Greece and the Ægean Islands

by Philip Sanford Marden

By the time the last of the rolls and jam had disappeared and the task of furling up the beds was well advanced, a clatter of hoofs in the village street drew one of the party to the door, whence word was speedily returned that the street outside was full of horses. And it was. There were ten steeds, including four for our party, two for Spyros and Stathi, one for a muleteer relief conveyance, and the rest for the baggage—the latter being small and seemingly quite inadequate burros or donkeys, who proved more notable for their patient indifference than for size or animation. While these were being laden, four other beasts drew near, bearing our solitary German of the day before and another of his countrymen who had materialized during the night, with their impedimenta. They were welcomed to the caravan, which, numbering fourteen beasts and almost as many humans, took the road out of town with commendable promptitude at sharp six o'clock. The cloud had lifted as we rounded the western edge of the valley and looked back at Andhritsæna, glimmering in the morning light. We were streaming off in Indian file along a very excellent road, like that on which we had ridden up from Megalopolis two days before, and which promised well for a speedy removal of the apprehensions awakened by Bædeker. But the road did not last long. Before we had fairly lost Andhritsæna in the hills behind, the leading guide turned sharply to the left, through a rocky defile in the hillside, and precipitated us down one of those rocky torrent beds, with the nature of which we had become only too familiar the day before. It was the less disturbing this time, however, because we had learned to trust implicitly to the careful feet of our horses, with no more than a firm grip on bridle and pommel and an occasional soft whistle, or murmured "ochs', ochs'," to the intelligent beasts as an outward and audible sign of inward and spiritual perturbation. It was steep but short, and we came out below upon the road again, to everybody’s unconcealed delight.

The road, however, soon lost itself in a meadow. When it is ultimately finished, the journey will be much easier than we found it. In a few years I suppose it will be perfectly possible to ride to Olympia in a carriage, and the horseback problem will cease to deter visitors to Bassæ from continuing their journey westward. The way now lay along a pleasant and rolling meadow country, dotted with primitive farms, which glowed under the bright morning sun. We splashed through a narrow upland river and up another rocky ascent, beyond which another downward pitch carried us to a still lower meadow. Meantime the cold of morning gave place to a growing warmth, and the wraps became saddle blankets in short order. We rode and walked alternately, choosing the level stretches through the grass for pedestrianism and riding only when we came to sharp upward climbs, thus easing the fatigue that we should otherwise have found in continued riding. Always we could see the imposing peaks to the north, and the downward tendency of the trail soon brought out the altitude of the hills behind Andhritsæna. The immediate vicinity of our path was pastoral and agricultural, in the main, for the recurring ridges over which we scrambled served only as boundaries between well-watered vales in which small trees and bushes flourished, and where the occasional sharp whir of pressure from a primitive penstock called attention to the presence of a water mill. Aside from these isolated mills there was little sign of habitation, for the fields seemed mostly grown up to grass. In the far distance we could see the valley of the Alpheios, broadening out of its confining walls of rock to what seemed like a sandy reach in the plain far below, and we were told that at nightfall we should be ferried across it close to Olympia, provided we caught the boatmen before they left for home. It was this anxiety to be on time that led Spyros to urge us along, lest when we came out at the bank of the river we should find no response to the ferryman’s call of "Varka! Varka!"—the common mode of hailing boatmen in Greece. With this for a spur we wasted little time on the way, but proceeded steadily, now riding, now walking, up hill and down dale, through groves of low acacias or Judas trees, or along grassy meadows where a profusion of wild flowers added a touch of color to the green.

