What follows makes no pretense whatever of being a scientific work on Greece, from an archæological or other standpoint. That it is written at all is the resultant of several forces, chief among which are the consciousness that no book hitherto published, so far as I am aware, has covered quite the same ground, and the feeling, based on the experience of myself and others, that some such book ought to be available. By way of explanation and apology, I am forced to admit, even to myself, that wha

The days in which a visit to Greece might be set down as something quite unusual and apart from the beaten track of European travel have passed away, and happily so. The announcement of one’s intention to visit Athens and its environs no longer affords occasion for astonishment, as it did when Greece was held to be almost the exclusive stamping-ground of the more strenuous archæologists. To be sure, those who have never experienced the delights of Hellenic travel are still given to wonderment at

The island of Crete, lying like a long, narrow bar across the mouth of the Ægean Sea, presents a mountainous and rugged appearance to one approaching from any side. Possessing an extreme length of about one hundred and sixty miles, it is nowhere more than thirty-five miles in width, and in places much less than that. A lofty backbone of mountain runs through it from end to end. In all its coast-line few decent harbors are to be found, and that of the thriving city of Canea, near the northwestern

Leaving Crete behind, the steamer turns her prow northward into the Ægean toward Greece proper, and in the early morning, if all goes smoothly, will be found well inside the promontory of Sunium, approaching the Piræus. One ought most infallibly to be early on deck, for the rugged, rocky shores of the Peloponnesus are close at hand on the left, indented here and there by deep inlets or gulfs, and looking as most travelers seem to think “Greece ought to look.” If it is clear, a few islands may be

Athens lies in a long and narrow plain between two rocky mountain ridges that run down from the north. The plain to-day is neither interesting nor particularly fertile, although it is still tilled with some success. Once when it was better watered by the Cephissus and Ilissus rivers, whose courses are still visible though in the main dry and rocky, it was doubtless better able to support the local population; but to-day it is rather a bare and unattractive intervale between mountains quite as ba

The visible remains of the ancient city of Athens, as distinguished from the city of to-day, lie mainly to the south and west of the Acropolis, where are to be seen many distinct traces of the classic town, close around the base of the great rock and the Hill of Mars. How far the ancient city had extended around to the eastward can only be conjectured by the layman, for there exist almost no remains in that direction save the choragic monument of Lysicrates and the ruins of the temple of Olympia

There are two favorite ways whereby those leaving the Acropolis are wont to descend to the modern city. One lies around to the right as you leave the gates, passing between the Acropolis and Mars Hill to the north side of the former, where steps will be found leading down to the old quarter and thence past Shoe Lane to Hermes Street and home. The other passes to the south of the Acropolis along its southerly slopes, finally emerging through an iron gate at the eastern end, whence a street leads

As the admirable Baedeker well says, the stay in Athens is undoubtedly the finest part of a visit to Greece, and it is so not merely because of the many attractions and delights of the city itself, but because also of the numerous short trips aside which can be made in a day’s time, without involving a night’s absence. Such little journeys include the ascent of Pentelicus, whose massive peak rises only a few miles away, revealing even from afar the great gash made in his side by the ancients in

The pilgrimage to Delphi, which used to be fraught with considerable hardship and inconvenience, is happily so no longer. It is still true that the Greek steamers plying between the Piræus and Itea, the port nearest the ancient oracular shrine, leave much to be desired and are by no means to be depended upon to keep to their schedules; but aside from this minor difficulty there is nothing to hinder the ordinary visitor from making the journey, which is far and away the best of all ordinary short

We journeyed down to Mycenæ from Athens by train. The moment the railroad leaves Corinth it branches southward into the Peloponnesus and into a country which, for legendary interest, has few equals in the world. Old Corinth herself, mother of colonies, might claim a preëminent interest from the purely historical point of view, but she must forever subordinate herself to the half-mythical charm that surrounds ruined and desolate Mycenæ, the famous capital of Atreus and his two celebrated sons, Me

We were awakened in the morning by an unaccustomed sound,—a subdued, rapid, rhythmic cadence coming up from the esplanade below, accompanied by the monotonous undertone of a voice saying something in time with the shuffle of marching feet, the whole punctuated now and then by a word of command and less frequently by the unmistakable clang of arms. The soldiers from the fortress were having their morning drill. The words of command sounded strangely natural, although presumably in Greek, doubtles

