaching it by the loud noise made by their petty wheels in the vault. A little beyond the entrance the floor was cov- ered with a pool of water. We found a twine- maker who very readily took us, one after another, on his shoulders into the recess 250 feet, and planted us on dry land at the bottom of the cave. We shouted and shouted and the cave bellowed and bellowed; the twine-maker tore a bit of paper in the middle of the cave, and very loud it sounded ; then they fired a pistol at the entrance and we had our fill of thunder.

Visited the Latomie of the gardens of the Capuchins, a strange place. It is a large and beautiful garden, full of oranges and lemons and pomegranates, in a deep pit, say lao feet below the surrounding grounds. All this is a vast ex- cavation in the solid rock, and we first came upon it from above and peeped down the precipice into this fragrant cellar far below us. " Opus est ingens magnificum regum ac tyrannorum. 'Totum ex saxo in mirandam altitudinem depresso" etc. Cicero. All this excavation is manifestly the work of art, — Cyclopean all. After circumam- bulating the brink above, we went to the Con- vent and got admission to the garden below. A handsome and courteous monk conducted us, and showed us one huge arch wherein he said the Athenian prisoners recited the verses of Euripides for their ransom ; wild and grand effect. All Syracuse must have been built out of this enormous quarry, traces of works on a vast scale in oldest time.