Chapter IX: Part 9

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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