Rambles and Studies in Greece Part 13

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Palamedi, Nauplia]

The island of Hydra was, in old days, a mere barren rock, scarcely inhabited, and would probably never have changed its reputation but for a pirate settlement in a very curious little harbor, with a very narrow entrance, which faces the main sh.o.r.e of Argolis. As you sail along the straight coast line, there seems no break or indentation, when suddenly, as if by magic, the rocky sh.o.r.e opens for about twenty yards, at a spot marked by several caves in the face of the cliff, and lets you see into a circular harbor of very small dimensions, with an amphitheatre of rich and well-built houses rising up all round the bay. Though the water is very deep, there is actually no room for a large fleet, and there seems not a yard of level ground, except where terraces have been artificially made.

High rocks on both sides of the narrow entrance hide all prospect of the town, except from the point directly opposite the entrance.

The Hydriotes, who were rich merchants, and, I suppose, successful pirates in the Turkish days, were never enslaved, but kept their liberty and their wealth by paying a tribute to the Porte. They developed a trading power which reminds one strongly of the old Greek cities; and so faithful were they to one another that it was an ordinary habit for citizens to entrust all their savings to a captain starting for a distant port, to be laid out by him to the best advantage. It is said that they were never defrauded of their profits. The Turks may, perhaps, have thought that by gentle treatment they would secure the fidelity of the Hydriotes, whose wealth and power depended much on Turkish protection; but they were greatly mistaken. There was, indeed, some hesitation among the islanders, when the War of Liberation broke out, what part they should take; for during the great Napoleonic wars the Hydriotes, sailing under the neutral flag of Turkey, had made enormous profits by carrying trade among the belligerents. They lived in great luxury. With the peace of 1815, and the reopening of the French and other ports to English s.h.i.+ps, these profits disappeared, and the extravagant hopes of the Hydriotes ended in bankruptcy. This was probably a main cause of their patriotism. However, by far the most brilliant feats in the war were those performed by the Hydriote sailors, who remind one very much of the Zealanders in the wars of Holland against the Spanish power. Whether their bravery has been exaggerated is hard to say: this, at all events, is clear, that they earned the respect and admiration of the whole nation, nor is there any n.o.bility so recognized in Greek society as descent from the Hydriote chiefs who fought for the Liberation.

With the rise of the nation the wealth and importance of Hydra has strangely decayed. Probably the Peiraeus, with its vast advantages, has naturally regained its former predominance, now that every part of the coast and every port are equally free. Still, the general style and way of living at Hydra reminds one of old times; and if the island itself be sterile, the rich slopes of the opposite coast, covered with great groves of lemon-trees, are owned by the wealthy descendants of the old merchants.

The neighboring island of Spezza, where the steamer waits, and a crowd of picturesque people come out in quaint boats to give and take cargo, has a history very parallel to that of Hydra. It is to be noted that the population of both islands is rather Albanian than Greek. A few hours brings the steamer past Poros and through narrow pa.s.sages among islands to aegina, as they now call it. We have here an island whose history is precisely the reverse of that of Hydra. The great days of aegina (as I mentioned above) were in very old times, from the age of Pheidon of Argos, in the seventh century B. C., up to the rise of Athens's democracy and navy, when this splendid centre of literature, art, and commerce was absorbed in the greater Athenian empire.

There is at present a considerable town on the coast, and some cultivation on the hills; but the whole aspect of the island is very rocky and barren, and as it can hardly ever have been otherwise, we feel at once that the early greatness of aegina was, like that of Hydra in the last century, a purely commercial greatness. The people are very hospitable and interesting. Nowhere in Greece did I see more apparent remains of the purest Greek type. Our hostess, in particular, was worthy to take her place in the Parthenon frieze, and among the children playing on the quay there were faces of marvellous beauty.

With enterprise and diligence, a trading nation or city may readily become great in a small island or barren coast, and no phenomenon in history proves this more strongly than the vast empire of the Phnicians, who seem never to have owned more than a bare tract of a few miles about Tyre and Sidon. They were, in fact, a great people without a country. The Venetians similarly raised an empire on a salt marsh, and at one time owned many important possessions on Greek coasts and islands, without "any visible means of subsistence," as they say in the police courts. In the same way, Pericles thought nothing of the possession of Attica, provided the Athenians could hold their city walls and their harbors. He knew that with a maritime supremacy they must necessarily be lords of so vast a stretch of coasts and islands that the barren hills of Attica might be completely left out of account.

