LXIX. The Cave of the Black Demeter.—

The cave of the Black Demeter has been identified with a small cavern in the glen of the Neda, about an hour’s walk to the west of Phigalia. The place is known in the neighbourhood as the stomion tes Panagias or Gully of the Virgin. To reach the cavern it is necessary to descend into the ravine by a steep and narrow path which affords very little foothold and overhangs depths which might turn a weak head. At the awkward places, however, it is generally possible to hold on to bushes or rocks with the hands. Thus we descend to the bed of the river, which here rushes roaring along at the bottom of the narrow wooded ravine, the precipitous sides of which tower up on either hand to an immense height. The cave is situated in the face of a prodigious cliff on the north side of the ravine, about a hundred feet or so above the bed of the river, from which it is accessible only by a narrow and difficult footpath. The ravine at this point sweeps round in a sharp curve, and the cavern is placed just at the elbow of the bend. On the opposite side of the lyn, some fifty feet or so away, a great crag, its sides green with grass and trees wherever they can find a footing, soars up to a height about as far above the cavern as the cavern is above the stream. Hills close the view both up and down the glen; those at the upper end are high, steep, and wooded.

The cavern itself, originally a mere shallow depression or hollow in the side of the cliff, has been artificially closed by a rough wall of masonry, apparently of recent date; the plaster seemed to me fresh. In the cavern thus formed a rough floor of boards has been run across at a height of about four feet above the ground. Thus the grotto is divided into two compartments, the upper of which has been converted into a tiny chapel with an altar at the end and two holy pictures of Christ and John the Baptist. On one of the walls are some faded frescoes. Light enters the little cave by a small window in the wall beside the altar. At least half of the roof is artificial, being built of the same rough masonry as the wall. Close beside this tiny cavern, to the east of it, may be seen a still tinier grotto, separated from the former by a slight protuberance in the rock. The same ledge of rock gives access to both grottoes.

What is called the Gully of the Virgin is a tunnel, some hundred yards long, formed of fallen rocks and earth, through which the Neda rushes in the ravine below the cavern. In winter the swollen stream flows over the roof of the tunnel, but in summer, when the river is low, you may walk through the tunnel and admire the stalactites which hang from its roof.