with sacks or baskets, or a row of donkeys carrying huge bundles of brushwood, under which they were almost hidden. As for the foot passengers they shifted for themselves; in cases where the street was too narrow to allow of more than a couple of horses passing each other, they took refuge in some open doorway or shop. We left Nauplia through the only land gate, over which we turned to see the old winged lion of St. Mark, still existing as an indication of the former supremacy of the Venetian republic over this city. Indeed we saw the same emblem more or less entire on various portions of the wall. The Turks when they gained possession of the place, after carefully destroying the head of the lion, which they supposed, doubtless, to be one of the idols of the infidel, seem to have cared very little whether the remainder of the monument. was still there or not. Passing the narrow strip of ground, used as a promenade, at the foot of the Palamede, we came to the suburb of Pronia, which, when Nauplia was the capital of the government, as it was for many years after the revolution, was crowded with country seats of all the principal families. Pronia has seen some stormy scenes.

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that assembled there was broken up by force of arms, and its deputies dispersed. On the rock, which forms the boundary of the sort of recess in which Pronia is situated, we noticed as we passed a lion cut out of the solid stone, after the fashion of the famous lion of Lucerne. It commemorated the Bavarians who died in Greece.

We turned now to the north and entered the plain of Argos. A remarkable plain it is, indeed, and the scene of interesting historical events from the time of Hercules, the Pelasgians, and the heroes of the Trojan war. The names of its celebrated cities Mycenae, Tiryns, and Argos, are mentioned as the seats of potent monarchs, when proud Athens itself was spoken of by Homer as only a "demus," or town, when, perhaps, no city had been erected. The fertility of the soil and its advantageous situation for commerce, led to its being early selected for the principal kingdom of Greece, and it still enjoys the reputation of being superior in productiveness to any other part of the country, except Messenia. We certainly could not fail to be struck with the vast difference between it and the plain of Athens, than which a more rocky and arid district can scarcely be imagined. The valley measured perhaps a dozen miles in length from Nauplia to Mycenae, and its greatest VOL. IIL-5

breadth could not be less than seven or eight in the southern part, gradually diminishing as we rode on further, until above Mycenæ it contracted into a narrow defile. Fields of wheat and vineyards of the Corinthian currant occupied both sides of the road, and the products of both are said to be excellent. But there are none of those fine old olive groves which give such a light green tinge to the landscape in Attica. No one who travels across it, as we were doing to-day, after a heavy rain, and is obliged to wade through the pools of water that cover the whole road, or stem the current of the Inachus, would be disposed to call the plain of Argos, as both ancients and moderns do, "a thirsty land." But such it is generally, on account of the meagreness of the only torrent it possesses, the famous Inachus.

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We rode on about a half an hour before we reached the ruined walls of Tiryns. The long and narrow eminence is a prominent object; indeed, it rises quite alone in the midst of a perfectly level country, like a large ship in the middle of the sea. had noted it some time before. The road runs parallel with its western side; and we turned into the fields on our right, and rode up what was the principal entrance to this acropolis. Alighting just at the walls, our guide led our horses around the hill to the road, while we explored the remains of Greek masonry. Fraying our way through the mass of tangled vines and more annoying nettles, which had grown luxuriantly during the rains of spring, we reached the entrance of a passage running in the thickness of the wall on the eastern side of the place. It was formed, like the rest of the wall, of large, rough, and apparently unworked stones, heaped together, one upon the other, with smaller ones often filling the interstices. Some of the stones measured five or six, and others up to ten feet. The passage way was vaulted, not according to the principle of the arch, but with large stones which projected over the passage, until the highest courses met entirely, their balance being preserved by their being proportionately longer; and so the centre of gravity fell within the wall. The same effect might have been obtained by cutting the gallery out of a solid wall. We entered this curious gallery, and found it some eight or nine feet high, and stretching about one hundred feet in depth, when we came to its sudden termination. single stone just at the end has fallen in. and lets in a stream of light, which shows that the gallery never extended any farther; and we could distinguish by the

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dim light some five or six old openings or doors on the right, which served at some time or other as doors leading to the outside of the city. They were all walled up some time posterior to the building of the wall. What could they have served for? Perhaps as secret openings through which sallies might be made upon the enemies who might besiege the town.

We found another similar passage on the opposite or western side of the great entrance; but it was less interesting. The vault was perfect for a short distance only, and the rest was quite destroyed. We passed on and ascended to the top of the city, which seemed to me to be elevated some thirty to fifty feet above the plain, one part being much lower than the other, which formed a sort of interior fortress. The top is about seven or eight hundred feet long from north to south, and usually about one fourth as wide, though it varies considerably.

