At first these rains, sweeping down torrentially, unhindered by the lost forests, only enriched the plain with the long hoarded sweetness of the trees, but by and by the living rivers grew heavy and thick, vomiting mud into the ever-shallowing harbours, and the lands soured with the undrained stagnant water. Commerce turned more and more to deeper ports, and mosquitoes began to breed in the brackish soil that was making fast between the city and the sea. Who of all those powerful land-owners and rich merchants could ever have dreamed that little buzzing insects could sting a great city to death? But they did. Fevers grew more and more prevalent. The malaria-haunted 41population went more and more languidly about their business. The natives, hardy and vigorous in the hills, were but feebly repulsed. Carthage demanded tribute, and Rome took it, and changed the city’s name from Poseidonia to Pæstum. After Rome grew weak Saracen corsairs came in by sea and grasped the slackly defended riches, and the little winged poisoners of the night struck again and again, until grass grew in the streets, and the wharves crumbled where they stood. Finally the wretched remnant of a great people wandered away into the more wholesome hills, the marshes rotted in the heat and grew up in coarse reeds where corn and vine had flourished, and the city melted back into the wasted earth. So wicked a name had the miasmatic, fever-haunted plain that age after age rolled away and only birds and serpents and wild beasts dared dwell there, or some outlaw chose to face its sickly terrors rather than the revenge of the law. “Think,” said Jane, “of the sensations of the man who came first upon those huge temples standing lonely in the naked plain! So lonely that their very existence had been long forgotten. Imagine the awe and surprise of such a discovery——” They were spinning—had been spinning for half an hour—along a rather bad highway, and Peripatetica found it hard to call up the proper emotions in answer to Jane’s suggestion, so occupied was she in looking for the relishing grimness insisted upon by the guide-books. There were reeds; there were a very few innocuous-looking buffalo, but for the most part there were nice cultivated fields of grain and vines on either hand, and occasionally half a mile or so of neglected shrubby heath. 42“Why, half of Long Island is wilder than this!” grumbled Peripatetica. “Where’s the Dark Tower country? Childe Roland would think this a formal garden. I insist upon Berliet taking us somewhere that will thick our blood with horror.” As it turned out, a wise government had drained the accursed land, planted eucalyptus trees, and was slowly reclaiming the plain to its old fertility, but the guide-books feel that the story is too good to be spoiled by modern facts, and cling to the old version of 1860.