[207] These immense fluctuations in the market are probably caused by the Phylloxera vastatrix now devastating the Continent. Trieste alone, for instance, has of late years imported as much as twenty cargoes of 200 tons each (a total of 4000) per annum; and the unground sulphur sells at about £7, 10s. per ton as in England. The spread of the disease is likely to cause an increased demand.
[208] 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.”
[209] In a recent report to the Italian Government, Sig. Parodi estimates that Sicilian sulphur will be exhausted in fifty to sixty years.
[210] Each ballata weighs 70 rotoli = 122½ lbs. avoir., and two are a mule-load.
[211] On the northern flank of the range, which, running from north-north-east to south-south-west, nearly bisects the island. It is a mean town in the mountains. Licata, the southern port, is nearest to the central mines.
[212] Her chief exports are fruit, oil, and silk.
[213] “Trust” seems to be the beau ideal of trade where it has not been tried. I have seen its workings in Africa and in Iceland, and my experience is that it is a pis aller which gives more trouble than it is worth.
[214] Here it is not stated whether paper or specie “lire” are meant.
[215] It would be better to state that sulphur costing above £5 per ton cannot at present compete with pyrites; sold below that price it would soon drive its rival out of the market.