There is yet another and a very interesting way from Nauplia to aegina, which may be strongly recommended to the traveller who does not arrive in due time to catch the weekly steamer. Horses can be hired at Nauplia, which can perform, in about seven hours, the journey to the little village of Epidauros (now p.r.o.nounced _Epidavros_). Here a boat can be obtained, which, with a fair wind, can reach aegina in three, and the Peiraeus in about six hours. But, like all boating expeditions, this trip is uncertain, and may be thwarted by either calm or storm.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sculptured Lion, Nauplia]

We left Nauplia on a very fine morning, while the shepherds from the country were going through the streets, shouting _???a_, and serving out their milk from skins, of which they held the neck in one hand, and loosened their hold slightly to pour it into the vessel brought to them by the customer. These picturesque people-men, women, and children-seem to drive an active trade, and yet are not, I believe, to be found in the streets of any other Greek town.

The way through the Argolic country is rough and stony, not unlike in character to the ride from Corinth to Mycenae, but more barren, and for the most part less picturesque. On some of the hilltops are old ruins, with fine remains of masonry, apparently old Greek work. The last two or three hours of the journey are, however, particularly beautiful, as the path goes along the course of a rich glen, in which a tumbling river hurries toward the sea. This glen is full of verdure and of trees. We saw it in the richest moment of a southern spring, when all the trees were bursting into leaf, or decked with varied bloom. It was the home, too, of thrushes, and many other singing birds, which filled the air with music-as it were a rich variation upon the monotonous sound of the murmuring river. There is no sweeter concert than this in nature, no union of sight and sound which fills the heart of the stranger in such a solitude with deeper gladness. I know no fitter exodus from the beautiful Morea-a farewell journey which will dwell upon the memory, and banish from the mind all thoughts of discomfort and fatigue.

In the picturesque little land-locked bay of Epidavros there was a good-sized fis.h.i.+ng-boat riding at anchor, which we immediately chartered to convey us to Athens. The skipper took some time to gather a crew, and to obtain the necessary papers from the local authorities, but after some pressure on our part we got under weigh with a fair wind, and ran out of the harbor into the broad rock-studded sheet of water which separates Argolis from aegina, and from the more distant coast of Attica. There is no more delightful or truly Greek mode of travelling than to run through islands and under rocky coasts in these boats, which are roomy and comfortable, and, being decked, afford fair shelter from shower or spray.

But presently the wind began to increase from the north-west, and our skipper to hesitate whether it were safe to continue the journey. He proposed to run into the harbor of aegina for the night. We acquiesced without demur, and went at a great pace to our new destination. But no sooner had we come into the harbor, and cast anchor, so that the boat lay steady with her head to the wind, than another somewhat larger boat which came sailing in after us ran right into her amids.h.i.+ps. The shock started up all my companions, who were lying asleep in the bottom of the boat, and the situation looked rather desperate, for we were in the middle of a large harbor, a long way from land. It was night, and blowing hard, and all our crew betook themselves to weeping and praying, while the other boat did her best to sheer off and leave us to our fate. However, some of us climbed into her by the bow-sprit, which lay across our deck, while others got up the baggage, and proceeded to examine at what pace the water was coming in. A boat from the sh.o.r.e came out in time to take us off safely, but when we had landed our skipper gravely proposed that we should pay for the boat, as she was injured in our service! Of course, we laughed him to scorn, and having found at aegina a steam-launch belonging to Captain Miaoulis, then Minister of Marine, we went in search of him, and besought him to take us next day to the Peiraeus. The excellent man not only granted our request, but entertained us on the way with the most interesting anecdotes of his stay in England as a boy, when he came with his father to seek a.s.sistance from our country during the War of Liberation. Thus we came into the Peiraeus, not as s.h.i.+pwrecked outcasts, but under the protection of one of the most gallant and distinguished officers of the Greek navy.

