THESSALY

THERMOPYLÆ. FROM THE WEST

As to the heroic deed itself, the view that Leonidas threw away his own life and that of the four thousand, that it was magnificent but not strategy, not war, does not take into account the fact that Sparta had for nearly half a century been looked to as the military leader of Greece. It was audacious in the Athenians to fight the battle of Marathon without them, and they did so only because the Spartans did not come at their call. Sparta had not come to Thermopylæ in force, it is true; but her king was there with three hundred of her best men. Only by staying and fighting could he show that Sparta held by right the place she had won. It had to be done. “So the glory of Sparta was not blotted out.” Had Sparta shown the white feather here, and a retreat would have been interpreted as showing the white feather, she would have lost prestige with the rest of the Greeks; and in that case it is as good as certain that Platæa would never have been fought. But besides showing the high statecraft which the occasion demanded, Leonidas was performing the simple duty of obedience to Spartan law, not to retreat before an enemy. He had been sent to hold the post; and he stayed to the end; and there is no more stirring clarion note in all that high-pitched story of the Persian war in Herodotus than the epitaph inscribed on the monument to the fallen Spartans, “Stranger, tell the Lacedemonians that we lie here in obedience to their laws.” Whether Simonides felt the need of simplicity and brevity, or whether Spartan taste prescribed it, it is at any rate most fitting that boasting is omitted. The deed was so great that one little note of brag, or even some little amplifying and embellishing, would have belittled it. It is stirring to read those other equally brief and equally simple lines of Simonides inscribed on the monument erected for the total number who fought and fell: “Four thousand from Peloponnesus fought here with three millions.”

One may have read, and read often, the description of the battle in the school-room, but he reads it with different eyes on the spot, when he can look up at the hillock crowned with a ruined cavalry barrack just inside the western pass and say to himself: “Here on this hill they fought their last fight and fell to the last man. Here once stood the monuments to Leonidas, to the three hundred, and to the four thousand.”

The very monuments have crumbled to dust, butthe great deed lives on. We rode back to Lamia under the spell of it. It was as if we had been in church and been held by a great preacher who knows how to touch the deepest chords of the heart. Eubœa was already dark blue, while the sky above it was shaded from pink to purple. Tymphrestos in the west was bathed in the light of the sun that had gone down behind it. The whole surrounding was most stirring, and there was ever sounding in our hearts that deep bass note, “What theydidhere.” Even when we were afterward enjoying the great walls of the Acropolis of Pharsalos and the Vale of Tempe we kept thinking of Thermopylæ.

Thessaly is in a certain sense a land apart from the rest of Greece. It was so in antiquity. In spite of being the home of Jason, of Achilles, and of Alcestis, and in spite of the fact that “snowy Olympus,” the home of the Greek gods, looked down upon it, the stream of its history flowed apart. In the Persian war it was prevented by force from taking any honorable part; but in the Peloponnesian war, which called all the rest of Greece to arms and divided it into two camps, it willingly stood aloof. The same may be said of most of the smaller wars which followed the Peloponnesian war. Once only did it appear that it was going to take a part, and indeed a leading part, in the affairs of Greece. But the assassination of Jason of Pheræ, who seemed about to play the rôle afterward played by the Macedonians, sent Thessaly again on her separate way.

To-day also Thessaly is a land apart. When the Kingdom of Greece was established by the European Powers Thessaly was not included in it. After it had become a part of the kingdom in 1880 it again fell into the hands of the Turks in the disastrous war of 1897, living through two sad years ofsubjection which were not shared by the rest of Greece. It has also suffered isolation from the rest of Greece in that while the network of railroads constantly extending out from Athens has already taken in most of Peloponnesus, and even Ætolia, it has not yet been extended to Thessaly. To reach it one must make a voyage by sea.

But this very isolation has always been to the enthusiastic traveller an added charm. Inaccessibility adds interest. The usual approach is by steamer from Piræus, and requires, according to the timetable, twenty-four hours; but it actually varies from twenty-four to forty-eight hours, according to the weather and the amount of freight to be handled on the way. The journey in itself is so charming that one need not chafe at delay, and might well prefer this method of approach even after railroad communication has been established. Particularly fine is the long stretch between Eubœa and the mainland, where mountain succeeds mountain, with Thermopylæ thrown in.

The end of the journey is the finest part of it, if one has the good fortune to enter the great Bay of Volo, called in ancient times the Gulf of Pagasæ, by daylight and in the winter. Taking associations and everything into account, there are few finer sights in the world than that which here presents itself. In front of you is Olympus, majestic, towering above the low range that separates the territoryof Volo from the great basin of Thessaly. So near does it seem that one hardly thinks of it as being beyond the northern border, over in Turkey. The long ridge of Pelion is close at hand on the right, with its twenty-four villages, covered on the occasion of one of my winter visits by twelve or fourteen feet of snow, so that they abandoned for a week all attempts at communicating with one another. What Pelion lacks in height it makes up in length, and its bulk is great. It seems a strange thought of Homer to make the giants pile Pelion upon Ossa, which is a shapely and rather sharp cone. Vergil seems to do even worse in making them put Olympus on the top of the pile. Can it be that both poets made the attempt to pile the mass of Olympus or Pelion on top of the pointed Ossa a part of the daring deed? Either Olympus or Pelion would be the natural base on which to pile up the other mountains. By turning around and looking astern one sees Parnassus, which in ordinary company would absorb attention, but is here dwarfed by the sight of Olympus. In such company Othrys, on our left, hardly counts at all.

The near view with its associations claims attention. Here in the middle of Volo is the site of Iolkos, from which the Argonauts sailed out through this very bay into the distant Euxine on their daring quest. To the left are the massive walls of Pagasæ, which in classical times controlled theregion. To the right is the still later controller of the bay, Demetrias, founded by the Macedonian Demetrios Polyorketes to be with Chalkis and Corinth one of the “fetters of Greece.”

