large supply of _malvas_ which were drying on his counter, the only
wholesome-looking thing amidst his stores, we asked if he had any
_quinine_. "_Sicuro!_" and he presented us with a white powder having
a slightly bitter taste, which, together with an ounce of green tea,
to be dispensed in pinches of five grains on extraordinary occasions,
comes, he says, from the East. On our observing that the quinine, if
such at all, was adulterated, and that this was too bad in a country
of malaria, where it was the poor man's only protection, he looked
angry; but we rose in the esteem of peasants in the shop, who said to
each other--"Ed ha ragione il Signor." Wanting a little _soda_, we
were presented with sub-carbonate of potash as the nearest approach
to it--a substitution which suggested to us a classical recollection
from Theocritus; namely, that in this same Sicily, 2000 years ago, a
Syracusan husband is rated by his dame for sending her _soda_ for her
washing in place of potash, the very converse of what our old
drug-vender intended to have washed our inside withal.

The Roman Catholic religion patronises painting oddly here; not a
cart but is adorned with some sacred subject. Every wretched vehicle
that totters under an unmerciful load, with one poor donkey to draw
six men, has its picture of _Souls in Purgatory_, who seem putting
their hands and heads out of the flames, and vainly calling on the
ruffians inside to _stop_. We read _Viva la Divina Providenza_, in
flaming characters on the front board of a carriole, while the whip
is goading the poor starved brute who drags it; for these barbarians
in the rear of European civilization, plainly are of opinion that a
cart with a sacred device shall not _break down_, though its owner
commit every species of cruelty.

The next day found us again installed at our old quarters in Palermo,