war, and who saw the villages and buildings everywhere in ruins, and even the towns were full of heaps of ruins and decaying houses. The valley of Aosta, the country of the Salassians, is remarkable for its gold-dust and gold-washings in the river Doria. Gold still exists there, but little, for such veins often are entirely drained. SICILIA. In passing on to the islands, I shall first speak of Sicily, the queen of the islands in the Mediterranean. It derives, like Italy and most other countries, its name from its inhabitants, and Sicilia is the country of the Siculi. I have already said that Itali and Siculi are the same name in different dialects, and that accordingly both denote the same people. The general tradition of antiquity is, that the Siculi migrated from Italy into the island, and pushed the Sicani, its previous inhabitants, into the western and southern parts. Those who go back to the mythical ages, represent the island in the most ancient times as inhabited by Gigantes, Cyclopes, and Laestrygones. It is a widely-spread opinion among the ancients, that the Sicani belonged to the race of the Iberians. The Sicani called themselves Autochthons, while, according to others, they had come from Iberia, having been displaced by Ligurians; but such an emigration, so far across the sea and by so many intermediate countries as the Balearian islands and Sardinia, or, if you please, along the coast of Africa, is incredible in the case of a people like the Iberians, who never were great navigators. I believe that, in this account, we can keep only to this one point, that, according to the conviction of those who most thoroughly understand the circumstances, the Sicani belonged to the Iberian race, even if we admit that the tradition about their emigration is without foundation; and this is very possible. It is equally possible that the story about the emigration of the Siculi from Italy is without foundation; at least our authorities for it are not authentic. Another question is, as to whether the Sicani and Siculi were everywhere different people; the testimonies of the ancients must, of course, be of the greatest weight to us in this matter. I am not one of those who build history upon the mere names of nations, and am, therefore, not much inclined to lay great stress upon the resemblance of the two names; but Virgil uses Sicani and Siculi as synonymous, and this leads us to infer that he probably had more ancient authors before him, who had done the same. It is true also, that such a change of form is not unprecedented, for _Aequus_, _Aequanus_, _Aequulus_, _Aequicus_, and _Aequiculus_, are only derivatives from the same basis; and in like manner we might regard _Sicanus_ and _Siculus_ as simple derivatives of the stem _Sicus_. I should believe this to be quite correct, were it not that the ancients speak so positively of the Iberian origin of the Sicani. I should, in fact, reject this origin, were it not certain that Iberians existed in