CHAPTER III.

Quarrel with the Landlord.--Ægina.--Sicyon.--Corinth.--A distinguished Reception.--Desolation of Corinth.--The Acropolis.--View from the Acropolis.--Lechæum and Cenchreæ.--Kaka Scala.--Arrival at Athens.

IN the morning Demetrius had a roaring quarrel with the keeper of the locanda, in which he tried to keep back part of the money we gave him to pay for us. He did this, however, on principle, for we had given twice as much as our lodging was worth, and no man ought to have more. His character was at stake in preventing any one from cheating us too much; and, in order to do this, he stopped our funds in transitu.

We started early, and for some time our road lay along the shore. It was not necessary, surrounded by such magnificent scenery, to draw upon historical recollections for the sake of giving interest to the road; still it did not diminish that interest to know that, many centuries ago, great cities stood here, whose sites are now desolate or occupied as the miserable gathering-places of a starving population. Directly opposite Parnassus, and at the foot of a hill crowned with the ruins of an acropolis, in perfect desolation now, stood the ancient Ægira; once numbering a population of ten thousand inhabitants, and in the second century containing three hiera, a temple, and another sacred edifice. Farther on, and toward the head of the Gulf of Corinth, the miserable village of Basilico stands on the site of the ancient Sicyon, boasting as high an antiquity as any city in Greece, and long celebrated as the first of her schools of painting. In five hours we came in sight of the Acropolis of Corinth, and, shortly after, of Corinth itself.

The reader need not fear my plunging him deeply into antiquities. Greece has been explored, and examined, and written upon, till the subject is almost threadbare; and I do not flatter myself that I discovered in it anything new. Still no man from such a distant country as mine can find himself crossing the plain of Corinth, and ascending to the ancient city, without a strange and indescribable feeling. We have no old monuments, no classical associations; and our history hardly goes beyond the memory of that venerable personage, "the oldest inhabitant." Corinth is so old that its early records are blended with the history of the heathen gods. The Corinthians say that it was called after the son of Jupiter, and its early sovereigns were heroes of the Grecian mythology. It was the friend of Sparta and the rival of Athens; the first city to build war-galleys and send forth colonies, which became great empires. It was the assembling-place of their delegates, who elected Philip, and afterward Alexander the Great, to conduct the war against the Persians. In painting, sculpture, and architecture surpassing all the achievements of Greece, or which the genius of man has ever since accomplished. Conquered by the then barbarous Romans, her walls were razed to the ground, her men put to the sword, her women and children sold into captivity, and the historian who records her fall writes that he saw the finest pictures thrown wantonly on the ground, and Roman soldiers playing on them at draughts and dice. For many years deserted, Corinth was again peopled; rose rapidly from its ruins; and, when St. Paul abode there "a year and six months"--to the Christian the most interesting period in her history--she was again a populous city, and the Corinthians a luxurious people.

Its situation in the early ages of the world could not fail to make it a great commercial emporium. In the inexperienced navigation of early times it was considered difficult and dangerous to go around the point of the Peloponnesus, and there was a proverb, "Before the mariner doubles Cape Malea, he should forget all he holds dearest in the world." Standing on the isthmus commanding the Adriatic and Ægean Seas; receiving in one hand the riches of Asia and in the other those of Europe; distributing them to every quarter of the then known world, wealth followed commerce, and then came luxury and extravagance to such an extent that it became a proverb, "It is not for every man to go to Corinth."

As travellers having regard to supper and lodging, we should have been glad to see some vestige of its ancient luxury; but times are changed; the ruined city stands where stood Corinth of old, but it has fallen once more; the sailor no longer hugs the well-known coasts, but launches fearlessly into the trackless ocean, and Corinth can never again be what she has been.

