Menzilgis
are postmasters. — Our traveller was fortunate in his Turks, who are hired to walk by the side of the baggage-horses. They "are certain," he says, "of performing their engagement without grumbling." We apprehend that this is by no means certain:— but Mr. Gell is perfectly right in preferring a Turk to a Greek for this purpose; and in his general recommendation to take a Janissary on the tour: who, we may add, should be suffered to act as he pleases, since nothing is to be done by gentle means, or even by offers of money, at the places of accommodation. A courier, to be sent on before to the place at which the traveller intends to sleep, is indispensable to comfort; but no tourist should be misled by the author's advice to suffer the Greeks to gratify their curiosity, in permitting them to remain for some time about him on his arrival at an inn. They should be removed as soon as possible; for, as to the remark that "no stranger would think of intruding when a room is pre-occupied," our informants were not so well convinced of that fact.
Though we have made the above exceptions to the accuracy of Mr. Gell's information, we are most ready to do justice to the general utility of his directions, and can certainly concede the praise which he is desirous of obtaining, — namely, "of having facilitated the researches of future travellers, by affording that local information which it was before impossible to obtain." This book, indeed, is absolutely necessary to any person who wishes to explore the Morea advantageously; and we hope that Mr. Gell will continue his Itinerary over that and over every other part of Greece. He allows that his volume "is only calculated to become a book of reference, and not of general entertainment;" but we do not see any reason against the compatibility of both objects in a survey of the most celebrated country of the ancient world. To that country, we trust, the attention not only of our travellers, but of our legislators, will hereafter be directed. The greatest caution will, indeed, be required, as we have premised, in touching on so delicate a subject as the amelioration of the possessions of an ally: but the field for the exercise of political sagacity is wide and inviting in this portion of the globe; and Mr. Gell, and all other writers who interest us, however remotely, in its extraordinary
capabilities
, deserve well of the British empire. We shall conclude by an extract from the author's work: which, even if it fails of exciting that general interest which we hope most earnestly it may attract towards its important subject, cannot, as he justly observes, "be entirely uninteresting to the scholar;" since it is a work "which gives him a faithful description of the remains of cities, the very existence of which was doubtful, as they perished before the æra of authentic history." The subjoined quotation is a good specimen of the author's minuteness of research as a topographer; and we trust that the credit which must accrue to him from the present performance will ensure the completion of his
Itinerary
:—
"The inaccuracies of the maps of Anacharsis are in many respects very glaring. The situation of Phlius is marked by Strabo as surrounded by the territories of Sicyon, Argos, Cleonæ, and Stymphalus. Mr. Hawkins observed, that Phlius, the ruins of which still exist near Agios Giorgios, lies in a direct line between Cleonæ and Stymphalus, and another from Sicyon to Argos; so that Strabo was correct in saying that it lay between those four towns; yet we see Phlius, in the map of Argolis by M. Barbie du Bocage, placed ten miles to the north of Stymphalus, contradicting both history and fact. D'Anville is guilty of the same error.
M. du Bocage places a town named Phlius, and by him Phlionte, on the point of land which forms the port of Drepano; there are not at present any ruins there. The maps of D'Anville are generally more correct than any others where ancient geography is concerned. A mistake occurs on the subject of Tiryns, and a place named by him Vathia, but of which nothing can be understood. It is possible that Vathi, or the profound valley, may be a name sometimes used for the valley of Barbitsa, and that the place named by D'Anville Claustra may be the outlet of that valley called Kleisoura, which has a corresponding signification.
The city of Tiryns is also placed in two different positions, once by its Greek name, and again as Tirynthus. The mistake between the islands of Sphæria and Calaura has been noticed in page 135. The Pontinus, which D'Anville represents as a river, and the Erasinus, are equally ill placed in his map. There was a place called Creopolis, somewhere toward Cynouria; but its situation is not easily fixed. The ports called Bucephalium and Piræus seem to have been nothing more than little bays in the country between Corinth and Epidaurus. The town called Athenæ, in Cynouria, by Pausanias, is called Anthena by Thucydides, book 5. 41.
In general, the map of D'Anville will be found more accurate than those which have been published since his time; indeed, the mistakes of that geographer are in general such as could not be avoided without visiting the country. Two errors of D'Anville may be mentioned, lest the opportunity of publishing the itinerary of Arcadia should never occur. The first is, that the rivers Malætas and Mylaon, near Methydrium, are represented as running toward the south, whereas they flow northwards to the Ladon; and the second is, that the Aroanius, which falls into the Erymanthus at Psophis, is represented as flowing from the lake of Pheneos; a mistake which arises from the ignorance of the ancients themselves who have written on the subject. The fact is that the Ladon receives the waters of the lakes of Orchomenos and Pheneos; but the Aroanius rises at a spot not two hours distant from Psophis."
In furtherance of our principal object in this critique, we have only to add a wish that some of our Grecian tourists, among the fresh articles of information concerning Greece which they have lately imported, would turn their minds to the language of the country. So strikingly similar to the ancient Greek is the modern Romaic as a written language, and so dissimilar in sound, that even a few general rules concerning pronunciation would be of most extensive use.