The prisoners and the spoil were despatched to Palermo under a strong guard of Africans. Six days and nights were required for the painful journey. Eager to arrive at their destination, the brutal soldiery refused to allow their captives a moment of rest, and the march was accomplished without a halt, except when the necessity of preparing food or the physical obstacles of the mountain pathways caused delay. At the approach of the melancholy procession the gates of the Moslem capital poured forth its thousands of turbaned spectators. The sight of the long train of captives, and of plunder such as had never before dazzled the eyes of the most experienced veteran, aroused the fervid enthusiasm of the multitude. Some displayed their joy by extravagant gestures and dances, but the majority, more decorous, chanted in unison appropriate passages from the Koran. Many of the captives, after unspeakable sufferings, perished in the subterranean dungeons of Palermo. Others obtained an infamous security by the public renunciation of their faith. The fall of Syracuse practically completes the Moslem conquest of Sicily. The degenerate monarch, who, through his inexcusable neglect, was responsible for the loss of the island, made no serious effort to recover it. A few insignificant towns, the principal of which was Taormina, indebted for their safety rather to the indifference of the Saracens than to their own impregnability, still remained faithful to the Emperor. The Byzantine standard--the emblem of rapacity, bigotry, and every political abuse--disappeared forever from those lofty ramparts where it had waved for so many centuries. Henceforth the prowess of the conquerors was to be principally exerted against each other. The annals of Sicily for many subsequent years are a tedious and unprofitable recital of conspiracies, assassinations, and civil commotions, of the ineffectual efforts of ambitious captains aspiring to independent sovereignty, of the rapid succession of emirs of sanguinary tastes and mediocre abilities, of defiance of and indecisive conflicts with the princes of Kairoan. History was repeating itself. The disorders which had disgraced the society of every Moslem country, when the apparent cohesion of races was dissolved by the defeat and expulsion of the common enemy, were now exhibited on a smaller scale, but with no less vindictiveness, upon the narrow theatre of Sicily. Elevation to the emirate, whether sanctioned or not by the confirmation and investiture of the African Sultan, had become a most perilous distinction. Tribes and factions pursued each other with relentless hatred. Not even in Spain were the glaring defects of the Moslem polity more conspicuous, or the vicious character of the components of the social organization more thoroughly revealed. The constant deportation of criminals and political malcontents by the Sultans of Africa, as a measure of prudence whose inexpediency was demonstrated in every new insurrection,