The pleasant valley, however, proved not to be the road for very long. In an hour or so the guides branched off again into a range of hills that seemed as high as those we had left, and there entered a tortuous ravine worn by a mountain brook, along which the path wound higher and higher toward a distant house which the muleteers pointed out and pronounced to be a "ξενοδοχεῖον,"—the Professor had long ago learned to call it "Senator Sheehan,"—at which wayside inn the mistaken impression prevailed that we were speedily to lunch. It was not so to be, however. When we had achieved the height and rested under two leafy plane trees that we found there, Spyros repeated his tale about the ferrymen and their departure at sundown; and we must away at once, with no more refreshment than was to be drawn from some crackers and a bottle of Solon. And so we pressed on again, still climbing, though more gradually. The path was not so bad after all, despite the Bædeker, and in one place we voted it easily the finest spot we had found in all our Peloponnesian rambles. We were riding along at the time through a shady grove when we came suddenly upon a collection of mammoth planes, whose branches spread far and wide, and from the midst of the cleft side of one of them a spring bubbled forth joyously, flooding the road. It was here that the king on one of his journeys the year before had stopped to rest and partake of his noonday meal. It seemed to us, famished by six hours of hard riding, that the king’s example was one all good citizens should follow; but Spyros was inexorable, and reminded us that ferrymen might wait for the King of Greece, but not for any lesser personages whatsoever. We must not halt until we got to Gremka; for at Gremka we should find a good road, and beyond there it was four hours of travel, and we might judge exactly how much time we had for rest by the hour of our reaching the place. So we obediently proceeded, joined now by two more beasts so laden with the empty oil-cans common to the region that only their legs were visible. These furnished the comedy element in the day’s experiences, for the donkeys thus loaded proved to be contrary little creatures, always getting off the trail and careering down the mountain-side through the scrubby trees and bushes, their deck-loads of tin making a merry din as they crashed through the underbrush, while our guides roared with derisive laughter at the discomfiture of the harassed attendants. When not engaged in ridiculing the owners of those numerous and troublesome oil-cans, the muleteers sang antiphonally some music in a minor key which Spyros said was a wedding song wherein the bridegroom and the bride’s family interchange sentiments. This seems to be the regular diversion of muleteers, judging by the unanimity with which travelers in Greece relate the experience. Anon our muleteers would likewise find amusement by stealing around behind and administering an unexpected smack on the plump buttocks of the horses, with the inevitable result of starting the beast out of his meditative amble into something remotely resembling a canter, and eliciting an alarmed squeal from the rider—at which the muleteer, with the most innocent face in the world, would appear under the horse’s nose and grasp the bridle, assuring the frightened equestrian that the beast was "kalà"—or “all right.”

All the steeds were small with the exception of the altitudinous mule ridden by one of the ladies, and they were not at all bothered by the low branches of the trees through which we wended our way. Not so, however, the riders. The thorny branches that just cleared the nonchalant horse’s head swept over the saddle with uncompromising vigor, and the effort to swing the beast away from one tree meant encountering similar difficulties on the other side of the narrow path. Through this arboreal Scylla and Charybdis it was extremely difficult navigation and the horses took no interest in our plight at all, so that long before we emerged from the last of the groves along the way we were a beraveled and bescratched company.

Shortly after noon two villages appeared far ahead, and we were engaged in speculating as to which one was Gremka, when the guides suddenly turned again and shot straight up the hill toward a narrow defile in the mountain wall we had been skirting. It proved as narrow as a chimney and almost as steep, and for a few moments we scrambled sharply, our little horses struggling hard to get their burdens up the grade; but at last they gained the top, and we emerged from between two walls of towering rock into another and even fairer landscape. The plain of the Alpheios spread directly below, but we were not allowed to descend to it. Instead we actually began to climb, and for an hour or two more we rode along the side of the range of hills through the midst of which we had just penetrated. The path was pleasantly wooded, and the foliage was thick enough to afford a grateful shade above and a soft carpeting of dead leaves below. The air was heavy with the balsamic fragrance of the boughs, and the birds sang merrily although it was midday. Through the vistas that opened in this delightful grove we got recurring glimpses of the Erymanthus range, now separated from us only by the miles of open plain, and vastly impressive in their ruggedness.