On my second visit to this region, which, by an unexpected chance, was only about a month after my first, having had occasion—a not unusual thing in Greece—to wait all the afternoon for a return steamer to Athens, I had a boatman named Leonidas, from Sparta, too, row me out to Demetrias, from which I got, as I then supposed, my last view on earth of Olympus. I then floated aimlessly about the bay until sunset, steeped in sunshine and mythological associations. I was so much “in the spirit” that I could almost see the centaurs prancing along the slopes of Pelion. Leonidas also seemed to enter into the spirit of the thing, and to become quite sympathetic, even if we did not or could not talk much. When I said to him, “Leonidas, do you know that the gods used to live around here?” he said, “Yes, yes,” with apparent enthusiasm. I suspected, however, afterward that his enthusiasm was only skin deep, and that his chief pleasure in the affair was that he was getting pay for a whole afternoon’s work without really doing much. I, on my part, was satisfied to squander on him the munificent sum of sixty cents for giving me the setting to such pleasant day-dreaming.

I am not going to recount my successive visits toThessaly, but only to recall certain vivid impressions. I have twice entered it on the southwest, from Lamia over the passes of Othrys, and once on the northwest over the Zygos pass in the great Pindos range, and it is difficult to say which is the most impressive approach, one of these or the usual one through the Bay of Volo. Wherever you look down into the great basin from any part of the rim of mountains surrounding it, or look back at this rim from any part of the plain, you are impressed with the beauty of the plain and its surroundings.

On my first visit—how vivid are first impressions!—I came by the usual route with a companion who was in a hurry. He had an imperative engagement before him. We had a schedule to keep, and every hour was important. It was the only time that I have done Thessaly by schedule. Work on the Larisa Railroad was being pushed, and we unloaded so much material for that work at Chalkis that we did not get off until afternoon, and, at Stylidha, the port of Lamia, we kept unloading until after midnight. The result was that we did not reach Volo until the next morning, over twelve hours behind time. By a dash for the station we secured the first train, and reached Larisa at about ten o’clock. Thessaly has had since 1884 its own very good railroad system, starting from Volo and branching at Velestino, the ancient Pheræ, one branch going to Larisa and the other to Trikkalaand beyond. This system connects the three principal cities, Volo, Larisa, and Trikkala, each of about fifteen thousand inhabitants, and brings the traveller near to all the interesting points of the land.

In order to carry out our schedule it was necessary for us to see the Vale of Tempe that day. Without losing a minute we engaged our carriage at the station, a mile from the town, and drove through the town, where we gathered a little stock of provisions while the driver changed horses. Of course, he had told us that our scheme was impossible, but we forced him along. In spite of mud (it was March, and Thessaly is always muddy at that time), we got through Tempe, and came back, reaching Larisa before nine o’clock in the evening. Without a full moon it would have been impossible to do Tempe that day. On that evening we caught for the first time the notes of the Greek frogs,Brek-ke-ke-kek-koak-koak, reproducing Aristophanes with the exception of a few sibilants.

Tempe is one of the two great show pieces of Thessaly. Even the ancients, who are often said to have set little store by beauties of nature, were enthusiastic over Tempe, although they appear to have paid little attention to the other great show piece, the cliffs of Meteora. Herodotus records that Xerxes was struck with wonder at the great defile five miles long with steep sides and a mighty river, the Peneios, flowing through it. One fine feature ofTempe is also the view which one gets at the end, out over the sea to the site of Potidæa and Olynthos.

The Thessalian legend that Poseidon split open with his trident the great eastern range of mountain, and let out here between Ossa and Olympus the water which had made Thessaly a lake, is strictly true if we let the trident represent earthquake force. Geology accepts the legend in all its essential features. Thessaly was until comparatively late times, geologically speaking, a lake. It is now a lake bottom of inexhaustible fertility.

The next day, instead of taking the train back to Pheræ and over the other branch which we were going to traverse later, we took a carriage to drive straight across due west to Trikkala, intending to take the train there for the last fourteen miles of the journey to Kalabaka, which lies at the foot of the Meteora cliffs. We were off at six o’clock, and had over eight hours for our drive of thirty-seven miles. When we had done two-thirds of it the driver stopped to bait his horses. He knew that we had taken him expressly to bring us to Trikkala in season to catch the train, and yet he waited so long that it became very doubtful by the time he was ready to start whether we could do it. We offered five drachmas extra if he did it; and he tried hard to get them then, whipping his horses unmercifully. The result was that we saw the train go out of the station as we got into the outskirts of the town.

The horses were unable to make the extra fourteen miles to Kalabaka that night, and an essential part of our schedule was to spend the night at one of the monasteries perched upon the picturesque rocks. We must spend that very night there or give up the plan entirely. Our driver tried in vain to get other horses for us. One man promised to come with a carriage in half an hour, and at the end of that time came and said that he could not go, the road was too bad. From subsequent experience I judge that he was right. Somebody in the crowd of interested bystanders suggested that we take a hand-car, which the station-agent could give us by telegraphing to Volo for authorization to do so. When we went to the station-agent with our plan, we judged by his answer that our advisers had been mildly guying us. By this time quite a crowd had gathered, curious to see what we would do next.

