Chapter III: Part 3

The prestige of Leake, his almost established record of never going astray, led topographers generally to follow him, at least in the location of Thermon. Bazin, indeed, having a conscience about changing left to right, makes Philip march clear round the lake and reach Vlocho in season to destroy that great citadel on the same day, a distance of forty-five miles over some very bad ground, and that, too, on top of a forced march the day before. A military man like Leake could not have made this error, though he led Bazin into it by falsely locating Thermon.

In spite of a growing belief, starting with Bursian and at last finding exact expression in Lolling's selection of Palæo-Bazaar, that Thermon was somewhere near the east end of the lake, Vlocho, the mighty hill fortress, made such an impression that many regarded the discussion as one in which it was still worth while to sum up the _pros_ and _cons_, adding: "If Vlocho is not Thermon, give us some adequate name for it." But the spade, which has again substantiated its claims to be the best archæologist, has relegated all this discussion to the limbo of old notions. Whatever Vlocho was, it was _not_ Thermon. A score or more of inscriptions found by Soteiriades at Palæo-Bazaar, speaking of the affairs of the Ætolian League, show that he has found the capital. What makes the identification absolutely certain is the inscription containing the treaty between the Ætolians and Philip of Macedon, in which it is provided that of two copies one shall be set up at Thermon, and the other at Delphi, which was at the time the ecclesiastical capital of the league. The French have found one copy at Delphi; Soteiriades found the other, an exact duplicate, at Kephalovrysi. After that, one surely need not go elsewhere to seek for Thermon. A suggestive trifle was found here before the excavations, viz., a life-size bronze thumb of good work, showing the dint of a hammer on the knuckle. This probably belonged to one of the two thousand statues destroyed by Philip.

Leaving Kephalovrysi at two o'clock, instead of taking the shortest road to Agrinion along the north shore of the lake, at my suggestion, which again sprung from the desire of seeing something new, we circled the lake, following the line of Philip's retreat along the south side, and identifying among other places the site of Trichonion, which gave its name to the lake. Passing between this lake and its neighbor to the west, we reached Agrinion just before dark, and found there a new, clean hotel. The railroad is beginning to work its wonders even in Agrinion.

This flourishing town of about ten thousand inhabitants, the centre of the most important tobacco-growing region in Greece, and the capital of Ætolia, has stolen its name from ancient Agrinion, which lay about seven miles away on the Acheloos. Its real name is Vrachori, which is still used by many who do not fancy the revamping of classical names, especially when they are foisted on to towns that are not entitled to them, and have an honorable history of their own which has been gained under the name which it is proposed to set aside. Vrachori is such a case.

Not till after dinner did we present ourselves at the house of the doctor who had bountifully entertained my friend and me last year for two nights. Both he and his wife seemed hurt that we had not all four of us come unannounced straight to them, and extorted from us the promise that on our return from Arta we would spend a night with them. "But these things lay on the knees of the gods." After starting off hopefully in the morning, when almost in sight of Stratos my bicycle met with a collapse, which we tried in vain to remedy; and the afternoon train bore me in great tribulation through the front door of Ætolia back to Patras and Athens.

The next year, and pretty nearly every succeeding year, brought me again to this most romantic part of Greece, so little known by modern travellers, and so little famed in ancient history, but full of walls and acropolises which cry out for a name. On the last of these visits we climbed Vlocho on a rather hot day. To judge from the exhaustion which even the strongest felt, as well as from the appearance of the mountain, for Vlocho is really a mountain, we have here the highest acropolis in Greece. It looks down upon Trichonis to the south and back into the rugged peaks of Ætolia to the north, overtopping all the foot-hills of those mountains. Its walls also match the commanding position. It is no wonder that Leake took it for the great central citadel of the Ætolians, none other than Thermon. But not only has Thermon been positively identified, as has been already mentioned, but Vlocho has been shown by an inscription found by Soteiriades to be the acropolis of the Thestiæi, a merely tribal gathering place. This solution is a surprise, a sort of anticlimax. It is an equally great surprise that Thermon had no acropolis at all, but was a gathering-place in a plain. Its situation, however, high up above the mountainous north shore of Lake Trichonis near its eastern end, made it difficult for an enemy to attack; and when Philip V. broke into the nest of the robber brood, destroyed it, and got safely back to his connections, it was the master stroke of that enterprising and rash boy king. The Ætolians got a sweet revenge more than twenty years later, when, at Kynoskephalæ, they contributed materially to Philip's crushing defeat by Flamininus.

The usual approach to Thermon is from Agrinion over a level road along the north shore until the middle of that shore-line is reached. Then comes a steady climb until one gains an altitude of perhaps two thousand feet, directly over the surface of the lake, and then another more gentle climb away from the lake, and the goal is reached. There is a fine carriage-road all the way.

