'Fair clime I where every season smiles.
There, mildly dimpling, Ocean's check
Reflects the tints of many a peak
Caught by the laughing tides that lave
These Edens of the Eastern wave.
And if, at times, a transient breeze
Break the blue crystal of the seas,
Or sweep one blossom from the trees,
How welcome is each gentle air
That wakes and wafts the odors there!'
It was with thoughts like these running in our heads, that we found ourselves, at about half-past four o'clock, on a dark, cloudy, windy morning, March fifteenth, 18—, rolling slowly along the uneven road that leads from Athens to the Piraeus. Our guide was Dhemetri, of course—who ever heard of a guide that was not named Dhemetri? An excellent guide he was, too, never missing his way, answering correctly all our questions to which he knew the answers, and fabricating answers to the rest as near the truth as his moderate knowledge of antiquity would permit; providing us sedulously with creature comforts, and besieging our hearts daily with delicious omelettes and endless strings of figs. Arrived at the Piraeus, we were transferred, with beds, cooking apparatus, and baggage, to the Lloyd steamer, whose cloud of steam and smoke was seen dimly in the gray morning. At a reasonable time after the hour advertised, we sailed into the open bay, passed near enough the island of Ægina to see the ruined temple on one of its hights—almost to count its columns—then coasted along the rugged shores of Argolis, which we eagerly studied with the aid of a map. Here was the peninsula Methana, and half hiding it, the island Calauria, where Demosthenes put an end to his life, once the seat of a famous Amphictyony. Then the bold promontory which shuts in the fertile valley of Troezer, then the territory of Hermione, stretching between the mountains and the sea. We touched at Hydhra, famed in the history of the Greek Revolution, a strange, rambling town, picturesquely situated on a cleft in a bare island of gray rock, and shortly after at Spetzia, a town of much the same character; then toward night sailed into the beautiful bay of Napoli, or Nauplia, once the capital of Greece.
It had been our intention to procure horses that night, and ride as far as Mycenæ, but we were too late, so contented ourselves with a walk to Tiryus, and a rapid examination of its ruins. The massive walls of this venerable town—they were a wonder in the age of Pericles as in ours—still stand in their whole circuit, and here and there apparently in their whole hight. It is a small, steep, mound-like hill—you can walk around it in fifteen minutes—and within the walls the terraced slope, thickly sprinkled with fragments of ruins, is grown over with the tall purple flowers of the asphodel—a fit monument to the perished city. From the citadel of Tiryus the view over the wide plain of the Inachus, the broad bay beyond, covered with sails, the bold headland of Napoli crowned with the ruined castle, the noble citadel of Argos, and the mountain ranges on every side, made a picture beautiful even under the dull sky of that March evening. Our walk—quickened by the fear that the city gates would be found closed—gave us a hearty appetite, and a classic smack was imparted to our modest viands by the fact that Orestes himself waited on our table. We slept well, notwithstanding the uncomfortable reputation of the inn, and set off early the next morning upon our wanderings.
Traveling in Greece is no child's play. Roads there are none, except between some large towns; indeed, the nature of the country hardly allows of them, as it is made up chiefly of mountain ridges and ravines. Neither would the poverty-stricken inhabitants be able at present to make much use of them. When I expressed to Dhemetri the great benefits I conceived that roads would confer upon the community, he asked contemptuously: 'What good would roads be to them, when they have no carriages?' Inns, too, there are none, or almost none; after leaving Napoli we found none until we returned to Athens. In their stead, each village has its khan, a house rather larger than ordinary, and containing one large unfurnished room for guests. Here a fire is made on the hearth, (the smoke escaping, or intended to escape, through a hole in the roof, for chimneys do not exist,) and the traveler pitches his tent metaphorically in this apartment. The beds, which he carries with him, are spread on the floor, to do double duty as seats during the evening and beds by night. Thus the accommodations are reduced to their lowest terms—shelter and fire; to which add a lamb from the flock, eggs in abundance, or sometimes a chicken, loaf of bread, or string of figs. Wine, too, flavored with resin in true classic style, and tasting like weak spirits of turpentine, is to be had every where. But for any entertainment beyond this, the host is no-way responsible. If you do not choose to sleep on the bare floor, you must bring beds and bedding with you. If you wish the luxury of a knife and fork, you must furnish them yourself. Kettles, plates, saucepans, cups, coffee, sugar, salt, candles, all came from that mysterious basket which rode on the pack-horse with the baggage. Were I visiting Greece again, I would eschew all these vanities—carry nothing but a Reisesack, or travel-bag, as the Germans are wont to call every variety of knapsack—a shawl, and a copy of Pausanias, and live among the Greeks as the Greeks do; but I was inexperienced then.