We now gave an unexpected turn to events by picking up our heels and our very small packs and starting off along the railroad track, at a good athletic pace for Kalabaka. Probably the crowd expected to see us come back and lodge at Trikkala; but we reached Kalabaka in three hours and a half, at nearly eight o’clock. Hungry and tired, we sat down in an eating-house and began our supper with the feeling that we had missed our game, except in so far as we had got sight of the wonderful rocks which towered high up above the village.What we had wanted was the sensation of passing the night on top of one of these needles. When our desire was made known it seemed as if everybody in the village was determined that we should get into the monastery that night. Some went and brought the astynomos (chief of gendarmes), and he promptly detailed two of his men to escort us up; and as soon as we had eaten we set off. Again the full moon saved us. Without it it would have been impossible to scale the heights, even with the best of guides. There was some incidental gain in the view afforded by moonlight. One enormous round tower, about fifty times as large as the famous Heidelberg Tower, has never looked to me by daylight as impressive as it did then by moonlight.

When at last we came to the bridge which spanned the chasm separating the cliff on which stood the monastery of St. Stephen from the body of the mountain our attendants shouted and cracked their whips over the reverberating chasm until a sleepy monk put his head out of a window in a third story and said, in a sleepy voice: “What time is it now?” On being told that it was ten o’clock he seemed disinclined to admit our claim, which the gendarmes urged vehemently. We made out that the gist of the claim was that here were strangers who had come all the way from America, ten thousand miles away, just to see that monastery. Suddenly the parleying was stopped by the shutting ofthe window. We thought that we were shut out; but the gendarmes lingered as if they thought their appeal had taken effect; and, in fact, after a delay of several minutes, which seemed to us much longer, we heard the clapping of wooden soles along the stone flagging inside the oaken door, which was soon after swung open. We went to sleep that night congratulating ourselves on having restored by our own good legs, aided by a kind full moon, a programme that had been broken by a shiftless driver.

The next morning, after climbing up St. Trinity by means of a series of ladders arranged in a cleft of the rock, we caught the train which took us to Pharsala at noon. From there we walked to Domoko, since made famous by the stand made by the Greek army in the war of 1897, and called in ancient times Thaumakoi, “the wonderful,” on account of the superb view of the great plain of Thessaly which it affords. On the following day we reached the port of Lamia, slightly stiff from the bare tables on which we had slept at Domoko, and there ended our Thessalian trip.

The Meteora (literally “aloft”) cloisters can hardly be enough praised. There were once twenty-four of them, all perched upon these needles. They were placed there in the fourteenth century for the sake of security from robber bands. Only about a half-dozen of them are now occupied; the rest are wholly or partly ruined. St. Stephen is the onlyone that regularly entertains guests. Two of the most difficult to ascend, the Meteoron and St. Barlaam, are more than a mile away from St. Stephen; and an ascent of these is not easily combined with spending the night at St. Stephen, unless one spends there all the next day and night also. On a later visit I made the really perilous ascent of the Meteoron on a series of ladders dangling along the perpendicular face of the needle, 1,820 feet above the sea-level, and, at a rough estimate, 200 feet above the flat rock from which you start to climb. When I had once gone up and walked about a little I shrank from the descent. I was particularly nervous when I started downward by backing out of the window, and holding on to the sill with my hands, while I felt for the rounds of the ladder below with my feet. I felt then that, as never before, I had taken my life into my hands. When we asked the monks why they had refused to wind us up in the basket with which they hauled up their fuel and supplies, they replied that there were so few of them that they were afraid that their strength would give out while they had us in mid-air. This explanation satisfied us completely. One would rather trust to his own hands and feet than to an insufficient force of monks. But since the least failure of one’s own hands or feet meant certain death, one is satisfied by having made the ascent once, and having experienced a sensation.

METEORA MONASTERIES

At St. Stephen the hospitality is most cheerfully accorded, and nothing exacted in return; but one usually puts something into “the box,” as an expression of thankfulness. The monasteries are all rich landed proprietors and need not our poor alms. I recall one occasion when their hospitality was more bountiful than timely. Professor Edward Capps and I once arrived at St. Stephen with our wives at six o’clock, in a state bordering on starvation. We immediately heard a clattering of dishes below stairs, and pretty soon an exhalation of savory odors began to rise from the kitchen. From time to time a monk would bring up a pitcher or a plate, while we endured the pains of Tantalus until half-past nine, simply because our hosts wanted to do something extra, regarding the presence of ladies as making an extraordinary occasion. A little cold meat and bread at six o’clock would have been more keenly appreciated by us than the eight courses with which they finally plied us. Let the traveller in Greece beware of special occasions.

My last three visits to Thessaly have been made by bicycle. One gets over the ground more rapidly that way. For example, in February, 1900, Mr. Benjamin Powell and I rode from Trikkala to Larisa in two hours and thirty-seven minutes, including a short delay at the ferry over the Peneios. Baedeker puts this journey as “37 miles, 8 hours, carriage about 50 drachmas.” We had time in theafternoon of the same day to go out to Tempe and back without trespassing much upon the evening. Sometimes, however, the tale is not so triumphant. In February, 1902, five of us were doing this same journey at a somewhat more gentle gait, and, just after remounting from the ferry, ran over some particularly dry and stiff Thessalian thistles, reducing about half of our tires to the condition of sieves in a few seconds. A long and pensive walk into Larisa was the penalty imposed on three of the party; and we took a carriage out to Tempe the next day.

Sometimes one in travelling blunders into a good thing. Before the journey just mentioned I had several times passed Pharsala with just pause enough to take in the probable topography of the great battle between Cæsar and Pompey, and once only had I taken a rather hasty view of the walls of the acropolis. But this time, by the chance of two of our party lagging behind on the descent from Domoko, we missed a train that we might have taken to carry us a long way on toward Kalabaka. When I realized that we were compelled to pass the night at Pharsala, I expected to “pay of my person,” inasmuch as we had no guest friend to fall back upon. What was my surprise to find a perfectly clean hotel opened only fourteen months before, bearing the name of the patriot poet, Rhegas Pheræos. We were in luck.

