Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia Part 24

Sa.s.sari also boasts a s.p.a.cious cathedral, with a very elaborate facade, a work of the 17th century. It contains also twenty churches, including those that are conventual. If the religious state of the community were to be estimated by the number of those devoted to the service of the church, the Sa.s.sarese ought to be models of piety; for Mr. Tyndale calculates the number of priests and monks in 1840 as giving a total of 769 clerical persons, about one for every thirty-two individuals of the community. Their numbers have been diminished by the suppression of some of the convents, but, even at the time of our visit, his remark, that one cannot walk fifty yards in the street without meeting an ecclesiastic, was confirmed by our own observation.

The object which the Sa.s.sarese are most proud to exhibit to strangers, is the fountain of Rosello, outside the north-east or Macella gate. At the angles are large figures of the four seasons, at the feet of which the stream issues forth, as well as from eight lions' mouths in the sides of the building. The whole is of white marble, and though open to criticism as an architectural design, the utility of a fountain, which has twelve mouths constantly pouring forth pure water, in such a climate, cannot be overrated.

The University of Sa.s.sari, founded by Philip IV. in 1634, is established in the s.p.a.cious college formerly belonging to the Jesuits. It numbers about 200 students. The library contains a scanty collection of books, mostly ecclesiastical works. The museum exhibits some few articles of interest, relics of the Phnician colonisation and Roman occupation of the island, mixed up in the greatest confusion, as in a broker's shop, with meagre specimens of mineralogy and conchology; and cannot for a moment be compared with the museum of Cagliari, rich in valuable remains of antiquity, and admirably arranged. It will be noticed in its proper place.

We were much more interested in being allowed to examine a small private collection belonging to a young Sa.s.sarese, whose acquaintance it was our good fortune to make, and of whose talents, intelligence, and courtesy I retain a most pleasing impression. The pursuits of the young men of the higher cla.s.ses in Sa.s.sari, are described as entirely frivolous, and the bent of the bourgeoisie as eminently sordid. It was, therefore, with an agreeable surprise, that we found ourselves in a studio embellished with the portraits of such characters as Dante, Ariosto, and Sir Isaac Newton; and where mathematical instruments, scattered about, and a cabinet containing some of the best French, English, German, and Italian authors, gave a pleasing idea of the tastes of the owner. With imperfect aid he had made himself sufficiently proficient in foreign languages to be able to read them; and it appeared that his severer studies were relieved by accomplishments displaying considerable talent, such as painting, and taking impressions from the antique in electrotype. He was good enough to offer me some of his casts, with a few coins from his museum of antiquities; two engravings from which, ill.u.s.trating the Punic and Saracenic periods of the history of Sardinia, will appear in future pages, together with one copied from a unique coin of the Roman age, preserved in the Royal Museum at Cagliari.

One seldom finds such talents and accomplishments accompanied by the modesty with which our young student spoke of his pursuits. Nor was he a mere recluse, though his health appeared feeble; for he entered with zest into conversation on the various topics of European interest suggested by a visit from foreigners, while he did not hesitate to expose, with patriotic zeal, the follies and abuses which opposed the march of civilisation in his native country. Such characters are rare.

We had unexpectedly stumbled on a delicate flower, nurtured on an ungrateful soil, and destined to shed its sweetness in an atmosphere where, I fear, it is little appreciated. I may be excused, then, for devoting a page to the adventure, and allowed to inscribe on that page, a name of which I have so agreeable a recollection-that of Carlo Rugiu.

Our new friend was kind enough to be our conductor in a walk to a Nuraghe, standing about three miles from Sa.s.sari, and in good preservation. We had already seen many of these very ancient structures scattered over all parts of the country; more or less ruinous, they are said to number 3000 at the present day, and many others have been destroyed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EXTERIOR OF A NURAGHE.]

Whether seen on the plains or on the mountains, the Nuraghe are generally built on the summits of hillocks, or on artificial mounds, commanding the country. Some are partially inclosed at a slight distance by a low wall of similar construction with the building. Their external appearance is that of a truncated cone from thirty to sixty feet in height, and from 100 to 300 in circ.u.mference at the base. The walls are composed of rough ma.s.ses of the stones peculiar to the locality, each from two to six cubic feet, built in regular horizontal layers, in somewhat of the Cyclopean style, and gradually diminishing in size to the summit. Most commonly they betray no marks of the chisel, but in many instances the stones appear to have been rudely worked by the hammer, though not exactly squared.