On these three or four acres of ground stood the famous city of Tiryns, one of the oldest cities in Greece, and famous for the most part only for its wars with its neighbors. It is curious to see that in the time of that most invaluable of writers, Pausanias, sixteen or seventeen hundred years ago, it was in pretty nearly the same ruinous condition as now. "The wall," he tells us, "the only part of the ruins that remains, is the work of the Cyclops; and built of unwrought stones, each of which is so large that a yoke of mules could scarcely move at all, even the smallest of them. Small stones have been of old fitted in with them, so as to form each of them a connection between the large stones." Nothing but earthquakes, I think, could make much impression on these gigantic masses; and so the wall remains pretty perfect in most of its circuit. The view over the vicinity is beautiful and quite extensive, and there is a neat-looking building near the southern end, an agricultural college, which has not flourished very well so far, I believe. The Greek mind does not, I imagine, incline much to agriculture.

Demetri came to us before we had satisfied ourselves with examining these ruins, and reminded us that we had a long ride before us, promising that if there should be time we should have the opportunity of spending half an hour more at the place on our return. So we were compelled to mount, and we pursued a northerly direction, over a level plain abounding in villages and well cultivated, leaving the city of Argos far on our left. Near Mycenae the soil became thinner and the country

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less populous. At the little khan of Kharvati we turned from the main road, on our right, and followed a path which led us through the village of the same name. Our arrival was greeted by some dozens of boys who came to beg, and as many dogs who came to bark at us; but we set both at defiance, and pursued our way. We were struck with the miserable condition of the inhabitants, who lived in common low stone or mud hovels, thatched with the brushwood and herbs gathered in the vicinity. A short distance on we reached the neighborhood of Mycenae, and before entering the inclosure of the walls, we came to the far-famed Treasury of Atreus." An inclined plane lined on either side by massive stone walls led us down to the building, which is excavated in the bowels of the hill. rode down, and, entering by the wide portal, found ourselves in a great circular chamber, about fifty feet in diameter, and about forty in height. It can neither be said to be vaulted, nor to be conical, but the sides are somewhat circular. whole consists of a series of regular courses of squared stone, gradually narrowing until the summit was formerly covered with a single stone. The most remarkable thing about the architecture is the circumstance that the dome is not constructed with an arch, but that the successive circles of stones by their very weight are held firmly together. gateway through which we had entered, however, struck us more than any thing else. The passage is scarcely more than eight feet in diameter; but it is spanned by an enormous soffit twenty-eight feet long, while it is nineteen broad, and three fect and nine inches in thickness! that mass weighing several tons was raised to a height of twenty feet above the soil, and that too without the aid of modern improvements in machinery, is a mystery difficult to solve. Certainly the architects of Agamemnon's time were no mean ones. Above this door is a triangular opening or window, which serves to let a faint light into the building. Leaving our horses here, we groped our way through a similar but more narrow door, now much obstructed with rubbish, into a smaller chamber. Demetri brought in a few armfuls of brush, and soon kindled a fire, which revealed to us its form. It was a damp room some twenty feet square, by our measurement, and fourteen high; cut out of the hard rock, and left rough as at first. Its use is uncertain. Our guide persisted in calling this the Tomb of Agamemnon, while the rest

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alone is the Treasury of Atreus, and this way of getting over the difficulty about its nomenclature is certainly ingenious, and not unreasonable. As it is outside of the walls of the city—the most ancient ones at any rate-it is not impossible that this may have been a tomb, but others endeavor to show, and with plausibility, too, that it was in some way connected with the worship of those early races that inhabited Greece before authentic history, and about whom the amount of knowledge we possess, notwithstanding the ponderous tomes of some modern writers, might be summed up in a page or two of writing. Very likely the walls of this inner clamber were coated with marble, as those of the great one undoubtedly were with copper plates, as is evident from the abundant remains of small copper nails studding the entire ceiling and walls. After satisfying our curiosity with this remarkable monument of antiquity, as far as we could satisfy ourselves with such a short visit, we proceeded to visit the remaining portions of the city of Mycenæ. Riding along the coast of the hill, upon whose summit ran the more recent walls of the city, we came unexpectedly upon a hole, where we found a monument similar to that we had just been visiting-another “treasury," which seems to be the name now appropriated to that sort of building. The whole upper part of the dome had fallen in, and disclosed the lower courses of masonry. Most of the structure, however, is buried below the mass of rubbish. There are a couple more outside of the walls. We dismounted on coming to the acropolis, and made a great part of the circuit on foot, observing the number of different kinds of construction which is thus exhibited. Sometimes as at Tiryns there were great masses of stone heaped together, seemingly without any attempt at giving them a more symmetrical shape having been made. At others, the masses, though scarcely smaller, were hewn into large and almost regular courses, very small stones being thrust into the small crevices. In walls of a yet more recent date, the stones were much smaller, of a polygonal shape, and generally very closely fitted one to the other, not leaving space enough to crowd the blade of a penknife into the joints. We entered the ancient acropolis through an ancient little gate, formed in the most simple manner of three stones, two form