But greater luck it was that we had a half-day to explore carefully the walls of the acropolis. Some parts of these are seen to be as old as those of Mycenæ. Some think that here was the home of Achilles. If this is so, he had a citadel that might vie with that of his chief. In the midst of our study of walls we were from time to time impelled to look up to majestic Olympus, and also to look into the deep cut between it and Ossa, the Vale of Tempe, through which Pompey, up to that time so fortunate, but then a broken man, fled precipitate to his doom.

Probably if the question which is the highest mountain in Greece were proposed to a lot of candidates for admission to college, whose equipment in Greek geography is better than it is likely to be at any other time, the majority of the suffrages would go to either Olympus or Parnassus. But Olympus, with all its Greek associations, is, alas! a mountain in Turkey; and as for Parnassus, it is overtopped by nearly two hundred feet by a mountain to the west of it. This mountain, called Kiona, a part of the group known in antiquity under the name of Korax, “Crow Mountain,” has the honor of being the highest mountain in the Kingdom of Greece. Parnassus, to be sure, by the greatness of its fame more than overcomes the lacking two hundred feet, just as Erymanthus, on account largely of its famous boar, is of more importance than its higher neighbor to the east, Aroania. But there are always a few spirits who wish to scale the highest heights.

The American School at Athens has, in the various persons representing it, scaled most of the mountains of Greece; but not until 1898 had it scaledthe highest. We had hoped to do it with a considerable force; but late in June the men get scattered. There remained but four of us together at the close of the campaign in Corinth. When I told the Government Ephor, attendant upon our work, that we proposed to shake off the dust of our excavations by climbing Kiona, he developed a sudden interest in my welfare, and begged me not to venture it, or at least to take along a posse of soldiers. When I said that I had climbed most of the mountains of Greece without harm or fear, he said that this particular part of Greece, Ætolia, and at this particular time, was dangerous. The men of that section were, he said, particularly bad men. I had so often heard men of other villages and sections called in the lump bad men, when they in reality proved no worse than those who gave them that bad name, that I was not shaken until our overseer also, an intelligent man, begged me not to go. He said that the shepherds of Kiona were a bad lot and known as such all over Greece. I did not so much mind taking my own life in my hand, but felt some scruple about hazarding that of my fourteen-year-old boy, whose party it really was. So when we awoke at midnight at New Corinth to find that the boat which was to take us to Itea had, after the manner of Greek boats, gone through the canal without turning toward Corinth at all, I proposed that, taking this as a sort of“judgment of God,” we should return to Athens. But others of the party said that they felt ashamed to give up an enterprise that had been so much talked about. So, considering ourselves a sort of society with an object, we did not dissolve. We had lost one day; but, taking the west-bound train to Ægion, which we reached at two o’clock in the afternoon, with a delay of only fifteen minutes we were aboard a sail-boat with a stern wind driving us toward Itea, which the boatmen promised to reach in three hours. But promises based upon wind are rarely kept. We were, it is true, nearly at the mouth of the Bay of Itea, perhaps four-fifths of the way, at the end of three hours. But then the wind fell, and much rowing followed, at which we all took a hand. And it was nearly eleven o’clock when we reached Itea.

We had hoped to reach Amphissa, seven miles from Itea, and then make our arrangements for climbing the mountain before going to sleep. But now all we could do was to avoid sleeping at Itea, which we did by walking about half a mile, and ascending a little knoll where we spread our blankets and slept under the open sky. It was not hard to get up at four o’clock the next morning and reach Amphissa shortly after six. By the time we had made a scanty breakfast horses were engaged for two days; and while they were being made ready we had an hour to devote to the remains of ancient Amphissa, on which Philip’s heavy hand fell as a preliminary to the battle of Chæronea. There is one gate here that is one of the finest specimens of Greek fortification extant, the sight of which made me realize what an oversight I had been guilty of eight years ago, when I passed by this acropolis as a mediæval affair.

Nobody in this town of over five thousand inhabitants appeared to have the local knowledge that fitted him to be our guide; and so we set out with the understanding that at a monastery three hours up we should find such a man. When we reached the monastery it was high noon, and hot, as became the fifteenth of June. The solitary monk, Chrysanthos Liaskos, upbraided us for not telling him that we were coming, that he might have killed for us a lamb, or at least some chickens. But how little we knew just when we were coming! Such as he had he gave us, and refused payment.

The old wall paintings in his chapel, some of them four or five hundred years old, were very fine, but were now rapidly going to ruin with the crumbling walls. His face lighted up as he told us of miracles performed in this chapel, not hundreds of years ago, but last year and under his own eyes. He was a very wide-awake man, and appeared to be convinced of the truth of his own story.

The best thing he did for us was to get from the neighboring village, Sigritza, a very competent guide. When we got off at half-past two, thehorses, which went only about two hours farther, were serviceable mainly in carrying our packs. After that our guide led us over difficult foot-paths which climbed along the edges of precipices and up heights only to descend again. We proceeded more rapidly now that we had got rid of our slow-paced horses, which were to return to the monastery and come to meet us the next morning. At nightfall we came to a hut at the foot of the main peak, which required an hour and a half of climbing in the morning. We received the warmest welcome from shepherds who were friends and relations of our guide. They did not seem at all like the dreadful men of whom we had been forewarned. They made a most savory brew of half a kid—but the milk! Only from such pastures can such milk come. We all regretted engagements that prevented our staying a week, that we might do justice to this mountain dairy.

It was half-past ten before we could go to rest. Then the shepherds took us to a cave where they kept their cheeses, which gave just room enough to pack us in. They then closed the door with boughs and a big stone to keep out the cold night wind and the dogs. We had just time to note how much our lodging seemed like the cave of Polyphemos in the Odyssey, and get a good whiff of the cheese, when, with apparently no interval at all, we heard our guide calling out that it was time toget up and be off. Where the heart of that night went to I never knew.

