Note 208 — APPENDIX. (continued 2)

In 1864, according to Mr Consul Dennis, the author of Murray’s “Hand-book of Sicily,” the two most important mines of Girgenti were “La Crocella” and “Maudarazzi” near Comitine, belonging to Don Ignazio Genusardi. They yielded annually 140,000 quintals = 10,937½ tons, worth about £70,000, and gave constant employment to 700 hands (chiefly from the opposite town of Arragona), at the daily cost of about £60. The produce was shipped at the Mole of Girgenti, and the road was thronged day and night at certain seasons with loaded carts and beasts of burden, chiefly mules.

Caltanissetta, Serra di Falco, on Monte Carano, and St Cutaldo are villages in the heart of the sulphur district. “The scenery is wild and stern. The mountains are of rounded forms, always bare, here craggy, there browned with scorched herbage, and in parts tinged with red, yellow, and grey, by the heaps of ore and dross at the mouths. Corn will not thrive in the fumes of sulphur; what little cultivation is to be seen is generally in the bottoms of the valleys. The hills around St Cutaldo are burrowed with sulphur mines.”