XXIX. Troezen.—

The plain of Troezen lies between the sea and a range of rough and rocky hills, wooded with dark evergreens and stunted trees, which shut it in on the west and south. The northern part of the plain is marshy in places, and the marshes breed fever among the sallow inhabitants of Damala, the wretched hamlet which nestles among trees at the foot of the hills in the inmost corner of the plain, close to the ruins of Troezen. Stretches of pasture-land, however, and of vineyards alternate with the swamps; and eastward, toward the island of Calauria, the plain is well watered, cultivated like a garden, and verdant with vines, olives, lemon-groves, and fig-trees. Seen from the water of the beautiful almost landlocked bay the green of this rich vegetation, with the tall dark cypresses towering conspicuously over all, is refreshing to eyes accustomed to the arid plains and hills of Greece. At Damala groves of oranges and lemons yield the villagers a considerable return. On higher ground, to the north-west of the village, are the ruins of Troezen. The glorious prospect over plain and mountain and sea is unchanged; but of the city itself, which, if we may trust Pausanias, its people regarded with such fond patriotic pride, nothing is left but some insignificant ruins overgrown with weeds and dispersed amid a wilderness of bushes. An isolated craggy mountain, rising steeply on the farther side of a deep ravine, was the ancient acropolis. The ascent is toilsome, especially if it be made at noon on an airless summer day with the sun blazing pitilessly from a cloudless sky, the rocks so hot that you cannot touch them without pain, the loose stones slipping at every step, the dry withered shrubs and herbage crackling under foot and blinding you with clouds of dust and down. The wonderful view from the summit, however, makes amends for the labour of the ascent, ranging as it does across the green fertile plain at our feet and away beyond a bewildering maze of islands, capes, and bays to Sunium on the north-east and the snowy peak of Parnassus on the north-west.

Another picturesque bit of scenery, of a different kind, may be seen by following up the ravine to the point where at a great height it is spanned by a single small arch of grey stone, which the peasants call the Devil’s Bridge. It carries the path and a tiny aqueduct, hewn out of one block of stone, across the narrow but profound abyss. High beetling crags rise above the little bridge; ferns and ivy mantle thickly one of the rocky sides of the lyn beneath it; and trees droop over the stream that murmurs in the depths below. This is the stream which Pausanias calls the Golden River. Luxuriant lemon-groves now line its banks where it issues from the ravine on the plain of Troezen.