ing the sides, and the third the top of the doorway. On either side there was the projection against which the door rested, and before it the two holes in which was placed the bar, which invariably served to fasten it. We found ourselves on an elevated platform, where we could look far and wide over the plain, where reigned Agamemnon, king of men. This was the capital of the kingdom, while Tiryns to the south, and Argos at the foot of that high hill almost as far towards the southwest, were the older and later capitals of the Atridæ. The ground we stand on, was perhaps occupied of old by that palace celebrated for the misdeeds of Clytæmnestra and Ægisthus, and where the victorious monarch Agamemnon was assassinated with the laurel still fresh on his brow. The summit of the hill was the station of that watchman, whom one of the Tragic poets represents as watching for ten long years, wet with the dews of every night, for the signal fires that were to announce the taking of Troy by the Grecian troops. We descended from the top of the hill to the most celebrated object of interest in the place, the Gate of Lions. Two enormous stones standing on end support a slab equally ponderous; and on the top of this is a triangular piece of gray limestone, ten feet long and nine high, upholding the remains of the only statuary about the entire place. Two lions are represented on it facing each other, and standing on their hind legs, while the front ones rest on a low pedestal between them. This pedestal supports in turn a short column, very similar in shape to the Doric, except that it diminishes downwards instead of upwards. Unfortunately the heads of the lions are entirely destroyed, and if there was any object on the top of the column, that has likewise disappeared; so that it is impossible to tell what this curious monument signified, or whether it was connected with the religion of the mysterious builders of the city. The artist who executed this work of art, was certainly not devoid of skill in portraying nature. Every muscle of the lion's body is expressed, and even exaggerated, though there is a certain stiffness about the whole which marks an early period of art. The merest spectator is struck by the resemblance of the figures with Egyptian works, and no one, who has seen the Assyrian monuments in the London and Parisian Muse

ums can fail to notice an equal likeness to their rigid outlines. It is a well authenticated tradition that the Egyptians sent colonies to this part of Greece; but it seems very doubtful whether these monuments resemble each other any further than in the mere clumsiness which characterizes all works of remote antiquity. What makes this and the other ruins of Mycena the more interesting, is, that in the time of Pausanias, two centuries after the Christian era, they were nearly in the same state as now. "The inhabitants of Argos," says that historian, destroyed Mycenae out of envy; for whilst the Argives remained at rest during the invasion of the Medes, the Mycenians sent eight men to Thermopylæ, who shared the work with the Lacedæmonians. This brought destruction upon them, as it excited the emulation of the Argives. There remains, however, besides other parts of the inclosure, the gate with the lions standing over it. They say that these are the works of the Cyclopes, who constructed the wall at Tiryns for Protus." The great topographer also mentions the subterranean treasuries of Atreus and his children, his tomb, and those of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra.

We lingered for an hour or two among these ruins, and then hurried back to the little village of Kharvati, to take our lunch at the khan. While we were partaking of such food as our guide had provided, a few peasants brought in some ancient coins of the Byzantine Empire. They set an enormous price on them-and indeeed these persons value an early Christian coin far above much more ancient ones. If they get hold of a medal of Constantine, they keep it as an heirloom, and scarcely any thing can tempt them to part with it. We left our worthy friends in possession of their treasures, and set off on our return, following, however, a somewhat longer road, which led through Argos. This took us more than two hours, for our horses were miserable creatures; and the road, though pretty good, and in dry weather even passable for a carriage, led us directly across the swollen stream of the Inachus, which, indeed, forms quite a respectable creek at this season of the year.

We found Argos quite a different looking place from Nauplia. The houses are much newer and lower, and many of them

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are scattered about in the gardens and vineyards, forming a populous, but not at all a closely-inhabited town. Nauplia is its rival, and for a long time overshadowed it; but now Argos contains about ten or twelve thousand souls, while Nauplia has only eight. Our object here was to see the remains of a Greek theatre. To reach it, we had to go the greater part of the town, and a crowd of boys, seeing the "milordi" coming, quitted their games to follow our steps. We had seen enough of their character to know that there was nothing to be gained by commanding them to be gone. Every one who had been loudest in his play but a moment ago, pressed us in piteous tones to give him a penny; and when we alighted, half a dozen called us in different directions to show us the ruins. If we followed, or walked behind, any one of them, he was satisfied that we had engaged him as guide; so that, by the time we got through, we found ourselves indebted to them, by their own calculation, in quite a little sum. The theatre, itself, however, we found interesting enough, notwithstanding our clamorous attendants. seats are cut into the solid rock, rising one above the other on its face, and divided by alleys into three divisions. Though the lower part of the theatre is covered over with soil, and a flourishing wheatfield occupies the arena-some sixtyseven seats are visible. In one or two places, there are on the neighboring rocks some small bas-reliefs, which we could make little of. A friend of mine told me, that in this theatre was held one of the chief congresses during the Greek revolution, in which, if I remember right, he himself sat.* From the theatre we returned to Nauplia. Our way led us through the agora, or market-place of Argos. This name is not here always applied to a building, or an open square; but to the portion of the town where provisions and other commodities are sold. Here there were few or no shops, every thing being exposed on cloths or boards stretched on the ground, on either side of the street. Like the Turkish bazars, these places are noisy and crowded; every seller screams in your ear the excellence of his goods, and you are heartily glad when you find yourself fairly out of the place. There were few houses between Argos and Nauplia, a distance of seven or eight miles; but the traffic and intercom