A great point of interest among newly-discovered sites is the great temple and theatre of Epidaurus, which I did not visit, on account of an epidemic of small-pox-_e?f????a_ they call it, euphemistically. The very journey to this place is worth making, on account of its intensely characteristic features. You start from Athens in a coasting steamer full of natives, who carry with them their food and beds, and camp on deck where it pleases them, regardless of cla.s.s. You see all the homeliness of ordinary life obtruded upon you without seeking it, instead of intruding upon others to find it; and you can study not only the country, but the people, at great leisure. But the ever-varying beauty of the scene leaves little time for other studies. The boat pa.s.ses along aegina, and rounds the promontory of Kalauria-the death-scene of Demosthenes-into the land-locked bay of Poros, where lay the old Trzen and Hermione along the fruitful sh.o.r.e, surrounded by an amphitheatre of lofty mountains. The sea is like a fair inland lake, studded with white sails, and framed with the rich green of vines and figs and growing corn. Even the rows of tall solemn cypresses can suggest no gloom in such a landscape. From here it is but a short ride to the famous temple of aesculapius, though most people go from Nauplia, as I once did in former years, before the discoveries were made which now attract the student.

The excavations of the Greek archaeological society have laid bare at least three princ.i.p.al buildings in connection with the famous spot; the old temple of the G.o.d, the theatre, and the famous _tholos_, a circular building, in which those who had been healed of diseases set up votive tablets. The extraordinary size and splendor of the theatre-Pausanias says it was far the finest in Greece-rather contrasts with the dimensions of the temple, and suggests that most of the patients who came were able to enjoy themselves, or else that many people came for pleasure, and not on serious business. The remains discovered are particularly valuable for the good preservation of the stage, but of this I can only speak at second hand. So also the circular building, which was erected under the supervision of the famous Polycletus, the great Argive sculptor, a rival of Phidias, has many peculiar features, and shows in one more instance that what earlier art critics a.s.sumed as modern was based on older cla.s.sical models. Circular buildings supported on pillars were thought rather Graeco-Roman than Greek, but here we see that, like the builders of the Odeon of Pericles, of the later Philippeion at Olympia, so the Epidaurians had this form before them from early days. Inside the outer row of Doric pillars was a second circle of pillars, apparently Ionic as to proportions and fluting, but the capitals were Corinthian, so that this feature also in architecture has a venerable antiquity, and was not Graeco-Roman, as was once supposed. For a long time the so-called Lantern of Demosthenes, built for Lysicrates at Athens in 335 B. C., when Alexander was leading his army into Asia, was considered the oldest, and perhaps the only pure Greek example of the Corinthian capital. People began to hesitate when a solitary specimen was found in the famous temple of Ba.s.sae, where it could hardly have been imported in later days. Now the evidence is completed, and in this respect the historians of art are correcting the rash generalization of their predecessors.

CHAPTER XIV.

KYNURIA-SPARTA-MESSENE.

Whatever other excursions a traveller may make in the Morea, he ought not to omit a trip to Sparta, which has so often been the centre of power, and is still one of the chief centres of attraction in Greece. And yet many reasons conspire to make this famous place less visited than the rest of the country. It is distinctly out of the way from the present starting-points of travel. To reach it from Athens, or even from Patras or Corinth, requires several days, and it is not remarkable for any of those architectural remains which are more attractive to the modern inquirer than anything else in a historic country.

Of the various routes we choose (in 1884) that from Nauplia by Astros, as we had been the guests for some days of the hospitable Dr. Schliemann, who was prosecuting his now famous researches at Tiryns. So we rose one morning with the indefatigable doctor before dawn,(173) and took a boat to bring us down the coast to Astros. The morning was perfectly fair and calm, and the great mountain chains of the coast were mirrored in the opal sea, as we pa.s.sed the picturesque rocky fort which stands close to Nauplia in the bay, the residence of the public executioner. The beauty of the Gulf of Argos never seemed more perfect than in the freshness of the morning, with the rising sun illuminating the lofty coasts. Our progress was at first by the slow labor of the oar, but as the morning advanced there came down a fresh west wind from the mountains, which at intervals filled our lateen sail almost too well, and sent us flying along upon our way. In three hours we rounded a headland, and found ourselves in the pretty little bay of Astros.

