When we got off it was nearly eleven o'clock, and the flower of the day was gone; but we had vowed to see the sunrise from the theatre of Taormina the next morning; and so we sped off in the heat over roads so bad as to make us repent of all the hard things we had said of the roads of Greece. A good deal of the way lay between Ætna and the sea over lava-beds of various ages, among them the identical stream which, coming down fresh and hot, turned Himilco from proceeding straight against Dionysius and Syracuse after the destruction of Messina, and obliged him to make the circuit of the awful mountain. Shortly after noon we passed, on the highest of these lava-beds, Acireale, the most important of several Acis, all of which commemorate Acis, who here, to his grief, associated with Galatea and Polyphemus. Near by are several jagged islands pointed out by tradition as the very rocks which the latter hurled at Ulysses with such poor results. From this point on Taormina lay clear before us in the distance, high up above the sea, though but a short horizontal distance from it. When we reached Giardini, the village on the seashore which serves as a railroad station for Taormina, parched with heat and thirst, we were reminded of the verse of Euripides, "The sea washes away all human ills," and we here began a series of baths with which we encircled the island. Nemesis marked me when, in exuberance of spirit, I made the understatement, "This bath is worth a dollar," and made it cost me just that amount. Between the road and the shore was a railroad with a cactus hedge on each side of it. In passing this I hardly noticed that my wheel had lightly brushed against a cactus plant. But we had hardly begun the ascent to Taormina before my wheel was in a state of collapse. Well, the morrow must take thought for the things of itself. Here was Taormina for us to enjoy. We had planned to spend one night only here, because there was little material for archæological study except the famous theatre, which in its present state is Roman. It was indeed refreshing to see near the upper rim of the theatre, and partly covered by its massive but cheap-looking walls of brick, the foundations of a Greek temple in four courses with its perfect joints of stone. But while Syracuse and Girgenti and Selinus were our proper fields for study, Taormina was for pleasure. From this eyrie, Ætna, which from Catania is in some degree disappointing, as is even Mont Blanc when seen from Chamonix, rises as grandly as does Mont Blanc when seen from the heights across the valley, Flégère or Brévent; and when the sun, rising over Calabria, gives a rosy color to the slope up to the snow-line, one gazes, forgetting the theatre in the glory of the mountain.