There are many other charming spots in Attica where no railroad comes in to help. Marathon and Salamis are two such places, to which we make excursions every year. One afternoon in May two of us started out from Athens at half-past two, proceeding aimlessly eastward against a rather pronounced wind. Suddenly the thought struck us that Marathon lay in front of us. A definite goal is always inspiring, and we struck a good gait for Marathon. We reached it before five o’clock, and after passing ten minutes on the top of the historic mound came back to Athens for dinner at quarter before eight. Last year some of us rode out on Thanksgiving Day through Dekeleia to a point where we saw Oropos and the Eubœan Gulf at our feet, and Dirphys, the highest mountain in Eubœa, rising opposite us, and then turned around with the recollection of one of the finest views in the world to add to enjoyment of our Thanksgiving dinner. In twenty minutes, had we so wished, we could have been in Oropos. On any day, one can start out from Athens and reach the end of Attica in any direction, and get home to an early dinner. In fact, we have sometimes taken dinner at home after straying as far as Megara and Thebes. The acquaintance which some members of our school have gained with Attica, in all its nooks and corners, by single day’s bicycle-riding, is something noteworthy; and when, in 1897, on Thanksgiving Day, we turned out ten men for a ride across Salamis to Megara for a luncheon, and came home by the shore road, we felt considerable esprit de corps.
The notion of foreigners that the roads of Greece are bad compared with those of other countries is an error. A bicycle journey through Italy and Sicily disabused me of that notion. The worst road that I ever tried was that between Caserta and Naples, and the next worse was that leading into Rome from the north. There are, of course, some bad roads in Greece; but even Sicily, to say nothing of worse roads in Italy, cured me of complaining against Greece. For a pure pleasure ride, the road between Tripolitza and Sparta would be hard to match anywhere in the world. It is in capital condition, and, on account of its gentle grade, involves very little walking. Six hours suffice for the journey in either direction, and the view either way is superb. The ride through Ætolia and Acarnania, regions considered half civilized in the classical period of Greek history, but always fine in natural beauty, with big lakes, and rivers that “move in majesty” (a rare thing in Greece), and hedged in by high mountains, is perhaps the best in Greece. One rides from the shore of the Corinthian Gulf opposite Patras to Arta (Ambrakia) in two days, with a comfortable night at Agrinion, passing the historic Messolonghi and visiting the ruins of Calydon, Pleuron, Œniadæ, Stratos, Limnæa, and Amphilochian Argos, while to the right and left are other ruins which invite one to make détours if one is not in a hurry. And one ought not to omit the recently excavated Thermon, the ancient capital of Ætolia, even if it does cost an extra day. The long-known and impressive ruins of Œniadæ, the chief city in Acarnania, also invite one to linger a whole day instead of spending a few hours in passing.
The first five cities of ancient Greece in renown and interest were Athens, Sparta, Argos, Thebes, and Corinth. One can ride from Athens to Thebes or Corinth and back in a single day; he can also reach Argos from Athens in a day, leaving a rather long day’s work for reaching Sparta. Any good bicyclist would find it no great matter to leave Thebes and pay his respects to Athens on the first day, visit Corinth and Argos on the next day, and sleep comfortably at Sparta the next night.