munication between was evidently considerable. We reached the harbor near the time for the leaving of the steamer on its return to Athens, and my companions, who were in haste to return, hurried on board. As for myself, I had resolved to vary my return, by crossing to Corinth, and taking the steamer thence to Piræus. As Demetri was to return with the rest of the party, and I trusted to my knowledge of the language to make my way, I had a new pass made out, and soon domiciled myself in the small old hotel of "Peace," opposite the public square.

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Mine host, who rejoiced in the name of Elias Giannopoulos, or Joannopoulos, finding I could speak the modern Greek, was disposed to show me every attention. It was too late in the afternoon to procure permission of the mayor to visit the Palamede; but he volunteered to show me the other curiosities of the place. took me to the church of St. Spiridon, a little building in a narrow lane, remarkable for nothing in its exterior, or interior either. "This," said he, "was the spot where Capo d'Istria, the first president of Greece, was slain by the sons of Petron Bey. The two Mavromichalis, the assassins, stood down here in this alley, and when the president came from the church into the doorway, they wounded him mortally." My friend Elias, though he disapproved of the action, and saw how utterly useless such an assassination must be, yet, I must confess, did not appear very sorry for the murdered man, who was the head of the Russian party. He grew very animated in describing the abuses of the government here, and the corruption introduced, even into the mu- . nicipal authority. My window at the hotel looked out upon the monument erected to the memory of Ypsilanti, and mine host is much interested in learning that a township in America had been named after the favorite modern hero of this part of Greece.

I had to be up early the next morning. I had engaged an agogates to furnish me with a horse, and to come along with me. As Elias wanted to get travellers from Corinth to come to his hotel, it was easy for me to find a guide. Sideri was ready early the next morning, and as soon as I could get prepared, we started. During the night the weather had undergone a sudden change, and instead of a clear, bright day, such as we had enjoyed, the clouds hung threateningly along the sides of the hills, offering but a poor prospect for our long day's journey. Again we had to traverse the plains of Argos along

the same road which we had crossed the day before. We lunched again at the khan of Kharvati, near the ruins of Mycena. Here the plain ended, or rather contracted into a valley, and that shortly ended in a narrow ravine. This was the entrance into the Pass of Troetus, a pass known in antiquity for its difficulty. It was here that, in 1822, 8000 Turks, under Drami Ali Pasha, after having ravaged the whole plain of Argos, and utterly destroyed the town, attempted to cross the mountains into Corinthia. The Greeks, under Nicetas, were posted at the most difficult point in the passes, while 1600 more occupied the heights about the entrance. When the Turks had fairly entered, they were assailed by these latter, consisting principally of Mainiotes, who fired upon them from behind the rocks and bushes, without offering them any opportunity of defence. Drami Ali hoped, by pushing onward, to free himself from his perilous position. But after two hours' march, with the enemy continually killing numbers of his men, he came to the narrowest place, where Nicetas had been awaiting him. Out of the whole army of the Turks, only two thousand succeeded in dashing by the opposing force. About as many more retreated to Nauplia; but between three and four thousand perished in the awful conflict. Quarter was asked by many, but the Greeks massacred, to the last of their enemies. The plunder was very great. How changed is the scene now! The passes were the very picture of loneliness, and not a sound was to be heard. The pass is noted for nothing but robbers, who till lately infested it. It is considered now the most likely place for them to reappear in, though the Peloponnesus is, at present, entirely free from brigands.

The rain, which had been threatening at any time to descend upon us, now began to fall in torrents. In addition to this, the cold was excessive for the season of the year, and I found an overcoat and an umbrella poor protection. My guide, Sideri, wrapped up in his great capote" of camel's hair, fared much better. The Pass of Troetus is a long one, and we wished to find shelter, hoping that the rain would cease, or at least diminish. We reached at length a hut; but upon opening the door, we found it dark, and crowded by a set of Greek peasants, who were consoling themselves with the bottle for the unpromising aspect of the weather without. So we resolved to go on. Pretty soon we turned from the direct road to Corinth, and took a