The sides of the range of hills along which our path wound were corrugated again and again by ravines, worn by the brooks, and our progress was a continual rising and falling in consequence. The footing was slippery, due to the minute particles of reddish gravel and sand, so that here even our mountain horses slipped and stumbled, and we were warned to dismount and pick our own way down, which we did, shouting gayly “Varka! Varka!” at the crossing of every absurd little three-inch brook, to the intense enjoyment of the muleteers. And thus by two in the afternoon we arrived at Gremka, a poor little hamlet almost at the edge of the great plain, and were told that we had made splendid time, so that we might have almost an hour of rest, while Stathi unlimbered the sumpter mules and spread luncheon under two pleasant plane trees beside a real spring.

From Gremka on, we found the road again. It was almost absolutely level after we left the minor foothill on which Gremka sits, and for the remainder of our day we were to all intents and purposes in civilization again. Curiously enough, it was here that our little horses, that had been so admirably reliable in precipitous trails of loose rock and sand, began to stumble occasionally, as if careless now that the road was smooth and doubtless somewhat weary with the miles of climbing and descending. The guides and muleteers, refreshed with a little food and a vast amount of resinated wine, began to sing marriage music louder than ever, and the most imposing figure of all, a man who in every-day life was a butcher and who carried his huge cleaver thrust in his leathern belt, essayed to converse with us in modern Greek, but with indifferent success. The landscape, while no longer rugged, was pleasant and peaceful as the road wound about the valley through low hillocks and knolls crowned with little groves of pine, the broad lower reaches of the rivers testifying that we were nearing the sea. And at last, toward sunset, we swung in a long line down over the sands that skirt the rushing Alpheios and came to rest on the banks opposite Olympia, whose hotels we could easily see across the swelling flood.

The Alpheios is not to be despised as a river in April. It is not especially wide, but it has what a good many Greek rivers do not,—water, and plenty of it, running a swift course between the low banks of the south and the steeper bluffs that confine it on the Olympia side. The ferry was waiting. It proved to be a sizable boat, of the general shape of a coastwise schooner, but devoid of masts, and mainly hollow, save for a little deck fore and aft. Three voluble and, as it proved, rapacious natives manned it, the motive power being poles. With these ferrymen Spyros and Stathi almost immediately became involved in a furious controversy, aided by our cohort of muleteers. It did not surprise us greatly, and knowing that whatever happened we should be financially scathless, we sat down on the bank and skipped pebbles in the water. It developed that the boatman had demanded thrice his fee, and that Spyros, who had no illusions about departed spirits, objected strenuously to being gouged in this way and was protesting vehemently and volubly, while Stathi, whose exterior was ordinarily so calm, was positively terrible to behold as he danced about the gesticulating knot of men. It finally became so serious that the Professor and I, looking as fierce as we could, ranged ourselves alongside, mentioning a wholly mythical intimacy with the head of the Hellenic police department in the hope of promoting a wholesome spirit of compromise, but really more anxious to calm the excited cook, who was clamoring for the tools of his trade that he might dispatch these thrice-qualified knaves of boatmen then and there. Eventually, as tending to induce a cessation of hostilities, we cast off the mooring—whereat the dispute suddenly ended and the beasts of burden went aboard. So also did the Professor, who was anxious to establish a strategic base on the opposite bank; and the rest of us sat and watched the craft pushed painfully out into the stream and well up against the current, until a point was reached whence the force of the river took her and bore her madly down to her berth on the Olympia bank. Here fresh difficulties arose,—not financial but mechanical. The heavily loaded little donkeys proved utterly unable to step over the gunwale and get ashore. It was an inspiring sight to watch, the Professor tugging manfully at the bridle and the remainder of the crew boosting with might and main; but it was of no avail, although they wrought mightily, until at the psychological moment and in the spot most fitted to receive it, a muleteer gave the needed impetus by a prodigious kick, which lifted the patient ass over the side and out on the bank. The rest was easy. We were ferried over in our turn and disappeared from the view of the boatmen, each side expressing its opinion of the other in terms which we gathered from the tones employed were the diametrical reverse of complimentary. It was twelve hours to a dot from the time of our departure from Andhritsæna when we strolled into our hotel—at which fact Spyros plumed himself not a little.

HERÆUM. OLYMPIA