"My fever continued to harass me until I took a trip to Ægina, which I made for the purpose of change of air, as well as of correcting and revising our drawings of the Temple of Jupiter Panhellenius. In both respects I have succeeded beyond my hopes. I am now in perfect health, and have made some improvements and additions to our observations which will be of importance to our work. Taking ladders from here, I have also succeeded in measuring the columns of a temple supposed to have been that of Venus--I think Hecate--which are of universally admired proportion, and so high that hitherto no travellers have been able to manage them. Only two columns still exist. They belong, I found, to the posticum between the antæ. In digging at their base to prove this, I came upon a very beautiful foot in a sandal, life-size, of Parian marble, of precisely the same school and style as those of our Panhellenian discovery.[48] You may imagine I counted on nothing less than finding a collection as interesting and extensive as the other. I procured, with some difficulty, authority from the archons of the island, and struck a bargain by which they were to have one half of the produce of the excavation, which was to be made at my expense, and I the other, with a first refusal of purchasing their portion. I dug for three days without finding the smallest fragment, and, what was worse, satisfied myself that it had been dug over and re-dug a hundred times, the foundations of the temple having served time out of mind as a quarry for the Æginetans. The money spent was not very great, the time wasted was all to the good of my health, and I was able to make a curious observation on the foundations of the building. Greek temples are commonly on rock. This was not; and the foundations were no less than 14 to 15 feet deep, the first three courses of well-cut stone, the last set in mortar on a wall of small stones in mortar, at the sides of which is a rubble-work of largish stones beaten down with sea sand and charcoal and bones of sacrifices. Underneath, again, are other courses of well-cut stones which form a solid mass under the whole temple. I have also with great difficulty, since there are no carpenters in this country, ascertained what I spoke of before as a matter of conjecture--viz. the entasis or swelling of the Greek columns. A straight line stretched from the capital to the base showed the swelling at about a third of the height to be in the Temple of Minerva an inch, in that of Ægina half an inch, which is the same proportion in both. The ruined state of the columns of the Theseum makes it less easy to ascertain the exact swelling. Those of Minerva Polias and the Erechtheum are also swelled. I have no doubt that it was a general rule with the Greek architects, though it has hitherto escaped the eyes of Stuart and our most accurate observers."