A flight of ancient steps, in tolerable preservation, leads from the Marinella to the Acropolis, where the covert-ways, gates, and walls, built of large squared stones, may still be traced all round the hill. A little to the west of the Acropolis is the small pestiferous lake, Yhalici, partly choked up with sand. In ancient times this was called _Stagnum Gonusa_, and it is said the great philosopher Empedocles purified it and made the air around it wholesome, by clearing a mouth towards the sea, and conveying a good stream of water through it. The Fountain of Diana, at a short distance, which supplied this stream, still pours forth a copious volume of excellent water; but it is allowed to run and stagnate over the plain, and now adds to the _malaria_ created by the stagnant lake. The surrounding country is wholly uncultivated, and, where not a morass, is covered with underwood, dwarf palms, and myrtle-bushes of a prodigious growth. For six months in the year, Selinunte is a most unhealthy place; and though the stranger may visit it by day-time without much danger of catching the infection, it seems scarcely possible to sleep there in summer and escape the malaria fever in one of its worst forms. Of four English artists who tried the experiment in 1822, not one escaped; and Mr. Harris, a young architect of great promise, died in Sicily from the consequences. These gentlemen made a discovery of some importance. They dug up near one of the temples some sculptured metopæ with figures in rilievo, of a singular primitive style, which seems to have more affinity with the Egyptian or the Etruscan, than with the Greek style of a later age. There are probably few Greek fragments of so ancient a date in so perfect a state of preservation.