The interior is almost invariably divided into two domed chambers, one above the other; the lowest averaging from fifteen to twenty feet in diameter, and from twenty to twenty-five feet in height. Access to the upper chamber is gained by a spiral ramp, or rude steps, between the internal and external walls. These are continued to the summit of the tower, which is generally supposed to have formed a platform; but scarcely any of the Nuraghe now present a perfect apex. On the ground floor, there are generally from two to four cells worked in the solid masonry of the base of the cone.

Independently of the interest attached to the object of our search, the fertile plains surrounding Sa.s.sari formed a sufficient attraction for a long walk. Plantations of olives, of vines, oranges, and other fruit-trees, succeeded each other in rich profusion; the olive trees being especially productive, and the oil, exported from Sa.s.sari in large quant.i.ties, being of the first quality. The environs, far and wide, are laid out in these plantations, and in gardens highly cultivated, interspersed with villas and pleasure-grounds. Tobacco is largely cultivated, and the vegetables are excellent. A cauliflower served up at dinner was of enormous size, nor can I forget the baskets of delicious figs which, at this late period of the year, were brought by the market-women to the door of our hotel.

The Nuraghe to which our steps were directed proved to be a very picturesque object, rising out of a thicket of shrubs, with tufts growing in the crevices of the tower, which on one side was dilapidated.

The other, composed of huge boulders, laid horizontally with much precision, considering the rude materials, still preserved its conical form, rising to the height of twenty or twenty-five feet. The entrance was so low that we were obliged to stoop almost to our knees in pa.s.sing through it. A lintel, consisting of a single stone, some two tons'

weight, was supported by the protruding jambs. No light being admitted to the chamber, but by a low pa.s.sage through the double walls, it was gloomy enough.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ENTRANCE TO A NURAGHE.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: INTERIOR OF A NURAGHE.]

In this instance, the interior formed a single dome or cone about twenty-five feet high, well-proportioned, and diminishing till a single ma.s.sive stone formed the apex. The chamber was fifteen feet in diameter, and had four recesses or cells worked in the solid masonry, about five feet high, three deep, and nearly the same in breadth.

The small platform on the summit of the cone, to which we ascended by the ramp in the interior of the wall and some rugged steps, commanded a rich view of the plain of Sa.s.sari, appearing from the top one dense thicket of olive and fruit trees spreading for miles round the city. Out of these groves rise the towers and domes of Sa.s.sari, the enceinte of its grey battlemented walls, and the lofty ma.s.ses of its white houses.

The view over the plain to the west is bounded by the Mediterranean, intersected by the bold outlines of the island of Asmara. After feasting our eyes on perhaps the most charming _tableau_ the island affords, decked with nature's choicest gifts, and exhibiting an industry unusual among the modern Sardes, we sat down at the foot of the hillock, while my friend was completing his sketches of the Nuraghe, and our thoughts were naturally drawn to these relics of a primitive age. "What was their origin-their history-what were the purposes for which they were designed?"

It needed only that we should lift our eyes to the rude but shapely cone before us,-ma.s.sive in its materials and fabric, and yet constructed with some degree of mechanical skill,-to come to the conclusion that the Nuraghe are works of a very early period, just when rude labour had begun to be directed by some rules of geometrical art. But, in examining the details, we find little or nothing to a.s.sist us in forming any clear idea of the period at which they were erected, or the purpose for which they were designed. There are not the slightest vestiges of ornament, any rude sculpture, any inscriptions. Of an antiquity probably anterior to all written records, history not only throws no certain light on their origin, but, till modern times, was silent as to their existence.

Successive races, and powers, and dynasties have flourished in the island, and pa.s.sed away, scarcely any of them without leaving some relics, some medals of history, some impress on the manners and character of the people still to be traced. The mouldering cones which arrest the traveller's attention, scattered, as we have observed, in great numbers throughout the island, enduring in their simple and ma.s.sive structure, have thrown their shade over Phnicians and Greeks, Romans and Carthaginians, Saracens, Pisans, Genoese, and Spaniards, and still survive the wreck of time and so many other early buildings,-the remains of a people of whose existence they are the only record, and, except monoliths, the oldest of, at least, European monuments.