When, at four o’clock, we had finished our toil, we got a great reward. The view was the finest that I had had in Greece. Both the Corinthian Gulf and Thermopylæ seemed to lie at our feet. The sun soon rose in line with the strait between Eubœa and Thessaly, making that strait, with Skopelos and Skiathos blocking its exit, a sea of fire. To the south was the great trio of Arcadian mountains; to the northeast, closing a long line of mountains beginning with Pelion, was the majestic Olympus; to the northwest stood Tymphrestos, in lonely dignity; while to the west, peak upon peak and chain upon chain of Ætolia made a most bewildering impression. On the whole it was a panorama that can never fade from the mind’s eye. Two years earlier, in climbing Parnassus, I had been defrauded by clouds of all that was best in this view, viz., that to the north and east.

When we got back to the shepherds’ quarters and began our farther descent at seven o’clock, I gave the head man two five-drachma pieces, as a slight reward for what they had done for us. He seemed perplexed, and at last gave me back one of the pieces, and asked me if I could change it, as I had given him too much. You may believe that I didn’t do it. And I couldn’t help smiling to think how carefully I had hidden away my watch in mytrousers pocket, for fear that the gold chain might tempt these bad men. Of all the gentle shepherds whom I have met on Greek mountains, these were the gentlest and best.

From the glorious mountain air and cold water, trickling down over precipices a thousand feet high, we came at evening again to Amphissa, with its stifling air and scanty water-supply, and, worst of all, with its one hotel, which has not improved since 1890. It is a fact that there was only one wash-basin in the house, and it was very hard to get a turn at it. Our sufferings in the night were dreadful; and when in the morning the landlord tried to persuade us that they were caused by mosquitoes, the meekest man in our party got angry almost to the point of profanity, and pointed out blood-stains on the sheets that were evidently not those of mosquitoes. And yet this landlord tried to do well by us, giving us four of his six beds, while well-dressed Greeks slept on his dining-tables. But stop! Perhaps they knew better than we what they were about. If one were shut up to a choice between Itea and Amphissa for a night’s lodging, it would be better to take to the woods, especially in summer. And during that long summer night of torture we regretted that we were not lying again in the open field on our blankets.

But regrets are out of place, and nothing but the pleasure remains when one thinks of the glories of Kiona.

Most hand-books of travel in Greece, beginning with the invaluable Baedeker, impress it upon their readers that there are no long distances in Greece. Even without the help of railroads, which, of course, as far as they extend, have annihilated the barriers between the old “jarring states,” one finds the historic places, like Corinth, Delphi, Chæronea, Thebes, and many others lying so near one another that, after lodging in one of them, one can always count on spending the next night at another. One loses no time. On the map, according to which one might lay out a scheme of travel, Athens and Eretria lie very near together. The overland route to Oropos, with a short sail across the Eubœan Gulf, can be compassed in any summer’s day. But the surest and most convenient way is supposed to be to take the steamer at Piræus in the early evening, and wake at Chalkis the next morning, and take a ride of three hours to Eretria in the morning air. But this simple and easy scheme sometimes fails in practice, as my experience has shown.

On Wednesday, February 18, 1891, three of usstarted out from Piræus at evening to re-enforce one student of the American School who, in very bad weather, had been carrying on excavations begun several weeks before. We had deferred sailing for three days on account of the weather. As we set out it was a grief to us that we must sail past Sunion, Marathon, and Rhamnus before daybreak. We wished to supplement previous acquaintance with those places by a view from the sea. The night wore away with considerable tossing, and in order to get a little view of the narrowing Euripos at Chalkis I arose at half-past six. Seeing that we were near land on the left, I asked a sailor what land it was, and got for an answer something that sounded like “Macaroni.” Not remembering any such land in the neighborhood of Chalkis, I cleared my eyes, looked about me, and became sharply interrogative. Now I elicited the well-known name “Sunion.” This was astounding. Leaning far out over the railing I saw the columns crowning the “steep.” Ah! good fortune was going to allow us to see Marathon by broad daylight.

It did not take long to see that we were in a boisterous sea. My various Atlantic experiences furnished no parallel to it. Not only were the billows high, but the fierce northeast wind, mingled with sleet, seemed to take up the tops of them and carry them up into the sky. It required two hours more for us to round the point of Sunion. It wasa great effort for the good ship Peneios, and when that was accomplished we seemed to come to nothing better, and we were soon aware of the determination of our level-headed captain to put into the harbor of Laurion from stress of weather.

All that day and the next day we lay in that harbor, if it can be called lying to roll about as we did. The long island, Makronisi, called in antiquity Helene, almost makes Laurion a land-locked harbor. But between this island and the mainland the northeast wind came tearing through with unabated fury for forty-eight hours. The projection of the mainland to the north of the harbor being quite low, we were as poorly protected as it was possible to be in that harbor. Several of the vessels which had taken refuge there appeared to be having a rougher time than the Peneios. Our captain looked on with some pride when an English steamer dragged her anchor nearly across the whole width of the harbor. During the second night we had some fears of an Apia disaster. No boats went to or from the land, and so we lay the greater part of two days, unable to telegraph to our friends in Athens, as much shut off from the world as if we were on an ocean voyage. Yet nobody thought of wishing to see the captain change his mind and sail on. At last, on Saturday morning, at about two o’clock, we steamed out, and were as badly shaken at the start as one often finds it his lot to be. One lesson was mostthoroughly impressed upon us, that there may have been good cause in antiquity for Athenian fleets shunning the winter trip northward, and for Philip’s being allowed free hand to accomplish his undertakings Thraceward at that season of the year.

