Come, come with me to the Isles of Greece,
And on o'er the seas to its golden shore;
Pause not till you reach Athenia's crown,
Then mount to its heaven-domed Parthenon.
Its glories will feed your musing hours,
When fame has dwindled to cheap renown.
It is a far cry from the Bowery to the Bosporus, but only a few obstacles, such as the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, the Adriatic and the Sea of Marmora, intervene. We had overcome two of these so that it was from Brindisi, Italy, the end of the Appian Way, that we embarked for Greece.
I expected to find tall, willowy maidens in Grecian draperies standing on the banks of Corfu waving golden lyres to welcome me to these fair Ionian Islands, with mighty warriors back of them proclaiming of their ancestors; instead, I found a pretty little island covered with blossoms, in the midst of which is the magnificent Villa Achilleion erected for Empress Elisabeth of Austria.
One would never dream that the lazy sailors found along the shores of this hilly isle were descendants of those old Greeks who fought the first naval battle 2600 years ago, off its coast.
One must be a good pedestrian, for even with the excellent roads it is necessary to climb on foot to the lookout if one would have a survey of the island and its surroundings. I reached it just in time to see the sun sink, all gold and orange, into the green liquid of the Adriatic.