Sigritza, a very competent guide. When we got off at half-past two,
the horses, which went only about two hours farther, were serviceable
mainly in carrying our packs. After that our guide led us over
difficult foot-paths which climbed along the edges of precipices and
up heights only to descend again. We proceeded more rapidly now that
we had got rid of our slow-paced horses, which were to return to the
monastery and come to meet us the next morning. At nightfall we came
to a hut at the foot of the main peak, which required an hour and a
half of climbing in the morning. We received the warmest welcome from
shepherds who were friends and relations of our guide. They did not
seem at all like the dreadful men of whom we had been forewarned.
They made a most savory brew of half a kid--but the milk! Only from
such pastures can such milk come. We all regretted engagements that
prevented our staying a week, that we might do justice to this mountain
dairy.
It was half-past ten before we could go to rest. Then the shepherds
took us to a cave where they kept their cheeses, which gave just room
enough to pack us in. They then closed the door with boughs and a big
stone to keep out the cold night wind and the dogs. We had just time
to note how much our lodging seemed like the cave of Polyphemos in the
Odyssey, and get a good whiff of the cheese, when, with apparently no
interval at all, we heard our guide calling out that it was time to
get up and be off. Where the heart of that night went to I never knew.
When, at four o'clock, we had finished our toil, we got a great
reward. The view was the finest that I had had in Greece. Both the
Corinthian Gulf and Thermopylæ seemed to lie at our feet. The sun
soon rose in line with the strait between Eubœa and Thessaly, making
that strait, with Skopelos and Skiathos blocking its exit, a sea of
fire. To the south was the great trio of Arcadian mountains; to the
northeast, closing a long line of mountains beginning with Pelion, was
the majestic Olympus; to the northwest stood Tymphrestos, in lonely
dignity; while to the west, peak upon peak and chain upon chain of
Ætolia made a most bewildering impression. On the whole it was a
panorama that can never fade from the mind's eye. Two years earlier, in
climbing Parnassus, I had been defrauded by clouds of all that was best
in this view, viz., that to the north and east.
When we got back to the shepherds' quarters and began our farther
descent at seven o'clock, I gave the head man two five-drachma pieces,
as a slight reward for what they had done for us. He seemed perplexed,
and at last gave me back one of the pieces, and asked me if I could
change it, as I had given him too much. You may believe that I didn't
do it. And I couldn't help smiling to think how carefully I had hidden
away my watch in my trousers pocket, for fear that the gold chain
might tempt these bad men. Of all the gentle shepherds whom I have met
on Greek mountains, these were the gentlest and best.
From the glorious mountain air and cold water, trickling down over
precipices a thousand feet high, we came at evening again to Amphissa,
with its stifling air and scanty water-supply, and, worst of all, with
its one hotel, which has not improved since 1890. It is a fact that
there was only one wash-basin in the house, and it was very hard to
get a turn at it. Our sufferings in the night were dreadful; and when
in the morning the landlord tried to persuade us that they were caused
by mosquitoes, the meekest man in our party got angry almost to the
point of profanity, and pointed out blood-stains on the sheets that
were evidently not those of mosquitoes. And yet this landlord tried
to do well by us, giving us four of his six beds, while well-dressed
Greeks slept on his dining-tables. But stop! Perhaps they knew better
than we what they were about. If one were shut up to a choice between
Itea and Amphissa for a night's lodging, it would be better to take to
the woods, especially in summer. And during that long summer night of
torture we regretted that we were not lying again in the open field on
our blankets.
But regrets are out of place, and nothing but the pleasure remains when
one thinks of the glories of Kiona.
