Vacation days in Greece

by Rufus B. Richardson

Tempe is one of the two great show pieces of Thessaly. Even the ancients, who are often said to have set little store by beauties of nature, were enthusiastic over Tempe, although they appear to have paid little attention to the other great show piece, the cliffs of Meteora. Herodotus records that Xerxes was struck with wonder at the great defile five miles long with steep sides and a mighty river, the Peneios, flowing through it. One fine feature of Tempe is also the view which one gets at the end, out over the sea to the site of Potidæa and Olynthos.

The Thessalian legend that Poseidon split open with his trident the great eastern range of mountain, and let out here between Ossa and Olympus the water which had made Thessaly a lake, is strictly true if we let the trident represent earthquake force. Geology accepts the legend in all its essential features. Thessaly was until comparatively late times, geologically speaking, a lake. It is now a lake bottom of inexhaustible fertility.

The next day, instead of taking the train back to Pheræ and over the other branch which we were going to traverse later, we took a carriage to drive straight across due west to Trikkala, intending to take the train there for the last fourteen miles of the journey to Kalabaka, which lies at the foot of the Meteora cliffs. We were off at six o’clock, and had over eight hours for our drive of thirty-seven miles. When we had done two-thirds of it the driver stopped to bait his horses. He knew that we had taken him expressly to bring us to Trikkala in season to catch the train, and yet he waited so long that it became very doubtful by the time he was ready to start whether we could do it. We offered five drachmas extra if he did it; and he tried hard to get them then, whipping his horses unmercifully. The result was that we saw the train go out of the station as we got into the outskirts of the town.

The horses were unable to make the extra fourteen miles to Kalabaka that night, and an essential part of our schedule was to spend the night at one of the monasteries perched upon the picturesque rocks. We must spend that very night there or give up the plan entirely. Our driver tried in vain to get other horses for us. One man promised to come with a carriage in half an hour, and at the end of that time came and said that he could not go, the road was too bad. From subsequent experience I judge that he was right. Somebody in the crowd of interested bystanders suggested that we take a hand-car, which the station-agent could give us by telegraphing to Volo for authorization to do so. When we went to the station-agent with our plan, we judged by his answer that our advisers had been mildly guying us. By this time quite a crowd had gathered, curious to see what we would do next.

We now gave an unexpected turn to events by picking up our heels and our very small packs and starting off along the railroad track, at a good athletic pace for Kalabaka. Probably the crowd expected to see us come back and lodge at Trikkala; but we reached Kalabaka in three hours and a half, at nearly eight o’clock. Hungry and tired, we sat down in an eating-house and began our supper with the feeling that we had missed our game, except in so far as we had got sight of the wonderful rocks which towered high up above the village. What we had wanted was the sensation of passing the night on top of one of these needles. When our desire was made known it seemed as if everybody in the village was determined that we should get into the monastery that night. Some went and brought the astynomos (chief of gendarmes), and he promptly detailed two of his men to escort us up; and as soon as we had eaten we set off. Again the full moon saved us. Without it it would have been impossible to scale the heights, even with the best of guides. There was some incidental gain in the view afforded by moonlight. One enormous round tower, about fifty times as large as the famous Heidelberg Tower, has never looked to me by daylight as impressive as it did then by moonlight.

When at last we came to the bridge which spanned the chasm separating the cliff on which stood the monastery of St. Stephen from the body of the mountain our attendants shouted and cracked their whips over the reverberating chasm until a sleepy monk put his head out of a window in a third story and said, in a sleepy voice: “What time is it now?” On being told that it was ten o’clock he seemed disinclined to admit our claim, which the gendarmes urged vehemently. We made out that the gist of the claim was that here were strangers who had come all the way from America, ten thousand miles away, just to see that monastery. Suddenly the parleying was stopped by the shutting of the window. We thought that we were shut out; but the gendarmes lingered as if they thought their appeal had taken effect; and, in fact, after a delay of several minutes, which seemed to us much longer, we heard the clapping of wooden soles along the stone flagging inside the oaken door, which was soon after swung open. We went to sleep that night congratulating ourselves on having restored by our own good legs, aided by a kind full moon, a programme that had been broken by a shiftless driver.

The next morning, after climbing up St. Trinity by means of a series of ladders arranged in a cleft of the rock, we caught the train which took us to Pharsala at noon. From there we walked to Domoko, since made famous by the stand made by the Greek army in the war of 1897, and called in ancient times Thaumakoi, “the wonderful,” on account of the superb view of the great plain of Thessaly which it affords. On the following day we reached the port of Lamia, slightly stiff from the bare tables on which we had slept at Domoko, and there ended our Thessalian trip.

The Meteora (literally “aloft”) cloisters can hardly be enough praised. There were once twenty-four of them, all perched upon these needles. They were placed there in the fourteenth century for the sake of security from robber bands. Only about a half-dozen of them are now occupied; the rest are wholly or partly ruined. St. Stephen is the only one that regularly entertains guests. Two of the most difficult to ascend, the Meteoron and St. Barlaam, are more than a mile away from St. Stephen; and an ascent of these is not easily combined with spending the night at St. Stephen, unless one spends there all the next day and night also. On a later visit I made the really perilous ascent of the Meteoron on a series of ladders dangling along the perpendicular face of the needle, 1,820 feet above the sea-level, and, at a rough estimate, 200 feet above the flat rock from which you start to climb. When I had once gone up and walked about a little I shrank from the descent. I was particularly nervous when I started downward by backing out of the window, and holding on to the sill with my hands, while I felt for the rounds of the ladder below with my feet. I felt then that, as never before, I had taken my life into my hands. When we asked the monks why they had refused to wind us up in the basket with which they hauled up their fuel and supplies, they replied that there were so few of them that they were afraid that their strength would give out while they had us in mid-air. This explanation satisfied us completely. One would rather trust to his own hands and feet than to an insufficient force of monks. But since the least failure of one’s own hands or feet meant certain death, one is satisfied by having made the ascent once, and having experienced a sensation.