Little recked we of Marathon, or Rhamnus, or Oropos in the blinding storm in which we at last reached Chalkis, and were rowed ashore in blinding snow and splashing water from the oars. Photographic apparatus was in special danger.

Once landed we seemed near Eretria, but here our vicissitudes thickened. Between us and Basiliko, the half-way halting-place on the road to Eretria, was one of the numerous Potamos of Greece, which was taking this opportunity to justify its name, to make up for being nothing but a dry bed nine months in the year. All coach-drivers but one said that the Potamo would be as far as we could go toward Eretria that day. But this one talked so confidently of being able to find horses for us at the Potamo that we entrusted ourselves to his care, and started out in the rain.

The course lay through the famous Lelantine Plain, which, in spite of the rain, was seen to be a paradise. Such vines and fig-trees and, farther on, such grain-fields! I had not seen its like in Greece. It is no wonder that it was a bone of contention almost before the dawn of history. It is something of a testimonial to the power and ambition of Eretriathat it reached so far out from its own fertile plain to grasp at what geographically belonged to Chalkis.

Our driver soon made a halt, and informed us that we were at the end of our stipulated drive. There were no signs of any river or any horses. He said the river was a quarter of a mile farther on, and that the horses were not his lookout. On being told either to find horses or drive back to Chalkis, he became surly, and demanded, besides the liberal sum of twenty drachmas which we had agreed to pay at this point, twenty drachmas more for driving us back. We told him that we should pay nothing at all except on a hearing before the demarch of Chalkis. He at last drove slowly back, going through the form of inquiring at several houses for horses, but getting none.

Arrived at Chalkis, we all went to the demarch’s office, and, shivering over a pan of coals, discussed the case. Under the demarch’s pacific influence, we arranged to have the same man drive us out again the next day, paying a total of thirty drachmas, and in the meantime to telegraph to the demarch of Eretria to send us horses to meet us at the river.

The next day was no better than the preceding, and we postponed starting for several hours, in hopes of a cessation of the rain. When at last we reached the river, and looked across the arches of the bridge then lying several years unfinished, though the rest of the road was ready for use, we were unable to getany response to our shouts. At last somebody told us that a man from Eretria had got tired of shouting for us an hour before, and had returned the way he came. Here was an emergency. We must go forward. After much beating about the neighborhood, one little unpromising-looking horse was found. By making trips enough we could by means of this weak creature get over to Basiliko, and then perhaps still get on to Eretria. By the aid of a long rope, our effects were soon made fast to the many-horned Greek saddle, and we started to make the quarter-mile distance to a ford a little below the bridge. Going along the top of one of the dikes thrown up to facilitate watering of the vineyards, our horse slipped and came down the bank into a foot of Lelantine mud. Our effects scattered about under him prevented his absolute disappearance. But this was bad for the effects. Some of the cargo was at last righted, and the horse ungently pulled by application of force at both ends into a standing position, and by some carrying of bags and bundles we reached the river-bank. The stalwart boy who accompanied the horse ventured into the water to test its depth. It was clear that that weak horse could not keep his footing there.

Our stalwart boy was equal to the emergency. Taking us one by one on his back he bore us over, and then the parcels, spending nearly an hour in the operation. The sight of a bearded gentleman beingcarried pickapack across a rushing river by a boy whose footing could not be very secure on the uneven river-bed, and who could not quite keep the boots of his rider out of the water, is a very ridiculous one to a bystander; but as each one’s turn came it became a serious event to him.

When we were all well over, we noticed that the faithful horse had followed his master, and got across also. By his help we easily made the half mile to Basiliko, where our man from Eretria was still waiting for us; and that night we spent at Eretria, ready to inaugurate what proved to be most interesting and successful excavations on the site of that city on which the storm of Persian vengeance fell before it was scattered at Marathon.

We had a most unusual March. At one time snow lay on the ground a foot deep for three days. But we excavated the greater part of the ancient theatre and many interesting graves, besides mapping out the walls of the city. In subsequent years we took up the work again, and uncovered the old gymnasium and a temple of Dionysos near the theatre, but we stopped too soon; after us the Greeks took up the work, and achieved results that nearly overshadowed ours. But ours will ever be the service of having uncovered one of the most interesting theatres of Greece, and a real Greek gymnasium, which is a rare thing, inasmuch as most gymnasia which are preserved to us are Romanmodifications of the original Greek form. More than this, we forever laid the idea, up to that time so prevalent, that the Eretria which was destroyed by the Persians was several miles to the east of this. The acropolis walls did that; but it was the service of the Greek excavator to uncover the temple of Apollo, with its archaic gable sculptures, and to find a considerable quantity of large vases of the sixth century before Christ, and thus to corroborate the testimony of the walls. There was, in fact, no other such place for a commanding acropolis on the whole stretch of shore as on the hill rising above the theatre. Any city established further east would have deserved the name of “the city of the blind.”

If the coupling of these two names seems forced, my first reason for it is the purely formal one that ten days after being on the summit of Taygetos, we were climbing Kithæron. Greece is such a small country that to traverse it from end to end in ten days, and see Sparta, Argos, and Thebes, with some mountain climbing thrown in, is nothing that justifies a boastful feeling; but when, at the end of such a journey, one reflects upon the history and mythology which is attached to these names, and calls up the scenes enacted on the plains on which he looks down from these mountains, he wonders at what he has accomplished.

The mountains of Greece have many and great charms; and they have this pre-eminent claim on our attention, that they are the unchanged witnesses of the past. Poor villages occupy the Cadmeia and the site of Sparta; waves of immigration have swept over Greece to such an extent that one may be in honest doubt whether the people who walk these dirty streets have any more claim to be the heirs and representatives of Leonidas and Epaminondas, whose names perchance they bear, than we have. The plains and rivers remain, except thatthe former have lost their trees and the latter their water. But Taygetos, “rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun,” remains as it was. The great men of Greece knew the mountains, and were known of them. Alkman and Pindar had held converse with Taygetos and Kithæron, which now remain as their sole surviving companions.