Of course, the whole population came down to see us. They were apparently as idle, and as ready to be amused, as the inhabitants of an Irish village. But they are sadly wanting in fun. You seldom hear them make a joke or laugh, and their curiosity is itself curious from this aspect.

After a good deal of bargaining we agreed for a set of mules and ponies to bring us all the way round the Morea, to Corinth if necessary, though ultimately we were glad to leave them at Kyparissia, at the opposite side of Peloponnesus, and pursue our way by sea. The bargain was eight drachmas per day for each animal; a native, or very experienced traveller, could have got them for five to six drachmas.

Our way led us up a river course, as usual through fine olive-trees and fields of corn, studded with scarlet anemones, till after a mile or two we began to ascend from the level of the coast to the alt.i.tudes of the central plateau, or rather mountain system, of the Morea. Here the flora of the coast gave way to fields of sperge, hyacinths, irises, and star of Bethlehem. Every inch of ascent gave us a more splendid and extended view back over coasts and islands. The giant tops of the inner country showed themselves still covered with snow. We were in that district so little known in ancient history, which was so long a bone of contention between Argos and Sparta, whose boundaries seem never to have been fixed by any national landmark. When we had reached the top of the rim of inland Alps, we ascended and descended various steeps, and rounded many glens, reaching in the end the village of Hagios Petros, which we had seen before us for a long time, while we descended one precipice and mounted another to attain our goal. It was amusing to see our _agogiatae_ or muleteers pulling out fragments of mirror, and arranging their toilette, such as it was, before encountering the criticism of the Hagiopetrans. One of these men was indeed a handsome soldierly youth, who walked all day with us for a week over the roughest country, in miserable shoes, and yet without apparent fatigue.

Another, a great stout man with a beard, excused himself for not being married by saying he was _too little_ (_e??a? ?????_), and so we learned that as they are all expected to marry, and do marry, twenty-five is considered the earliest proper age. One would almost think they had preserved some echo of Aristotle's views, which make thirty years the best age for marriage-thirty years! when most of us are already so old as to have lost interest in these great pleasures.

At Hagios Petros we were hospitably received by the demarch, a venerable old man with a white beard, who was a physician, unfortunately also a politician, and who insisted on making a thousand inquiries about Mr.

Gladstone and Prince Bismarck, while we were starving and longing for dinner. Some fish, which the muleteers had providently bought at Astros and brought with them, formed the best part of the entertainment, if we except the magnificent creature, adorned in all his petticoats and colors and knives, who came in to see us before dinner, and kissed our hands with wonderful dignity, but who turned out to be the waiter at the table. We asked the demarch how he had procured himself so stately a servant, and he said he was the clerk in his office. It occurred to us, when we watched the grace and dignity of every movement in this royal-looking person, how great an effect splendid costume seems to have on manners. It was but a few days since that I had gone to a very fas.h.i.+onable evening party at a handsome palace in Athens, and had been amused at the extraordinary awkwardness with which various very learned men-professors, archaeologists, men of independent means-had entered the room. The circle was, I may add, chiefly German. Here was a man, ignorant, acting as a servant and yet a king in demeanor. But how could you expect a German professor in his miserable Frankish dress to a.s.sume the dignity of a Greek in palicar costume, in forty yards of petticoat, his waist squeezed with female relentlessness, with his ruby jacket and gaiters, his daggers and pistols at his belt. After all, manners are hardly attainable, as a rule, without costume.

We were accommodated as well as the worthy demarch could manage for the night. As a special favor I was put to sleep into his dispensary, a little chamber full of galley-pots, pestles, and labelled bottles of antiquated appearance, and dreamt in turns of the study of Faust and of the apothecary's shop in Mantua, which we see upon the stage.

Early in the morning we climbed up a steep ascent to attain the high plateau, very bleak and bare, which is believed by the people to have been the scene of the conflict of Othryades and his men with the Argive 300. A particular spot is still called _st??? f??e??????_, _the place of the slain_. The high plain, about 3500 feet above the sea, was all peopled with country-folk coming to a market at Hagios Petros, and we had ample opportunity of admiring both the fine manly appearance and the excellent manners of this hardy and free peasantry. The complex of mountains in which they live is the chain of Parnon, which ultimately extends from Thyreatis through Kynuria down to Cape Malea, but not without many breaks and crossings. The heights of Parnon (now called Malevo) still hid from us the farther Alps of the inner country.

