And A Sad Thought Obtrudes Itself In These Oases Of Peace And Verdure. The Italian Law Requires That The Body Shall Be Buried Within Twenty-Four Hours After Decease (The French Consider Forty-Eight Hours Too Short A Term, And Are Thinking Of Modifying Their Regulations In This Respect):

A doctor's certificate of death is necessary but often impossible to procure, since some five hundred Italian communities possess no medical man whatever.

Add to this, the superstitions of ignorant country people towards the dead, testified to by extraordinary beliefs and customs which you will find in Pitre and other collectors of native lore - their mingled fear and hatred of a corpse, which prompts them to thrust it underground at the earliest possible opportunity. . . . Premature burial must be all too frequent here. I will not enlarge upon the theme of horror by relating what gravediggers have seen with their own eyes on disturbing old coffins; if only half what they tell me is true, it reveals a state of affairs not to be contemplated without shuddering pity, and one that calls for prompt legislation. Only last year a frightful case came to light in Sicily. Videant Consules.

Here, at the cemetery, the driving road abruptly ends; thenceforward there is merely a track along the sea that leads, ultimately, to Capo Nau, where stands a solitary column, last relic of the great temple of Hera. I sometimes follow it as far as certain wells that are sunk, Arab-fashion, into the sand, and dedicated to Saint Anne.

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