Our servant had talked so much of the hotel at Corinth, that perhaps the idea of bed and lodging was rather too prominent in our reveries as we approached the fallen city. He rode on before to announce our coming, and, working our way up the hill through narrow streets, stared at by all the men, followed by a large representation from the juvenile portion of the modern Corinthians, and barked at by the dogs, we turned into a large enclosure, something like a barnyard, on which opened a ruined balcony forming the entrance to the hotel. Demetrius was standing before it with our host, as unpromising a looking scoundrel as ever took a traveller in. He had been a notorious captain of brigands, and when his lawless band was broken up and half of its number hanged, he could not overcome his disposition to prey upon travellers, but got a couple of mattresses and bedsteads, and set up a hotel at Corinth. Demetrius had made a bargain for us at a price that made him hang his head when he told it, and we were so indignant at the extortion that we at first refused to dismount. Our host stood aloof, being used to such scenes, and perfectly sure that, after storming a little, we should be glad to take the only beds between Padras and Athens. In the end, however, we got the better both of him and Demetrius; for, as he had fixed separate prices for dinner, beds, and breakfast, we went to a little Greek coffee-house, and raised half Corinth to get us something to eat, and paid him only for our lodging.

We had a fine afternoon before us, and our first movement was to the ruins of a temple, the only monument of antiquity in Corinth. The city has been so often sacked and plundered, that not a column of the Corinthian order exists in the place from which it derives its name. Seven columns of the old temple are still standing, fluted and of the Doric order, though wanting in height the usual proportion to the diameter; built probably before that order had attained its perfection, and long before the Corinthian order was invented; though when it was built, by whom, or to what god it was consecrated, antiquaries cannot agree in deciding. Contrasted with these solitary columns of an unknown antiquity are ruins of yesterday. Houses fallen, burned, and black with smoke, as if the wretched inmates had fled before the blaze of their dwellings; and high above the ruined city, now as in the days when the Persian and Roman invaded it, still towers the Acropolis, a sharp and naked rock, rising abruptly a thousand feet from the earth, inaccessible and impregnable under the science of ancient war; and in all times of invasion and public distress, from her earliest history down to the bloody days of the late revolution, the refuge of the inhabitants.

It was late in the afternoon when we set out for the Acropolis. About a mile from the city we came to the foot of the hill, and ascended by a steep and difficult path, with many turnings and windings, to the first gate. Having been in the saddle since early in the morning, we stopped several times to rest, and each time lingered and looked out with admiration upon the wild and beautiful scenery around us; and we thought of the frequently recurring times when hostile armies had drawn up before the city at our feet, and the inhabitants, in terror and confusion, had hurried up this path and taken refuge within the gate before us.

Inside the gate were the ruins of a city, and here, too, we saw the tokens of ruthless war; the fire-brand was hardly yet extinguished, and the houses were in ruins. Within a few years it has been the stronghold and refuge of infidels and Christians, taken and retaken, destroyed, rebuilt, and destroyed again, and the ruins of Turkish mosques and Christian churches are mingled together in undistinguishable confusion. This enclosure is abundantly supplied with water, issuing from the rock, and is capable of containing several thousand people. The fountain of Pyrene, which supplies the Acropolis, called the most salubrious in Greece, is celebrated as that at which Pegasus was drinking when taken by Bellerophon. Ascending among ruined and deserted habitations, we came to a second gate flanked by towers. A wall about two miles in circumference encloses the whole summit of the rock, including two principal points which still rise above the rest. One is crowned with a tower and the other with a mosque, now in ruins; probably erected where once stood a heathen temple. Some have mistaken it for a Christian church, but all agree that it is a place built and consecrated to divine use, and that, for unknown ages men have gone up to this cloud-capped point to worship their Creator. It was a sublime idea to erect on this lofty pinnacle an altar to the Almighty. Above us were only the unclouded heavens; the sun was setting with that brilliancy which attends his departing glory nowhere but in the East; and the sky was glowing with a lurid red, as of some great conflagration. The scene around and below was wondrously beautiful. Mountains and rivers, seas and islands, rocks, forests, and plains, thrown together in perfect wantonness, and yet in the most perfect harmony, and every feature in the expanded landscape consecrated by the richest associations. On one side the Saronic Gulf, with its little islands, and Ægina and Salamis, stretching off to "Sunium's marble height," with the ruins of its temple looking out mournfully upon the sea; on the other, the Gulf of Corinth or Lepanto, bounded by the dark and dreary mountains of Cytheron, where Acteon, gazing at the goddess, was changed into a stag, and hunted to death by his own hounds; and where Bacchus, with his train of satyrs and frantic bacchantes, celebrated his orgies. Beyond were Helicon, sacred to Apollo and the Muses, and Parnassus, covered with snow. Behind us towered a range of mountains stretching away to Argos and the ancient Sparta, and in front was the dim outline of the temple of the Acropolis at Athens. The shades of evening gathered thick around us while we remained on the top of the Acropolis, and it was dark long before we reached our locanda.

