Book 6
2.9
The Nebrodes mountainsSicilian topographers vary exceedingly in defining the position of these mountains. Groskurd makes them Madonia. take their rise oppositeTo the south-west. to Aetna; they are not so lofty as Aetna, but extend over a much greater surface. The whole island is hollow under ground, and full of rivers and fire like the bed of the Tyrrhenian Sea,See Humboldt, Cosmos, i. 242. as far as Cumaea, as we before describedBook v. chap. iv. § 9. For there are hot springs in many places in the island, some of which are saline, as those named SelinuntiaI Bagni di Sciacca. and the springs at Himera, while those at AegestaNow ruins at Barbara, in the valley of Mazzara. are fresh. Near to AcragasGirgenti. there are certain lakes,A modern traveller is of opinion that these correspond with certain peculiar marshes near Girgenti, in the midst of the Macaluba mountains, supplied by a spring of salt water. The soil here is chalky, and the mountains abound in a grey and ductile clay. See Monsieur le Commandeur de Dolomieu, Voyage aux iles de Lipari, pp. 165 et seqq.; also Fazell. Decad. i. lib. i. cap. 5, p. 45. the waters of which taste like the sea, but their properties are very different, for if those who do not know how to swim plunge into them, they are not covered over by them, but float on the surface like pieces of wood.