In the absence of any positive evidence regarding the origin and design of the Sardinian Nuraghe[76], there has been abundance of conjecture and speculation on the subject. On the present occasion, I had the advantage of discussing it with our intelligent Sa.s.sarese student, I have also heard the remarks of one of the most distinguished Sarde antiquarians, and having since consulted the works of La Marmora and other writers, whose extensive researches and personal investigations ent.i.tle their opinions to much respect, I shall endeavour to lay the result, unsatisfactory as it proves, before the reader, in the shortest compa.s.s to which so wide an inquiry can be reduced.

The world has been searched for styles of building corresponding with that of the Sarde Nuraghe; without success. Neither in Etruscan, Pelasgic, or any other European architecture are any such models to be found, nor do Indian, a.s.syrian, or Egyptian remains exhibit any ident.i.ty with them. They have been supposed, among other theories, to have some affinity with the Round Towers of Ireland; but after a careful examination of some of those almost equally mysterious structures, and considerable research among the authorities for their antiquity and uses, I have failed to discover anything in common between them and the Nuraghe. If my memory be correct, Mr. Petrie, the highest authority on the subject of the Round Towers, though he had not seen the Nuraghe, incidentally expresses the same opinion. The only existing buildings exhibiting a cognate character with those of Sardinia, are certain conical towers found in the Balearic islands, which were also colonised by the Phnicians. They are called _talayots_, a diminutive, it is said, of _atalaya_, meaning the "Giants' Burrow;" and if the plate annexed to Father Bresciani's work be a correct representation, they would appear to be identical with the Nuraghe in the exterior, except that the ramp leading to the summit is worked in the outward face of the wall. We find, also, from La Marmora's description of the _talayots_ examined by him, that the character of the cells is different, the style of masonry more cyclopean, and that many of them are surrounded with circles of stones and supposed altars, scarcely ever met with in Sardinia. The resemblance, however, is striking, as connected with the facts of the contiguity of Minorca, and the colonisation of both the islands by the Phnicians.

Opinions as to the purposes for which the Nuraghe were erected are as various as those regarding their origin. From their great number, scattered over the country, they are supposed by some to have been the habitations of the most ancient shepherds; and the words of Micah-"the tower of the flocks,"[77] and other similar pa.s.sages, are referred to as supporting this view. But it is hardly necessary to point out that the inconveniences of the structure, from its low entrance and dark interior, to say nothing of the waste of labour in heaping up such vast structures for shepherds' huts, will not admit of the idea being entertained. With somewhat more reason, but still with little probability, they have been represented as watch-towers, strongholds, and places of refuge; a theory to which their position, their numbers, and their structure are all opposed. Another hypothesis treats the Nuraghe as monuments commemorating heroes or great national events, whether in peace or war; forgetting, as Father Bresciani suggests, the centuries that must have elapsed while the mountains, and hills, and plains of Sardinia were being successively crowned with monuments of this description.

Discarding such conjectural theories, the best-informed travellers and writers are agreed in considering the Nuraghe as being designed either for religious edifices or tombs for the dead. La Marmora confesses his inability to p.r.o.nounce decidedly between the two opinions, but inclines to the opinion that they may have been intended for both purposes.

Father Bresciani, the latest writer on Sardinian antiquities, after a personal examination of the Nuraghe and much general research, though he does not venture a decided opinion, is disposed to agree with La Marmora. In confirmation of the idea that the most ancient monuments were at once tombs and altars, he quotes a Spanish writer[78] on the antiquities of Mexico, referring also to Lord Kingsborough's splendid work. So general an a.s.sumption is hardly warranted either by historical testimony or existing relics of antiquity. If such were the primitive custom, it did not prevail among the Greeks and Romans, and it is in the rites and practices of the Christian Church that we find its revival.

However this may be, the theory not only of the twofold design or use of the Nuraghe, but of either of them, is confessedly quite conjectural: it rests upon a narrow basis of facts. Though a great number of the Nuraghe have been carefully ransacked, in very few instances only have human bones been discovered, but neither urns, arms, nor ornaments usually inhumed with the dead; nor are many of them so constructed as to permit the supposition that they were designed for sepulchral purposes.

