These and such like thoughts throng the mind of him who sits beside the solitary tomb; and it may be said in favor of its remoteness and difficulty of access, that in solitude there is at least peace and leisure, and the scattered objects of interest are scanned with affection and with care.
CHAPTER X.
ARACHOVA—DELPHI—THE BAY OF KIRRHA.
The pilgrim who went of old from Athens to the shrine of Delphi, to consult the august oracle on some great difficulty in his own life, or some great danger to his country, saw before him the giant Parnassus as his goal, as soon as he reached the passes of Cithæron. For two or three days he went across Bœotia with this great landmark before him, but it was not till he reached Lebadea that he found himself leaving level roads, and entering defiles, where great cliffs and narrow glens gave to his mind a tone of superstition and of awe which ever dwelt around that wild and dangerous country. Starting from Lebadea, or, by another road, from Chæronea, he must go about half-way round Parnassus, from its east to its south-west aspect; and this can only be done by threading his way along torrents and precipices, mounting steep ascents, and descending into wild glens. This journey among the Alps of Phocis is perhaps the most beautiful in all Greece—certainly, with the exception of the journey from Olympia over Mount Erymanthus, [pg 275]the most beautiful of all the routes known to me through the highlands.
A Greek Shepherd, Olympia
The old priests of Delphi, who were the first systematic road-builders among the Greeks, had made a careful way from Thebes into Phocis, for the use of the pilgrims thronging to their shrine. It appears that, by way of saving the expense of paving it all, they laid down or macadamized in some way a double wheel-track or fixed track, upon which chariots could run with safety; but we hear from the oldest times of the unpleasantness of two vehicles meeting on this road, and of the disputes that took place as to which of them should turn aside into the deep mud.[110] We may infer from this that the lot of pedestrians cannot have been very pleasant. Now, all these difficulties have vanished with the road itself. There are nothing but faintly-marked bridle-paths, often indicated only by the solitary telegraph wires, which reach over the mountains, apparently for no purpose whatever; and all travellers must ride or walk in single file, if they will not force their way through covert and forest.
These wild mountains do not strike the mind with the painful feeling of desolation which is produced by the abandoned plains. At no time can they have supported a large population, and we may suppose [pg 276]that they never contained more than scattered hamlets of shepherds, living, as they now do, in deep brown hairy tents of hides at night, and wandering along the glens by day, in charge of great herds of quaint-looking goats with long beards and spiral horns. The dull tinkling of their bells, and the eagle’s yelp, are the only sounds which give variety to the rushing of the wind through the dark pines, and the falling of the torrent from the rocks. It is a country in which the consciousness grows not of solitude, but of smallness—a land of huge form and feature, meet dwelling for mysterious god and gloomy giant, but far too huge for mortal man.