A JOURNEY FROM ATHENS TO ERETRIA
Most hand-books of travel in Greece, beginning with the invaluable
Baedeker, impress it upon their readers that there are no long
distances in Greece. Even without the help of railroads, which, of
course, as far as they extend, have annihilated the barriers between
the old "jarring states," one finds the historic places, like Corinth,
Delphi, Chæronea, Thebes, and many others lying so near one another
that, after lodging in one of them, one can always count on spending
the next night at another. One loses no time. On the map, according to
which one might lay out a scheme of travel, Athens and Eretria lie very
near together. The overland route to Oropos, with a short sail across
the Eubœan Gulf, can be compassed in any summer's day. But the surest
and most convenient way is supposed to be to take the steamer at Piræus
in the early evening, and wake at Chalkis the next morning, and take a
ride of three hours to Eretria in the morning air. But this simple and
easy scheme sometimes fails in practice, as my experience has shown.
On Wednesday, February 18, 1891, three of us started out from Piræus
at evening to re-enforce one student of the American School who, in
very bad weather, had been carrying on excavations begun several weeks
before. We had deferred sailing for three days on account of the
weather. As we set out it was a grief to us that we must sail past
Sunion, Marathon, and Rhamnus before daybreak. We wished to supplement
previous acquaintance with those places by a view from the sea. The
night wore away with considerable tossing, and in order to get a little
view of the narrowing Euripos at Chalkis I arose at half-past six.
Seeing that we were near land on the left, I asked a sailor what land
it was, and got for an answer something that sounded like "Macaroni."
Not remembering any such land in the neighborhood of Chalkis, I cleared
my eyes, looked about me, and became sharply interrogative. Now I
elicited the well-known name "Sunion." This was astounding. Leaning far
out over the railing I saw the columns crowning the "steep." Ah! good
fortune was going to allow us to see Marathon by broad daylight.
It did not take long to see that we were in a boisterous sea. My
various Atlantic experiences furnished no parallel to it. Not only were
the billows high, but the fierce northeast wind, mingled with sleet,
seemed to take up the tops of them and carry them up into the sky. It
required two hours more for us to round the point of Sunion. It was a
great effort for the good ship Peneios, and when that was accomplished
we seemed to come to nothing better, and we were soon aware of the
determination of our level-headed captain to put into the harbor of
Laurion from stress of weather.
All that day and the next day we lay in that harbor, if it can be
called lying to roll about as we did. The long island, Makronisi,
called in antiquity Helene, almost makes Laurion a land-locked
harbor. But between this island and the mainland the northeast wind
came tearing through with unabated fury for forty-eight hours. The
projection of the mainland to the north of the harbor being quite low,
we were as poorly protected as it was possible to be in that harbor.
Several of the vessels which had taken refuge there appeared to be
having a rougher time than the Peneios. Our captain looked on with some
pride when an English steamer dragged her anchor nearly across the
whole width of the harbor. During the second night we had some fears of
an Apia disaster. No boats went to or from the land, and so we lay the
greater part of two days, unable to telegraph to our friends in Athens,
as much shut off from the world as if we were on an ocean voyage. Yet
nobody thought of wishing to see the captain change his mind and sail
on. At last, on Saturday morning, at about two o'clock, we steamed out,
and were as badly shaken at the start as one often finds it his lot
to be. One lesson was most thoroughly impressed upon us, that there
may have been good cause in antiquity for Athenian fleets shunning the
winter trip northward, and for Philip's being allowed free hand to
accomplish his undertakings Thraceward at that season of the year.
Little recked we of Marathon, or Rhamnus, or Oropos in the blinding
storm in which we at last reached Chalkis, and were rowed ashore in
blinding snow and splashing water from the oars. Photographic apparatus
was in special danger.
Once landed we seemed near Eretria, but here our vicissitudes
thickened. Between us and Basiliko, the half-way halting-place on the
road to Eretria, was one of the numerous Potamos of Greece, which was
taking this opportunity to justify its name, to make up for being
nothing but a dry bed nine months in the year. All coach-drivers but
one said that the Potamo would be as far as we could go toward Eretria
that day. But this one talked so confidently of being able to find
horses for us at the Potamo that we entrusted ourselves to his care,
and started out in the rain.
The course lay through the famous Lelantine Plain, which, in spite of
the rain, was seen to be a paradise. Such vines and fig-trees and,
farther on, such grain-fields! I had not seen its like in Greece. It is
no wonder that it was a bone of contention almost before the dawn of
history. It is something of a testimonial to the power and ambition of
Eretria that it reached so far out from its own fertile plain to grasp
at what geographically belonged to Chalkis.