So we set out with great pomp and circumstance, each on his beast—alogon, the Unreasonable Thing, is the word for horse—while a fifth, with two drivers, carried our goods. A ride of about three hours—passing the silent and deserted Tiryus—brought us to the village of Charváti, the modern representative of the 'rich Mycenae.' Here, while Dehmetri prepared our breakfast, we followed a villager, who led us by rapid strides up the rocky hill toward the angle formed by two mountains. As we rose over one elevation after another, he plucked his hands full of dry grass and brush, and then leading us into a hole in the side of the hill, informed us in good classic Greek that it was the tomb of Agamemnon. It is a large, round apartment, rising to the hight of forty-nine feet, and of about the same width, the layers of masonry gradually approaching one another until a single stone caps the whole; not conical in shape, however, but like a beehive. A single monstrous stone, twenty-seven feet long and twenty wide, is placed over the doorway. The whole is buried with earth, and covered with a growth of grass and shrubs, and a passage leads from it into a smaller chamber hewn in the solid rock, in which our guide lighted the fuel he had gathered. The gloomy walls were lighted up for a moment, then when the fire died away, we returned to the open air. A little further on is the famous gateway with two lionesses carved in relief above—the armorial bearings, we may call it, of the city—and in every direction are seen massive walls, foundation-stones, ruins of gates and of subterraneous chambers like the first we visited, conical hillocks, probably containing others in equally good preservation, and other marks of the busy hand of man—'Spuren ordnender Menschenhand unter dem Gesträuch.' Sidney Smith says: 'It is impossible to feel affection beyond seventy-eight degrees or below twenty degrees of Fahrenheit.... Man only lives to shiver or to perspire.' I think it is so with the sublime and beautiful, and deeply as I felt in the abstract the privilege I enjoyed in standing on the citadel of Agamemnon, and seeing the most venerable ruins that Europe can boast, that keen March wind was too much for me, and I was not sorry to return to the khan, where, sitting cross-legged on the floor, we ate with our fingers a roast chicken dissected with the one knife of the family, and drank a bumper of resinous wine.
After dinner we remounted and rode back through the broad plain to Argos, traversed its narrow, dirty streets, stared at by the Argive youth, examined its grass-grown theatre, cast wistful eyes at the lofty citadel of Larissa, which time forbade us to ascend, then wound along the foot of the mountain-range, saw at a distance on the seashore a spot of green, which we were told was Lerna, where Hercules slew the hydra, and near the road an old ruined pyramid, which we afterward examined more closely, then followed a mountain-path, catching now and then a glimpse of the bay, following the crest of the ridge into the valley beyond. On one of the undulations of the path we passed over the site of an ancient city, evidenced only by that most sure sign, a soil thickly covered with potsherds. No classic writer mentions it, no inscription gives it a name; perhaps the careless traveler would pass without a suspicion that he was treading on the street, or forum, or temple of a once thriving town. Striking soon into the carriage-road from Napoli to Tripolitza, and descending into a charming little valley with the euphonious name of Achladhókamvo, we were not sorry to find a khan, and take up our quarters for the night. We found the family sitting on the floor around a fire blazing on a hearth in the middle of a room, and here we placed ourselves, watching the women spinning and Dhemetri making his preparations for supper. Out of the afore-mentioned basket quickly came all the afore-mentioned articles. A lamb was killed, and shortly an excellent supper was served up to us. Soon the guest-chamber was announced to be ready for us, a large open room having a fire at one end, and containing our beds, spread on the floor, a cricket three inches high, that served as a table, two windows closed by shutters instead of glass, and a large quantity of smoke.
The next morning a steep and picturesque path over Mount Parthenion—the same path, I suppose, on which Phidippides had his well-known interview with the god Pan—brought us to Arcadia. And at the name of Arcadia let not the fond mind revert to scenes of pastoral innocence and enjoyment, such as poets and artists love to paint—a lawn of ever-fresh verdure shaded by the sturdy oak and wide-spreading beech, watered by never-failing springs, swains and maidens innocent as the sheep they tend, dancing on the green sward to the music of the pipe, and snowy mountains in the distance lending repose and majesty to the scene. Nothing of this picture is realized by the Arcadia of to-day, but the snowy mountains, and they, indeed, are all around and near. No, let your dream of Arcadia he something like this: A bare, open plain, three thousand feet above the level of the sea, fenced in on every side by snow-topped mountains, and swept incessantly by cold winds, the sky heavy with clouds, the ground sown with numberless stones, with here and there a bunch of hungry-looking grass pushing itself feebly up among them. Not a tree do you behold, hardly a shrub. You come to a river—it is a broad, waterless bed of cobble-stones and gravel, only differing from the dry land in being less mixed with dirt, and wholly, instead of partly, destitute of vegetation. But your eye falls at last on a sheet of water—there is surely a placid lake giving beauty and fertility to its neighborhood. No, it is a katavothron, or chasm, in which the accumulated waters of the plain disappear. For as these Arcadian valleys are so shut in by mountains as to leave no natural egress to the water, it gathers in the lowest spot it can reach, and there stagnates, unless it can wear a passage for itself, or find a subterraneous channel through the limestone mountain, and come to light again in a lower valley. Such a reäppearance we saw near Argos, a broad, swift stream—the Erasmus—rushing from under a mountain with such force as to turn mills; it is believed to come from a kalavothron in the northern part of Arcadia. And not far from thence a fountain of fresh water bubbles up in the sea a few yards from the shore; this is traced to a similar source. In some parts of Greece the remains may still be seen of the subterranean channels by which in ancient times the katavothra were kept clear, and thus prevented from overflowing. In this way much land was artificially redeemed to agriculture.
