We rode back to Lamia under the spell of it. It was as if we had been
in church and been held by a great preacher who knows how to touch the
deepest chords of the heart. Eubœa was already dark blue, while the
sky above it was shaded from pink to purple. Tymphrestos in the west
was bathed in the light of the sun that had gone down behind it. The
whole surrounding was most stirring, and there was ever sounding in our
hearts that deep bass note, "What they _did_ here." Even when we were
afterward enjoying the great walls of the Acropolis of Pharsalos and
the Vale of Tempe we kept thinking of Thermopylæ.
THESSALY
Thessaly is in a certain sense a land apart from the rest of Greece. It
was so in antiquity. In spite of being the home of Jason, of Achilles,
and of Alcestis, and in spite of the fact that "snowy Olympus," the
home of the Greek gods, looked down upon it, the stream of its history
flowed apart. In the Persian war it was prevented by force from taking
any honorable part; but in the Peloponnesian war, which called all the
rest of Greece to arms and divided it into two camps, it willingly
stood aloof. The same may be said of most of the smaller wars which
followed the Peloponnesian war. Once only did it appear that it was
going to take a part, and indeed a leading part, in the affairs of
Greece. But the assassination of Jason of Pheræ, who seemed about to
play the rôle afterward played by the Macedonians, sent Thessaly again
on her separate way.
To-day also Thessaly is a land apart. When the Kingdom of Greece was
established by the European Powers Thessaly was not included in it.
After it had become a part of the kingdom in 1880 it again fell into
the hands of the Turks in the disastrous war of 1897, living through
two sad years of subjection which were not shared by the rest of
Greece. It has also suffered isolation from the rest of Greece in that
while the network of railroads constantly extending out from Athens has
already taken in most of Peloponnesus, and even Ætolia, it has not yet
been extended to Thessaly. To reach it one must make a voyage by sea.
But this very isolation has always been to the enthusiastic traveller
an added charm. Inaccessibility adds interest. The usual approach is
by steamer from Piræus, and requires, according to the timetable,
twenty-four hours; but it actually varies from twenty-four to
forty-eight hours, according to the weather and the amount of freight
to be handled on the way. The journey in itself is so charming that one
need not chafe at delay, and might well prefer this method of approach
even after railroad communication has been established. Particularly
fine is the long stretch between Eubœa and the mainland, where mountain
succeeds mountain, with Thermopylæ thrown in.
The end of the journey is the finest part of it, if one has the good
fortune to enter the great Bay of Volo, called in ancient times the
Gulf of Pagasæ, by daylight and in the winter. Taking associations
and everything into account, there are few finer sights in the world
than that which here presents itself. In front of you is Olympus,
majestic, towering above the low range that separates the territory
of Volo from the great basin of Thessaly. So near does it seem that
one hardly thinks of it as being beyond the northern border, over in
Turkey. The long ridge of Pelion is close at hand on the right, with
its twenty-four villages, covered on the occasion of one of my winter
visits by twelve or fourteen feet of snow, so that they abandoned for
a week all attempts at communicating with one another. What Pelion
lacks in height it makes up in length, and its bulk is great. It seems
a strange thought of Homer to make the giants pile Pelion upon Ossa,
which is a shapely and rather sharp cone. Vergil seems to do even worse
in making them put Olympus on the top of the pile. Can it be that both
poets made the attempt to pile the mass of Olympus or Pelion on top of
the pointed Ossa a part of the daring deed? Either Olympus or Pelion
would be the natural base on which to pile up the other mountains. By
turning around and looking astern one sees Parnassus, which in ordinary
company would absorb attention, but is here dwarfed by the sight of
Olympus. In such company Othrys, on our left, hardly counts at all.
The near view with its associations claims attention. Here in the
middle of Volo is the site of Iolkos, from which the Argonauts
sailed out through this very bay into the distant Euxine on their
daring quest. To the left are the massive walls of Pagasæ, which in
classical times controlled the region. To the right is the still later
controller of the bay, Demetrias, founded by the Macedonian Demetrios
Polyorketes to be with Chalkis and Corinth one of the "fetters of
Greece."
On my second visit to this region, which, by an unexpected chance, was
only about a month after my first, having had occasion--a not unusual
thing in Greece--to wait all the afternoon for a return steamer to
Athens, I had a boatman named Leonidas, from Sparta, too, row me out
to Demetrias, from which I got, as I then supposed, my last view on
earth of Olympus. I then floated aimlessly about the bay until sunset,
steeped in sunshine and mythological associations. I was so much "in
the spirit" that I could almost see the centaurs prancing along the
slopes of Pelion. Leonidas also seemed to enter into the spirit of the
thing, and to become quite sympathetic, even if we did not or could
not talk much. When I said to him, "Leonidas, do you know that the
gods used to live around here?" he said, "Yes, yes," with apparent
enthusiasm. I suspected, however, afterward that his enthusiasm was
only skin deep, and that his chief pleasure in the affair was that he
was getting pay for a whole afternoon's work without really doing much.