With the benison of the landlord, who promised to send our luncheon over to the station “in a little boy,” we departed from Nauplia on a train toward noontime, headed for the interior of the Peloponnesus by way of Arcadia. The journey that we had mapped out for ourselves was somewhat off the beaten path, and it is not improbable that it always will be so, at least for those travelers who insist on railway lines and hotels as conditions precedent to an inland voyage, and who prefer to avoid the p

We found the village of Andhritsæna fascinating in the extreme, from within as well as from without. It was obviously afflicted with a degree of poverty, and suffers, like most Peloponnesian towns, from a steady drain on its population by the emigration to America. Naturally it was squalid, as Megalopolis had been, but in a way that did not mar the natural beauty of its situation, and, if anything, increased its internal picturesqueness. This we had abundant opportunity to observe during our ini

At five o'clock the persistent thumping of Spyros on the bedroom doors announced the call of incense-breathing morn, though Phœbus had not yet by any means driven his horses above the rim of the horizon. The air outside was thick o' fog,—doubtless a low-lying cloud settling on the mountain,—and it was dark and cheerless work getting out of our narrow beds and dressing in the cold twilight. Nevertheless it was necessary, for the ride to Olympia is long, and Spyros had promised us a fatiguing day,

It was a gray morning—for Greece. The sky was overcast, the wind blew chill from the north, and anon the rain would set in and give us a few moments of downpour, only to cease again and permit a brief glimpse ahead across the Ægean, into which classic sea our little steamer was thrusting her blunt nose, rising and falling on the heavy swell. We had borne around Sunium in the early dawn, and our course was now in an easterly direction toward the once famous but now entirely deserted island of Del

The stiff north wind, which was known to be blowing outside, counseled delaying departure from Delos until after the evening meal, for our course to Samos lay through the trough of the sea. In the shelter of the narrow channel between Greater and Lesser Delos the water was calm enough to enable eating in comfort, and it was the commendable rule of the cruise to seek shelter for meals, owing to the lack of “racks” to prevent the contents of the tables from shifting when the vessel rolled. Hence i

From the little harbor where we had found shelter for our landing to visit Branchidæ it proved but a few hours’ steaming to Cos, which was scheduled as our next stopping place. Like Samos, Cos lies close to the Asia Minor shore. The chief city, which bears the same name as the island, unchanged from ancient times, proved to be a formidable looking place by reason of its great walls and moles, recalling the Cretan cities much more forcibly than the Samos town had done; for the yellowish-white for

It was our purpose to land on Rhodes the isle, not at Rhodes the town. To visit the famous northern city where once stood the Colossus would have been highly agreeable had opportunity presented itself; but as it was we planned to coast along the southeasterly side of Rhodes and make our landing at the little less celebrated and probably even more picturesque site of Lindos. So in the morning we woke to find our vessel rolling merrily in a cross sea just off the entrance to the little bay that se

No island that we visited in our Ægean cruise was more interesting than Thera proved to be, when we had steamed across the intervening ocean from Rhodes and into the immense basin that serves Thera—or modern Santorin—for a harbor. No more remarkable harbor could well be conceived. If Vesuvius could be imagined to sink into Naples bay until there were left protruding only about a thousand feet of the present altitude; if the ocean should be admitted to the interior of the volcano by two great cha

We spent Easter Sunday at Paros. It proved to be a mild and not especially remarkable day in the local church, which was old and quaint and possessed of many highly interesting features within and without, of which we must speak later on, for some of its portions date back to the pagan days. Its floor was littered with the aromatic leaves which had been dropped and trampled under foot the night before by the worshipers at the midnight mass; for it appeared that the chief observance of the feast

The city of Patras, from which port we are about to take leave of Greece, is probably the most incongruous city in the kingdom. To be sure it is second in importance to Piræus, and the latter city is quite as frankly commercial. But the proximity of the Piræus to Athens and the presence of the Acropolis, crowned with its ruined temples always in the field of view, conspire to take a little of the modern gloss off the major port, and thus prevent it from displaying an entire lack of harmony with