The gem of the whole collection is the great palm-tree that stands alone in one of the outer courts. There are others that equal it in girth—its stem measures little more than three feet in diameter—but its splendid shaft ascends flawless, joint above joint of white coral-like stalagmite, till it unites with the roof sixty or seventy feet above the level of the floor. Since the world was young it has stood in these Halls of Silence—a silence of æons, broken only by dropping water and occasional earthquake shocks that have flung masses of stalactite to the ground. These horizontal rings in its stem may have been deposited in the days of palæolithic man; while that joint was being formed Babylon and Nineveh rose and passed away, and the Pharaohs in long procession filed across the world’s stage and vanished.
The falling drop has now finished its work and has shifted to another spot where it has begun the base of a second column. Some day the capital of this one also will be completed....
It is a glimpse into Eternity that appals one.
On March 18th we left Arta. A hum and a buzz in the street proclaimed it Sunday morning, and on emerging from our inn we found a couple of hundred people—including two Civil Guards and all the elders of the place—assembled to see us off. This interest was centred less in ourselves than in our victoria, for to people whose only notion of a carriage is the Spanish one of the baker’s-cart pattern, the sight of so long, low, and altogether remarkable looking a vehicle was of thrilling interest. It was probably the first ever seen in this part of the island, and had it been a motor-car it could not have made a greater sensation. Beasts of burden bolted at so novel an apparition, mules in carts swerved violently; children would drag their small brothers and sisters half a mile across country to catch a glimpse of us, and we brought whole village populations running to their doors.
“A cliff path with the turquoise-blue sea below leads to the entrance to the caves of Arta....”
(page [61])