Our driver soon made a halt, and informed us that we were at the end
of our stipulated drive. There were no signs of any river or any
horses. He said the river was a quarter of a mile farther on, and that
the horses were not his lookout. On being told either to find horses
or drive back to Chalkis, he became surly, and demanded, besides the
liberal sum of twenty drachmas which we had agreed to pay at this
point, twenty drachmas more for driving us back. We told him that
we should pay nothing at all except on a hearing before the demarch
of Chalkis. He at last drove slowly back, going through the form of
inquiring at several houses for horses, but getting none.
Arrived at Chalkis, we all went to the demarch's office, and, shivering
over a pan of coals, discussed the case. Under the demarch's pacific
influence, we arranged to have the same man drive us out again the
next day, paying a total of thirty drachmas, and in the meantime to
telegraph to the demarch of Eretria to send us horses to meet us at the
river.
The next day was no better than the preceding, and we postponed
starting for several hours, in hopes of a cessation of the rain. When
at last we reached the river, and looked across the arches of the
bridge then lying several years unfinished, though the rest of the
road was ready for use, we were unable to get any response to our
shouts. At last somebody told us that a man from Eretria had got tired
of shouting for us an hour before, and had returned the way he came.
Here was an emergency. We must go forward. After much beating about
the neighborhood, one little unpromising-looking horse was found. By
making trips enough we could by means of this weak creature get over
to Basiliko, and then perhaps still get on to Eretria. By the aid of
a long rope, our effects were soon made fast to the many-horned Greek
saddle, and we started to make the quarter-mile distance to a ford a
little below the bridge. Going along the top of one of the dikes thrown
up to facilitate watering of the vineyards, our horse slipped and came
down the bank into a foot of Lelantine mud. Our effects scattered
about under him prevented his absolute disappearance. But this was bad
for the effects. Some of the cargo was at last righted, and the horse
ungently pulled by application of force at both ends into a standing
position, and by some carrying of bags and bundles we reached the
river-bank. The stalwart boy who accompanied the horse ventured into
the water to test its depth. It was clear that that weak horse could
not keep his footing there.
Our stalwart boy was equal to the emergency. Taking us one by one on
his back he bore us over, and then the parcels, spending nearly an
hour in the operation. The sight of a bearded gentleman being carried
pickapack across a rushing river by a boy whose footing could not be
very secure on the uneven river-bed, and who could not quite keep the
boots of his rider out of the water, is a very ridiculous one to a
bystander; but as each one's turn came it became a serious event to him.
When we were all well over, we noticed that the faithful horse had
followed his master, and got across also. By his help we easily made
the half mile to Basiliko, where our man from Eretria was still waiting
for us; and that night we spent at Eretria, ready to inaugurate what
proved to be most interesting and successful excavations on the site of
that city on which the storm of Persian vengeance fell before it was
scattered at Marathon.
We had a most unusual March. At one time snow lay on the ground a
foot deep for three days. But we excavated the greater part of the
ancient theatre and many interesting graves, besides mapping out the
walls of the city. In subsequent years we took up the work again, and
uncovered the old gymnasium and a temple of Dionysos near the theatre,
but we stopped too soon; after us the Greeks took up the work, and
achieved results that nearly overshadowed ours. But ours will ever be
the service of having uncovered one of the most interesting theatres
of Greece, and a real Greek gymnasium, which is a rare thing, inasmuch
as most gymnasia which are preserved to us are Roman modifications of
the original Greek form. More than this, we forever laid the idea, up
to that time so prevalent, that the Eretria which was destroyed by the
Persians was several miles to the east of this. The acropolis walls
did that; but it was the service of the Greek excavator to uncover
the temple of Apollo, with its archaic gable sculptures, and to find
a considerable quantity of large vases of the sixth century before
Christ, and thus to corroborate the testimony of the walls. There was,
in fact, no other such place for a commanding acropolis on the whole
stretch of shore as on the hill rising above the theatre. Any city
established further east would have deserved the name of "the city of
the blind."
