"The 'stagno,' or lagoon, the sea-marsh of Strabo, is a vast expanse of stagnant salt water, so shallow that it may be forded in parts, yet never dried up by the hottest summer; the curse of the country around for the foul and pestilent vapour and the swarms of mosquitoes and other insects it generates at that season, yet compensating the inhabitants with an abundance of fish. The fishery is generally carried on at night, and in the way often practiced in Italy and Sicily, by harpooning the fish, which are attracted by a light in the prow of the boat. It is a curious sight on calm nights to see hundreds of these little skiffs or canoes wandering about with their lights, and making an ever-moving illumination on the surface of the lake."[2] Elba seems to maintain some relation with the mainland by means of the hilly promontory which supports the houses of Piombino, a small town, chiefly interesting as being at no great distance from Populonia, an old Etruscan city of which some considerable ruins still remain. Here, when the clans gathered to bring back the Tarquins to Rome, stood "Sea-girt Populonia, Whose sentinels descry Sardinia's snowy mountain tops Fringing the southern sky." But long after Lars Porsenna of Clusium had retreated baffled from the broken bridge Populonia continued to be a place of some importance, for it has a castle erected in the Middle Ages. But now it is only a poor village; it retains, however, fragments of building recalling its Roman masters, and its walls of polygonal masonry carry us back to the era of the Etruscans.