The only entrance to the quarries was by ladder, so there was no escape for a man once he got in there.
There are huge caves cut in the walls of the quarries in which the slaves lived, and one of these caves has been cut into a narrow cleft exactly on the principle of the inside of your ear. So that anyone sitting at the top of the cleft can hear every word that is being spoken or even whispered in the cave below.
It is said that Dionysius, the ruler of Syracuse, had this made so that he could sit in the cleft (where there is a little chamber with private door) unknown to the people in the cave, and there he could overhear all that the prisoners talked about and plotted among themselves.
The whole cave is called "The Ear of Dionysius."
I remember a similar kind of "ear" in a natural cave in Matabeleland. It was here that one of the native sorcerers used to hide himself, and when he whispered through a crack in the rocks it could be heard all over the cave.
The people believed that it was the voice of a god speaking to them, so they used to come and pray to him for advice, and the old villain told them that they must rise up and murder all the white people, and their chief, Lobengula, who had long been dead, would come to life and lead them against their enemies once more.
He had nearly persuaded them to come out on the war-path, when Burnham, the American scout, made his way into the secret part of the cave and shot the supposed god while he was preaching murder.
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CARTS IN SICILY.
A curious thing that strikes you in Sicily is the kind of cart and harness used by the country people.