TAYGETOS AND KITHÆRON
If the coupling of these two names seems forced, my first reason for
it is the purely formal one that ten days after being on the summit of
Taygetos, we were climbing Kithæron. Greece is such a small country
that to traverse it from end to end in ten days, and see Sparta, Argos,
and Thebes, with some mountain climbing thrown in, is nothing that
justifies a boastful feeling; but when, at the end of such a journey,
one reflects upon the history and mythology which is attached to these
names, and calls up the scenes enacted on the plains on which he looks
down from these mountains, he wonders at what he has accomplished.
The mountains of Greece have many and great charms; and they have
this pre-eminent claim on our attention, that they are the unchanged
witnesses of the past. Poor villages occupy the Cadmeia and the site of
Sparta; waves of immigration have swept over Greece to such an extent
that one may be in honest doubt whether the people who walk these
dirty streets have any more claim to be the heirs and representatives
of Leonidas and Epaminondas, whose names perchance they bear, than we
have. The plains and rivers remain, except that the former have lost
their trees and the latter their water. But Taygetos, "rock-ribbed
and ancient as the sun," remains as it was. The great men of Greece
knew the mountains, and were known of them. Alkman and Pindar had held
converse with Taygetos and Kithæron, which now remain as their sole
surviving companions.
Six years ago I had approached Sparta from Messenia _through_
Taygetos, and had arrived at evening when the sun sent its rays almost
level through the orange-trees loaded with fruit and redolent with
blossoms. I feared that any different approach might bring a sort of
disappointment. But when, after a morning at Mantineia, in the upland
plain of Arcadia, we gained the top of the last height of the pass, and
saw the long ridge of Taygetos towering before us with the sun just
sinking behind it, we stood leaning over our bicycles and gave way to
silence like that of "stout Cortez and his men." What went through my
mind could hardly be called reflection, unless I could so designate
an acceptance of the propriety of the one epithet, περιμήκετος, which
Homer chose for this mighty mass, whether he intended it in the sense
of "stretched out" or "high towering." Night was beginning to fall
before we could break the spell and move down into the valley of the
Eurotas, and it was already dark when we crossed the bridge of the
Eurotas and entered Sparta. The object of this journey was not so
much to visit Sparta as to climb Taygetos; but, while waiting until
the afternoon of the next day for another contingent of the American
School to come after us from Tripolitza by carriage, we used the time
to visit the site of Amyklæ, and to hunt up the mound from which came
the celebrated Vaphio cups, the finest product of the goldsmith's art
left to our wondering eyes by the Achæan civilization of Greece.
[Illustration: SPARTA WITH TAYGETOS IN THE BACKGROUND]
Taygetos is the highest mountain in Peloponnesus, outranking Kyllene
by somewhat more than a hundred feet, and falling only a hundred feet
short of eight thousand. Since Sparta is only slightly above the
sea-level, the task before us was arduous, and when our forces were
united, we decided to make a part of the ascent before evening. An
acquaintance in Sparta gave me a letter of introduction to a leading
man of Anavryti, a village three hours up the mountain. When we reached
his house at dusk, in the middle of a village that resounded with
flowing streams, this letter opened his doors and his heart. It opened
the doors so wide that the neighbors came streaming in to see us, to
such an extent that he was at last glad to avail himself of the help
of a gendarme with his whip to clear out the younger portion of his
self-invited guests. He then set to work, in the manner of Greek hosts,
to kill us with kindness, making us eat and drink for about two hours.
After this came those futile attempts to sleep which those who have
travelled much in the interior of Greece know too well. At half-past
two we were only too ready to stop the fight with the small enemy and
address ourselves to the overcoming of Taygetos. For the first two
hours we went on by the light of a lantern, guided by the son of our
host, over a difficult path which gave us an occasional fall. After
that came the gorgeous sunrise and the increasing reward in the ever
more extended outlook, which made us almost forget that we had not
slept. It was owing, however, largely to this lack of sleep that one of
our number gave out a thousand feet below the summit, while another was
with some difficulty coached over the last five hundred feet.
