CONTENTS (continued 5)

“Farther on, the way winds through wood and thicket, where fruit-trees alternate with tall oaks, elms, and plane-trees, to the village of Hagiannis, hidden among groves of oranges, lemons, fig-trees, and olives. Amongst the woods dark cypresses rise singly like columns; many Judas-trees stood in full blossom, forming with their rosy red a pleasant contrast to the various shades of green, while the oleanders, growing as high as trees beside every rill, had not yet unfolded their buds. Wild vines climb to the very topmost boughs, and many other 277creepers, such as ivy, bindweed, and clematis, often weave trees and shrubs into an impenetrable thicket. In wealth of vegetation this district is unsurpassed in Greece, and no one who has set foot on Greek soil should fail to visit it. Yet it often happens that travellers, satisfied with having visited Sparta, turn back from it immediately, and then, full of the impressions left on them by the plains of Tripolitza, of Argolis, and of the neighbourhood of Athens, complain that there are no trees in Greece.”

The present writer, though he was not farther south than Parori, can confirm the general accuracy of this description. The view of the beautiful valley of Sparta from the steep hill of Mistra, crowded with monuments of the Middle Ages, and dominated by the towering mass of Mount Taygetus, which rises like a wall behind it, combines almost every element of natural beauty and historical association. Immediately below the Frankish castle, which crowns the summit of the hill, are the ruins of a spacious Byzantine palace, once the residence of the governor of the Morea, who ranked next after the emperor. Its great hall opened on the palace garden, from the terrace of which the wonderful view is to be had over the valley. Again, the fountain, described by Vischer, at the mouth of the tremendous gorge, is a scene not to be forgotten. The water gushes from 278many mouths in the face of a wall built against the rock. A stone seat encircles the trunk of the great spreading plane-tree which fronts the fountain. All this, with the gloomy gorge behind, makes up a picture such as is oftener seen in dreams than in reality. Once more, the village of Trypi, situated a little to the north of Mistra, at the entrance of the famed Langada pass over Mount Taygetus, is one of idyllic beauty. It is embowered among woods and orchards on the mountain-side; and entering it from the south you pass the mouth of a narrow glen carpeted with ferns and overarched with trees.

XXXIX. On the Road from Sparta to Arcadia.—Pausanias now returns from Mount Taygetus to Sparta and sets off northward by the road which led to Megalopolis in Arcadia. As far as the Arcadian frontier the track follows the valley of the Eurotas, keeping on the right or west bank of the river and generally running close to the stream, the banks of which are fringed with oleanders, fig-trees, and planes. For the first three miles the valley is open and possesses that combination of charms which renders the vale of Sparta the most beautiful region of Greece. The river flows on the whole at the foot of the 279somewhat bare hills which rise on the eastern side of the valley, dipping their rocky declivities in many places in its water. But on the other side low rolling hills, covered with excellent soil and intersected by streams, stretch away to where the long range of Taygetus stands up against the western sky, its majestic snowy peaks contrasting finely with the dark woods of its lower slopes and the luxuriant vegetation of the valley. In this open part of the valley must have lain all the places and objects mentioned by Pausanias between Sparta and the image of Modesty; but no one has yet ventured to identify them. About three miles from Sparta the valley contracts and the scenery changes. We are no longer in a great open valley covered with luxuriant vegetation and enclosed by grand mountains. It is a narrow dale through which we are passing, hemmed in by low hills, at the foot of which the river flows between banks thickly wooded with willows, poplars, oleanders, and plane-trees. Well-tilled fields lie on the gentle lower slopes of the hills and occupy the stretches of flat land where the hills retire from the river. The bare upper declivities are dotted here and there with a few olives.

XL. Cape Malea.—The sides of Cape 280Malea, the south-eastern extremity of the Greek mainland and of Europe, are formed by dizzy crags, about a thousand feet high, of dark bare rock, seamed and scarred in places by cracks and fissures. At the extreme end of the cape there is a great natural recess in the cliff; and here in the face of the bluff, about two hundred and fifty feet above the sea, there is a tiny terrace sloping to the perpendicular edge of the precipice. Two chapels are built on the terrace, and close by, partly hewn in the rock, is the cell of a half-naked and nearly savage hermit. From the terrace you may clamber down, at the risk of your neck, to a cave opening on the foam of the great rollers which break here eternally. In the inmost corner of the cave is a heap of human bones. The sense of utter solitude and isolation from the world which the spot is fitted to evoke in the mind is broken by the sight of passing vessels. In fair weather steamers of all nations pass continually; and small Greek sailing-boats, with their reddish-brown or white lateen sails, skim along close under the cliffs. But the cape has a bad name for storms and heavy surf; at times even large steamers are unable to weather it for a week together. There was an ancient proverb, “When you have rounded Malea, forget your home.”

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XLI. Monemvasia.—The ancient Minoa ^[8] is now Monemvasia, an island about half a mile long, close to the shore, with which it is connected by a long old stone bridge. The island is a lofty precipitous rock, resembling Gibraltar, or the Bass Rock and Dumbarton Rock in Scotland. The summit, crowned by the ruins of a mediaeval fortress and a mass of tumble-down roofless churches and houses overgrown with weeds, is now only a sheepwalk. From the summit the rock falls away in sheer and lofty precipices, especially on the north. The modern town lies huddled up at the foot of the cliffs on the southern side. Strong walls encircle it, which are connected with the ruined fortress on the top of the rock. Within the walls everything is fast falling to decay. Fine churches, high archways, great private houses, all deserted and in ruins, testify to the former prosperity and the present decline of the town. Trade has quite deserted it; the coasting steamers call only at rare intervals. From the town a zigzag path leads up the face of the rock to the old citadel on the summit.

In the Middle Ages Monemvasia was one of the chief places of the Levantine trade and one of the strongest fortresses in the Morea. It gave its name to Malmsey wine, which was 282grown in the Cyclades, especially Tenos, but was called after the port whence it was shipped to the west.

XLII. Maina.—The great central peninsula of southern Greece, which Pausanias describes in detail, has been known since the Middle Ages by the name of Maina or Mani. The backbone of the peninsula is the great range of Taygetus, which runs south till it terminates in Taenarum, the modern Cape Matapan, the southern extremity of Greece. The scenery of the peninsula is wild and savage; the villages, hedged in by impenetrable thickets of cactus, cling like eagles’ eyries to the faces of apparently inaccessible cliffs, and are reached by stony and exceedingly toilsome footpaths—the only semblance of roads in these secluded highlands. Almost everywhere the surface is nothing but the naked rock. Wood there is none, but a few bushes and here and there some tufts of grass have rooted themselves in the crevices of the rocks, and furnish a scanty pasture to the sheep and goats. The miserable stony soil, wherever it exists, is carefully husbanded by means of terraces, and under the soft southern sky of Laconia yields a tolerable return. There are no springs or brooks; water is obtained only 283from cisterns, which are kept closed by their owners, and leave to draw from them has to be paid for.

The inhabitants, the Mainotes, Mainiotes, or Maniates, are a hardy and warlike race of mountaineers, who claim to be descended from the ancient Spartans. In the fastnesses of their rugged mountains they are said to have retained their primitive heathenism till the latter half of the ninth century; and the Turks never succeeded in subjugating them. As pirates they were greatly dreaded. They are still notorious for the relentless ferocity of their blood-feuds, which are so common that every family of importance has a tower in which to take refuge from the avengers of blood. In these towers persons implicated in a blood-feud have been known to live for many years without ever coming out. To this day many heads of families dare not quit their shelter except under a strong guard of armed retainers. A village will contain twenty to thirty of such strongholds. Each tower is surrounded by a few low huts, which serve as workshops and as the lodgings of the subordinate members of the household. Frequently tower and huts together are enclosed within a fortification wall strengthened with turrets and loopholed. Bitter feuds often rage between the towers of the same village.

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XLIII. Pharae and the Messenian Plain.—The ancient Pharae, or Pherae, probably occupied the site of the modern Kalamata, an industrial town situated on the left bank of the broad stony bed of the Nedon, a mile from the sea. Telemachus, in search of his father, lodged for the night at Pharae on his way from Pylus to Sparta, and again on his return. It is a long day’s ride from Sparta to Kalamata, by the magnificent Langada pass over Mount Taygetus. Pausanias does not mention the name of the river on which Pharae stood, but from Strabo we learn that it was the Nedon. It is a torrent which issues from a rocky gorge in Mount Taygetus, about a mile to the north-east of a steep hill that rises at the back of the town. This hill is crowned with a mediaeval castle, built or occupied successively by Franks, Venetians, and Turks. The presence of ancient hewn stones in the walls, as well as the whole arrangement of the fortress, seem to show that a castle stood here in antiquity also. There are no other relics of antiquity in Kalamata.

The town, with its narrow winding streets and lively bazaar, lies in the great Messenian plain, near its south-eastern extremity. This plain, open to the south and sheltered from the north by mountains, is the warmest part of Greece, and on account of its wonderful fertility was 285known to the ancients as Makaria or the Happy Land. Its natural wealth and delightful climate were celebrated by Euripides in a lost play, of which some lines have been preserved by Strabo. Here at the present day groves of oranges, lemons, fig-trees, olives, and vineyards succeed each other, all fenced by gigantic hedges of prickly and fantastically-shaped cactuses and sword-like aloes, which, with the hot air, remind a traveller from northern Europe that he is in a sub-tropical climate.

