About one o’clock the road wound through a thick wood of olive-trees, upon an eminence. Going down this steep descent, we found at the foot a little hamlet, consisting of four or five houses and an oil-mill. We stopped here to rest our mules, and I strolled round the place. The mill was a tall, square tower of stone; great numbers of oil-jars lay scattered about upon the ground: the sight of them made me think of the Forty Thieves. In one part of the mill, I found a large quantity of oranges packed in boxes for shipping; very probably they found their way to Boston in the course of the spring. The houses were rude stone edifices, of one story. I went into one of them for curiosity: the door stood wide open. In the kitchen, I found a great clumsy fireplace like a blacksmith’s forge, and two or three awkward wooden stools, but nothing like a table, except a sort of dresser, on which stood an earthen dish or two, and a few cups. Heaps of straw were lying about, and a few trumpery things, all at sixes and sevens. Pigeons were roosting overhead and flying about the room. It was the oddest looking kitchen I was ever in. Another room had a bed and a chair; and these were all the articles of furniture which the house contained.--Such is the description of an ordinary country-house in this part of the world. Could one of these Sicilian peasants be put in possession of the house of a New England farmer, and behold his chairs and tables, his silver spoons and crockery, his desks and bureaus, and other comfortable and ornamental furniture, he would think himself a rich man. But the Sicilian, although he dwells upon a soil three times as fertile as that of New England, and which is never encumbered with ice or snow, remains poor amidst all the bountiful gifts of nature. A mild climate makes him indolent, and he uses just strength enough to scratch the ground and throw the seed into it; the fertility of the soil does all the rest; and the most of his time is spent in doing nothing, or in unproductive amusement.