When we were at last on the summit at half-past ten, the reward was a
perfect view--the first absolutely perfect view which I had ever had
out of many mountain ascents in Greece. We had, fortunately, taken the
rare moment when, after four days of cloudy and rainy weather, the sky
had just cleared, and for half a day a perfectly cloudless ether was
diffused over everything. We saw the valley of the Eurotas winding
down from the mountains to the sea, where it empties near Helos,
the "marsh town," which is said to have given its name to the whole
remnant of the Achæan people, who were reduced to a galling bondage
under the Dorian spearmen from the north. Sparta looked so near
that we were almost lured into the attempt to throw stones into it.
Kythera was surprisingly near, and even Crete--troubled and troublesome
Crete--seemed so near that annexation to Greece appeared to be a most
obvious lot for it. The southern islands of the Ægean, Melos and its
neighbors, were conspicuous to the east; while on the west it seemed
as if we could almost slide down into the Messenian Gulf. But, while
all these objects caught our attention time and again, it was still to
the north that our gaze was mainly directed; for there lay the whole
Peloponnesus, with its peaks and ridges, which compose the greater
part of it, spread out before us like a raised map, closed in on the
north by the big three, Kyllene, Aroania, and Erymanthos. Compared with
these, the three Attic mountains to the extreme left, and somewhat
distant, looked small, though distinct. It was a place and a scene that
one must needs be reluctant to leave. Had we brought food with us we
should have been tempted to stay and spend the night in the substantial
"tabernacle for Elias," which crowns this summit, according to the
usual practice in Greece. But evening brought us to Sparta, a good many
stone's-throws distant, as we felt in our knees and in our appetites.
Two suggestions force themselves upon one visiting this region: the
first is that the Spartans showed wonderful energy in breaking through
the wall of Taygetos, and conquering their Dorian neighbors in
Messenia, and in crushing them again when they made a desperate attempt
to throw off the yoke; the second is that the difference between these
two branches of Dorians could not be due to the Messenians having,
as is sometimes alleged, settled in a fatally fertile and enervating
plain. If rich fields could enervate a people, the Spartans surely did
not lack that invitation, for the valley of the Eurotas must have been
in antiquity, as now, a garden.
But what an unlovely people was this armed camp, which goes under
the name of Sparta! We will not reproach them that they failed to
produce anything in art and literature. It is rather their meanness
and absolute selfishness, as the strongest military power in Greece,
that makes them odious. For a century, from the Persian war to Leuctra,
whenever Sparta moved through the passes to the north it meant woe to
some Greek city; and when there was question raised at home over the
unrighteous conduct of a general abroad, the outspoken criterion was:
"Has he acted for the interests of Sparta?"
The last great injustice was the seizing and holding the Cadmeia in
time of peace. It is this that makes lovers of fair play rejoice at
the crushing return blow delivered by Epaminondas and his Thebans at
Leuctra, and take satisfaction in his passing down the Eurotas, and
showing the women of Sparta, for the first time, "the smoke of an
enemy's camp." And now by a historical thread we are led from Taygetos
and Sparta over to Thebes and Kithæron.
By a lucky choice we approached Thebes, not by any of the usual routes,
but by taking the train from Athens to Megara, walking thence across
to the east end of the Corinthian Gulf, and skirting its shore until
we reached Ægosthenæ, at the foot of Kithæron. No traveller ought to
neglect this region. It is one of the finest shores in Greece; so
rugged that we were several times driven inland by a promontory rising
perpendicularly from the sea, and made to climb more than a thousand
feet before we could continue our journey. We took a recompense for the
extra toil by tipping off into the sea several bowlders, some of which,
striking a projecting crag, would reach the water with the effect of
a bursting shell. This whole northeastern arm of the Corinthian Gulf
runs in between Kithæron on the north and Geraneia on the south, and so
gains a peculiar seclusion.