Six years ago I had approached Sparta from MesseniathroughTaygetos, and had arrived at evening when the sun sent its rays almost level through the orange-trees loaded with fruit and redolent with blossoms. I feared that any different approach might bring a sort of disappointment. But when, after a morning at Mantineia, in the upland plain of Arcadia, we gained the top of the last height of the pass, and saw the long ridge of Taygetos towering before us with the sun just sinking behind it, we stood leaning over our bicycles and gave way to silence like that of “stout Cortez and his men.” What went through my mind could hardly be called reflection, unless I could so designate an acceptance of the propriety of the one epithet, περιμήκετος, which Homer chose for this mighty mass, whether he intended it in the sense of “stretched out” or “high towering.” Night was beginning to fall before we could break the spell and move down into the valley of the Eurotas, and it was already dark when we crossed the bridge of the Eurotas and entered Sparta. The object ofthis journey was not so much to visit Sparta as to climb Taygetos; but, while waiting until the afternoon of the next day for another contingent of the American School to come after us from Tripolitza by carriage, we used the time to visit the site of Amyklæ, and to hunt up the mound from which came the celebrated Vaphio cups, the finest product of the goldsmith’s art left to our wondering eyes by the Achæan civilization of Greece.

SPARTA WITH TAYGETOS IN THE BACKGROUND

Taygetos is the highest mountain in Peloponnesus, outranking Kyllene by somewhat more than a hundred feet, and falling only a hundred feet short of eight thousand. Since Sparta is only slightly above the sea-level, the task before us was arduous, and when our forces were united, we decided to make a part of the ascent before evening. An acquaintance in Sparta gave me a letter of introduction to a leading man of Anavryti, a village three hours up the mountain. When we reached his house at dusk, in the middle of a village that resounded with flowing streams, this letter opened his doors and his heart. It opened the doors so wide that the neighbors came streaming in to see us, to such an extent that he was at last glad to avail himself of the help of a gendarme with his whip to clear out the younger portion of his self-invited guests. He then set to work, in the manner of Greek hosts, to kill us with kindness, making us eat and drink for about two hours. Afterthis came those futile attempts to sleep which those who have travelled much in the interior of Greece know too well. At half-past two we were only too ready to stop the fight with the small enemy and address ourselves to the overcoming of Taygetos. For the first two hours we went on by the light of a lantern, guided by the son of our host, over a difficult path which gave us an occasional fall. After that came the gorgeous sunrise and the increasing reward in the ever more extended outlook, which made us almost forget that we had not slept. It was owing, however, largely to this lack of sleep that one of our number gave out a thousand feet below the summit, while another was with some difficulty coached over the last five hundred feet.

When we were at last on the summit at half-past ten, the reward was a perfect view—the first absolutely perfect view which I had ever had out of many mountain ascents in Greece. We had, fortunately, taken the rare moment when, after four days of cloudy and rainy weather, the sky had just cleared, and for half a day a perfectly cloudless ether was diffused over everything. We saw the valley of the Eurotas winding down from the mountains to the sea, where it empties near Helos, the “marsh town,” which is said to have given its name to the whole remnant of the Achæan people, who were reduced to a galling bondage under the Dorian spearmenfrom the north. Sparta looked so near that we were almost lured into the attempt to throw stones into it. Kythera was surprisingly near, and even Crete—troubled and troublesome Crete—seemed so near that annexation to Greece appeared to be a most obvious lot for it. The southern islands of the Ægean, Melos and its neighbors, were conspicuous to the east; while on the west it seemed as if we could almost slide down into the Messenian Gulf. But, while all these objects caught our attention time and again, it was still to the north that our gaze was mainly directed; for there lay the whole Peloponnesus, with its peaks and ridges, which compose the greater part of it, spread out before us like a raised map, closed in on the north by the big three, Kyllene, Aroania, and Erymanthos. Compared with these, the three Attic mountains to the extreme left, and somewhat distant, looked small, though distinct. It was a place and a scene that one must needs be reluctant to leave. Had we brought food with us we should have been tempted to stay and spend the night in the substantial “tabernacle for Elias,” which crowns this summit, according to the usual practice in Greece. But evening brought us to Sparta, a good many stone’s-throws distant, as we felt in our knees and in our appetites. Two suggestions force themselves upon one visiting this region: the first is that the Spartans showed wonderful energy in breaking through the wall of Taygetos, and conquering their Dorian neighbors in Messenia, and in crushing them again when they made a desperate attempt to throw off the yoke; the second is that the difference between these two branches of Dorians could not be due to the Messenians having, as is sometimes alleged, settled in a fatally fertile and enervating plain. If rich fields could enervate a people, the Spartans surely did not lack that invitation, for the valley of the Eurotas must have been in antiquity, as now, a garden.

But what an unlovely people was this armed camp, which goes under the name of Sparta! We will not reproach them that they failed to produce anything in art and literature. It is rather their meanness and absolute selfishness, as the strongest military power in Greece, that makes them odious. For a century, from the Persian war to Leuctra, whenever Sparta moved through the passes to the north it meant woe to some Greek city; and when there was question raised at home over the unrighteous conduct of a general abroad, the outspoken criterion was: “Has he acted for the interests of Sparta?”

The last great injustice was the seizing and holding the Cadmeia in time of peace. It is this that makes lovers of fair play rejoice at the crushing return blow delivered by Epaminondas and his Thebans at Leuctra, and take satisfaction in his passing down the Eurotas, and showing the women of Sparta, for the first time, "the smoke of an enemy’scamp." And now by a historical thread we are led from Taygetos and Sparta over to Thebes and Kithæron.

