We stood still, held our breath, and marked the drear silence that reigned around, where the sound of a footstep or a whisper struck the ear like an unhallowed intrusion breaking the still repose of the ancient dead. Then we shouted and listened to the hollow echoes that rumbled through the rocky mansion, and died away in the distance, among miles of long galleries and reverberating caverns. No scene could be more impressive--I almost expected the dead inmates of this gloomy abode to start up before my face, and greet me with the accents of three thousand years ago. We traversed one long passage after another, but the labyrinth appeared to be endless. The excavations are said to be fifteen miles in extent; they may be twice as long for aught I know: the only wonder is that any man ever undertook to measure them. After all I have said, the reader will have no adequate conception of these wonderful abodes: he must go to the spot to know what they really are. I never knew the light of day so cheerful, delicious, and exhilarating as when I got out of this dark place, into the open air; it seemed like passing from death to life. The little monk was very thankful for a ninepence which I gave him for his trouble in showing me through the catacombs. Going along one of the streets of the town, I saw a statue of St. Paul, shaking the viper from his hand. This is believed to be the spot where the house stood in which he lodged while in the island. There is a bay on the southwestern shore, where, according to tradition, he was shipwrecked. This I determined to visit, and hired a stout boy, whom I found in the street, to show me the way. We travelled over a road on the bare rock, very rough, and which grew rougher every mile. The country was pretty much like what I have mentioned, parcelled out into little square inclosures, with low cabins in the sides of the walls, looking like dog-kennels, but designed as lodging-places for the men who guard the fields by night. By-and-by the road began to descend, and I soon found we were close to the sea. I was obliged to clamber down the ragged rocks, but my companion jumped from cliff to cliff like a goat. We soon reached the margin of the bay, and he conducted me to a bold projection in the rocky shore, which tradition has marked out as the precise spot where the ship which was bearing St. Paul to Rome, struck the land, as related in the twenty-seventh chapter of the Acts of the Apostles.