The next morning we breakfasted at the coffee-house, and left Corinth wonderfully pleased at having outwitted Demetrius and our brigand host, who gazed after us with a surly scowl as we rode away, and probably longed for the good old days when, at the head of his hanged companions, he could have stopped us at the first mountain-pass and levied contributions at his own rate. I probably condemn myself when I say that we left this ancient city with such a trifle uppermost in our thoughts, but so it was; we bought a loaf of bread as we passed through the market-place, and descended to the plain of Corinth. We had still the same horses which we rode from Padras; they were miserable animals, and I did not mount mine the whole day. Indeed, this is the true way to travel in Greece; the country is mountainous, and the road or narrow horse-path so rough and precipitous that the traveller is often obliged to dismount and walk. The exercise of clambering up the mountains and the purity of the air brace every nerve in the body, and not a single feature of the scenery escapes the eye.

But, as yet, there are other things beside scenery; on each side of the road and within site of each other are the ruins of the ancient cities of Lechæum and Cenchreæ, the ports of Corinth on the Corinthian and Saronic Gulfs; the former once connected with it by two long walls, and the road to the latter once lined with temples and sepulchres, the ruins of which may still be seen. The isthmus connecting the Peloponnesus with the continent is about six miles wide, and Corinth owed her commercial greatness to the profits of her merchants in transporting merchandise across it. Entire vessels were sometimes carried from one sea and launched into the other. The project of a canal across suggested itself both to the Greeks and Romans, and there yet exist traces of a ditch commenced for that purpose.

On the death of Leonidas, and in apprehension of a Persian invasion, the Peloponnesians built a wall across the isthmus from Lechæum to Cenchreæ. This wall was at one time fortified with a hundred and fifty towers; it was often destroyed and as often rebuilt; and in one place, about three miles from Corinth, vestiges of it may still be seen. Here were celebrated those Isthmian games so familiar to every tyro in Grecian literature and history; toward Mount Oneus stands on an eminence an ancient mound, supposed to be the tomb of Melicertes, their founder, and near it is at this day a grove of the sacred pine, with garlands of the leaves of which the victors were crowned.

In about three hours from Corinth we crossed the isthmus, and came to the village of Kalamaki on the shore of the Saronic Gulf, containing a few miserable buildings, fit only for the miserable people who occupied them. Directly on the shore was a large coffee-house enclosed by mud walls, and having branches of trees for a roof; and in front was a little flotilla of Greek caiques.

Next to the Greek's love for his native mountains is his passion for the waters that roll at their feet; and many of the proprietors of the rakish little boats in the harbour talked to us of the superior advantage of the sea over a mountainous road, and tried to make us abandon our horses and go by water to Athens; but we clung to the land, and have reason to congratulate ourselves upon having done so, for our road was one of the most beautiful it was ever my fortune to travel over. For some distance I walked along the shore, on the edge of a plain running from the foot of Mount Geranion. The plain was intersected by mountain torrents, the channel-beds of which were at that time dry. We passed the little village of Caridi, supposed to be the Sidus of antiquity, while a ruined church and a few old blocks of marble mark the site of ancient Crommyon, celebrated as the haunt of a wild boar destroyed by Theseus.