After a ride of an hour or two we descended to the village of Arachova, much smaller and poorer than its namesake in Phocis (above, p. 274), and thence to the valley of a stream called Phonissa, the murderess, from its dangerous floods, but at the moment a pleasant and shallow brook. Down its narrow bed we went for hours, crossing and recrossing it, or riding along its banks, with all the verdure gradually increasing with the change of climate and of shelter, till at last a turn in the river brought us suddenly in sight of the brilliant serrated crest of Taygetus, glittering with its snow in the suns.h.i.+ne. Then we knew our proper landmark, and felt that we were indeed approaching Sparta.

But we still had a long way to ride down our river till we reached its confluence with the Eurotas, near to which we stopped at a solitary khan, from which it is an easy ride to visit the remains of Sellasia. During the remaining three hours we descended the banks of the Eurotas, with the country gradually growing richer, and the stream so deep that it could no longer be forded. There is a quaint high mediaeval bridge at the head of the vale of Sparta. On a hot summer's afternoon, about five o'clock, we rode, dusty and tired, into Sparta.

The town was in holiday, and athletic sports were going on in commemoration of the establishment of Greek liberty. Crowds of fine tall men were in the very wide regular streets, and in the evening this new town vindicated its ancient t.i.tle of _e????????_. But the very first glance at the surroundings of the place was sufficient to correct in my mind a very widespread error, which we all obtain from reading the books of people who have never studied history on the spot. We imagine to ourselves the Spartans as hardy mountaineers, living in a rude alpine country, with sterile soil, the rude nurse of liberty. They may have been such when they arrived in prehistoric times from the mountains of Phocis, but a very short residence in Laconia must have changed them very much.

The vale of Sparta is the richest and most fertile in Peloponnesus. The bounding chains of mountains are separated by a stretch, some twenty miles wide, of undulating hills and slopes, all now covered with vineyards, orange and lemon orchards, and comfortable homesteads or villages. The great chain on the west limits the vale by a definite line, but toward the east the hills that run toward Malea rise very gradually and with many delays beyond the arable ground. The old Spartans therefore settled in the richest and best country available, and must from the very outset of their career have had better food, better climate, and hence much more luxury than their neighbors.

We are led to the same conclusion by the art-remains which are now coming to light, and which are being collected in the well-built local museum of the town. They show us that there was an archaic school of sculpture, which produced votive and funeral reliefs, and therefore that the old Spartans were by no means so opposed to art as they have been represented in the histories. The poetry of Alkman, with its social and moral freedom, its suggestions of luxury and good living, shows what kind of literature the Spartan rulers thought fit to import and encourage in the city of Lycurgus. The whole sketch of Spartan society which we read in Plutarch's _Life_ and other late authorities seems rather to smack of imaginary reconstruction on Doric principles than of historical reality. Contrasts there were, no doubt, between Dorians and Ionians, nay, even between Sparta and Tarentine or Argive Dorians; but still Sparta was a rich and luxurious society, as is confessed on all hands where there is any mention of the ladies and their homes. We might as well infer from the rudeness of the dormitories in the College at Winchester, or from the simplicity of an English man-of-war's mess, that our nation consisted of rude mountaineers living in the sternest simplicity.

But if I continue to write in this way I shall have all the pedants down upon me. Let us return to the Sparta of to-day. We lodged at a very bad and dear inn, and our host's candid excuse for his exorbitant prices was the fact that he very seldom had strangers to rob, and so must plunder those that came without stint. His formula was perhaps a little more decent, but he hardly sought to disguise the plain truth. When we sought our beds, we found that a very noisy party had established themselves below to celebrate the Feast of the Liberation, with supper, speeches, and midnight revelry.

So, as usual, there was little possibility of sleep. Moreover, I knew that we had a very long day's journey before us to Kalamata, so I rose before the sun and before my companions, to make preparations and to rouse the muleteers.

