At Argostoli I inquired about the ruins of Palé, but was told that they are mainly built over, and what is visible is only of the Roman period. I attempted, however, on our return to Samé, to run around in the Kestrel, as the voyage across the bay from Argostoli is neither pleasant nor sure in the small boats that make the service. We got up anchor as the land breeze began to blow at midnight, and I went to bed, having given orders to anchor in a little bay about half-way to the southern extremity of the island near which some ruins are indicated on the map. Awaking in the morning and finding a most suspicious tranquillity prevailing, I took a look at the outside surroundings, and found the yacht quietly moored on the same spot she had occupied the day before. A furious sirocco had sprung up and met us half-way to our destined anchorage, and after beating for an hour in vain, our little boat nearly buried in the seas, we were compelled to retreat and run back to our former place of refuge. There is no getting ahead in such small craft against the sharp, violent seas of the Mediterranean.
Three days the sirocco blew, and we tried in vain to pass the time fishing. The Ionians have adopted dynamite so universally to catch their fish that they are as scarce as honest people on shore. One does find them sometimes, and we caught a shark about four feet long and a half dozen red mullet where, before dynamite was discovered, we could have caught in the same time a hundred-weight.
The third night we got under way again, and, with a heavy swell still on, ran down to our harbor, reaching it as a flaming, splendid thunder-storm was coming up, the finale of our southern blow. We moored with cables out in three directions, and when the storm had all gone by I went ashore to hunt my ruins. A vagabond Cephalonian offered his services to carry my camera and guide me; but his crafty and evasive face, coupled with the assurance with which he clung to me, so irritated me that to rid myself of him I plunged into the pathless thicket. Traveling by compass, and searching long and closely, I found at last the remains of an early Pelasgic wall on a magnificent site, with a breezy outlook to sea north and west and overlooking a fertile valley inland, not especially pictorial, for it was too regular and too thoroughly cultivated, but through it ran a bright crystal brook overhung by huge pollard sycamores and fringed with oleanders just bursting into blossom and making the valley look like a rose-garden. Beyond the hill on which the city stood is a wild ravine through which runs the brook, which in Greek would naturally be dignified by the name of a river. Only a narrow neck, as usual, gave access to the site. It is impossible to ascertain with any kind of assurance what the name of the city was. It could not have been Nesia, the only one of the four principal ones we have not visited, for no ruins are visible approaching so late an epoch as the Roman, and it was probably Heraclea. Its position was magnificent for defense and on account of the fertility of the country behind it, but the site was probably abandoned very early for one further inland, where I was assured there were ruins of an ancient city. But my time had been so invaded by the loss of three days through the storm, and I was already so behind my programme, that I was not able to give the time necessary to the search and examination, or, indeed, to follow my plan of visiting Palé.
DISTANT VIEW OF PALÉ FROM THE CITADEL OF CRANÉ.
We climbed down to the brook, and I enjoyed the pastime of wading in the gurgling water as if I were a boy—it was so long since I had had that pleasure! We followed it into a close and gloomy gorge, where the crag of the ancient site overhung us like a huge, rough wall, almost a sheer precipice, and down at the foot ran the brook, which we followed to the sea. The sun was setting as we reached the yacht, and before we waked from sleep next morning we were bounding toward Zante.
In Zante (Zakynthos) there is, so far as I could find, no ancient ruin whatever. The character of the rock explains this; for, except at the extreme southern end of the island, there is no stone which would resist even the weather-wear since the Roman epoch. The island seems to be a bed of sand raised from the sea and slightly hardened, so that, though the citadel hill is imposing enough as a mass, the material of it is being continually dissolved, and looks at a distance more like a bank of clay than like rock.
ZANTE.
Zante is rhymingly called the “fior di Levante” (flower of the Levant), but it is difficult to see wherein it surpasses Corfu in any flowery attribute. I guess that, as in many other cases, the rhyme went for more than the fact, poetical or otherwise. It is fertile, and the land extends in an immense unpicturesque plain covered with olive-orchards and vineyards for miles from the port. Its history is unimportant and its mythology not interesting. It was said to have been colonized by Zakynthos, son of Dardanus of Troy, about 1500 years before Christ; but, as I have before said, all Greek dates and traditions of migration earlier than 1000 B. C. are purely conjectural. Zante suffered with the other islands from the endless and furious feuds of the Greek states; ravaged by turns by Athenian and Lacedæmonian, it came down to the Romans an unruly subject province, conquered and reconquered, and finally lay still in the tranquillity of slavery until Geneseric, king of the Vandals, began an epoch of devastation, which only concluded with the purchase, by the Venetians from the Sultan, of its soil depopulated by the sword and slavery.