Quite the most curious proofs of the ancient importance of the island are to be found between the little villages, of S. Ilario and St. Piero di Campo, overlooking the southern coast. We are in a granite country from which the stone is exported for sculptural and architectural purposes. No need of quarries to obtain it, though; it lies scattered over hill and valley in huge blocks, as though some prehistoric giant had dumped cart-load after cart-load with the idea of raising some enormous building, but had been cut off by a god in the midst of his operations. They have a certain defiant air about them, still, those masses of granite. They shrug a shoulder at you from under the houses, they poke out a rounded back in the very middle of the church wall, they lie across your path in winking, slippery masses, nourishing thorns in their bosoms on to which you may fall, and then, if you look up suddenly, you may see one that has climbed on to the shoulders of his brethren and with feathered cap stuck awry, and big empty eye-sockets, is grinning down at you with unholy, sardonic mirth. Every little fold in the hillside, shut in strangely from the outside world, has its chestnut grove and its running stream; but even here there is something uncanny, and no peasant will put his lips to that water without making the sign of the cross above it; he fears he may become possessed by the spirits that haunt it. It is curious, however, that if he takes the water in a glass he considers himself free from the danger. In the midst of all this weird desolation rise two Roman buildings at some little distance from each other; one a spacious ancient church, the other a square tower. They are built of beautifully hewn blocks of granite, oblong or square, but mostly square, at the surface, put together without mortar. The door of the church is low and square, not arched; its face is pierced just under the roof (now fallen in) by a rounded window formed of smaller slabs of stone, also without mortar, in which a bell formerly hung, but which does not give one the idea of having been built for a belfry. The building is rather oblong than square, and was apparently divided into two unequal portions by a low granite wall, which does not seem to have much in common with an altar-railing—it is too much towards the middle of the church and appears to have been altogether too strong a construction. The apse is extraordinarily shallow, pierced by three of the loopholes that at long intervals serve as windows to the church. There are no traces of pillars.