XLIV. Messene.—From Kalamata, the probable site of the ancient Pharae, the road to Messene runs north-west across the fertile Messenian plain between hedges of huge fantastically-shaped cactuses and groves of fig-trees, olives, and vines. In front of us loom nearer and nearer the twin peaks of Ithome and Eva rising boldly and abruptly from a single base on the western side of the plain, and forming the natural citadel, as it were, of the whole country. As we near their base we quit the dusty highway and strike westward up the mountain-side by devious and rocky paths. This brings us in time to the monastery of Vourkano, where visitors to Messene generally spend the night.

The monastery is beautifully situated on 286the eastern slope of the mountain, about a quarter of an hour’s walk below the saddle which unites the twin peaks. The buildings, arranged in the form of a quadrangle round a little church, stand on a fine open terrace among cypresses, oaks, and wild olives, commanding an unimpeded view over the Messenian plain southward to the shining waters of the gulf and northward to where the plain ends at the foot of the hills. Ithome and its sister peak rise from the plain about midway between these northern hills and the gulf. Mount Eva, the lower of the two peaks, lies to the south or south-east of Ithome, with which it is connected by a ridge or saddle about half-way up the two mountains. The eastern wall of Messene stood and still stands in ruins on this saddle. The city itself lay on the western side, in the cup formed by the converging slopes of the two mountains. The site may be compared to an immense theatre, of which the back is formed by the saddle in question and the wings by Mount Ithome and Mount Eva. The wretched hamlet of Mavromati lies nearly in the middle of this theatre-like hollow; there are many remains of antiquity in its neighbourhood. But the site of the ancient city is now chiefly occupied by corn-fields, vineyards, and olive-groves.olive-groves.

287The view from the top of Ithome is magnificent. The whole of the rich Messenian plain lies stretched out beneath us. To the south the full sweep of the Messenian gulf is seen, with the glorious snow-capped range of Taygetus bounding both plain and gulf on the east. High up on Taygetus is visible the gap through which the Langada pass runs. Over this pass, which forms the direct route between Sparta and Messenia, the Spartans must have often marched to attack their ancient foes; and it seems just possible that the gleam of their burnished arms in the sunshine, as the army defiled over the pass, may have been visible to the sentinels on Ithome. Farther to the north we see the mountains of Arcadia, with the Lycaean group conspicuous on the north-east. Westward the view is in general bounded by nearer and lower hills, but where they dip on the north-west and again on the south-west we catch glimpses of the Ionian or, as the ancients also called it, the Sicilian sea.

XLV. On the Road to Olympia.—The Erymanthus, descending from the lofty mountains of north-western Arcadia, flows between hills into the broad open valley of the Alpheus and joins that river on its northern bank. At 288its junction with the Alpheus it flows over gravel between abrupt cliffs of pudding-stone. Its water, seen at least from the southern side of the wide valley on a sunny day, is of a bright blue colour. After fording the river and climbing the farther bank, the path leads through open pastures, and then, to avoid a great bend of the river, ascends a pass or woody gorge, where fine oaks and pines, now singly now in clumps, are scattered in wild variety. When we have reached the summit and begin to descend again towards the Alpheus, a series of magnificent views of the river winding between wooded hills opens up before us. For beyond the meeting of its waters with the Erymanthus, the valley of the Alpheus assumes a softer and gayer aspect. Moderate heights rise on the right bank, their gentle slopes thickly wooded with trees and shrubs of the most varied sorts. Pine-trees, maples, planes, and tall lentisk bushes succeed each other, varied here and there by fields and green pastures. Across the Alpheus lie the beautiful wooded hills of Triphylia, where many a picturesque village is seen nestling among pine-woods, and many a height, crowned by church or ruins, stands out abruptly and precipitously above the river. The whole country, with its woods and streams, and the broad river flowing majestically through the middle of the landscape, 289is like a great park. The illusion, however, is broken by the path, which scrambles up hill and down dale, struggles through thickets, and splashes through streams and torrents, in a fashion which resembles anything rather than the trim well-kept walks and avenues of an English park. Such is the scenery and such the path by which Pausanias is now moving westward towards Olympia.

Dio Chrysostom has described how he lost his way in this charming country and fell in with an old dame of the Meg Merrilies type who professed to have the gift of second sight. He says: “Going on foot from Heraea to Pisa by the side of the Alpheus, I was able, up to a certain point, to make out the path. But by and by I found myself in a forest and on broken ground, with many tracks leading to sheepfolds and cattle-pens. And meeting with no one of whom I could ask the way I strayed from the path and wandered up and down. It was high noon; and seeing on a height a clump of oaks, as it might be a grove, I betook myself thither, in the hope that from thence I might spy some path or house. Here then I found stones piled carelessly together, and skins of sacrificed animals hanging up, with clubs and staves, the offerings, as I supposed, of shepherds; and a little way off, seated on the ground, was a tall and stalwart dame, somewhat advanced 290in years, in rustic attire, with long grey hair. Of her I asked what these things might be. She answered, very civilly, in a broad Doric accent, that the spot was sacred to Hercules, and as for herself, she had a son a shepherd and often minded the sheep herself; that by the grace of the Mother of the Gods she had the gift of second sight, and all the herdsmen and farmers of the neighbourhood came to ask her about their crops and cattle.”

XLVI. Olympia.—Olympia lies on the right or north bank of the Alpheus, where the river meanders westward through a spacious valley enclosed by low wooded hills of soft and rounded forms, beyond which appear on the eastern horizon the loftier mountains of Arcadia. The soil of the valley, being alluvial, is fertile; corn-fields and vineyards stretch away in all directions. The whole aspect of the scene, without being grand or impressive, is rich, peaceful, and pleasing. The bed of the Alpheus is wide; but in summer the water is scanty and is divided into several streams running over a broad gravelly bed. The sacred precinct or Altis of Olympia lies between the river on the south and a low but steep hill, thickly wooded with pine-trees and shrubs, which rises on the north. This 291wooded hill is the ancient Mount Cronius. Immediately to the west of the precinct the Cladeus flows between steep sandy banks into the Alpheus from the north.

In the close hot climate of Olympia the need of a good supply of drinking water is especially felt. For months together rain hardly falls; between May and October a shower is a rarity. The great festival was always held in summer (July or August), when the weather at Olympia is cloudless and the heat intense. Hence the multitudes who flocked to witness the games must have been much distressed by the dust and the burning sun, against which the spreading shade of the plane-trees in the sacred precinct could have afforded only an imperfect protection. Indeed Lucian, doubtless with a strong touch of exaggeration, speaks of the spectators packed together and dying in swarms of thirst and of distemper contracted from the excessive drought. The water of the Alpheus is not good to drink, for even in the height of summer it holds in solution a quantity of chalky matter. The water of the Cladeus, on the other hand, is drinkable in its normal state; but even a little rain swells it and makes it run turbid for a long time. Hence it was necessary to sink wells and to bring water from a distance. This was done even in 292Greek times. Nine wells, some square, some round, some lined with the usual shell-limestone, others with plaques of terra-cotta, have been found at Olympia; and water was brought in aqueducts from the upper valley of the Cladeus. But in Roman times the supply was immensely improved and extended by the munificence of the wealthy sophist Herodes Atticus. Lucian tells us how the mountebank Peregrinus denounced Herodes and his aqueduct for pandering to the luxury and effeminacy of the day. It was the duty of the spectators, he said, to endure their thirst, and if need be to die of it. This doctrine proved unacceptable to his hearers, and the preacher had to run for his life pursued by a volley of stones.

XLVII. Phidias’s Image of Olympian Zeus.—The testimony of antiquity to the extraordinary beauty and majesty of the image is very strong. The Roman general Paulus Aemilius was deeply moved by the sight of it; he felt as if in the presence of the god himself, and declared that Phidias alone had succeeded in embodying the Homeric conception of Zeus. Cicero says that Phidias fashioned the image, not after any living model, but after that ideal beauty which he saw with the inward eye alone. Quintilian asserts that the beauty of the image 293served to strengthen religion, the majesty of the image equalling the majesty of the god. A poet declared that either the god must have come from heaven to earth to show Phidias his image, or that Phidias must have gone to heaven to behold it. The statue was reckoned one of the seven wonders of the world, and to die without having seen it was deemed a misfortune. The rhetorician Dio Chrysostom, a man of fine taste, extolled it in one of his speeches. He calls it “the most beautiful image on earth, and the dearest to the gods.” He represents Phidias speaking of his “peaceful and gentle Zeus, the overseer, as it were, of united and harmonious Greece, whom by the help of my art and of the wise and good city of Elis I set up, mild and august in an unconstrained attitude, the giver of life and breath and all good things, the common father and saviour of mankind.” And again in a fine passage he says: “Methinks that if one who is heavy laden in mind, who has drained the cup of misfortune and sorrow in life, and whom sweet sleep visits no more, were to stand before this image, he would forget all the griefs and troubles that are incident to the life of man.”