The one thing that Ætolia, as well as Acarnania, lacks to make it famous is the bard, or, failing him, the historian. No Homer or Sophocles or Pindar has made the beautiful Lake Trichonis into a more than earthly lake. The great historians have found elsewhere more attractive themes than the wars of the men who inhabited these mighty fortresses. The modern traveller likes to follow the footsteps of the poets and historians; and so Attica, Argos, Bœotia, and Thessaly are visited and enjoyed, while the stream passes by Ætolia and Acarnania "on the other side." But there are some who will be drawn by that beautiful Lake Trichonis, by the bountiful Acheloos, by the Gulf of Ambrakia, and by the Gorge of Klissoura, which runs through Mount Arakynthos, and only lacks a stream to make it surpass Tempe. This number may increase so that in ten years more, demand creating supply, even Arta may provide an inn where the weary traveller may lie down to pleasant dreams.

THERMOPYLÆ

We twelve members of the American School had spent three rather cold and rainy November days at Delphi, managing to see between the showers, perhaps better called tempests, that kept sweeping up the valley of the Pleistos, most of the important objects both in the museum and in the excavation area. After so much tantalizing promise, followed by disappointment, it began to seem very doubtful whether the six bicyclists of the party could carry out their intention of prolonging the trip into Thessaly. The morning of the fourth day looked about like the three preceding mornings, except that the storm centre, on and around Mount Korax to the west of Parnassus and Delphi, had at last broken up. Just this little encouragement led five of us to move on, and we slipped quickly down the long winding road to the foot of the high slope on the top of which Delphi stands.

After we had toiled through mud to Amphissa, we began to reap the benefits of a clearing and bracing north wind. We had an exhilarating climb of three hours up the Amblema Pass, which leads over the ridge connecting Parnassus with the still higher mountains to the west. Before we got to the top, which is the backbone between the Corinthian Gulf and the Gulf of Malis, a cold cloud, which we may as well call a winter storm, came rushing out of the gap to meet us like an army debouching from a covert. We began to fear that Doris, into which we were going to pass, was another storm centre, and our feeling of pity for the one man who had been prudent enough to take his bicycle back to Athens began to change to envy. But after dropping a thousand feet or more into Doris we got below the storm, and the roads became somewhat drier. When we were at the level of that upland plain they were quite good. Doris had been a storm centre in the morning, but at noon was almost clear. What luck!

Confronting us on the north side of the plain was another mountain barrier which shut out Thermopylæ from our view. Rain-clouds were playing around this mountain. After luncheon at Gravia, it was a matter of from two to three hours to get across the plain and partly climb and partly circumvent this second barrier. And then came a most exhilarating experience. Here was the sight of a lifetime. The Gulf of Malis far below us, the road visible in all its extent winding like an enormous serpent down the side of the mountain to the plain from two to three thousand feet below us, and then running straight as an arrow to Lamia, Mount Othrys in the background, Thermopylæ to the right, and, soon after, Tymphrestos to the left, with the Spercheios winding down from it. Historic associations apart--as if they ever could be apart!--this is a landscape not easily surpassed. It is one of those views which seem to gain in power with repetition. It was the fifth time that I had seen and felt it; and I firmly believe that I had a keener relish in the view than my companions who saw it for the first time.

Bicycling down the face of a mountain like that, over curves that take you half a mile or a mile in one direction, and then as far in the other direction, is about the nearest approach to flying that has yet been given to man. One seems to be floating in the ether, and dropping at will down to the earth like a bird on the wing.

In this winding down the mountain-side we crossed probably more than once the path by which the Greek traitor led Hydarnes and his Ten Thousand Immortals around in the rear of the Greeks and cut off their retreat. But it was getting too late now to see and study Thermopylæ by the light of that day. Lamia was our goal, a city where one finds comfortable quarters and good eating. We had heard far back on the road that the bridge over the Spercheios had been carried away two years before, and had not yet been replaced. Some said that we should find a boat to ferry us over, while others said that there was neither bridge nor ferry, which seemed incredible, since we were on the great highway from the Corinthian Gulf to northern Greece. But when we reached the Spercheios at twenty minutes before five o'clock the worst that had been told us came true. No ferry-man was there. One sorrowful-looking Greek who was, figuratively speaking, in the same boat with us, suggested that we go back to a village called Moschochori, which we had passed about two miles back, the road leaving it about a quarter of a mile to the east. He thought that we should there find the ferry-man, who had abandoned his post a little too early, and had left his boat in plain sight bound to a tree with chain and padlock. This suggestion had the advantage that, in case we failed to find the boatman and to induce him to return, we might at least find shelter in the village, poor as it was, which would in the cold weather be better than passing the night in the open air.

I had on two former occasions failed to reach Lamia at nightfall and been obliged to pass the night in this region; once in 1890, very near where we were then standing, in a barn filled with corn-husks, and again, ten years later, under the hospitable roof of the chief of police at Molo, to the east of Thermopylæ. But this time it seemed as if, with a sufficient outlay of energy, we ought to pass over Jordan into a land of milk and honey. The first step was to go back. Just where we were turning from the high-road to go into the village there met us a man on horseback, who proved to be the village doctor going to visit a sick woman. The husband of the patient was trotting along behind him. No sooner did the doctor hear our story than he turned to the man following him, and said: "Go into the village and tell the ferry-man that if he doesn't get back to the ferry as fast as his legs can carry him I will split his head for him. Tell him there are strangers waiting to get over to Lamia." The word "stranger" has great power in Greece. If the stranger is not, as in Homer, under the special protection of Zeus, he is under the protection of all good men, which is perhaps quite as efficient.

