LV. The Road from Argos to Arcadia.—

From Argos two main passes lead westward over the chain of Mount Artemisius to Mantinea. The southern and more direct of the two is for the greater part of the way nothing but a rough bridle-path; in places it crosses the deep beds of torrents, which at the time of my journey were dry. The path turns round the northern foot of the lofty acropolis of Argos, and skirting the wide Argolic plain enters the valley of the Charadrus or Xerias, as it is now called. This is a long narrow valley of somewhat monotonous aspect, enclosed by barren and rocky hills, and barred at the farther end by a steep mountain, on which, when I saw it far away on a bright April morning, purple shadows rested. The bed of the river is broad and stony, sometimes several hundred yards in width; it is generally dry, but after heavy rains the spates that come roaring down it from the mountains are much dreaded. Flocks of sheep and goats feed in the valley; the herdsmen carry the usual long staves tipped with crooks, and sometimes a gun. Trains of laden mules or asses, conducted by peasants, also met us. The head of the valley, immediately under the mountain barrier, is very picturesque. The bottom is partly covered with shrubs and trees, among which (for the place was then in its spring beauty) I noticed the broom and the hawthorn, both in flower, also wild roses, and a tree with a lovely purple bloom, which I believe to have been the Judas-tree. Beyond the small hamlet of Mazi, consisting of a few wretched stone cottages, the path begins the long ascent and winds up the face of the mountain-wall in a series of zigzags. The view backward from the summit of the pass is magnificent, embracing a wilderness of mountains with the sea and the islands of Hydra and Spetsa in the distance. From the top of the pass the path drops down very steeply, almost precipitously, into the flat sodden expanse of the Fallow Plain, across which we look to a bleak chain of grey limestone hills. The village of Tsipiana stands at the foot of the pass, its red-roofed houses, with a large church in their midst, rising in tiers on the steep mountain-side. On a ledge high above the village is a monastery among cypresses, and higher still there shoots up a huge fantastic pinnacle of rock. The traveller who has reached Tsipiana is in Arcadia, and if this is his first glimpse of that poetical land, he may find the reality to answer to his expectations, if not to his dreams.

From a low rocky hillock, which runs out like a promontory into the flat, he looks northward over the Fallow Plain, fallow no longer, but covered with a patchwork of maize-fields, and intersected by a stream meandering through it in serpentine curves. Southward the eye ranges away over the level expanse to where it terminates in low blue hills, at the foot of which, dimly perceptible in the distance, lies the town of Tripolitza. In the middle distance, on a projecting hill, appears a ruined mediaeval castle. The rural solitude of the landscape with its green spreading plain, its winding river, its lonely hills, and the silence and peace brooding over all, is not unworthy of Arcadia.