XLVIII. The Hermes of Praxiteles.—Hermes is represented standing with the infant 294Dionysus on his left arm, and the weight of his body resting on his right foot. His form is the perfection of manly grace and vigour; the features of his oval face, under the curly hair that encircles his brow, are refined, strong, and beautiful; their expression is tender and slightly pensive. The profile is of the straight Greek type, with “the bar of Michael Angelo” over the eyebrows. The left arm of the god rests upon the stump of a tree, over which his mantle hangs loosely in rich folds, that contrast well with his nude body. His right arm is raised. The child Dionysus lays his right hand confidingly on the shoulder of Hermes; his gaze is fixed on the object, whatever it was, which Hermes held in his right hand, and his missing left arm must have been stretched out (as it appears in the restoration) towards the same object. As most of Hermes’s right arm is wanting, we cannot know for certain what he had in his right hand. Probably it was a bunch of grapes. In a wall-painting at Pompeii a satyr is represented holding the infant Dionysus on his left arm, while in his raised right hand he dangles a bunch of grapes, after which the child reaches. It is highly probable that this painting is an imitation, not necessarily at first hand, of the work of Praxiteles; and if so, it affords a strong ground for supposing that the missing right hand of the Hermes held a bunch of 295grapes. The only objection of any weight to this view is that in the statue Hermes is not looking at the child, as we should expect him to be, but is gazing past him into the distance with what has been described as a listening or dreamy look. Hence it has been suggested that Hermes held a pair of cymbals or castanets in his hand, to the sound of which both he and the child are listening; and a passage of Calpurnius has been quoted in which Silenus is represented holding the infant Dionysus on his arm and amusing him by shaking a rattle. This certainly would well explain the attitude and look of Hermes; but on the other hand cymbals or a rattle would not serve so well as a bunch of grapes to characterise the infant Dionysus. The same may be said of the suggestion that Hermes, as god of gain, held aloft a purse and was listening to the chinking of the money in it. In his left hand Hermes probably held his characteristic attribute, a herald’s staff; the round hole for it in the hand is still visible.

On his head he seems to have worn a metal wreath; the deep groove for fastening it on may be seen in the back part of the hair. Traces of dark red paint were perceived on the hair and on the sandal of the foot when the statue was found; the colour is supposed to have been laid on as ground for gilding. The 296back of the statue, which would not be seen well, is not carefully finished; it still shows the strokes of the chisel. Otherwise the technical finish is exquisite. The differences of texture between the delicate white skin of the god, the leather straps of the sandals, the woollen stuff of the cloak, and the curly hair of the head, are expressed in the most masterly way.

A late distinguished critic was of opinion that the Hermes is an early work of Praxiteles, executed before he had attained a full mastery of his art. Such a view, it would seem, can only be held by one who knows the statue solely from photographs and casts. But no reproductions afford an adequate idea of the beauty of the original. Engravings of it are often no better than caricatures. Again, the dead white colour and the mealy texture of casts give no conception of the soft, glossy, flesh-like, seemingly elastic surface of the original, which appears to glow with divine life. Looking at the original, it seems impossible to conceive that Praxiteles or any man ever attained to a greater mastery over stone than is exhibited in this astonishing work.

XLIX. Lasion.—Pausanias has omitted to mention an ancient town that lay in the wild upper valley of the Peneus, in the heart of 297the Elean highlands, not far from the Arcadian frontier. This was Lasion, a place which, from its proximity to the Arcadian boundary, was the subject of border feuds, the Arcadians claiming possession of it, though in fact it appears to have belonged properly to Elis. It changed hands several times in the fifth, fourth, and third centuries B.C. The ruins of this secluded little town were discovered by G. F. Welcker in 1842 near Koumani, a village at the head waters of the Peneus. They may be visited on the way from Olympia to Psophis, though the visit necessitates a short detour to the west.

The route first follows the valley of the Cladeus through soft woodland scenery of the richest and most charming kind, between low hills crowned with clumps of pines. Then, still following the glen of the Cladeus, we ascend through romantically beautiful forests of pines and ancient oaks, and emerge on a wide breezy tableland, backed on the north by the high mountains of northern Arcadia. In the middle of the plateau, which is open and well cultivated, lies the scattered village of Lala. Crossing the northern end of the tableland, which is here carpeted with ferns, we again ascend a steep slope, and find ourselves on a still higher tableland, covered with fine oak forests. After traversing the forest for some 298time we quit the path to Psophis, which continues to run northward, and take a path which strikes westward. The time from Lala to the parting of the ways is about two hours. Another half-hour’s ride through the forest, which grows denser as we advance, brings us to Koumani, a trim well-to-do village, beautifully situated among oak-woods. The time from Olympia is about six hours.

The ruins of Lasion, now called Kouti, are to the north of the village, apparently on the same level with it, but a profound ravine divides them from the village, and half an hour’s laborious descent and ascent of its steep sides are needed to bring us to the ruins. The site is an exceedingly strong one. Two tributaries of the Peneus, coming from the higher mountains to the north-east, flow in deep ravines, which meet at an acute angle. Between them stretches a long, comparatively narrow ridge or tongue of land, which on three sides falls steeply down to the glens; only on the east the ascent is gentle. The top of the ridge is quite flat, and well adapted to be the site of a city. At one point it narrows to a mere isthmus or neck which divides the level summit into two parts, an eastern and a western. The western and smaller part was doubtless the ancient citadel; a finely-built wall of ashlar masonry, extending across the narrowest point 299of the neck, divides it from the rest of the city. The eastern and larger part of the ridge is more or less covered with ruins, and at its eastern end, where the ascent is easiest, a very fine piece of the city wall is still standing. Square towers, about seven feet broad, project from it at intervals. Walls and towers are built of well and regularly cut blocks; the masonry resembles that of Messene. There seem to be no traces of fortification walls on any other side of the plateau; perhaps none existed, the inhabitants thinking the deep ravines a sufficient defence.

The situation of Lasion is not only strong but beautiful. Tall plane-trees overhang the streams in the deep glens far below the ruins. To the north and north-east rises at no great distance the grand and massive range of Mount Erymanthus; while westward the view extends, between the heights that hem in the narrow valley of the Peneus, away over the lowlands of Elis to the distant sea.

L. The Erymanthus.—The first sight I had of the Erymanthus, among the mountains of northern Arcadia, is one of the scenes that dwell in the memory. We had been travelling for hours through the thick oak-woods which cover the outlying slopes and 300spurs of Mount Erymanthus on the south, when suddenly, emerging from the forest, we looked down into a long valley, through which flowed, between hills wooded to their summits, a shining river, the Erymanthus. At the far end of the valley high blue mountains closed the view. The scene, arched by the bright Greek sky, was indeed Arcadian.

LI. The Monastery of Megaspeleum.—The ancient Buraicus is the stream now called the Kalavryta river because it descends from the town of that name. The valley, which is broad and open at Kalavryta, contracts to the north of the town into a narrow defile flanked by huge rocks. In this narrow valley is the great monastery of Megaspeleum, the largest and wealthiest monastery in Greece, and indeed one of the largest and richest monasteries of the Eastern Church. Formerly it had dependencies even in Russia. The building and its situation are in the highest degree picturesque. It is a huge whitewashed pile, with wooden balconies on the outside, eight stories high, perched at a great height above the right bank of the river, on the steep slope of a mountain and immediately overhung by an enormous beetling crag which runs sheer up for some hundreds of feet above the roof of the 301monastery. It is this overhanging cliff which gives to the monastery its name of Megaspeleum (‘great cave’). So completely does it overarch the lofty building that when in the War of Independence the Egyptian soldiers of Ibrahim Pacha attempted to destroy the monastery by letting fall masses of rock upon it from the cliff above, the rocks fell clear of the monastery, leaving it unharmed. The steep slope of the mountain below is occupied by the terraced gardens of the monks, which with their rich vegetation, and the cypresses rising here and there above them, add greatly to the charm of the scene. A single zigzag path leads up this steep terraced slope to the monastery. The bare precipices above, crowned with forests, the deep wooded valley below, and the mountains rising steeply on the farther side, make up a landscape of varied delight and grandeur, on which a painter would love to dwell.

LII. The Gulf of Corinth.—After describing the view from the monastery of Troupia on the hill of Bura, Leake makes the following remarks on the scenery of the Gulf of Corinth, which are worth transcribing because they convey the impression made by this wonderfully beautiful gulf on one who in general was not given to dwell on the charms of nature. He 302says: “I doubt whether there is anything in Greece, abounding as it is in enchanting scenery and interesting recollections, that can rival the Corinthiac Gulf. There is no lake scenery in Europe that can compete with it. Its coasts, broken into an infinite variety of outline by the ever-changing mixture of bold promontory, gentle slope, and cultivated level, are crowned on every side by lofty mountains of the most pleasing and majestic forms; the fine expanse of water inclosed in this noble frame, though not so much frequented by ships as it ought to be by its natural adaptation to commerce, is sufficiently enlivened by vessels of every size and shape to present at all times an animated scene. Each step in the Corinthiac Gulf presents to the traveller a new prospect, not less delightful to the eye than interesting to the mind, by the historical fame and illustrious names of the objects which surround him. And if, in the latter peculiarity, the celebrated panorama of the Saronic Gulf, described by Sulpicius, be preferable, that arm of the Aegaean is in almost every part inferior to the Corinthian sea in picturesque beauty; the surrounding mountains are less lofty and less varied in their heights and outlines, and, unless where the beautiful plain of Athens is sufficiently near to decorate the prospect, it is a picture of almost unmitigated sterility and rocky wildness 303exhibited in every possible form of mountain, promontory, and island. It must, however, be admitted that it is only by comparison that such a scene can be depreciated.” I can only confirm this estimate of the superior charms of the Gulf of Corinth. Its waters seemed to me of an even deeper blue; and the delicacy of the morning and evening tints—azure, lilac, and rose—on the mountains is such that it is hard in looking at them to believe they are of the solid earth; so unsubstantial, so fairy-like do they seem, like the gorgeous phantasmagoria of cloudland or mountains seen in dreams.