At the other end of the plain we came to the foot of Mount Geranion, stretching out boldly to the edge of the gulf, and followed the road along its southern side close to and sometimes overhanging the sea. From time immemorial this has been called the Kaka Scala, or bad way. It is narrow, steep, and rugged, and wild to sublimity. Sometimes we were completely hemmed in by impending mountains, and then rose upon a lofty eminence commanding an almost boundless view. On the summit of the range the road runs directly along the mountain's brink, overhanging the sea, and so narrow that two horsemen can scarcely pass abreast; where a stumble would plunge the traveller several hundred yards into the waters beneath. Indeed, the horse of one of my companions stumbled and fell, and put him in such peril that both dismounted and accompanied me on foot. In the olden time this wild and rugged road was famous as the haunt of the robber Sciron, who plundered the luckless travellers, and then threw them from this precipice. The fabulous account is, that Theseus, three thousand years before, on his first visit to Athens, encountered the famous robber, and tossed him from the same precipice whence he had thrown so many better men. According to Ovid, the earth and the sea refused to receive the bones of Sciron, which continued for some time suspended in the open air, until they were changed into large rocks, whose points still appear at the foot of the precipice; and to this day, say the sailors, knock the bottoms out of the Greek vessels. In later days this road was so infested by corsairs and pirates, that even the Turks feared to travel on it; at one place, that looks as though it might be intended as a jumping-off point into another world, Ino, with her son Melicertes in her arms (so say the Greek poets), threw herself into the sea to escape the fury of her husband; and we know that in later days St. Paul travelled on this road to preach the gospel to the Corinthians.

But, independently of all associations, and in spite of its difficulties and dangers, if a man were by accident placed on the lofty height without knowing where he was, he would be struck with the view which it commands, as one of the most beautiful that mortal eyes ever beheld. It was my fortune to pass over it a second time on foot, and I often seated myself on some wild point, and waited the coming up of my muleteers, looking out upon the sea, calm and glistening as if plated with silver, and studded with islands in continuous clusters stretching away into the Ægean.

During the greater part of the passage of the Kaka Scala my companions walked with me; and, as we always kept in advance, when we seated ourselves on some rude rock overhanging the sea to wait for our beasts and attendants, few things could be more picturesque than their approach.

On the summit of the pass we fell into the ancient paved way that leads from Attica into the Peloponnesus, and walked over the same pavement which the Greeks travelled, perhaps, three thousand years ago. A ruined wall and gate mark the ancient boundary; and near this an early traveller observed a large block of white marble projecting over the precipice, and almost ready to fall into the sea, which bore an inscription, now illegible. Here it is supposed stood the Stèle erected by Theseus, bearing on one side the inscription, "Here is Peloponnesus, not Ionia;" and on the other the equally pithy notification, "Here is not Peloponnesus, but Ionia." It would be a pretty place of residence for a man in misfortune; for, besides the extraordinary beauty of the scenery, by a single step he might avoid the service of civil process, and set the sheriff of Attica or the Peloponnesus at defiance. Descending, we saw before us a beautiful plain, extending from the foot of the mountain to the sea, and afar off, on an eminence commanding the plain, was the little town of Megara.

It is unfortunate for the reader that every ruined village on the road stands on the site of an ancient city. The ruined town before us was the birthplace of Euclid, and the representative of that Megara which is distinguished in history more than two thousand years ago; which sent forth its armies in the Persian and Peloponnesian wars; alternately the ally and enemy of Corinth and Athens; containing numerous temples, and the largest public houses in Greece; and though exposed, with her other cities, to the violence of a fierce democracy, as is recorded by the historian, "the Megareans retained their independence and lived in peace." As a high compliment, the people offered to Alexander the Great the freedom of their city. When we approached it its appearance was a speaking comment upon human pride.