If, now, you seek for the dwellers in this paradise, behold them in yon shepherd and his faithful dog—Arcades ambo—the shepherd muffled against the searching wind in hood and cloak, under his arm a veritable crook, while his sheep and goats are browsing about wherever a blade of grass or a green leaf can be found. His invariable companion is—I was about to say a tamed wolf; but in reality, an untamed animal of wolfish aspect and disposition, always eager to make your acquaintance. These creatures are the torment of the traveler throughout Greece, and most of all in Arcadia. If on foot, he can pick up a stone, at sight of which the enemy will beat a hasty retreat. Greece seems to have been bountifully supplied with loose stones of the right size for this very purpose, just as the rattlesnake-plant is said to grow wherever the rattlesnake itself is found. If on horseback, he can easily escape, although the animal will not scruple to hang to the horse's tail or bite his heels. Such was Arcadia in March. No doubt, at another season it is a delightful retreat from the overpowering heat of the Greek summer. It may have a beauty of its own at that season; but there can be little of that quiet rural landscape which we call Arcadian.
After crossing this plain, visiting by the way the ruins of Tegea, which consisted of a potato-field, sprinkled with bits of brick and marble, and a medieval church, with some ancient marble built into its walls, we came to a broad river, the Alpheus, whose water, when it has any, empties in a katavothron which we left on our right; followed it up in a southerly direction until we came to a little water in its bed, then crossing over some rolling land which divides the water-courses of Arcadia from those of Laconia, we found ourselves in a country of a very different character. The land was better, and was covered with a low growth of wood; we could even see extensive forests on the sides of Parnon. The scenery became highly picturesque, and the weather, although still rigorous, was more comfortable than in the morning. Night came on us long before we reached our journey's end, the wayside khan of Krevatá. There was a little parleying at the door, and Dhemetri seemed dissatisfied with what he saw, and disposed to carry us on to another resting-place. But thoroughly benumbed as we were, the blaze of light that fell upon us from the half-open door quite won our hearts, and we felt willing to risk whatever discomforts the place might have rather than go further. As we entered the door, the scene was striking. A large fire was roaring in the middle of the room, filling it with smoke. On cushions and scraps of carpet, disposed about the fire, were crouched six or eight men and women, dressed in their national costume, very dirty and equally picturesque. Two or three children were among them, or lay stretched at random on the floor asleep. A large, swarthy man opposite us held a child of two or three years, now nestling in its father's arms, now climbing over to its mother, now gazing bashfully and curiously at the strangers. Basil, ever ready on occasion, seized his pencil and soon transferred the group to paper, to the admiration of them all. They moved to right and left as we came in, and made room for us on the side next the door, where our faces were scorched, Our backs shivering, and our eyes smarting with the smoke. An old woman who sat next me eyed us inquisitively, and would gladly have entered into conversation; but almost our sole Greek phrase, 'It is cold,' (eeny krió), we had exhausted immediately on entering the room. Basil essayed Italian, having a vague idea that it would pass any where in Greece, as French does in Italy, but with no success. Neither was our conversation among ourselves brilliant. We were tired, cold, sleepy, and hungry, and we thought despairingly on the long miles back that we had last seen our baggage. At length a shout at the door gladdened our hearts; our beds and that ever-welcome basket were handed in, and Dhemetri was soon deeply engaged in preparing supper. Meanwhile, a fire had been built in the upper room, and we went up by a ladder. But here we were worse off than below. Roof, floor, walls, and (wooden) windows, all were amply provided with cracks and knot-holes, through which the wind roved at its will. A wretched fire was smoldering on the hearth, and a candle was burning in a tin cup hanging by its handle on a nail in the wall, which, set it where we would, flickered in the wind. And when our supper came, fricassee, boiled chicken, roast hare, omelette, bread, cheese, figs, and wine—for such a bill of fare had Dhemetri made ready for us—we swallowed it hastily, huddled our beds about the fire, wrapped ourselves in our blankets, and lay down at once. The inquisitive old lady below, on seeing the extensive preparations for the supper of three fellow-mortals, was struck with reverence for us, and expressed her belief that those, who lived on such marvelous and unheard-of delicacies would never die. We, indeed, had requested Dhemetri to cater more simply for us; but his professional pride would not suffer it.