LIII. On the Coast of Achaia.—Pausanias continues to move eastward along the coast of Achaia. Beyond the Buraicus river, where it issues from its romantic gorge, the strip of fertile plain which has skirted the coast all the way from Aegium comes to an end. The mountains now advance to the shore, and the road runs for a short distance along the summit of cliffs that border the coast. Then the mountains again retreat from the shore, leaving at their base a small maritime plain clothed with olive-groves. A stream, the river of Diakopton, crosses the plain and flows into the sea. It comes down from a wild and magnificent gorge, thickly wooded with tall firs and 304shut in by stupendous precipices of naked rock. Seen at nightfall under a lowering sky, with wreaths of white mist drooping low on the black mountains, the entrance to this gloomy gorge might pass for the mouth of hell; one could fancy Dante and his guide wending their way into it in the darkness.

Eastward of this little plain the mountains, covered with pine forests, again rise in precipices from the sea, hemming in the railway at their foot. A line of fine crags runs along the face of the mountains for a long way, their crests tufted with pine-woods, and the lower slopes at their feet also clothed in the same mantle of sombre green.

LIV. Pellene.—The scanty and insignificant ruins of Pellene are situated on the summit of a mountain which rises on the western side of the river of Trikala (the ancient Sythas), near the small hamlet of Zougra. It is a ride of two hours and a half from Xylokastro, the little town at the mouth of the river, to Zougra. We cross the river by a large stone bridge not far from its mouth, and then ascend the valley on the western bank of the stream. The bottom of the valley is fruitful; vineyards and fine groves of olives occupy the greater part of it, and tall cypresses rise here 305and there, like dark spires, above the greener foliage. The hills which enclose the valley on the east and west are not very high, but they are gashed and tortured by great scaurs and precipices of white and whity-brown earth. On the western side of the valley in particular a long line of high white precipices runs almost unbroken along the brow of the hills. The white, probably argillaceous, earth, which is thus cleft and gouged into precipices, is the same which forms the great precipices on the eastern side of Sicyon. Indeed it prevails nearly all the way along the southern coast of the Gulf of Corinth from Sicyon to Derveni, near Aegira. This chalky earth forms a plateau of varying height, separated from the shore by a stretch of level plain which averages perhaps a mile in width. The seaward face of the plateau is steep, high, and white; its edges are sharp as if cut with a knife, and ragged like the edge of a saw. Every here and there it is rent by a stream or torrent which has scooped a deep bed for itself out of the friable soil. The valley of the Sythas, up which we go to Pellene, is nothing but one of these water-worn rifts on a gigantic scale. As we ascend it through vineyards and olive-groves, between the rugged broken hills with their long lines of white precipices, the massive Cyllene, with its high, bare, pointed summit, looms in front of us 306at no great distance, blocking the southern end of the valley. After riding up the valley for an hour or more along a road which, for Greece, is excellent, we begin to climb a mountain on the western side of the river. A long, toilsome, winding, dusty, or, in rainy weather, muddy ascent, impeded rather than facilitated by a Turkish paved road of the usual execrable description, brings us in time to the little hamlet of Zougra. As we rise up the steep slope, our fatigue is to some extent compensated by the fine prospect that opens up behind us to the Corinthian Gulf and the mountains beyond it.

LV. The Road from Argos to Arcadia.—From Argos two main passes lead westward over the chain of Mount Artemisius to Mantinea. The southern and more direct of the two is for the greater part of the way nothing but a rough bridle-path; in places it crosses the deep beds of torrents, which at the time of my journey were dry. The path turns round the northern foot of the lofty acropolis of Argos, and skirting the wide Argolic plain enters the valley of the Charadrus or Xerias, as it is now called. This is a long narrow valley of somewhat monotonous aspect, enclosed by barren and rocky hills, and barred at the 307farther end by a steep mountain, on which, when I saw it far away on a bright April morning, purple shadows rested. The bed of the river is broad and stony, sometimes several hundred yards in width; it is generally dry, but after heavy rains the spates that come roaring down it from the mountains are much dreaded. Flocks of sheep and goats feed in the valley; the herdsmen carry the usual long staves tipped with crooks, and sometimes a gun. Trains of laden mules or asses, conducted by peasants, also met us. The head of the valley, immediately under the mountain barrier, is very picturesque. The bottom is partly covered with shrubs and trees, among which (for the place was then in its spring beauty) I noticed the broom and the hawthorn, both in flower, also wild roses, and a tree with a lovely purple bloom, which I believe to have been the Judas-tree. Beyond the small hamlet of Mazi, consisting of a few wretched stone cottages, the path begins the long ascent and winds up the face of the mountain-wall in a series of zigzags. The view backward from the summit of the pass is magnificent, embracing a wilderness of mountains with the sea and the islands of Hydra and Spetsa in the distance. From the top of the pass the path drops down very steeply, almost precipitously, into the flat sodden expanse of the Fallow Plain, across which we look to a 308bleak chain of grey limestone hills. The village of Tsipiana stands at the foot of the pass, its red-roofed houses, with a large church in their midst, rising in tiers on the steep mountain-side. On a ledge high above the village is a monastery among cypresses, and higher still there shoots up a huge fantastic pinnacle of rock. The traveller who has reached Tsipiana is in Arcadia, and if this is his first glimpse of that poetical land, he may find the reality to answer to his expectations, if not to his dreams.

From a low rocky hillock, which runs out like a promontory into the flat, he looks northward over the Fallow Plain, fallow no longer, but covered with a patchwork of maize-fields, and intersected by a stream meandering through it in serpentine curves. Southward the eye ranges away over the level expanse to where it terminates in low blue hills, at the foot of which, dimly perceptible in the distance, lies the town of Tripolitza. In the middle distance, on a projecting hill, appears a ruined mediaeval castle. The rural solitude of the landscape with its green spreading plain, its winding river, its lonely hills, and the silence and peace brooding over all, is not unworthy of Arcadia.

LVI. Mantinea.—The ruins of Mantinea are situated in a flat, marshy, and treeless plain 309about nine miles north of the present town of Tripolitza. The plain is about seven miles long from north to south, but in the latter direction it melts into the plain of Tegea; the division between the two is marked only by the protrusion of rocky hills on either side, which here narrows the plain to about a mile in width. On the east the plain is bounded by the chain of Mount Alesius, bare and high on the north, low and bushy on the south; between the two sections of the chain thus marked off from each other is the dip through which the path goes to Nestane and so by the Prinus route to Argos. On the west of the plain rises the high rugged range of Mount Maenalus, its lower slopes bare or overgrown with bushes, its higher slopes belted with dark pine-woods. Seen from the plain to the north of Mantinea on a bright autumn day, this fine range, with its dark blue lights and purple shadows, presents the appearance of a tossing sea of billows petrified by magic. Finally, on the north the plain of Mantinea is divided from that of Orchomenus by a low chain of reddish hills.

A great part of the plain, including almost all the southern part, is covered with vineyards, the rich green foliage of which, when the vines are in leaf, contrasts with the grey arid slopes of the surrounding mountains. But the site of Mantinea itself is now mostly cornland. Not a single 310house stands within the wide area, and hardly one is within sight. In spring the swampy plain is traversed by sluggish streams, little better than ditches, the haunts of countless frogs, which sun themselves on the banks and squatter into the water with loud flops at the approach of the wayfarer. The whole scene is one of melancholy and desolation. As the plain stands about two thousand feet above the sea, the climate is piercingly cold in winter as well as burning hot in summer. The marshes now render the site unhealthy at all times, but in antiquity it was doubtless better drained. Of the oak-forest, through which the road ran from Mantinea to Tegea in the days of Pausanias, nothing is left. Indeed the oak has long ago retreated from the plains to the mountains of Arcadia.

LVII. The Road to Stymphalus.—The road to Stymphalus, after diverging from the road to Pheneus, continues to skirt the foot of the mountains in a north-easterly direction. Behind us we leave Mount Trachy, which seen from the north is an imposing mountain, its steep sides rent by parallel gullies. Gradually the hill and plain of Orchomenus disappear behind us, and the path leads into a savage glen, hemmed in by wild rocky mountains, bare and 311desolate, towering high on either side. Away up in the face of a precipice on the right of the path is seen the little monastery of Kandyla, hanging in what appears an almost inaccessible position. In winter a torrent flows down the middle of the glen to swell the marsh in the plain of Orchomenus. A mile or so beyond the monastery we reach the village of Kandyla, straggling in the wide gravelly bed of the torrent, shaded by plane-trees and mulberry-trees, and shut in on all sides by high rocky mountains, their sides covered with fir-woods and their summits tipped with snow for a good part of the year. From the upper end of the village a pass leads eastward over the mountains to Bougiati and the ancient Alea; the path, which is very rough and steep, ascends a wild gully overhung on the south by a huge beetling crag; the descent on the eastern side of the mountains, towards Bougiati, is so steep as to be almost impassable for horses.

