What a moment was that when, toward the end of the afternoon, after toiling up from the station on the north side of Girgenti to the city itself, which occupied the site of the acropolis of Akragas, we looked down on the plateau sloping southward toward the sea, and dotted with the famous ruins long known to us by photographs. About a mile below us, in the direction of the ruins, was the Hôtel des Temples, which we had been told in Syracuse was to close for the summer the day before. But as "the Greeks got into Troy by trying," we thought we would try to get into this hotel, and be near our goal. At the door a boy declared that the house was closed; but at our request he said he would call the padrone. In ten minutes there appeared in riding clothes, and leading a horse, the most charming landlord of Sicily, with a bewitching smile and the manners of a gentleman. He said that, although his house was closed and his cook gone, he had not the heart to send us back up into the city. We could have, he said, eight or nine beds apiece, and, as he had a hunting comrade with him for the night, he could give us some soup and meat. More than satisfied to have established a base of operations, without a delay of five minutes we were at the Concordia Temple, the most perfectly preserved Greek temple, unless we except perhaps the Theseum. Having an hour and a half of daylight, we used it in getting a first view of nearly everything on the plateau, and then returned to what we supposed was to be a frugal meal. But the dinner was an Akragantine feast, the best of the whole journey, with the possible exception of the next one at the same table. We wondered what sort of a dinner the regular cook would have produced if this was done by a novice; and when the padrone made apologies for his dinner, we searched his smiling face for traces of sarcasm. The next day we enjoyed in detail what we had already enjoyed in the lump, that row of temples lined up along the southern edge of the plateau which here ends in a rocky precipice. These temples when new, with the city of half a million inhabitants behind it, and the acropolis above it with still more temples, must have been a very effective sight to one coming up from the sea five miles away. [Illustration: SO-CALLED CONCORDIA TEMPLE AT GIRGENTI] Although the material of the temples is a friable yellow sandstone, quarried near by, we must not in reconstructing our picture think of them as yellow temples. They doubtless had stucco and paint enough to hide this core. The stone is so porous that it is not surprising to find the columns on the south side--_i.e._, the side most exposed to the sirocco--badly eaten away. The whole line dates from the fifth century, and was doubtless planned and begun by Theron, who had armies of slaves from Himera.