I, on my part, was satisfied to squander on him the munificent sum of
sixty cents for giving me the setting to such pleasant day-dreaming.
I am not going to recount my successive visits to Thessaly, but
only to recall certain vivid impressions. I have twice entered it on
the southwest, from Lamia over the passes of Othrys, and once on the
northwest over the Zygos pass in the great Pindos range, and it is
difficult to say which is the most impressive approach, one of these
or the usual one through the Bay of Volo. Wherever you look down into
the great basin from any part of the rim of mountains surrounding it,
or look back at this rim from any part of the plain, you are impressed
with the beauty of the plain and its surroundings.
On my first visit--how vivid are first impressions!--I came by the
usual route with a companion who was in a hurry. He had an imperative
engagement before him. We had a schedule to keep, and every hour was
important. It was the only time that I have done Thessaly by schedule.
Work on the Larisa Railroad was being pushed, and we unloaded so
much material for that work at Chalkis that we did not get off until
afternoon, and, at Stylidha, the port of Lamia, we kept unloading until
after midnight. The result was that we did not reach Volo until the
next morning, over twelve hours behind time. By a dash for the station
we secured the first train, and reached Larisa at about ten o'clock.
Thessaly has had since 1884 its own very good railroad system, starting
from Volo and branching at Velestino, the ancient Pheræ, one branch
going to Larisa and the other to Trikkala and beyond. This system
connects the three principal cities, Volo, Larisa, and Trikkala, each
of about fifteen thousand inhabitants, and brings the traveller near to
all the interesting points of the land.
In order to carry out our schedule it was necessary for us to see
the Vale of Tempe that day. Without losing a minute we engaged our
carriage at the station, a mile from the town, and drove through
the town, where we gathered a little stock of provisions while the
driver changed horses. Of course, he had told us that our scheme was
impossible, but we forced him along. In spite of mud (it was March, and
Thessaly is always muddy at that time), we got through Tempe, and came
back, reaching Larisa before nine o'clock in the evening. Without a
full moon it would have been impossible to do Tempe that day. On that
evening we caught for the first time the notes of the Greek frogs,
_Brek-ke-ke-kek-koak-koak_, reproducing Aristophanes with the exception
of a few sibilants.
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.
[Illustration: METEORA MONASTERIES]
At St. Stephen the hospitality is most cheerfully accorded, and nothing
exacted in return; but one usually puts something into "the box," as
an expression of thankfulness. The monasteries are all rich landed
proprietors and need not our poor alms. I recall one occasion when
their hospitality was more bountiful than timely. Professor Edward
Capps and I once arrived at St. Stephen with our wives at six o'clock,
in a state bordering on starvation. We immediately heard a clattering
of dishes below stairs, and pretty soon an exhalation of savory odors
began to rise from the kitchen. From time to time a monk would bring
up a pitcher or a plate, while we endured the pains of Tantalus until
half-past nine, simply because our hosts wanted to do something extra,
regarding the presence of ladies as making an extraordinary occasion. A
little cold meat and bread at six o'clock would have been more keenly
appreciated by us than the eight courses with which they finally plied
us. Let the traveller in Greece beware of special occasions.
My last three visits to Thessaly have been made by bicycle. One gets
over the ground more rapidly that way. For example, in February, 1900,
Mr. Benjamin Powell and I rode from Trikkala to Larisa in two hours and
thirty-seven minutes, including a short delay at the ferry over the
Peneios. Baedeker puts this journey as "37 miles, 8 hours, carriage
about 50 drachmas." We had time in the afternoon of the same day to
go out to Tempe and back without trespassing much upon the evening.
Sometimes, however, the tale is not so triumphant. In February, 1902,
five of us were doing this same journey at a somewhat more gentle gait,
and, just after remounting from the ferry, ran over some particularly
dry and stiff Thessalian thistles, reducing about half of our tires to
the condition of sieves in a few seconds. A long and pensive walk into
Larisa was the penalty imposed on three of the party; and we took a
carriage out to Tempe the next day.
Sometimes one in travelling blunders into a good thing. Before the
journey just mentioned I had several times passed Pharsala with just
pause enough to take in the probable topography of the great battle
between Cæsar and Pompey, and once only had I taken a rather hasty view
of the walls of the acropolis. But this time, by the chance of two of
our party lagging behind on the descent from Domoko, we missed a train
that we might have taken to carry us a long way on toward Kalabaka.
When I realized that we were compelled to pass the night at Pharsala, I
expected to "pay of my person," inasmuch as we had no guest friend to
fall back upon. What was my surprise to find a perfectly clean hotel
opened only fourteen months before, bearing the name of the patriot
poet, Rhegas Pheræos. We were in luck.
