Because of this episode Fortunato found his offered services frigidly dispensed with the next day when he presented himself, Jane and Peripatetica setting out alone to explore the town of Girgenti. They were quite sure they could themselves discover a short cut to the small city which would be much more amusing than the dusty highway. It seemed but a stone’s throw distant, and surely by striking down this footpath, and rounding that rise.... An hour later, panting, dripping, and disgusted, they climbed into the rear of the town, having stumbled 216through the boulders of dry water-courses, struggled over the huge old rugged pavements of ancient Akragas—washed out of their concealment by winter torrents—skirted outlying villas, and laboured up steps. The short cut had proved the longest way round they could possibly have taken to the inadequate, shabby little museum they had set out to see in this modern successor of the great Greek city. Girgenti, though one of the most thriving of Sicilian towns, thanks to its sulphur mines, only manages to fill one small corner of the hill acropolis of that ancient city, which once covered all the miles stretching between this and the temple-crowned ridge of the southern boundary of cliffs. Akragas found space for nearly a million of inhabitants where Girgenti nourishes but twenty thousand or so. It was not till 580 B.C. that this Rhodian colony was founded, so Akragas was a century and a half younger than her great rival, Syracuse—the offspring of Corinth. But that site on the steep river-girt hill, rising from such fertile country, proved so favourable to life and commerce; trade with the opposite coast of Africa developed so richly, that Akragas’ rise to wealth and power was rapid, and she was soon pressing Syracuse hard for the place of first city. Her temples were the greatest of all Sicily, almost of all Greece. The city’s magnificence became a bye-word, and accounts of the wealth and prodigality of its private citizens read like Arabian Nights imaginings. In the public gymnasium the people used golden strigils and gold vessels for oil. One rich Akragantine kept slaves in waiting all day at the door of his great mansion to invite every passing stranger in to feast and repose in his spacious courts, 217where there were baths and fresh garments always waiting and slaves to entertain with dance and music; flower garlands and food and wine unlimited at his call. There was wine in the cellars by the reservoir full—three hundred reservoirs of nine hundred gallons each—hewn in the solid rock! This same genial Gelleas, when five hundred riders came at once from Gela, took them all in, and, it being the dead of winter, presented each man with new warm garments.