But at present we are following the path to Stymphalus, which, leaving the village of Kandyla in a northerly direction, ascends the mountain by zigzags along the edge of precipices. The snow sometimes lies deep here as late as March, making the ascent difficult and dangerous. The pass runs north-east between the lofty Mount Skipieza, nearly six thousand feet high, on the left, and the sharp-peaked Mount St. Constantine, 312crowned with a Frankish castle, on the right. From the first summit of the pass a path branches off to the right, descending into the narrow valley of Skotini which we see stretching eastward beneath us. Half an hour more takes us to a second summit, whence we look down on the plain and lake of Stymphalus and across to the majestic mass of Mount Cyllene towering on the farther side of the valley. The way now goes down a ravine shut in on both sides by lofty fir-clad mountains and known as the Wolf’s Ravine from the wolves that are said to abound in it. Thus descending we reach the valley of Stymphalus and the western end of the lake.

LVIII. The Lake and Valley of Stymphalus.—The valley of Stymphalus lies immediately to the east of the valley and lake of Pheneus, from which it is divided only by the ridge of Mount Geronteum. The general features of both valleys are alike. Both are shut in so closely on all sides by mountains and hills that the water which accumulates in them has no outlet except by underground chasms, and forms in the bottom of each valley a lake which shrinks in summer. But the valley of Stymphalus is smaller and narrower than the valley of Pheneus, and its lake is quite different. 313Instead of a deep sea-like expanse of blue water, we have here a small lake of the most limpid clearness, the shallowness of which is proved to the eye by the patches of reeds and other water-plants that emerge from the surface of the water even in the middle of the lake. The palm of beauty is generally, I believe, awarded to the lake of Pheneus; but the charms of Stymphalus are of a rarer and subtler sort. Blue lakes encircled by steep pine-clad mountains may be found in many lands; but where shall we look for the harmonious blending of grand mountains and sombre pine-forests with a still, pellucid, shallow, but not marshy lake, tufted with graceful water-plants, such as meets us in Stymphalus?

The lake of Stymphalus may be a mile and a half long by half a mile wide. On the north it bathes the foot of a ridge or chain of low heights, covered with rugged grey rocks and overgrown with prickly shrubs, which reaches its highest point on the west and descends gradually in terraces to the east, where its last rocks are elevated above the plain and lake by only a few feet. On the crest of this rocky ridge, towards its eastern end, are some remains of the citadel of Stymphalus. At the back of the ridge a stretch of level ground divides it from the steep slopes of the majestic Cyllene, 314which rises like a wall on the northern side of the valley. The sides of this great mountain are mostly bare and of a reddish-grey hue; but the grey shoulder of its sister peak on the east, joined to it by a high ridge, is mottled with black pines. The mountains on the southern side of the lake are also steep and high; low bushes mantle their lower and dark pine-forests their upper slopes. Conspicuous among them, between immense pine-covered slopes, is the deep glen known as the Wolfs Ravine, through which the road goes to Orchomenus.

Solitude and silence, broken by the strident cries of the water-fowl that haunt the mere, reign in the valley. A few hamlets nestle in the nooks and glens at the foot of the mountains; but in the wide strath and on the banks of the lake not a human habitation is to be seen. The impression left by the scenery on some minds is that of gloom and desolation. Yet on a hot day, when all the landscape is flooded with the intense sunlight of the south, it is pleasant to sit on the rocky ridge of Stymphalus, looking down on the cool clear water of the lake and listening to the cries of the water-fowl, the drowsy hum of bees, and the tinkle of distant goat-bells. In such weather even the dark pine-forests on the mountains, gloomy as they must be under a bleak cloudy sky, suggest only ideas of coolness and shade; and 315we can well imagine that the ancient Stymphalus, with its colonnades and terraces rising from the lake, must have been a perfect place in which to lounge away the languid hours of a Greek summer. For the high upland character of the valley contributes with the expanse of water to temper the heat of the summer sun. The traveller who passes, as he may do, in a single day from the cool moist air of the valley to the sultry heat of the plain of Argos is struck by the contrast between the climates. In the morning he may have left the cherry-trees in blossom at Stymphalus; in the evening he may see the reapers getting in the harvest in the plain of Argos.

LIX. The Lake of Pheneus.—The lake of Pheneus (for what was a plain in the time of Pausanias is now a lake) is a broad and beautiful sheet of greenish-blue water encircled by lofty mountains which descend in rocky declivities or sheer precipices to the water’s edge, their upper slopes clothed with black pine-woods and their summits capped with snow for many months of the year. Right above the lake on the north-east towers the mighty cone of Cyllene, the loftiest mountain but one in Peloponnese; while on the north-west Dourdouvana rears its long serrated crest, 316culminating in a sharp bare peak of grey rock, at the foot of which, embowered in trees and gardens, nestles the village of Phonia, the representative of the ancient Pheneus. Here on the north, between the village and the lake, is the only stretch of level ground that breaks the mountain ring, and the luxuriant green of its vineyards and maize-fields contrasts pleasingly with the sombre hue of the pine-forests all around. The first sight of this blue lake embosomed among forest-clad mountains takes the traveller by surprise, so unlike is it to anything else in Greece; and he feels as if suddenly transported from the arid hills and the parched plains of Greece to a northern land—from the land of the olive, the vine, and the orange, to the land of the pine, the mountain, and the lake.

So completely is the lake fenced in by mountains on all sides that no stream can issue from it above ground, and the water escapes only by two subterranean emissaries or Katavothras, as they are called by the Greeks, at the south-eastern and south-western ends of the lake. Through the latter emissary the water passes under the mountain, and issuing on the other side, about six miles from the lake and eight hundred feet below its level, forms the source of the Ladon. On the state of these emissaries it depends whether the great 317mountain-basin of Pheneus is a fertile plain or a broad lake. From antiquity down to the present century the periods in which the basin has been completely drained have alternated with periods in which it has been occupied by a lake. In the time of Theophrastus (the fourth century B.C.) the bottom of the valley seems to have been generally dry land, for he mentions that once, when the emissaries had got choked up, the water rose and flooded the plain, drowning the willows, firs, and pines, which, however, reappeared the following year when the flood subsided. In the following century part of the valley at least would seem to have been a lake, for the geographer Eratosthenes, quoted by Strabo, informs us that the river Anias formed in front of the city of Pheneus a lake which was drained by subterranean passages, and that when these passages were closed the water rose over the plain, but that when they were opened again it was discharged into the Ladon and hence into the Alpheus in such volume that the sacred precinct at Olympia was flooded, while the lake on the other hand shrank. Strabo himself mentions that the flow of the Ladon was once checked by the obstruction of the emissaries consequent upon an earthquake. According to Pliny there had been down to his time five changes in the condition of the valley from 318wet to dry and from dry to wet, all of them caused by earthquakes. In Plutarch’s age the flood rose so high that the whole valley was under water, which pious people attributed to Apollo’s anger at Hercules, who was said to have stolen the prophetic tripod at Delphi and carried it off to Pheneus about a thousand years before. However, later on in the same century the waters had again subsided, for Pausanias found the bottom of the valley to be dry land, and knew of the former existence of the lake only from tradition.

From the days of Pausanias down to the beginning of the nineteenth century we have no record of the condition of the valley. In 1806, when Leake and Dodwell visited it, the great valley was still a swampy plain, covered with fields of wheat or barley except at the south-western end, where round the entrance to the emissary the water formed a small lake which never dried up even in summer. But in 1821, doubtless through the obstruction of the emissaries, the water began to rise over the plain, and by 1829-1830, when the French surveyors mapped the district, the whole basin was occupied by a deep lake five miles long by five miles wide. On January 1, 1834, the emissaries suddenly opened again, the Ladon became a deep and raging torrent, the valley was drained, and fresh vegetation 319sprang up on the rich slimy soil. But when Welcker visited Pheneus in 1842 the valley was once more occupied by a lake, and had been so, if he was correctly informed, since 1838 at least. And a lake it would seem to have been ever since. In 1853 the Swiss scholar Vischer found a great lake, exactly as the French surveyors had represented it on their map; the hill on the north-west side of the valley, on which are the scanty remains of the ancient acropolis, projected like a peninsula into the lake, and the site of the ancient city was deep under water. W. G. Clark in 1856 describes with enthusiasm the “wide expanse of still water deep among the hills, reflecting black pine-woods and grey crags and sky now crimson with sunset”; according to him the lake was seven miles long and as many wide. In June 1888 Mr. Philippson found a broad clear lake of deep green colour; and in the autumn of 1895 I viewed with pleasure the same beautiful scene, though I would describe the colour of the water as greenish-blue rather than green. The lake has shrunk, however, a good deal since the middle of the century. A long stretch of level plain, covered with vineyards and maize-fields, now divides the ancient acropolis of Pheneus from the margin of the lake.