By a lucky choice we approached Thebes, not by any of the usual routes, but by taking the train from Athens to Megara, walking thence across to the east end of the Corinthian Gulf, and skirting its shore until we reached Ægosthenæ, at the foot of Kithæron. No traveller ought to neglect this region. It is one of the finest shores in Greece; so rugged that we were several times driven inland by a promontory rising perpendicularly from the sea, and made to climb more than a thousand feet before we could continue our journey. We took a recompense for the extra toil by tipping off into the sea several bowlders, some of which, striking a projecting crag, would reach the water with the effect of a bursting shell. This whole northeastern arm of the Corinthian Gulf runs in between Kithæron on the north and Geraneia on the south, and so gains a peculiar seclusion.

And Ægosthenæ! the northwestern frontier town of the Megarid, what a magnificent ruin! The view that we took of its walls and towers by the full moon was something not to be forgotten. At Ægosthenæ we were on the route so often travelled by the Spartans when they went over into Bœotia to “regulate” its affairs, and it was under these walls that the remnant of their beaten and disheartened army first stopped to take breath on getting out of Bœotian territory after Leuctra. We had planned to follow this entire route, but, since even this involved some climbing, we agreed to take a little more climbing and go in a straight line for Platæa, over the top of Kithæron, in spite of the fact that the mountain wore a cap of cloud. So, having taken a very cold sea-bath and another good look at the ruins of Ægosthenæ, which were only a little less imposing by day than by moonlight, we scaled the height with a single peasant for a guide, and his mule to carry our packs. After many a look back on the increasingly beautiful scene behind us, whenever the dark fir-trees, which cover the slopes and give the name of “fir mountain” as a substitute for the old name Kithæron, allowed it, we at last entered into the cloud just before reaching the top. In the darkness of cloud and fir-trees we better felt that we were on the mountain chosen by the Erinnyes for their abode, a place of howlings, the scene of woe for Œdipus, Actæon, Pentheus, and Agave. Who would wish for sunlight on such a spot? It would have been as inappropriate as a cloud on Taygetos. While we were musing thus, suddenly there came a rift in the cloud, and we saw the whole plain of Bœotia once, twice, three times, and the spell of the Erinnyes was broken. We went five hundred feet further down on the north side, where we seemed to have left behind us the awfulmyths and to have come down into the realms of history; for we were looking down into Platæa, which lay at our feet. One of the brightest pages in Greek history is the unbroken record of the heroism of Platæa, and when it was finally crushed one might well have written over it, “dead on the field of honor.” Its Athenian leanings were abhorrent to Thebes, which always desired a “big Bœotia.” But no one could have done a better turn to Platæa than did Thebes, when it espoused the cause of Persia and led away nearly all the rest of Bœotia with it. At the close of “old Platæa’s day” the Panhellenic spirit of Platæa was rewarded by the Greeks in their giving the fine old heroic city the prize of valor, and declaring its soil forever sacred and inviolate. But the gods gave it a greater prize, in that they made its name forever associated with the battle that made Greece free.

It was again dark when we entered Thebes, and again we seemed to have left the realm of bright history and to have come under the spell of the awful myths of Cadmus’s line, the horrors of Œdipus and his fratricidal sons, dark horrors relieved only by the bright form of Antigone.

Arcadia is a name to conjure with. It “throngs the pulses with the fulness of the spring.” It had been my lot to pass twice through Southern Arcadia from east to west. But the great plains of Mantineia and Megalopolis lie open to the sunlight, and have nothing weird or even poetical about them. Even Lykosoura and Bassæ do not belong to the Arcadia that furnished the stories about singing fishes and aquatic mice. We must look elsewhere for those wonderful fountains, some of which cured madness, while one not only cured drunkenness, but, passing beyond the “touch not, taste not, handle not,” made even the smell of wine forever odious. It is recorded, by the way, that somebody set up an inscription by this fountain, warning the traveller against drinking of it. All these features belong to Northern Arcadia.

Mantineia is historically the most interesting city of Arcadia; and yet I had twice looked from its walls through those deep gorges to the north, knowing that just through the first one, almost in sight, lay old Orchomenos, and longed to pass through that gateway, but had been prevented by other claims upon my time. But in the summer of 1895 Iwas allowed the delight of seven days in the saddle with two pleasant companions in these uplands where reality is more inspiring than the Louis Quatorze fictions that have been thrown around the name of Arcadia.

To one accustomed to arid Attica and Argolis, the abundance of water and trees in this region is most striking. The three great northern mountains look bare enough at their tops; but they reach up and draw down from the sky that store of moisture which Pentelicus and Arachnæon are impotent to procure. Everywhere about them are rippling streams lined with plane-trees, with here and there a magnificent chestnut grove, and mountains covered with forests of pine and fir. Fields of maize (with here and there a patch of hemp), watered by thousands of little streams, diverted from the brooks, remind us of home. Around Nonakris, which was almost the farthest point north reached in our journey, is a wild tangle of vegetation which makes it difficult to keep the paths, which follow along the streams, from becoming overgrown and impassable. From this tangle we snatched many luscious blackberries as we rode past, catching some briers with the berries.

Nonakris was in ruins when Pausanias visited it, but past it flowed the river Styx, the name of which is probably better known than any other Arcadian name. It was a painful and somewhat dangeroustoil of about three hours from the nearest of the half-dozen villages which represent the ancient Nonakris to the foot of the famous waterfall from which the river comes down. I use the word “toil” rather than ascent, for, it being impossible to force our way up the bed of the stream, we had to climb down about half as much as up; in fact, it was, taken in the heat of noonday, a more toilsome climb than the ascent of Aroania, which we had made on the same day before daybreak.

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