Vacation days in Greece

by Rufus B. Richardson

After a glorious day spent at Acro-Corinth, the American School, four persons, set out on November 5, 1890, for a ten days’ trip through Central Greece. The first point of interest was Delphi.

As, in entrance into some fraternities, a rough and ridiculous initiation increases the pleasure of membership, so in the present case, perhaps, the rough and ridiculous approach to Delphi only served to increase the appreciation of the glory there.

The little Greek steamer which coasts the Corinthian Gulf lay at anchor at Corinth, ready to start at 5 P.M. But though it was so near that one could throw a stone into it from the shore, we paid a drachma and a half apiece for being rowed on board. The boatman got well paid for the few strokes which it took him to cover that short distance.

We paid more than we ought. We had committed the fatal error of asking the price instead of coolly jumping into the boat and paying half a drachma apiece when we reached the steamer. All that we lacked was a little knowledge of the country, the language, the people, and, more than all, the prices. We were paying for our tuition. Six months later, when I was much better informed, I was passing Chalkis, and thought I would like to go ashore for an hour or so. I then asked the boatman, by way of testing him, what he would charge to take me ashore and bring me back again. He replied, “Six drachmas.” I laughed, and said, “Half a drachma.” “All right,” said he, “jump in.” When one “knows the ropes” the boatmen are very tractable; but the stranger is at their mercy, because nowhere in Greece, not even at Piræus or Patras, is there a pier for a steamer to tie up to. All this seems managed in the interest of the boatmen.

After ascertaining that we should have to disembark at a very early hour the next morning at Itea, the ancient Chaleion, the port of Delphi (the ticket agent said five o’clock, and the steward of the boat said three o’clock), we all selected state-rooms with care, undressed and went to bed at the early hour of seven, with instructions to the steward to wake us half an hour before the time of disembarkation. Sound slumber, which comes to men wearied with tramping, often makes hours seem short; but, when we were waked, it seemed incredible that we could have had the night’s sleep that we had so carefully planned. Our watches soon gave the dreadful corroboration to our suspicions. It was only nine o’clock in the evening.

The boat had skipped Antikyra, shortening the journey by several hours, and was going to stop only half an hour before passing over to Galaxidhi, the ancient Oeantheia. In all my experience in Greece there was only one other case of a steamer being ahead of time. But oh! the hours both day and night that I have spent waiting for belated steamers; and no inconsiderable part of these hours has been spent at Itea. Three times, after patience had failed, I have taken a sail-boat across to the Peloponnesian shore, to strike the more regular communication by rail.

When we were fairly landed, the ridiculous part of our initiation was completed, and the rough part began. I would fain pass over that night in the hotel at Itea. It was no worse, however, than almost any night that the traveller passes in places called by courtesy hotels in the country towns of Greece.

Itea, after being for years the despair of travellers, received, as a result of the increased travel brought about by the excavation of Delphi, two very good lodging-houses, and, instead of being known as cheap and nasty, it became a place where one could be fleeced in good style.

The next morning we proceeded a mile or more along the shore to the east, until we identified the ruins of the ancient port of Delphi, Kirrha, which, we are told, the Amphictyons twice destroyed in a rage, though it seems quite un-Greek to do so unreasonable a thing as to destroy the harbor through which one must continue to land. Leaving Kirrha, and putting ourselves about on the track of the old visitors of the holy place of Delphi, who came from Peloponnesus, we passed through miles of the finest olive orchard in Greece to the site of the ancient Krissa at the head of the plain, the old Homeric town which appears to have yielded reluctantly to rising Delphi the control of this region. After the joy of the plain came the joy of climbing the rugged rocks for hours until it seemed as if Delphi must be in the clouds. This double reward for the double initiation suddenly ended when, turning a sharp spur of rock, we found ourselves in the grand natural theatre which was Delphi. Even to one who had never read of it, and did not know what it was to the Greeks, the mere sight of the place must still be one of the finest views in the world. But to one who has come to look on the sanctuary of ancient Greece it is this and more also. The Phædriadæ, which rise sheer behind the wretched village of Kastri, shutting out the higher snow-clad Parnassus from view, seem like no earthly rocks. The Pleistos seems like no earthly river, as it murmurs far below, as if about to tell the sea that it had passed Delphi. Mount Kirphis, fronting the Phædriadæ, and closing the great theatre, seems privileged to have been allowed to stand silently gazing on all that went on in that holy place, and to have been its appointed warder, shutting it in from the eyes of all who would not struggle up here through the mountain passes.

But from reverie to fact the little village of Kastri rudely recalls us. Villagers inform us of a “megale catastrophe.” Two nights before, at midnight, a mountain torrent had come down over the Phædriadæ, tearing through the village, sweeping away two of the miserable houses, and rendering several of the adjacent ones unsafe. One child was killed, and everybody thoroughly frightened.