At this point came a curious turn. The man who was to call the ferry-man said: "But the ferry-man will not believe me when I tell him that strangers are waiting." The doctor saw the point, and said: "Yes, one of you must go with him." I decided that I was needed, and after a hard tramp quite a distance through mud about a foot deep--I would not abate one tittle of nine inches--I saw the effect of the message. The ferry-man saddled a horse and shot off in the direction of the missing bridge as if he believed the doctor was ready to do what he had said he would do. When we reached the ferry all was in readiness for our passage, and, shortly after seven o'clock we sat down to dinner in Lamia. As the doctor and his follower went over in the same ferry-boat it is a fair inference that they had also a personal interest in stirring up the ferry-man.

The fact that this bridge had been lacking for two years on the only high-road which leads directly from Thessaly, not only to the Corinthian Gulf, but also, by a fork in Doris, to Bœotia and Attica, is a sign of the times. The people of Lamia complain against the Government, for this is a national road made and neglected by the general Government. Incomplete in 1890 when I first went over it on foot, it was completed at great expense, and it seems reckless extravagance to neglect it now. Greece might better afford to spare on its army and navy, and put the savings into internal improvements. The bridge over the Peneios, on the high-road between Trikkala and Larisa, the two principal cities of Thessaly, has been down for eight or ten years and its place has been supplied by a ferry-boat. The long-projected railroad, designed to connect Athens with Larisa, and ultimately with Europe, was nearly half finished in 1894, and until 1902 nothing was done to carry on the work, or to save from disintegration the part already finished. After a lapse of eight years a new company has taken up the work and is vigorously pushing it; but the old material has been declared to be of no value. A sense of waste in such matters makes one feel that Greece is far from being a Switzerland in thrift. It hardly affords a basis upon which a "greater Greece" can be built up.

The next day we took Thermopylæ at our leisure, passing out from Lamia over the Spercheios on the bridge of Alamana, at which Diakos, famous in ballad, resisted with a small band a Turkish army, until he was at last captured and taken to Lamia to be impaled. Luckily this one bridge over the Spercheios remains, and Thessaly has a road open to the east through Thermopylæ and Atalante. The day was perfect, a day to make an old man young. We were like boys at play, in spite of the overpowering associations of the place. We sat down in the sunlight and dabbled with our feet in the hot sulphur stream, which has given its name to the place, Thermopylæ meaning "Hot Gates," and when a serious shepherd came and looked at us in wonderment we regarded him as the "Old Man of Thermopylæ," in that character-sketch, "There was an old man of Thermopylæ who never did anything properly." We had him photographed in that character, and fancied him doomed to return for a space to the scene of his excesses and to behave himself "properly." We then went through the pass as far east as Molo, and after taking luncheon there returned to the pass for serious study, _i.e._, for tracing as far as possible the position and movements of the antagonists in the great battle.

It may be taken as a well-known fact that the Spercheios has since the time of Herodotus made so large an alluvial deposit around its mouth that, if he himself should return to earth, he would hardly recognize the spot which he has described so minutely. The western horn, which in his time came down so near to the gulf as to leave space for a single carriage-road only, is now separated from it by more than a mile of plain. Each visit to Thermopylæ has, however, deepened my conviction that Herodotus exaggerated the impregnability of this pass. The mountain spur which formed it did not rise so abruptly from the sea as to form an impassable barrier to the advance of a determined antagonist. It is of course difficult ground to operate on, but certainly not impossible. The other narrow place, nearly two miles to the east of this, is still more open, a fact that is to be emphasized, because many topographers, including Colonel Leake, hold that the battle actually took place there, as the great battle between the Romans and Antiochos certainly did. This eastern pass is, to be sure, no place where "a thousand may well be stopped by three," and there cannot have taken place any great transformation here since classical times, inasmuch as this region is practically out of reach of the Spercheios, and the deposit from the hot sulphur streams, which has so broadened the theatre-shaped area enclosed by the two horns, can hardly have contributed to changing the shape of the eastern horn itself. Artificial fortification was always needed here; but it is very uncertain whether any of the stones that still remain can be claimed as parts of such fortification. It is a fine position for an inferior force to choose for defence against a superior one; but while it cannot be declared with absolute certainty that this is not the place where the fighting took place, yet the western pass fits better the description of Herodotus. Besides this, if the western pass had been abandoned to the Persians at the outset the fact would have been worth mentioning.

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, but the 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 they _did_ here." 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

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 of subjection 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 territory of 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 the region. 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 to Thessaly, 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 Trikkala and 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 of Tempe 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 of the 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 only one 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.

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 the afternoon 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.

AN ASCENT OF THE HIGHEST MOUNTAIN IN GREECE

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 scaled the 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, the horses, 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 to get 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 my trousers 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.