The edge of the Table Rock is not approached without terror at the latter hour. The fairy hues are now all gone; excepting indeed, the rainbow, which, the ghost of what it was, now spans a dark impervious abyss. The rays of the sweet planet but feebly pierce the chill dense vapour that clogs the atmosphere; they only kiss, and coldly kiss, the waters at the brink, and faintly show the upper half of the columns, now black as ebony, plunging into a storm-tossed sea of murky clouds, whose depth and boundaries are alike unseen. It is the storm of the elements in chaos. The shivering mortal stands on the brink, like the startled fiend
“on the bare outside of this world,
Uncertain which, in ocean or in air.”[404]
[404] Views of Society and Manners in America; by an Englishwoman, 1821, 8vo.
NAVARINO.
This is a strong town on the west coast of the Morea on the Gulf of Zoncheo, with an excellent harbour, recently distinguished by the fleet of the pacha of Egypt being blockaded there by admiral sir E. Codrington.
It is affirmed that this was the ancient Pylus, where the eloquent and venerable Nestor reigned. At the siege of Troy, according to Homer, he moderated the wrath of Achilles, the pride of Agamemnon, the impetuosity of Ajax, and the rash courage of Diomedes. In the first book of the Iliad he is represented as interposing between the two first-mentioned chiefs:
To calm their passions with the words of age
Slow from his seat arose the Pylian sage,
Experienced Nestor, in persuasion skill’d.
Words sweet as honey from his lips distill’d.[405]
It appears to have been also called Coryphasion, from the promontory on which it was erected. It was built by Pylus, at the head of a colony from Megara. The founder was dispossessed of it by Neleus, and fled into Elis, where he dwelt in a small town, also called Pylos. There was likewise a third town of the same name, and they respectively claimed the honour of having given birth to Nestor. The Pylos at Elis seems, in the opinion of the learned, to have won the palm. Pindar, however, assigns it to the town now called Navarino.