XXXVII. Sparta.—

Ancient Sparta stood upon a broad stretch of fairly level ground, broken by a few low eminences, on the right bank of the Eurotas, where the river makes a bend to the south-east. Thus the city was bounded on the north and east by the wide gravelly bed of the river. Approaching from the north by the highroad from Tegea you cross the river by a new iron bridge, then traversing a flat strip of ground ascend through a hollow between two of the low eminences or hills which were included within the circuit of ancient Sparta. Leaving these eminences on the right and left you emerge to the south upon a level stretch of cornland, with olive-trees thickly dotted over it. When I saw it the wheat was breast high, and its waving surface, dappled with the shadows of multitudinous olive-trees, presented a rich and park-like aspect. This plain is about half a mile across; on the south it is terminated by the low broad-backed ridge, running east and west, on which stands the town of New Sparta.

This new town, which has sprung up since the War of Independence, is charming. The streets, crossing each other at right angles, are broad and pleasant. Many of the houses are surrounded by gardens, and the soft verdure of the trees peeping over the low walls is grateful and refreshing to the eyes. The gardens abound with orange-trees, which, when laden with fruit, remind one of the gardens of the Hesperides. In spring the air, even in the streets, is heavy with rich perfumes. On the south the town is bounded by the river of Magoula, which here flows from west to east, to fall into the Eurotas a little below the town, opposite the steep heights of Therapnae. Westward the plain extends three or four miles to the foot of the magnificent range of Taygetus, which rises abruptly with steep rocky sides to the height of nearly eight thousand feet. A conspicuous landmark to the west, viewed from Sparta, is the sharp conical hill of Mistra, leaning upon, but still sharply defined against, the Taygetus range. Though really a mountain over two thousand feet high, it is completely dwarfed by the immense wall of Taygetus rising at its back.

The country between Sparta and Taygetus offers points of the most picturesque beauty, especially if, instead of following the highroad, which is rather tame, you strike straight across for Mistra from the ruined theatre of Old Sparta. It was a bright evening in spring or early summer (towards the end of April, but summer is earlier in Greece than in England) when I took this walk, and the impression it made on me was ineffaceable. The orange-groves, the gardens fresh and green on all sides, men taking their ease in the warm evening air at a picturesque tavern under a great spreading tree, children playing in the green lanes, a group of Spartan maidens filling their pitchers at a spring that gurgled from a grey time-worn wall, a river (the Magoula) spanned by a quaint old bridge and winding through groves of orange-trees spangled with golden fruit, and towering above all the stupendous snow-clad range of Taygetus in the west, with the sunset sky above it—all this made up a picture or rather a succession of pictures, of which it is impossible to convey in words the effect. It was a dream of Arcadia, the Arcadia of poets, and of painters like the Poussins.

In this union of luxuriant verdure with grand mountain scenery the valley of Sparta recalls the more famed but not more beautiful Granada with its green spreading Vega, its lilac-tinted mountains basking under the bright sky of Spain, and the snowy range of the Sierra Nevada lying like a great white cloud on the southern horizon. But Taygetus towers above the spectator at Sparta as the Sierra Nevada certainly does not over the spectator at Granada. To see it on a bright day with all its superb outline—its sharp peaks and grand sweeping curves—clearly defined in the pellucid air, its long line of snowy summits glistering in the sun, and the deep purple shadows brooding on its lower slopes, is a sight not to be forgotten. A recent explorer of Greece has observed that of all Greek cities Sparta enjoys the most beautiful situation. So far as my experience goes, the observation is just.