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LX. From Pheneus To Nonacris.—The route from Pheneus to the Styx, at least so far as the modern village of Zarouchla, is one of the most beautiful in all Greece. The grandeur of the mountains, the richness of the vegetation, the fragrance and charm of the pine-forests, the distant views of the blue lake of Pheneus, all contribute to render the impression which the day’s journey leaves on the memory one of the most agreeable that the traveller brings back with him from Greece.

From the lower village of Phonia we ascend through the luxuriant gardens and lanes of the village to the ridge which bounds the plain of Pheneus on the north-west. On reaching it, a grand view westward of the mighty Mount Chelmos (the ancient Aroanius), with its bare summit and pine-clad lower slopes, bursts upon us. The mountain is seen rising above a deep basin-like valley, the bottom and sides of which are clothed with the richest vegetation. High up on the slope of the mountain to the north-west (Mount Crathis), among trees, is the delightfully-situated monastery of St. George. Our path leads down into the valley; on the slope grow white poplars and cypresses, and the ground is partly carpeted with ferns. From the bottom of the valley, which is chiefly occupied by a charming grove of plane-trees, we ascend through fine woods, mostly of oak, to 321the monastery of St. George. Still ascending after we have passed the monastery, we plunge again into a maze of beautiful woods and dense tangled thickets, threaded by rills of sparkling water. Vegetation of such rank luxuriance is rarely met with in Greece. On emerging from these delightful woodlands we traverse, always ascending, a stretch of bare bushy slopes which intervenes between the verdant glades below and the sombre pine-forests higher up. When these slopes are passed, we enter the pine-forest, through which our way now goes for several hours.

Few things can be more delightful than this ride through the pine-woods. It was a bright October day when I passed through them on my way to Solos; in many places the forest was carpeted with ferns, now turned yellow, and between the tree-trunks we could see across the valley the great slopes of Mount Cyllene, of a glowing purple in the intense sunlight. From time to time, too, we had views backward over the blue waters of the lake of Pheneus embosomed in its dark pine-clad mountains. Added to all this were the delicious odour of the pines and the freshness and exhilaration of the air at a height of about six thousand feet. But the culmination of beauty, so far as distant views go, is reached on the summit of the ridge, before we begin to descend the northern slope 322towards Zarouchla. On the one side, toward the south-east, we look back to the lake of Pheneus and the great mountains which encircle it, Mount Cyllene above all. On the other side, toward the north-west, we gaze down into the long narrow valley of the river Crathis, hemmed in on either hand by high mountains, above which soars the bare sharp peak of Mount Chelmos on the south, while at the farther end of the valley the view is closed by the blue Acarnanian mountains across the Gulf of Corinth.

From the ridge we now descend through the forest by a steep, winding, stony path, till we reach the bed of a stream flowing among romantic rocks and woods to join or rather to form, with other streams, the Crathis. In the bottom of the valley the richness of the vegetation even increases. We rode through thickets of planes, growing as great bushes or small trees, so dense that we had constantly to stoop to the horses’ necks to prevent our faces from being brushed by the branches. Other trees and plants, of which I did not know the names, grew in profusion around us. And above all this Eden-like verdure of woods and lanes and thickets shot up the huge sharp peaks of Chelmos and its sister mountains, blue and purple in the sunlight. In this paradise lies the village of Zarouchla. Beyond it the path 323follows the valley of the Crathis, keeping for the most part on the right bank of the stream. The valley is very narrow, and is enclosed by immense steep mountains, the sides of which, wherever it is practicable, are terraced for vines or other cultivation. The Crathis, when I saw it, was a clear rushing stream, easily fordable at any point. At first the path runs in the bottom of the valley through tangled thickets. Here and there, where the dale is wide enough to admit of it, a patch of maize is grown. But soon, as we proceed, the valley contracts too much to allow even of this, and so the path, often rough and difficult for horses, ascends and leads along the barer mountain-side at some height above the stream.

Thus advancing we at last arrive opposite to the mouth of the deep glen down which the Styx comes to join the Crathis on its western bank. Here we cross the Crathis and strike up the glen of the Styx. The scenery of the profound and narrow glen is almost oppressively grand. The mountains are immense and exceedingly massive; above they are bare and rocky; but their lower slopes are terraced so as to resemble gigantic staircases, and on the terraces are perched several very picturesque villages, the houses scattered at different levels and embowered among trees. At the upper end of the glen soars the mighty cone of Mount 324Chelmos. The grandeur of the scenery, which would otherwise be almost awful, is softened by the wonderful luxuriance of the vegetation in the glen. The horse-chestnut trees especially, with their enormous gnarled and knotted trunks, are a sight to see. The nightingales are said to be very common here and to sing from February to June. A long laborious ascent by a winding path brings us to the prosperous village of Solos on the eastern side of the glen. The villages on the opposite side of the glen, dispersed over the terraced slopes, form, with Solos, almost a single settlement. One of them probably occupies the site of the ancient Nonacris.

LXI. The Fall of the Styx.—The village of Solos stands, as we have seen, on the right bank of the Styx, near where that stream falls into the Crathis. But the source of the stream is at the head of the glen, some miles to the south, where the water tumbles or trickles, according to the season, over the smooth face of an immense perpendicular cliff, the top of which is not far below the conical summit of Mount Chelmos, a mountain nearly eight thousand feet high. The walk from Solos to the foot of the fall and back is exceedingly fatiguing, and very few travellers 325accomplish it; most of them are content to view the fall from a convenient distance through a telescope. For the first two miles or so the path is practicable for horses, and travellers who are resolved to make their way to the waterfall will do well to ride thus far and to have the horses waiting for them here on their return. It is also necessary to take a guide or guides. The path winds up the glen, keeping at first high on the right bank. The bed of the stream is here prettily wooded with poplars and other trees and is spanned by a bridge with a single high arch. For a considerable distance above the village the water of the Styx, as seen from above, appears to be of a clear light-blue colour, with a tinge of green. This colour, however, is only apparent, and is due to the slaty rocks, of a pale greenish-blue colour, among which the river flows. In reality the water is quite clear and colourless.

In about twenty minutes from leaving the village we come in sight of the cliff over which the water of the Styx descends. It is an immense cliff, absolutely perpendicular, a little to the left or east of the high conical summit of Mount Chelmos. The whole of this northern face of the mountain is in fact nothing but a sheer and in places even overhanging precipice of grey rock—by far the most awful line of precipices I have ever seen. The cliffs of 326Delphi, grand and imposing as they are, sink into insignificance compared with the prodigious wall of rock in which Mount Chelmos descends on the north into the glen of the Styx. The cliff down which the water comes is merely the eastern and lower end of this huge wall of rock. Seen from a distance it appears to be streaked perpendicularly with black and red. The black streak marks the line of the waterfall, to which it has given the modern name of Mavro-nero, ‘the Black Water.’ The colour is produced by a dark incrustation which spreads over the smooth face of the rock wherever it is washed by the falling water or by the spray into which the water dissolves before it reaches the ground. In the crevices of the cliffs to the right and left of the fall great patches of snow remain all the year through. I saw them and passed close to the largest of them on a warm autumn day, after the heat of summer and before the first snow of winter.

About twenty-five minutes after leaving Solos we cross the Styx by a ford, and henceforward the route lies on the left or western bank of the stream. Five minutes from the ford bring us to a mill picturesquely situated among trees, where a brook comes purling down a little glen wooded with willows and plane-trees. Just above the mill the Styx 327tumbles over a fine rocky lyn in a roaring cascade. Beyond this point the steep slopes of the hills on the opposite bank of the stream are covered with ferns, which when I rode up the glen were tinged with the gold of autumn. In front of us looms nearer and larger the cone of Mount Chelmos with its long line of precipices.

Ten or twelve minutes beyond the mill the horses are left and the traveller sets forward on foot. As we advance the glen grows wilder and more desolate, but for the first half-mile or so it is fairly open, the track keeps close to the bed of the stream, and there is no particular difficulty. A deep glen now joins the glen of the Styx from the south-east. Here we begin to ascend the slope and cross an artificial channel which brings down water to the mill. All pretence of a path now ceases, and henceforward till we reach the foot of the waterfall there is nothing for it but to scramble over rocks and to creep along slopes often so steep and precipitous that to find a foothold or handhold on them is not easy, and stretching away into such depths below that it is best not to look down them but to keep the eyes fixed on the ground at one’s feet. A stone set rolling down one of these slopes will be heard rumbling for a long time, and the sound is echoed and prolonged by the cliffs with such startling 328distinctness that at first it sounds as if a rock were coming thundering down upon the wayfarer from above. In the worst places the guides point out to the traveller where to plant his feet and hold him up if he begins to slip. Shrubs, tough grass, and here and there a stunted pine-tree give a welcome hold, but on the steepest slopes they are wanting. The last slope up to the foot of the cliff—a very long and steep declivity of loose gravel which gives way at every step—is most fatiguing. As I was struggling slowly up it with the guides, we heard the furious barking of dogs away up the mountains on the opposite side of the glen. The barking came nearer and nearer, and being echoed by the cliffs had a weird impressive sound that suited well with the scene, as if hell-hounds were baying at the strangers who dared to approach the infernal water. However, the dogs came no nearer than the foot of the slope up which we were clambering, and some shouts and volleys of stones served to keep them at bay.

