that we should be sorry to trust in British hands, is walled in by cliffs so bold, so rugged, and standing out so beautifully in relief, that for a moment we cannot choose but envy the citizen of _Panormus_. But we may not tarry even here; _we have more things_ to see, and every day is getting hotter than the last. JOURNEY TO SEGESTE. Leaving Palermo early, we pass _Monreale_ in our way to the Doric columns of _Segeste_, and find ourselves, before the heat of day has reached its greatest intensity, at a considerable elevation above the plain on which the capital stands, amidst mountains which, except in the difference of their vegetation, remind us not a little of the configuration of certain wild parts of the Highlands, where Ben Croachin flings his dark shadow across Loch Awe. Indeed, we were thinking of this old and favourite fishing haunt with much complacency, when two men suddenly came forth from behind the bristly aloes and the impenetrable cactus--ill-looking fellows were they; but, moved by the kindest intentions for our safety, they offer to conduct us through the remainder of the defile. This service our hired attendant from Palermo declined, and we push on unmolested to Partenico, our halting-place during the heat of the day. It is a town of some extent, large enough to afford two fountains of a certain pretension, but execrably dirty within. Twelve thousand inhabitants has Partenico, and five churches. Out of its five locandas, who shall declare the worst? Of that in which we had first taken refuge, (as, in a snow-storm on the Alps, any _roof_ is Paradise,) we were obliged to quit the shelter, and walk at _noon_, at _midsummer_, and in _Sicily_, a good mile _up_ a main street, which, beginning in habitations of the dimensions of our almshouses, ends in a few huts intolerably revolting, about which troops of naked children defy vermin, and encrust themselves in filth. At one door we could not help observing that worst form of _scabies_, the _gale à grosses bulles;_ so we had got, it appeared, from _Scylla_ into _Charybdis_, and were in the very preserves of Sicilian _itch_, and we prognosticate it will spread before the month expires wherever human skin is to be found for its entertainment. Partenico lies in a scorching plain full of malaria. Having passed the three stifling hours of the day here, we proceed on our journey to _Alcamo_, a town of considerable size, which looks remarkably well from the plain at the distance of four miles--an impression immediately removed on passing its high rampart gate. Glad to escape the miseries with which it threatens the _détenu_, we pass out at the other end, and zigzag down a hill of great beauty, and commanding such views of sea and land as it would be quite absurd to write about. Already a double row of aloë, planted at intervals, marks what is to be your course afar off, and is a faithful guide till it lands you in a Sicilian plain.