Occasionally, also, some of the miniature idols, such as are preserved in the museum at Cagliari, have been found buried in Nuraghe, or their precincts. But this is not general; and there are neither altars nor any other indications in the structure of the buildings to indicate their appropriation to religious uses, except their pyramidal or conical form, which they share in common with most buildings of the earliest age. So far as these were designed for idolatrous uses-as many of them doubtless were-the argument from a.n.a.logy may apply to the Nuraghe, but it can be carried no further.

Whatever were the purposes of the Nuraghe, almost all writers on Sardinia consider these ancient structures of Eastern origin. Father Bresciani attributes them to Canaanitish or Phnician colonies, which migrated to the west in early times; and he takes great pains, but, I consider, without much success, to establish their ident.i.ty, or, at least, their a.n.a.logy, with the religious or sepulchral erections,-the altars, and "high places," and tombs,-of which notices are found in the Old Testament. No doubt exists that extensive migrations, favoured by the enterprise of the earliest maritime people of whom we have any record, took place, perhaps both before and after the age of Moses, from the sh.o.r.es of Syria to the islands and sh.o.r.es of the West of Europe.

There is reason to think that the island of Sardinia, if not the first seat, was, from its peculiar situation, the very centre, of a colonisation, embracing in its ramifications the coasts of Africa and Spain, with Malta, Sicily, and the Balearic islands. It appears singular that Corsica, the sister island to Sardinia, should not have shared in this movement of settlers from the East; perhaps from its lying out of the direct current, while, in its onward course, the wave flowing through the Straits of Hercules bore forward on the ocean the "merchants of many isles," for commerce if not for settlement, as far as the Ca.s.siterides, our own Scilly Isles.

Though there is little historical evidence of the Phnician colonisation of Sardinia, and even that of the early Greek settlements in the island is obscure and conflicting, we have abundant traces of the former, more imperishable than written records, still lingering in the manners and customs of the modern Sardes, and in the great number of those extraordinary antiquities known as the Sarde idols. The greater part of these, as Mr. Tyndale undertakes to show, were symbols of Canaanitish worship, the miniature representations of the G.o.ds adored by the Syrian nations, especially of Moloch, Baal, Astarte or Astaroth, Adonis or Tammuz, the very objects of that idolatry so frequently and emphatically denounced in the Old Testament, to which we have already referred. Mr.

Tyndale, however, justly observes, that "so distinct and peculiar is the character of these relics, that their counterparts are no more to be met with out of Sardinia than the Nuraghe themselves." From this circ.u.mstance, in conjunction with the fact of the images being often found in and near those buildings, he infers that they may have been, directly or indirectly, connected with each other, in either a religious, sepulchral, or united character.

The inquiry would be incomplete unless it were extended to other Sarde remains, of equal or greater antiquity, for the purpose of discovering whether they have any affinity with, or can throw any light on, the mysterious origin of the Nuraghe. We propose devoting another chapter to this investigation.

CHAP. x.x.xV.

_Sardinian Monoliths.-The Sepolture, or "Tombs of the Giants."-Traditions regarding Giant Races.-The Anakim, &c., of Canaan.-Their supposed Migration to Sardinia.-Remarks on Aboriginal Races.-Antiquity of the Nuraghe and Sepolture.-Their Founders unknown._

We can hardly be mistaken in supposing that, among the relics of antiquity still existing in Sardinia, the monoliths, of somewhat similar character with the Celtic remains at Carnac, Avebury, and Stonehenge, and common also in other countries, belong to the earliest age. These Sarde monoliths are found in several parts of the island, being, as the name expresses, single stones, or obelisks, set upright in the ground.

In Sardinia they are called _Pietra-_ or _Perda-fitta_, and _Perda-Lunga_. We generally find them rounded by the hammer, but irregularly, in a conical form tapering to the top, but with a gradual swell in the middle; and their height varies from six to eighteen feet.

They differ from the Celtic monuments, in being generally thus worked and shaped; in not being often congregated on one spot beyond three in number-a _Perda-Lunga_ with two lesser stones; and in there not being any appearance of their ever having had, like the Trilithons of Stonehenge, any impost horizontal stone.

Father Bresciani finds the prototype of all these rude pillars scattered throughout the world, in the Beth-El of Jacob and other Bethylia, sepulchral or commemorative, mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures. By Mr. Tyndale, the Sarde _Perda-Lunga_ is considered a relic of the religion common to all the idolatrous Syro-Arabian nations, which, deifying the powers and laws of nature, considers the male s.e.x to be the type of its active, generative, and destructive powers, while that pa.s.sive power of nature, whose function is to conceive and bring forth, is embodied under the female form. And this worship, he conceives, was introduced into Sardinia, with the symbols just described, by the Phnician or Canaanitish immigrants.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SEPOLTURA DE IS GIGANTES.]