At the head of this long slope of loose gravel we reach the foot of the waterfall. The water, as I have indicated, descends the smooth face of a huge cliff, said to be over six hundred feet high. It comes largely from the snow-fields on the summit of Mount Chelmos, and hence its volume varies with the season. When 329I visited the fall early in October, after the long drought of summer, the water merely trickled down the black streak on the face of the cliff, its presence being shown only by the glistening appearance which it communicated to the dark surface of the rock. At the foot of the cliff it formed a small stream, flowing down a very steep rocky bed into the bottom of the glen far below. The water was clear and not excessively cold. Even when, through the melting of the snows, the body of the water is considerable, it is said to be all dissolved into spray by falling through such a height and to reach the ground in the form of fine rain. Only the lower part of the cliff is visible from the foot of the waterfall, probably because the cliff overhangs somewhat. Certainly the cliffs a little to the right of the waterfall overhang considerably. With these enormous beetling crags of grey rock rising on three sides, the scene is one of sublime but wild and desolate grandeur. I have seen nothing to equal it anywhere. On the third side, looking down the glen and away over the nearer hills, we see the blue mountains of Acarnania across the Gulf of Corinth; my guide said these mountains were in Roumelia. In the face of the rock, a few yards to the right of the waterfall, are carved the names or initials of persons who have visited the spot, with the 330dates of their visits. Among the names is that of King Otho, with the date 1847.

LXII. The Valley of the Aroanius.—After traversing the upland plain of Soudena in a broad stony bed, which in autumn is dry, the river enters a defile at the south-eastern corner of the plain. Through this defile, formed on the east by the slopes of Mount Chelmos and on the west by the hills that close the plain of Soudena on the south, the Aroanius and the road to Clitor run side by side. At first the space between the hills is broad and level, dotted here and there with trees. Soon, however, the valley contracts and begins to descend, affording a beautiful prospect of range behind range of mountains in the south, shading away according to the distance from dark purple to pale blue. The path runs at first on the east bank of the river-bed, which was dry when I saw it early in October. But after being joined by a tributary, which comes down from Mount Chelmos in a deeply-excavated bed between slopes of red earth, the river attained the dimensions of a good-sized Scotch burn. Gradually as the mountains close in on either side the valley becomes a glen, through which the stream flows among plane-trees in a prettily-wooded 331bed. Here the path crosses to the right or west bank, which it follows henceforward. Farther on the glen contracts into a deep rocky gorge between steep mountains, but only to expand again and allow the river to flow, with a pleasing murmur, in its wooded bed through a stretch of cultivated ground. Thus gradually the valley opens out into the plain of Clitor. Vineyards and maize-fields occupy its lower reaches. It was the time of the vintage when I traversed this beautiful valley. Bunches of ripe grapes lay as offerings before the holy pictures in the little wayside shrines; we met strings of donkeys laden with swelling wine-skins or with panniers of grapes; and in the vineyards as we passed the peasants were at work pressing the purple clusters, with which they insisted on loading, for nothing, the aprons of our muleteers.

LXIII. The Springs of the Ladon.—The Ladon of Arcadia, the greatest of the tributaries of the Alpheus, rises in the middle of a valley on the western side of Mount Saita, the ancient Oryxis. The valley is of some breadth, and its bottom is furrowed on both sides by the dry beds of two watercourses. Between the two watercourses there rises in the midst of the valley a low hill of reddish 332rock, which ends on the south in a precipitous face some hundred and fifty feet high. At the foot of this red precipitous rock lies a large still pool of opaque dark-blue water, fringed by sharp-pointed grasses and other water plants, while a few stunted willows, holly-oaks, and plane-trees grow among the rocks beside it. This pool is the source of the Ladon, which rushes from it in a brawling impetuous stream of dark-blue water, its margin fringed with willows. The water enters the pool, not from the rocks above, but from a deep chasm in the earth which is only visible when, as sometimes happens, the source dries up. A peasant, who was beside the pool when I visited it in 1895, told my dragoman that three years before, after a violent earthquake, the water ceased to flow for three hours, and the chasm in the bottom of the pool was exposed, and fish were seen lying on the dry ground. After three hours the spring began to flow a little, and three days later there was a loud explosion and the water burst forth in immense volume. Mr. Philippson was informed on the spot of a like event which had taken place in 1880. Similar sudden eruptions of water at the source of the Ladon have been reported earlier in the present century and in antiquity. The stoppage of the water and its abrupt reappearance are doubtless due to the 333alternate obstruction and clearance of the subterranean passages by which the Lake of Pheneus is drained. For the ancients were right in supposing that the water which rises at the source of the Ladon comes directly underground from the Lake of Pheneus. It has the same deep greenish-blue tinge as the water of the lake, and is flat and tepid to the taste like standing water, not cold and fresh like the water of a mountain spring. The source is distant only about five miles from the lake, from which it is divided by the high range of Mount Saita. The hills on the opposite or western side of the valley are much lower; their slopes of reddish rock are partly covered with low green bushes. Numbers of peasant women may be seen washing clothes beside the pool in the usual Greek fashion; after soaking the clothes in water they beat them with a sort of broad paddle in a wooden trough.

LXIV. The Gorge of the Ladon.—The path from the village of Stretzova leads across bushy and rocky slopes, and then through bare stony fields to the northern bank of the river. Indian corn is here grown in the valley of the Ladon; wooded mountains rise from its southern bank, and higher mountains of 334imposing contour close the view on the south-east. At the point where we strike the river two springs gush from under rocks and form a pool shaded by fine spreading plane-trees, whence a stream flows into the Ladon after a course of a few yards. From this point to the bridge of Spathari, a ride of about five hours, the scenery is unsurpassed in Greece. The river here forces its way along the bottom of a profound gorge hemmed in by high wooded mountains, which in places descend in immense precipices, feathered with trees and bushes in their crevices, to the brink of the rapid stream. The narrow path runs high up on the right or northern side of the gorge, sometimes overhung by beetling crags, and affording views, now grand now almost appalling, down into the depths of the tremendous gorge, and across it to the high wooded slopes or precipices on the farther side.

The gorge may be said to be divided in two at the village of Divritsa, where the mountains recede a little from the river, and the scenery of the two parts is somewhat different. In the first half, ending a little above the village of Divritsa, the river sweeps round the base of high steep mountains, which on the south side of the gorge are wooded to their summits and broken every now and then by a profound glen, the sides of which are also 335wooded from top to bottom. The mountains on the north side are in general not wooded, but bare or overgrown with bushes. This would detract from the beauty of the scenery if the path ran on the south side of the gorge, from which the barer slopes of the mountains on the north would be visible. As it is, the path runs along the steep sides of the mountains on the north side, and the eye rests continually on the mighty wall of verdure that rises on the other side of the river. I had the good fortune to traverse this wonderful gorge on a bright October day, when the beautiful woods were just touched here and there with the first tints of autumn. Far below the river was seen and heard rushing along, now as a smooth swirling stream of opaque green water with a murmurous sound, now tumbling, with a mighty roar, down great rocks and boulders in sheets of greenish-white foam.

Below Divritsa the grandeur of the gorge increases to the point of being almost overpowering. Wooded mountains rising steeply from the river have now given place to enormous perpendicular or beetling crags tufted with trees and bushes in their crevices wherever a tree or a bush can find a footing, and overhanging the ravine till there is hardly room to pass under them, and they seem as if they would shut out the sky and meet above the 336river. Add to this that the path is narrow and runs high above the stream along the brink of precipices where a slip or a stumble of the horse might precipitate his rider into the dreadful depths below. We seem therefore to breathe more freely when, a little above the bridge of Spathari, we at last issue from the gorge and see a great free expanse of sky above us, lower hills, and the river winding between them through woodland scenery of a pretty but commonplace type.

LXV. Aliphera.—From the citadel, and indeed from the whole summit of the ridge, there is a glorious prospect over the valley of the Alpheus for miles and miles. All the mountains of northern Arcadia are spread out like a panorama; and through the broad valley that intervenes between them and the height on which we stand, the Alpheus is seen winding far away and far below. The air blows fresh and sweet on the height, and the peacefulness, the stillness, the remoteness from the world of this little mountain-citadel remind one irresistibly of Keats’s lines in the “Ode on a Grecian Urn”:

What little town by river or sea-shore,

Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,

Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?

337

LXVI. Dimitsana.—The ancient Teuthis perhaps occupied the site of the modern Dimitsana, a village which stands very picturesquely on a high ridge on the left or eastern bank of the Gortynius river, surrounded on all sides by steep and lofty mountains. The river sweeps in a semicircle at the bottom of a deep gully round the western part of the town, which thus stands on a high rocky promontory jutting into the ravine. The steep and narrow streets, which are little better than rocky staircases, are lined with shops and present a busy and animated scene. The air is cool and healthy. To the south the eye ranges over the vine-clad hills on both sides of the river, to the green plain of Megalopolis threaded by the silver stream of the Alpheus, and bounded far away to the south by the snowy range of Taygetus. A steep, rugged, and zigzag path leads down through terraced vineyards to the bed of the river at the southern foot of the hill. Here a bridge spans the stream, just below a point where the river descends fifty feet in a space of as many yards, tumbling over huge masses of rock between lofty precipices overhung with shrubs. The hill on the opposite or western side of the ravine is even steeper and higher than that of Dimitsana.