One day in February the clouds dissipated themselves in such a way as to make me believe that we were about to have a few days of that winter weather which is “rarer than a day in June,” and so, taking a train to Eleusis, to spare myself a little at the start, I rode over the famous Treis Kephalai Pass into Bœotia. I thought when I was at the top of the pass that the view presented was the finest in Greece. Not to mention lesser glories, Parnassus was close at hand on the left, Dirphys almost equally close on the right, while very distant, but very clear, directly in front, was “snowy Olympus,” a perfect mass of white. After lunching at Thebes, I wheeled easily along to Lebadea, entering it as the setting sun was turning the white mountains into pink. The next day, more clear and beautiful than the first, if that were possible, brought me to Lamia in Thessaly, via Chæronea, Doris, and Thermopylæ. The third day, in order to get a nearer view of Olympus, I rode and climbed up to the top of the ridge which formed the old border between Greece and Turkey, before Thessaly was incorporated into the kingdom of Greece, and on which, in the late war, the Greeks made their last stand after the battle of Domoko. From this point Olympus is, indeed, grander than from the passes of Cithæron, while the whole Pindos range, and the grand isolated peak of Tymphrestos, which some think would prove, if properly measured, to be the highest peak in Greece, stand up in majesty. Parnassus and the Ætolian Mountains make a fine showing on the south. From this point, on this same third day, as clear as the two preceding, I reached Amphissa at evening, after climbing two passes and enjoying new glories at each. It was, in fact, a continuous intoxication, to recover from which it required two days of archæological study at Delphi. This was, to be sure, almost equally intoxicating, but, being an intoxication of another sort, it let me down gently. In three days I had got a glimpse of nearly all Greece in such weather as only a Greek winter can give.
ACARNANIA
In many respects the most interesting journey which I have made in Greece was my last one through Acarnania and Ætolia. To be sure, my last journey in Greece is always my best one; yet there was a special attraction in this journey from the fact that it was the fulfilment of a long-cherished desire. There was a gap in my knowledge of western Greece which I keenly felt. I had tramped over the Ionian Islands, visited Joannina and Dodona, and passed over the Pindos range into Thessaly. In passing Prevesa and Nikopolis the sight of the Ambrakian Gulf had filled me with a desire to explore its innermost recesses. The grand mountains of Acarnania to the south challenged especially to a nearer view. Three years later, coming up from Patras by the Northwestern Railroad of Greece to Agrinion, the capital of Ætolia, I had visited in bad weather Œniadæ, the most important city of Acarnania, mused over the Ætolian acropolis of Calydon, famous in song and story, and gone as far north as Stratos, Acarnania’s capital; but although in looking out from Stratos it seems as if all the glory was farther north, my travelling companion was obliged to retreat, and I followed his fortunes. All this had but whetted my appetite; and, three years later, at the end of February in that most marvellous of winters, which gave us six consecutive weeks of April temperature with unclouded sky, I set out from Piræus one moonlight night to satisfy my desire, with a companion who was not in a hurry.
Our first goal was Arta, the terminus of a line of steamers from Piræus. No mean part of the journey on a clear winter day is the view of the three masses of snow-covered mountains to the north of the Corinthian Gulf, each over eight thousand feet high, and the three to the south, falling just short of the same height, to say nothing of many others which would be impressive if the giants were absent. The effect is not unlike that of Lake Lucerne somewhat broadened out. A stop at Samos, in Kephallenia, on the morning of the second day, and a sail between Kephallenia and Ithaca, during which the latter may be studied at short range, is no slight advantage “thrown in.” At Leukas, in the afternoon, came a stirring scene. About a hundred recruits were taken on board. Greece had had troops in Crete for a week, and so, although war had not actually been declared, she was gathering troops to protect her border or to advance into Epirus, as circumstances might dictate. Two hours later, in sailing through the waters where the battle of Actium took place, we passed under the guns of the Turkish forts at Prevesa. As the Greek color-bearer was inclined to flaunt his flag a good deal, it seemed something like an adventure. But the Margarita escaped the fate that a few weeks later overtook the Macedonia, which was sunk by the Turkish fire, while the passengers had to swim for their lives. At Vonitza we took on another hundred of the recruits pouring into Arta from all over western Greece. The men were cheerful and orderly, but brimful of the war feeling which pervaded Greece.
Delayed by these embarkations of troops, we did not reach Koprena, the port of Arta, until eight o’clock in the evening. Then there was a lack of boats to bring such a crowd to shore, and with a long drive of ten or twelve miles in the dark, over a bad road crowded with soldiers, it was after midnight when we reached Arta. Our host, a man whom I had never seen, but to whom I was introduced by a friend in Athens, had been waiting for us at Koprena since noon, and did not appear to think that he had done any more for us than any proper man would do.