On opening my window, I felt that I had attained one of the strange moments of life which can never be forgotten. The air was preternaturally clear and cold, and the sky beginning to glow faintly with the coming day.

Straight before me, so close that it almost seemed within reach of voice, the giant Taygetus, which rises straight from the plain, stood up into the sky, its black and purple gradually brightening into crimson, and the cold blue-white of its snow warming into rose. There was a great feeling of peace and silence, and yet a vast diffusion of sound. From the whole plain, with all its homesteads and villages, myriads of c.o.c.ks were proclaiming the advent of the dawn. I had never thought there were so many c.o.c.ks in all the world. The ever-succeeding voices of these countless thousands kept up one continual wave of sound, such as I suppose could not be equalled anywhere else; and yet for all that, as I have said, there was a feeling of silence, a sense that no other living thing was abroad, an absolute stillness in the air, a deep sleep over the rest of nature.

How long I stood there, and forgot my hurry, I know not, but starting up at last as the sun struck the mountain, I went down, and found below stairs another curious contrast. All over the coffee-room (if I may so dignify it) were the disordered remains of a disorderly revel, ashes and stains and fragments in disgusting confusion; and among them a solitary figure was mumbling prayers in the gloom to the image of a saint with a faint lamp burning before it. In the midst of the wrecks of dissipation was the earnestness of devotion, prayer in the place of ribaldry; perhaps, too, dead formalism in the place of coa.r.s.e but real enjoyment.

We left for Mistra before six in the morning, so escaping some of the parting inspection which the whole town was ready to bestow upon us. The way led us past many orchards, where oranges and lemons were growing in the richest profusion on great trees, as large as the cherry-trees in the Alps. The branches were bending with their load, and there was fruit tumbled into the gra.s.s, and studding the ground in careless plenty with its ruddy and pale gold. In these orchards, with their deep green ma.s.ses of foliage, the nightingales sing all day, and we heard them out-carolling the homelier sounds of awakening husbandry. During all the many rides I have taken through Greece, no valley ever struck me with the sense of peace and wealth so much as that of Sparta.

After an hour or so we reached the picturesque town of Mistra, now nearly deserted, but all through the Middle Ages the capital of the district, nestled under the shelter of the great fortress of the Villehardouins, the family of the famous chronicler. Separated by a deep gorge (or _langada_) with its torrent from the loftier mountain, this picturesque rock with its fortress contains the most remarkable mediaeval remains, Latin, Greek, Venetian, Turkish, in all the Morea. Villehardouins and Paleologi made it their seat of power, and filled it with churches and palaces, to which I shall return when we speak of mediaeval Greece. An earthquake about fifty years ago destroyed many of the houses, and the population then founded the new Sparta, with its wide, regular streets, on the site of the old cla.s.sical city. This resettlement is not so serious a hindrance to archaeology as the rebuilding of Athens, for we know that in the days of its real greatness Sparta was a mere aggregate of villages, and the walls and theatre which are still visible must have been built in late Greek or Roman times. The so-called tomb of Leonidas, a square chamber built with huge blocks of ashlar masonry, of which three courses remain, appears like building of the best period, but its history is wholly unknown.

We reached in another hour the steep village of Trypi, at the very mouth of the great pa.s.s through Taygetus-a beautiful site, with houses and forest trees standing one above the other on the precipitous steep; and below, the torrent rus.h.i.+ng into the plain to join the Eurotas. It is from this village that we ought to have started at dawn, and where we should have spent the previous night, for even from here it takes eleven full hours to reach Kalamata on the Gulf of Messene. The traveller should send on his ponies, or take them to Mistra and thence to Trypi on the previous afternoon. The lodging there is probably not much worse than at Sparta.

From this point we entered at once into the great Langada pa.s.s, the most splendid defile in Greece-the only way from Sparta into Messene for a distance of thirty miles north and south. It is indeed possible to scale the mountain at a few other points, but only by regular alpine climbing, whereas this is a regular highway; and along it strings of mules, not without trouble, make their pa.s.sage daily, when the snow does not lie, from Sparta and from Kalamata.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Langada Pa.s.s]

Nothing can exceed the picturesqueness and beauty of this pa.s.s, and nothing was stranger than the contrast between its two steeps. That which faced south was covered with green and with spring flowers-pale anemones, irises, orchids, violets, and, where a stream trickled down, with primroses-a marsh plant in this country. All these were growing among great boulders and cliffs, whereas on the opposite side the whole face was bleak and barren, the rocks being striated with rich yellow and red veins.

