Every now and then a cross ravine demanded an abrupt descent of the road from its airy height, and down we would go to the bottom of a narrow valley, the driver unconcernedly cracking his whip, the bells of our steeds jangling merrily, and our party hanging on and trying hard to enjoy the view in a nervous and apprehensive way, although increasingly mindful of the exposed right-hand edge of the shelf. It bothered Stathi, the cook, not at all. He was riding behind on the baggage cart which followed steadily after, and at the steepest of the descent he was swaying from side to side on the narrow seat, his cigarette hanging neglected from his lips—sound asleep.
These occasional ravines appeared to be due to centuries of water action, and their banks, which were well covered with woods, were marked here and there by tiny threads of cascades which sang pleasantly down the cliffs from above, crossed the road, and disappeared into the wooded depths of the river valley below. Bædeker had mentioned a huge plane tree and a gushing spring of water as a desirable place to lunch, but we looked for them in vain. Instead we took our midday meal beside a stone khan lying deserted by the roadside, in which on the open hearth Stathi kindled a fire and produced another of his culinary miracles, which we ate in the open air by the road, under a plane tree that was anything but gigantic. We have never quite forgiven Bædeker that “gushing spring.” When one has lived for a month or more on bottled waters, the expectation of drinking at nature’s fount is not lightly to be regarded.
THE GORGE OF THE ALPHEIOS
The remainder of the ride was a steady climb to Andhritsæna, varied by few descents, although this is hardly to be deemed a drawback. The knowledge that one has two thousand feet to climb before the goal is reached does not conduce to welcome of a sudden loss of all the height one has by an hour’s hard climb attained. The tedium of the hours of riding was easily broken by descending to walk, the better thus to enjoy the view which slowly opened out to the westward. We were in the midst of the mountains of the Peloponnesus now, and they billowed all around. It was a deserted country. Distant sheep bells and occasional pipes testified that there was life somewhere near, but the only person we met was a woman who came down from a hill to ask the driver to get a doctor for her sick son when he should reach Andhritsæna. At last, well toward evening, the drivers pointed to a narrow cut in the top of the hill which we were slowly ascending by long sweeping turns of road and announced the top of the pass. And the view that greeted us as we entered the defile was one not easy to forget. Through the narrow passage in the summit lay a new and different country, and in the midst of it, nestling against the mountain-side, lay Andhritsæna, red roofed and white walled, and punctuated here and there by pointed cypress trees. Below the town, the hills swept sharply away to the valleys beneath, filled with green trees, while above the rocks of the mountain-side rose steeply toward the evening sky. In the western distance we saw for the first time Erymanthus and his gigantic neighbors, the mountains that hem in the plain about Olympia, the taller ones snow-clad and capped with evening clouds. We straightened in our seats. Stathi came out of his doze. The whips cracked and we dashed into the town with the smartness of gait and poise that seem to be demanded by every arrival of coach and four from Greece to Seattle. And thus they deposited us in the main square of Andhritsæna, under a huge plane tree, whose branches swept over the entire village street, and whose trunk lost itself in the buildings at its side. The carriage labored away. The dragoman and his faithful attendant sought our lodging house to set it in order. And in the meantime we stretched our cramped limbs in a walk around the town, attended as usual by the entire idle population of youths and maidens, to see the village from end to end before the sun went down.
I should, perhaps, add the remark that in my spelling of “Andhritsæna” I have done conscious violence to the word as it stands on the map—the added “h” representing a possibly needless attempt to give the local pronunciation of the name. It is accented on the second syllable.
CHAPTER XII. ANDHRITSÆNA AND
THE BASSÆ TEMPLE
We found the village of Andhritsæna fascinating in the extreme, from within as well as from without. It was obviously afflicted with a degree of poverty, and suffers, like most Peloponnesian towns, from a steady drain on its population by the emigration to America. Naturally it was squalid, as Megalopolis had been, but in a way that did not mar the natural beauty of its situation, and, if anything, increased its internal picturesqueness. This we had abundant opportunity to observe during our initial ramble through the place, starting from the gigantic plane tree which forms a sort of nucleus of the entire village, and which shelters with its spreading branches the chief centre of local activity,—the region immediately adjacent to the town pump. It was not exactly a pump, however. The term is merely conventional, and one must understand by it a stone fountain, fed by a spring, the water gushing out by means of two spouts, whither an almost continuous stream of townsfolk came with the inevitable tin oil-cans to obtain water for domestic uses.