Other memorabilia-Egyptian custom of embalming birds illustrated
-Inscription relating to Tithoreaits date ascertained— Other
Inscriptions.

pass

CHAP. VII. AFTER we had taken some refreshment, we set out for Arracovia, distant three hours from Delphi, intending to the night there; as it is much higher upon Parnassus, and a better place for procuring guides to the summit of the mountain, than the miserable village we had quitted. At about half an hour's distance from Delphi, we found the remains of an antient square building, nobly constructed with large masses of stone, put together without any cement. As we continued along this route, we observed niches cut in the rocks above the road, on our left hand. One place, in particular, near to Delphi, exhibited several works of this kind; among others, the appearance of a large door hewn in the solid stone, which had been subsequently severed by the effect of an earthquake. It is close to the road, and well worth notice; because hereabouts might have been one of the outworks of the city, or an arch covering the Via Sacra. We now entered the rich lands of Arracovia, full of the neatest vineyards, cultivated in the highest order, and seeming to extend over the mountain without any limitation, so as to cover all its sides and declivities; and actually rising into parts of it, so steep and elevated, that they would not have been tenable but for the industry of the inhabitants; who have built walls to protect them from torrents, and buoyed up the soil by means of terraces, to prevent its being washed away. The finest vineyards upon the banks of the Rhine are not managed with greater skill and labour

Arracovia.

Vineyards of
Parnassus.

than

CHAP. VII.

than those of Arracovia, upon the south side of Parnassus. The land is most carefully weeded; and it is kept so clean and free from rubbish, that the stones are collected and placed in heaps; a little hollow space being left around each vine, to collect the moisture. The plants are all of them old stocks, from which they suffer only one scion to sprout for the year, and this is afterwards pruned again. The wine from these vineyards is excellent. The view throughout Prospect.. this journey, of all the Plain of Salona, and of the Bay, backed by the mountainous district of Achaia in Peloponnesus, cannot be described; for it would be idle to repeat continually the words grand, and magnificent, as applied to the sublimest appearances in nature, without being able thereby to suggest the slightest conception of the real scene'.

The village of Arracovia is rich in comparison with Castri. It contains two hundred and fifty houses, inhabited by Albanians and by Greeks," without a Turk" among them. This expression, "without a Turk," is throughout Greece a

saying

(1) This has been felt by all who have attempted to describe fine prospects without the pencil. "As far as language can describe, Mr. Gray pushed its powers," observes the Editor of his Memoirs. "Rejecting every general unmeaning and hyperbolical phrase, he selected the plainest, simplest, and most direct terms: yet, notwithstanding his judicious care in the use of these, I MUST OWN I feel them defecTIVE. (See Mason's Note to Gray's Letter to Wharton; Mathias's Edit. vol. I. p. 469. Lond. 1814.) Perhaps Gray never succeeded more happily, than when, laying aside description, he simply said, of a view in Westmoreland, "I saw in my glass a picture,, that if I could transmit to you, and fix it in all the softness of its living colours, would fairly sell for a thousand pounds." (Ibid. p. 455.) The most faithful descriptive language may present, it is true, a picture to the mind; but then it is not the identical picture. “The imagination," says Mason, "receives clear and distinct images, but not true and exact images." (Ibid.)

of the

Condition
Inhabitants.

CHAP. VII.

Alteration of temperature.

saying of exultation; and it is never uttered but with an expression of triumph and of gladness. Yet some have pretended that there is a mildness in the administration of the Turkish government, which would be ill supplied by the substitution of any other European dynasty in its place; that the people are not taxed beyond what they are well able to bear; and that they possess the means of redress against tyranny and oppression. Leaving to all such writers the very difficult task of proving what they have thus affirmed, and judging solely by our own experience, we can only say that the land, divested of its Mahometan governors, would be a land, whose inhabitants might "eat bread without scarceness, nor lack any thing in it;" unless indeed, and this is not improbable, it should fall under the dominion of Russia; when it would become "a desolation, a dry land, and a wilderness." Arracovia is situated at such an elevation upon the mountain, that a change of temperature was sensibly felt by us all; and after sun-set it became very cold. We passed the night in a small hut, writing letters to our friends in England. Parnassus affording sensations at our fingers' ends, to which we had long been strangers, we found it expedient to maintain a considerable fire in the centre of our little dwelling; which, filling the room with smoke, brought tears of acknowledgment down our cheeks, for the seasonable warmth it afforded so near to the seat of Apollo. When we had finished our letters, as it was our usual practice, we entered into conversation with the inhabitants collected to gaze at the strangers who were their guests;

and

and we were much amused by the traditions they still entertained. The people of Delphi had told us that there were only five Muses, and that the opinion as to there being nine in number was a heresy. Such disputes about the number of the Muses existed in antient times, and the Arracovian Greeks reduced their number to three. The only thing that surprised us was, that any notion of the kind should yet remain upon the spot; although all the fountains of Parnassus, of Helicon, and of Pindus, were once sacred to them. We have before proved, in what we related of Platea, that the memory of Antient Greece is not quite obliterated among its modern inhabitants; and some additional facts were gathered here, however unworthy of further notice, to confirm and strengthen our former observation.

CHAP. VII.

Traditions.

the Summit.

On Wednesday morning, December 16th, at nine o'clock, Journey to we set out, with four guides, for the SUMMIT OF PARNASSUS; returning a short distance, by the road to Delphi, and then turning up the mountain towards the right, but with our faces towards Delphi, until we had climbed the first precipices. After an hour's ascent, we had a fine view of one of the principal mountains of the Morea, now called Trícălă; the Bay of Crissa looking like a lake, bounded by the opposite mountains of Peloponnesus. In fact, as we had formerly, from the Theatre at Sicyon, seen the very heights we were now climbing, so we were now looking back towards all that region of Achaia, and towards its more distant summits. After having surmounted the first precipices, we found a large crater, with a village in it, called Kallidia, or

८

Callithea,

Kallidia.