I suppose in hot summer these aspects are reversed. High above us, as it were, looking down from the summits, were great forests of fir-trees-a gloomy setting to a grandiose and savage landscape. The day was, as usual, calm and perfectly fine, with a few white clouds relieving the deep blue of the sky. As we were threading our way among the rocks of the river-course we were alarmed by large stones tumbling from above, and threatening to crush us. Our guides raised all the echoes with their shouts, to warn any unconscious disturber of this solitude that there were human beings beneath, but on closer survey we found that our possible a.s.sa.s.sins were only goats clambering along the precipice in search of food, and disturbing loose boulders as they went.

Farther on we met other herds of these quaint creatures generally tended by a pair of solitary children, who seemed to belong to no human kin, but, like birds or flowers, to be the natural denizens of these wilds. They seemed not to talk or play; we never heard them sing, but pa.s.sed them sitting in curious vague listlessness, with no wonder, no curiosity, in their deep solemn eyes. There, all the day long, they heard no sound but the falling water, the tinkling of their flocks, and the great whisper of the forest pines when the breeze touched them on its way down the pa.s.s.

They took little heed of us as we pa.s.sed, and seemed to have sunk from active beings into mere pa.s.sive mirrors of the external nature around them. The men with us, on the other hand, were constantly singing and talking. They were all in a strange country which they had never seen; a serious man with a gun slung around his shoulder was our guide from Trypi, and so at last we reached the top of the pa.s.s, about four thousand feet high, marked by a little chapel to St. Elias, and once by a stone pillar stating the boundary between Sparta and Messene. It was then up this pa.s.s, and among these forests, that the young Spartans had steeled themselves by hunting the wolf and the bear in peace, and by raids and surprises in days of war.

The descent was longer and more varied; sometimes through well cultivated olive yards, mulberries, and thriving villages, sometimes along giant slopes, where a high wind would have made our progress very difficult.

Gradually the views opened and extended, and in the evening we could see down to the coast of Messene, and the sea far away. But we did not reach Kalamata till long after nightfall, and rested gladly in a less uncomfortable inn than we had yet found in the journey.

The town is a cheery and pleasant little place, with remains of a large mediaeval castle occupied by Franks, Venetians, Turks, which was the first seat of the Villehardouins, and from which they founded their second fort at Mistra. The river Nedon here runs into the sea, and there is a sort of open roadstead for s.h.i.+ps, where steamers call almost daily, and a good deal of coasting trade (silk, currants, etc.) goes on. The only notable feature in the architecture is the pretty bell tower of the church, of a type which I afterward saw in other parts of Messenia, but which is not usual in these late Byzantine buildings.

As there was nothing to delay us here, we left next morning for the convent of Vourkano, from which we were to visit Mount Ithome, and the famous ruins of Epaminondas's second great foundation in Peloponnesus-the revived Messene. The plain (called _Macaria_ or Felix from its fertility) through which we rode was indeed both rich and prosperous, but swampy in some places and very dusty in others. There seemed to be active cultivation of mulberries, figs, olives, lemons, almonds, currant-grapes, with cactus hedges and plenty of cattle. There were numerous little pot-houses along the road, where mastich and luc.u.mia were sold, as well as dried fruit and oranges. If the Nedon was broad and shallow, we found the Pamisos narrow and deep, so that it could only be crossed by a bridge. A few hours brought us to the ascent of Mount Ithome, on a high shoulder of which is situated the famous and hospitable convent of Vourkano (or Voulkano).

The building, very picturesquely situated high on the side of Mount Ithome, commands a long slope covered with brushwood and wild-flowers, the ideal spot for a botanist, as many rills of water run down the descent and produce an abundant and various vegetation. There is not a sod of soil which does not contain bulbs and roots of flowers. Below stretches the valley of Stenyclarus, so famous in the old annals of Messene. It was studded with groves of orange and lemon, olive and date, mulberry and fig.