But greater luck it was that we had a half-day to explore carefully the
walls of the acropolis. Some parts of these are seen to be as old as
those of Mycenæ. Some think that here was the home of Achilles. If this
is so, he had a citadel that might vie with that of his chief. In the
midst of our study of walls we were from time to time impelled to look
up to majestic Olympus, and also to look into the deep cut between it
and Ossa, the Vale of Tempe, through which Pompey, up to that time so
fortunate, but then a broken man, fled precipitate to his doom.
AN ASCENT OF THE HIGHEST MOUNTAIN IN GREECE
Probably if the question which is the highest mountain in Greece
were proposed to a lot of candidates for admission to college, whose
equipment in Greek geography is better than it is likely to be at any
other time, the majority of the suffrages would go to either Olympus
or Parnassus. But Olympus, with all its Greek associations, is, alas!
a mountain in Turkey; and as for Parnassus, it is overtopped by nearly
two hundred feet by a mountain to the west of it. This mountain, called
Kiona, a part of the group known in antiquity under the name of Korax,
"Crow Mountain," has the honor of being the highest mountain in the
Kingdom of Greece. Parnassus, to be sure, by the greatness of its fame
more than overcomes the lacking two hundred feet, just as Erymanthus,
on account largely of its famous boar, is of more importance than
its higher neighbor to the east, Aroania. But there are always a few
spirits who wish to scale the highest heights.
The American School at Athens has, in the various persons representing
it, scaled most of the mountains of Greece; but not until 1898 had it
scaled the highest. We had hoped to do it with a considerable force;
but late in June the men get scattered. There remained but four of
us together at the close of the campaign in Corinth. When I told the
Government Ephor, attendant upon our work, that we proposed to shake
off the dust of our excavations by climbing Kiona, he developed a
sudden interest in my welfare, and begged me not to venture it, or at
least to take along a posse of soldiers. When I said that I had climbed
most of the mountains of Greece without harm or fear, he said that this
particular part of Greece, Ætolia, and at this particular time, was
dangerous. The men of that section were, he said, particularly bad men.
I had so often heard men of other villages and sections called in the
lump bad men, when they in reality proved no worse than those who gave
them that bad name, that I was not shaken until our overseer also, an
intelligent man, begged me not to go. He said that the shepherds of
Kiona were a bad lot and known as such all over Greece. I did not so
much mind taking my own life in my hand, but felt some scruple about
hazarding that of my fourteen-year-old boy, whose party it really was.
So when we awoke at midnight at New Corinth to find that the boat which
was to take us to Itea had, after the manner of Greek boats, gone
through the canal without turning toward Corinth at all, I proposed
that, taking this as a sort of "judgment of God," we should return to
Athens. But others of the party said that they felt ashamed to give
up an enterprise that had been so much talked about. So, considering
ourselves a sort of society with an object, we did not dissolve. We
had lost one day; but, taking the west-bound train to Ægion, which we
reached at two o'clock in the afternoon, with a delay of only fifteen
minutes we were aboard a sail-boat with a stern wind driving us toward
Itea, which the boatmen promised to reach in three hours. But promises
based upon wind are rarely kept. We were, it is true, nearly at the
mouth of the Bay of Itea, perhaps four-fifths of the way, at the end of
three hours. But then the wind fell, and much rowing followed, at which
we all took a hand. And it was nearly eleven o'clock when we reached
Itea.
We had hoped to reach Amphissa, seven miles from Itea, and then make
our arrangements for climbing the mountain before going to sleep. But
now all we could do was to avoid sleeping at Itea, which we did by
walking about half a mile, and ascending a little knoll where we spread
our blankets and slept under the open sky. It was not hard to get up
at four o'clock the next morning and reach Amphissa shortly after six.
By the time we had made a scanty breakfast horses were engaged for two
days; and while they were being made ready we had an hour to devote to
the remains of ancient Amphissa, on which Philip's heavy hand fell as
a preliminary to the battle of Chæronea. There is one gate here that
is one of the finest specimens of Greek fortification extant, the sight
of which made me realize what an oversight I had been guilty of eight
years ago, when I passed by this acropolis as a mediæval affair.
Nobody in this town of over five thousand inhabitants appeared to have
the local knowledge that fitted him to be our guide; and so we set out
with the understanding that at a monastery three hours up we should
find such a man. When we reached the monastery it was high noon, and
hot, as became the fifteenth of June. The solitary monk, Chrysanthos
Liaskos, upbraided us for not telling him that we were coming, that he
might have killed for us a lamb, or at least some chickens. But how
little we knew just when we were coming! Such as he had he gave us, and
refused payment.
The old wall paintings in his chapel, some of them four or five hundred
years old, were very fine, but were now rapidly going to ruin with
the crumbling walls. His face lighted up as he told us of miracles
performed in this chapel, not hundreds of years ago, but last year and
under his own eyes. He was a very wide-awake man, and appeared to be
convinced of the truth of his own story.