It had been demolished and burned by Greeks and Turks, and now presented little more than a mass of blackened ruins. A few apartments had been cleared out and patched up, and occasionally I saw a solitary figure stalking amid the desolation.

I had not mounted my horse all day; had kicked out a pair of Greek shoes on my walk, and was almost barefoot when I entered the city. A little below the town was a large building enclosed by a high wall, with a Bavarian soldier lounging at the gate. We entered, and found a good coffee-room below, and a comfortable bed chamber above, where we found good quilts and mattresses, and slept like princes.

Early in the morning we set out for Athens, our road for some time lying along the sea. About half way to the Piræus, a ruined village, with a starving population, stands on the site of the ancient Eleusis, famed throughout all Greece for the celebration of the mysterious rites of Ceres. The magnificent temple of the goddess has disappeared, and the colossal statue made by the immortal Phidias now adorns the vestibule of the University at Cambridge. We lingered a little while in the village, and soon after entered the Via Sacra, by which, centuries ago, the priests and people moved in solemn religious processions from Athens to the great temple of Ceres. At first we passed underneath the cliff along the shore, then rose by a steep ascent among the mountains, barren and stony, and wearing an aspect of desolation equal to that of the Roman Campagna; then we passed through a long defile, upon the side of which, deeply cut in the rock, are seen the marks of chariot-wheels; perhaps of those used in the sacred processions. We passed the ruined monastery of Daphne, in a beautifully picturesque situation, and in a few minutes saw the rich plain of Attica; and our muleteers and Demetrius, with a burst of enthusiasm, perhaps because the journey was ended, clapped their hands and cried out, "Atinæ! Atinæ!"

The reader, perhaps, trembles at the name of Athens, but let him take courage. I promise to let him off easily. A single remark, however, before reaching it. The plain of Attica lies between two parallel ranges of mountains, and extends from the sea many miles back into the interior. On the border of the sea stands the Piræus, now, as in former times, the harbour of the city, and toward the east, on a little eminence, Athens itself, like the other cities in Greece, presenting a miserable appearance, the effects of protracted and relentless wars. But high above the ruins of the modern city towers the Acropolis, holding up to the skies the ruined temples of other days, and proclaiming what Athens was. We wound around the temple of Theseus, the most beautiful and perfect specimen of architecture that time has spared; and in striking contrast with this monument of the magnificence of past days, here, in the entrance to the city, our horses were struggling and sinking up to their saddle-girths in the mud.

We did in Athens what we should have done in Boston or Philadelphia; rode up to the best hotel, and, not being able to obtain accommodations there, rode to another; where, being again refused admittance, we were obliged to distribute ourselves into three parcels. Dr. Willet went to Mr. Hill's (of whom more anon). M. found entrance at a new hotel in the suburbs, and I betook myself to the Hotel de France. The garçon was rather bothered when I threw him a pair of old boots which I had hanging at my saddle-bow, and told him to take care of my baggage; he asked me when the rest would come up; and hardly knew what to make of me when I told him that was all I travelled with.

I was still standing in the court of the hotel, almost barefoot, and thinking of the prosperous condition of the owner of a dozen shirts, and other things conforming, when Mr. Hill came over and introduced himself; and telling me that his house was the house of every American, asked me to waive ceremony and bring my luggage over at once. This was again hitting my sore point; everybody seemed to take a special interest in my luggage, and I was obliged to tell my story more than once. I declined Mr. Hill's kind invitation, but called upon him early the next day, dined with him, and, during the whole of my stay in Athens, was in the habit, to a great extent, of making his house my home; and this, I believe, is the case with all the Americans who go there; besides which, some borrow his money, and others his clothes.