The _Sepolture de is Gigantes_, the tombs of the giants, as they are called, form another cla.s.s of Sarde antiquities of the earliest age. The structures to which the popular traditions ascribe this name, may be described as a series of large stones placed together without any cement, inclosing a foss or hollow from fifteen to thirty-six feet long, from three to six wide, and the same in depth, with immense flat stones resting on them as a covering. Though the latter are not always found, it is evident, by a comparison with the more perfect Sepolture, that they have once existed, and have been destroyed or removed.[79]

The foss runs invariably from north-west to south-east; and at the latter point there is a large upright headstone, averaging from ten to fifteen feet high, varying in its form, from the square, elliptical, and conical, to that of three-fourths of an egg; and having in many instances an aperture about eighteen inches square at its base.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SEPOLTURA DE IS GIGANTES.]

On each side of this stele, or headstone, commences a series of separate stones, irregular in size and shape, but forming an arc, the chord of which varies from twenty to twenty-six feet; so that the whole figure somewhat resembles the bow and shank of a spur.

"The shape of the foss and headstone," observes Mr. Tyndale, "of these remains, fairly admits of the probability that they were graves, as some of the earliest forms of sepulchres on record are the upright stones with superinc.u.mbent slabs, such as the Druidical cistvaens and some tombs in Greece. Still, like the 'Sarde Idols' and the Nuraghe, the _Sepolture_ are peculiar to the island, being entirely different in point of size and character from any other sepulchral remains. Judging from the many remains of those partially destroyed, their numbers must have been considerable. The Sardes believe them to be veritable tombs of giants; and that there may be legends of their existence in the island is undeniable, as a similar belief is found in almost all countries."

Mr. Tyndale, in speaking of the supposed connexion between the _Nuraghe_ and the _Sepolture_, observes that, "if a Canaanitish race migrated here, nothing is more probable than that the tradition and worship of the giants would be also imported; and that it is even possible that some of the actual gigantic races of the Rephaim, Anakim, and others mentioned in Scripture, might have actually arrived in Sardinia." Father Bresciani goes further: he fixes the era of this migration, points out the event which caused it[80], and traces its route by the Isthmus of Suez, through Egypt, and along the coast of Africa, which they are also said to have colonised; and whence he considers they could easily navigate to Sardinia and other islands in that part of the Mediterranean.

This immigration, however, of the Canaanitish giants rests upon very slender evidence; and it may be questioned whether the oldest Sardinian monuments do not belong to an age far anterior to that of any Phnician or Canaanitish colonisation of the island whatever. That such there was, undoubted proofs have already been gathered; but the statuettes of Phnician idols, forming part of those proofs, with the arts and skill required for the maritime enterprise it required, betray the civilisation of a period more advanced than that to which we should be disposed to attribute such rude structures as the Nuraghe and the Sepolture. In this uncertainty, it may be worth an inquiry, whether these ancient monuments did not exist before the colonists landed on the sh.o.r.es of Sardinia,-in short, whether they were not the works of an aboriginal race. The question is raised by M. Tyndale: "We may reduce the inquiry," he says, "to the simple question, Were the Nuraghe built by the autochthones of the island, of whom we have no knowledge, or by the earliest colonists, of whom we have but little information?" On the former alternative the author is silent; nor is the question even raised by any other writer on Sardinian antiquities within our knowledge.

Yet surely, independently of its bearing on the origin of the Nuraghe and the early population of Sardinia, the subject of indigenous races is interesting in a general point of view. And it is worthy of notice, that the accounts handed down to us of the earliest colonists of the ancient world, speak of an aboriginal population existing in the countries to which they migrated, just as the European adventurers and circ.u.mnavigators of the last three centuries found indigenous races on the continents and islands they discovered, except on some few islands of the Pacific Ocean, recently emerged from the state of coral reefs.

The parallel may be carried further. The ancient, as well as the modern, colonists carried the arts of a superior civilisation in their train; but the indigenous races of the New World were destined to gradual decay and extinction, leaving some ancient monuments as the records of their existence, just as the primitive children of the soil in the West of Europe, whose relics we endeavour to decipher, disappeared and were lost; so uniform is the order of events in the designs of Providence.

