The banks of the classic Neathus have lost all their boasted beauty and verdure, and are now covered with sedgy marshes and stunted trees and shrubs; very different from that umbrageous foliage which clothed them in the days of Theocritus. Having ridden for the greater part of the day under a burning sun, during the sultry hours of afternoon—a time which the voluptuous Italian passes in the slumbers of the siesta—I was half choked by thirst and the oppressive heat of the atmosphere, and Cartouche was beginning to falter with fatigue. As I slowly followed the tortuous windings of the road to Crotona, the approaching dusk of evening gradually invested in its sombre veil the brilliant scenery: the Adriatic turned from gold to crimson and the distant hills from emerald green to misty purple, until their bright summits faded away into the dim horizon, and the blue vault of heaven assumed the aspect of a spangled dome, spanning land and sea; while the moon ascended slowly to her place, like a mighty globe of liquid silver rising from the dark heaving waters of the ocean. Evening had given place to night: but such a night! It seemed more beautiful than day! The balsamic odours of orange, olive and lemon groves, were wafted on the soft, refreshing breeze, till the whole air seemed to thicken with delicious fragrance. The sweet strains of the "Ave Maria" stole up the valley from the lighted chapel of a solitary convent, and the deep-toned chimes from a distant steeple were borne on the cool air, mingled with the tinklings from the lowing herds, and the evening hymn chanted by the shaggy-coated herdsman as he drove his cattle towards the basin of a gushing fountain. Myriads of insects buzzed around us, and Cartouche kept switching his long tail like a whip and shaking his ears with irritation, as they floated in a black cloud around him. I found the modern Crotona to be little better than a village, dominated by the citadel or castle. Every vestige or memorial of its ancient grandeur had passed away, save the moss-grown column on the cape; and nothing survived of the once-magnificent city, from the gate of which the gigantic Milo led forth a hundred thousand men to battle. The superb temples over which waved the banner of Justinian, the massive walls and brazen gates which the cohorts of Totila the Goth assailed in vain, had long since crumbled into dust, and a wretched hamlet marked the site of the ancient Crotona of Mysellus.