All round the crest of the ridge occupied by the town are the remains of an ancient wall, 338parts of it being intermixed with the yards, walls, and foundations of private houses. In some places there are several courses of masonry standing. The style of masonry is rectangular at the east, but polygonal at the west end of the ridge. The blocks at the latter end are enormous. Here too are the foundations of an imposing edifice, turned east and west, and built of fine squared blocks. It was doubtless a temple. Some ancient foundations may also be seen among the terraced vineyards on the southern slope of the hill.

LXVII. Gortys.—On the right bank of the Gortynius, or river of Dimitsana, about two and a half miles from its junction with the Alpheus, are the ruins of Gortys. They occupy the fairly spacious summit of a hill which falls away on the east in lofty precipices to the river. A visit to them may be most conveniently paid from Karytaena. From this picturesque town, perched high on the right or eastern bank of the Alpheus, we descend northward by a very rugged and stony path into the deep glen of the Alpheus. Steep arid mountains enclose the glen, and behind us towers the imposing rock of Karytaena with its ruined mediaeval castle. In about half an hour we reach the junction of the Gortynius river with 339the Alpheus. We now quit the glen of the Alpheus and follow that of the Gortynius river in a north-easterly direction, keeping at first along the left bank of the stream. The glen, though shut in by barren stony mountains, is rather less gloomy and forbidding than the glen of the Alpheus which we have left. In less than half an hour we descend into the bed of the Gortynius, a rushing stream of clear bluish-green water, and cross it by a stone bridge which is carried on a high pointed arch and paved, in the usual fashion of such bridges in Greece, with cobbles of the most agonising shapes and sizes. Just above the bridge the glen deepens and narrows into a ravine with steep rocky sides, and the view looking up it, with the old high-arched bridge in the foreground and the rushing stream of green water below, is highly picturesque. I drank of the water here and found it by no means cold, in spite of what Pausanias says as to the exceeding coldness of the water of the Gortynius. But it was hot autumn weather when I passed this way. Pausanias may have seen the river in winter or spring, when its current was chilled by ice or melting snow. From the bridge a steep and rugged path ascends the right or western side of the glen. We follow it and continue to ride up hill and down dale along the side of the barren mountains, with the river 340rolling along in the bottom of the deep ravine on our right. Half-way up the precipices which rise on this side of the ravine hangs a little red-roofed monastery. In about three-quarters of an hour from crossing the bridge we reach the ruins of Gortys.

The ruins, as we have seen, occupy the summit of a hill which overhangs the right or western bank of the Gortynius river. At its eastern extremity the hill falls down in sheer precipices of great height into the glen of the river. It is in looking down these immense precipices that we appreciate the height of the hill. On the other hand, seen from the south, as you approach it from Karytaena, the hill presents the appearance merely of a gently-swelling down. The reason of this is that from the bridge over the river we have been gradually rising, and that the ground immediately to the south of Gortys is itself a hill as high as the hill of Gortys, from which it is divided only by a slight hollow now chiefly occupied with vineyards. But when we have ascended what appears to be the gentle eminence occupied by the ruins of Gortys we see that the hill descends in a long slope north-eastward to the glen of the Gortynius river, which curves round the hill in a great bend on the north-east and east. The summit of the hill extends in the form of a rather narrow 341ridge from south-east to north-west, gradually rising to its highest point on the north-west. Towards this end the hill is naturally defended on the side of the south by masses of rugged rocks, of which the ancient engineers took advantage, interposing pieces of walls in the intervals between the rocks. In the crannies of the rocks bushes have now rooted themselves.

The long slope of the hill down to the glen of the Gortynius on the north-east is bare and stony. Stony and barren, too, are the mountains that surround Gortys on all sides. In a grey cold light or under a cloudy sky they would be exceedingly bleak and dreary; but under the warm sunshine of Greece they are only bare and desolate. The most pleasing view is down into the glen of the Gortynius on the north-east, where the river emerges from a narrow defile between high precipices, above which the mountains rise on both sides. At the mouth of the defile there is a house or two among trees. In spite of its height above the river, Gortys lies essentially in a basin shut in on all sides by mountains. The summer heat here must consequently be very great. Even in October, when I visited the place, though a fresh breeze was blowing, it was drowsily hot among the ruins. The sweet smell of the thyme, the tinkle of sheep-bells, the barking of dogs, and the cries of shepherds in the distance 342seemed to enhance the feeling of summer and to invite to slumber in the shade. But it was pleasant and almost cooling to hear the roar of the river, and to see its blue-green water and greenish-white foam away down in the glen.

LXVIII. The Plain of Megalopolis.—Megalopolis stood in the great western plain of Arcadia, which, like the great eastern plain of Mantinea and Tegea, extends in a direction from north to south. In natural beauty the plain of Megalopolis is far superior to its eastern neighbour. The latter is a bare monotonous flat, unrelieved by trees or rivers, and enclosed by barren mountains, so that its general aspect is somewhat dreary and depressing; only towards its northern end do the mountains rise in grander masses and with more picturesque outlines. The plain of Megalopolis, on the other hand, is surrounded by mountains of fine and varied outlines, some of the slopes of which are clothed with wood, and the surface of the plain itself is diversified with copses and undulating downs and hillocks, refreshed by numerous streams shaded with plane-trees, and watered by the broad though shallow stream of the Alpheus winding through its midst. The scenery, in contrast to that of the eastern plain, is eminently bright, smiling, 343and cheerful. It is, perhaps, seen at its best after rain on a fine morning in early summer. The vegetation is then green, the air pellucid, the outlines of the environing mountains are sharp and clear, and their tints vary from deep purple to lilac.

LXIX. The Cave of the Black Demeter.—The cave of the Black Demeter has been identified with a small cavern in the glen of the Neda, about an hour’s walk to the west of Phigalia. The place is known in the neighbourhood as the stomion tes Panagias or Gully of the Virgin. To reach the cavern it is necessary to descend into the ravine by a steep and narrow path which affords very little foothold and overhangs depths which might turn a weak head. At the awkward places, however, it is generally possible to hold on to bushes or rocks with the hands. Thus we descend to the bed of the river, which here rushes roaring along at the bottom of the narrow wooded ravine, the precipitous sides of which tower up on either hand to an immense height. The cave is situated in the face of a prodigious cliff on the north side of the ravine, about a hundred feet or so above the bed of the river, from which it is accessible only by a narrow and difficult footpath. The ravine at this point sweeps round 344in a sharp curve, and the cavern is placed just at the elbow of the bend. On the opposite side of the lyn, some fifty feet or so away, a great crag, its sides green with grass and trees wherever they can find a footing, soars up to a height about as far above the cavern as the cavern is above the stream. Hills close the view both up and down the glen; those at the upper end are high, steep, and wooded.

The cavern itself, originally a mere shallow depression or hollow in the side of the cliff, has been artificially closed by a rough wall of masonry, apparently of recent date; the plaster seemed to me fresh. In the cavern thus formed a rough floor of boards has been run across at a height of about four feet above the ground. Thus the grotto is divided into two compartments, the upper of which has been converted into a tiny chapel with an altar at the end and two holy pictures of Christ and John the Baptist. On one of the walls are some faded frescoes. Light enters the little cave by a small window in the wall beside the altar. At least half of the roof is artificial, being built of the same rough masonry as the wall. Close beside this tiny cavern, to the east of it, may be seen a still tinier grotto, separated from the former by a slight protuberance in the rock. The same ledge of rock gives access to both grottoes.

345What is called the Gully of the Virgin is a tunnel, some hundred yards long, formed of fallen rocks and earth, through which the Neda rushes in the ravine below the cavern. In winter the swollen stream flows over the roof of the tunnel, but in summer, when the river is low, you may walk through the tunnel and admire the stalactites which hang from its roof.

LXX. The Temple of Apollo At Bassae.—This temple, by far the best preserved of all ancient temples in Peloponnese, stands in a strikingly wild and secluded situation at a height of nearly four thousand feet above the sea, with a wide prospect southward to the distant mountains of Messenia and Laconia. The ground on which the temple is built is a narrow platform on the southern side of a hill, the Mount Cotilius of the ancients. The rocky slopes of this hill, rising rapidly behind the temple, shut out all distant views on the north and north-east. But to the south the slope descends gradually towards the valley of the Neda. Due south, through a dip in the hills, is seen the apparently flat-topped summit of Ithome. To the south-east, through another gap, appears the range of Taygetus, with its beautiful outlines and sharp snowy peaks. In the nearer foreground, between Ithome and 346Taygetus, rises Mount Ira, the last stronghold of the Messenian race in its struggle for freedom with Sparta. To the east are bare rough hills, dotted with oak-trees, the western spurs of Mount Lycaeus, while farther to the south appears the high round-topped Tetrasi, perhaps the Nomian mountains of the ancients. The sea is not visible, but it may be seen by ascending the slope at the back of the temple. The bleak desolate mountains form a striking background to the solitary temple which, built of the same cold grey limestone which composes the surrounding rocks, tends to deepen rather than relieve the melancholy of the scene, the ruined fane witnessing silently to the transitoriness of human greatness and the vanity of human faith.