Of sailing into Palermo, Lawrence wrote in "Sea and Sardinia" : "The fantastic peaks behind Palermo show half-ghostly in a half-dark sky."

She recalls watching the ship, brightly lit, slipping into its dark grave—and into seeming nothingness, rarely mentioned for more than half a century.

Yet there is a dark side to this picture: despite our progress, half of the world's population still suffers, with water services inferior to those available to the ancient Greeks and Romans.