Poetical legends, generally founded on, and blended with, traditionary facts, help us to form some idea of the character and habits of the aboriginal races; but history, and even tradition, seldom carry us further back in the review of past ages than the arrival of colonists, generally of Eastern origin, to form settlements on the sh.o.r.es and the islands washed by the Mediterranean. Did they find these sh.o.r.es and islands uninhabited? To say nothing of countries more remote and less accessible, many considerations would induce us to imagine that these fair regions were not all deserts; that, even at this early period, they were already peopled.

In Sardinia, where, as already observed, the manners, the superst.i.tions, and the traditions of the earliest ages, are more faithfully preserved than in any other European country, we find, among the most ancient existing structures, some which, to this day, are pointed out by the natives as "the Tombs of the Giants." And who were the "giants," of whom we read much, both in sacred and profane history? The very term is significant. It is formed from two Greek words-?? and ????, and signifies earth-born, sons of the earth.[81] The word a?t??????e?

(autochthones) has a cognate meaning; Liddell and Scott render it, "of the land itself; Latin, _terrigenae, aborigines, indigenae_, of the original race, _not settlers_." The mythical account of the origin of the "giants" concurs with this etymology. It paints them as the sons of Clus and Terra-Heaven and Earth. In the poetry of Hesiod, they spring from the earth imbued with the blood of the G.o.ds. Traces and traditions of this aboriginal race are found in all parts of the world, and in sacred as well as profane history. We are told that there were giants in the days before the flood[82]; and Josephus considers them the offspring of the union, mysteriously described by the sacred writer, of "the sons of G.o.d with the daughters of men;" for, as might be supposed, there were females also of the race of the earth-born. So the poets sang. Such was Cybele, daughter of Heaven and Earth, pictured as crowned with a diadem of towers, as the patroness of builders. We read of the giants, in the Old Testament, under the names of Rephaim, Emim, Zamzummim, and Anakim.

In the time of Abraham, these tribes dwelt in the country beyond Jordan, in about Astaroth-Karnaim[83], and it is now the received opinion of biblical archaeologists, that they were the most ancient, or aboriginal, inhabitants of Palestine; prior to the Canaanites, by whom they were gradually dispossessed of the region west of the Jordan, and driven beyond that river. Some of the race, however, remained in Palestine Proper so late as the invasion of the land by the Hebrews, and are repeatedly mentioned as "the sons of Anak," and "the remnant of the Rephaim;"[84] and a few families existed as late as the time of David.[85]

In the most ancient legends we find the giant race located in all parts of the then known world. In Thessaly, under the name of t.i.tans, poetic fiction records their deeds of prowess in piling mountain on mountain, and hurling immense rocks in their battles with the G.o.ds. Writers of credit have transmitted to us accounts of the discovery of their remains on the coast of Africa, from Bona to Tangier, in Sicily, and in Crete.

The earliest navigators who touched on the sh.o.r.es and islands of the Mediterranean, brought back romantic tales, receiving their colouring from the terrors of the narrators, of the barbarity and the stature of the races they found on those then inhospitable sh.o.r.es. They were robbers, and even cannibals; enemies of the G.o.ds and men. Such tales are not without their parallels in the annals of modern maritime discovery.

Before the fall of Troy, Sicily was peopled by a giant or aboriginal people, called Cyclopes; that insular race being said to be descended from Neptune and Amphitrite, just as the giant Antaeus, the founder of Tangier on the African coast, was called the son of Neptune and Terra.

If we take Polyphemus, the chief of a tribe of the Cyclops, for a type of this cognate race, what do we find in his story, divested of the fiction with which it was clothed by tradition, trans.m.u.ted into the poetry of the Odyssey and the aeneid? The Grecian and Trojan heroes, successively land on the eastern coast of Sicily, near the base of Mount aetna, whose throes and thunders lend horror to the scene. There dwelt this Cyclop chief, in a cavern of the rocks. The race were Troglodytes, as were the aboriginal Sardes, Baleares, Maltese, Libyans, &c. In Sardinia, their caverns are still to be seen in an island of the territory of Sulcis. Caves were probably the first habitations of primitive man, before emerging from a condition hardly superior to that of the savage beasts, his compet.i.tors for such rude shelter.