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The guard who believed in the moth told us that he had been stationed once on the coast a little east of Girgenti, near a town where the peasants pray for rain to their patron, S. Calogero, whose painted image, carved in wood, stands in their church. If it rains at once, well and good, they return thanks, and there is an end of the matter.
Calogero in the Lipari Islands, where the horizontal strata of tuffs, forming cliffs 200 feet high, have been discoloured in places by the jets of steam often above the boiling point, called "stufas," issuing from the fissures; and similar instances are recorded by M. Virlet of corrosion of rocks near Corinth, and by Dr.
The Fountain of Saint Calogero, described as one of the most famous, was lukewarm, of ammoniacal and alkaline flavour; a glassful of it produced the most violent retchings and vomitings. Properly applied, however, the water had been found to relieve the gout, the discomforts of child-bearing, leprosy, irritation of the mucous membrane of the nose, impetigo, strabismus and ophthalmia.
The peasant and the gambler are both playing for material gain, and S. Calogero in the sea has as much connection with the meteorological conditions as the dream has with the lottery numbers; yet the treatment of the saint has the sanction of the Church and the act of the gambler is branded as superstitious. But to abuse a thing is not to alter its nature."
"We call this treatment of S. Calogero an act of faith," said the sceptical guard, "and yet when a gambler puts a few soldi on any number he may have dreamt of, we call it superstition.
But if he is still obdurate, they assume he has chosen the first, put the threat into execution, take down S. Calogero, tie a cord about his neck and reverently cast him into the sea where they leave him till it does rain. If one waits long enough the rain always comes at last, even on the south coast of Sicily.
Calogero, about four miles from the town of Lipari. Daubeny considers it not improbable that this island may have had an active volcano even within the historical period, a view which is borne out by the statement of Strabo. Island of Vulcano, one of the Lipari Group, in eruption.
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