limestone, and so excellent in quality that no other is used in
Catania. Women with buckets were ascending and descending to fetch
supplies out of the lava of the dead city below, for the use of the
living town above. Moreover, this is the only point in Catania where
the accident of a bit of wall arresting for some time the progress of
the lava current, has left the level of the old town to be rigidly
ascertained.

Here, as at _Aci-Reale_, balconies at windows, for the most part
supported by brackets, terminating in human heads, give a rich,
though rather a heavy, appearance to the street. Much amber is found
and worked at Catania. It has been lately discovered in a fossil
state, and in contiguity with fossil wood; but we were quite
_electrified_ at the price of certain little scent-bottles, and other
articles made of this production. You see it in all its possible
varieties of colour, opacity, or transparency. The green opalized
kind is the most prized, and four pounds was demanded for a pair of
pendants of this colour for earrings. Besides the yellow sort, which
is common every where, we see the ruby red, which is very rare: some
varieties are freckled, and some of the sort which afforded subjects
for Martial, and for more than one of the Greek anthologists, with
insects in its matrix. _This_ kind, they say, is found exclusively on
the coast of Catania. There are such pieces the size of a hand, but
it is generally in much smaller bits. Amber lies under, or is formed
_upon_ the sand, and abounds most near the _embouchure_ of a small
river in this neighbourhood. Many beautiful shells, fossils, and
other objects of natural history, appear in the dealers' trays; and
polished knife-handles of Sicilian _agate_ may be had at five dollars
a dozen.