The mineral resources of Sicily were of remarkable richness and variety. Gold and silver were found in considerable quantities. There were mines of lead, iron, quicksilver, copper, antimony. Volcanic products, such as vitriol, sal-ammoniac, naphtha, pitch, and sulphur, were obtained with trifling labor. The deposits of rock-salt and alum, of inexhaustible extent and unusual purity, were of themselves sufficient, if properly developed, to insure the prosperity of any nation. The fine jaspers and marbles of the Sicilian quarries were well known to the builders of antiquity, and the Moorish architects were not slow to recognize their excellence and to employ them in the construction of the palaces with which the Arab nobles embellished the suburbs of the great centres of commerce and power. The sunny slopes of the hills furnished abundant pasturage for droves of cattle and flocks of goats and sheep. The horses of Italy were renowned for their fleetness and symmetry. Among the pursuits of the Saracen colonists apiculture was not neglected, and honey was exported in quantities to Italy and other countries of Christian Europe. But meagre accounts of the manufactures and trade of Moorish Sicily have been transmitted to posterity. It is well known, however, that commercial relations existed between the principal ports of the island and the maritime nations of the Mediterranean. The merchantmen of its thriving seaports exchanged the products of the East and West in the harbors of Malaga, Alexandria, Constantinople. No people surpassed the Sicilians in the delicacy and beauty of their fabrics, and the silks of Palermo, interwoven with texts and devices in gold, were highly esteemed, and much sought after by the luxurious potentates and nobles of the Mohammedan world. Of all the imposing palaces, baths, and mosques which once adorned the Moorish cities of the island, unhappily not a vestige now remains. Nothing but a few scattered and broken inscriptions has survived the violence of mediæval times, to attest the pomp and splendor of the Sicilian emirs. The architecture of no other people has suffered such complete and systematic annihilation. Two or three structures, erected during the rule of the Norman princes, but whose proportions and ornamentation, while remarkable, yet disclose unmistakably the decadence of architectural skill, are all we have upon which to found an opinion of the magnificence of Mohammedan Palermo.