Travel
[We publish on this page articles and notes which may help our readers in making their plans for travel at home and abroad. They are written by correspondents who have visited the places described. We shall be glad to answer questions arising out of the Travel articles published in our columns. Inquiries should be addressed to the Travel Manager, The SracreToa, 99 Gower Street, W.C. 1.]
All Hellas in a Day
[FROM A CORRESPONDENT.]
WE remained on deck till the Corinth Canal was reached. Now the moon was high in the heavens, and as we silently entered that narrow waterway it transmuted the golden-brown walls of cliff that towered above the oily black channel. By daylight these might seem to be but the vertical sides of a trench gouged-unmercifully out of the tough- flesh of the isthmus. To-night they slipped past like walls of smooth cyclopean masonry -ushering the awed pilgrim into some colossal temple of the mysteries.
The noisier of our fellow-passengers left the ship at Loutraki, the new watering-place at the foot of the Geranian Mountains. Profiting by the unwonted silence, we turned in for a few hours. When we awoke the moon had set, but the sun had not yet risen. The ship was turning out of the Gulf of Corinth into the narrow Gulf of Itea. The sky of translucent saffron was cut off sharply by hills that stood up like a jagged sheet of greenish- black metal. Tints of black and green and yellow mingled and blended on the surface of the water in a thousand kaleido- scopic reflections. There were mountains ahead. Parnassus was hidden from us, but the loftier summit of Mount Chiona, was plainly visible. A few moments later its limestone white- ness , was tinged with evanescent rose-like sunlight strained through coloured glass on to the bare stone of a cathedral wall. In the distance a long row of little houses at the waterside betokened Itea.
A motor swept us• rapidly upwards to Delphi. -For a little way the road lay through the sacred oliVe grove of -Chrysa. Then in a few swift sweeping curves we were lifted-above that sea of olives that stretched away,to where Amphissa rears its Frankish castle above those silvery waves.. Higher and" higher the road bore us. At one corner we met a file of camels piled high with merchandise, sole descendants-of that hardy strain which Ibrahim Pasha brought to the wars is Century -ago.
At Delphi we paused at the Hotel of Parnassus to breakfast off avga matia " eggs with eyes " or, in simpler language, fried. Our plans were quickly laid. It was now half-past eight. Two mules could be foddered and saddled by ten, and by midday the muleteers could - meet us at Arachova where the road ended. ' This would leave us time to ieneW.acqiiitintance with the classical antiquities of Delphi and, continuing by car, to stroll about Arachova with a little time to spare. - Thus we came once again to behold the ruined sanctuary of the Pythian Apollo. It had been springtime when we were last there, and there-had-been waving corn in the fields, purple campanula among -the dislocated seats of the -Stadium, great; emerald lizards sunning themselves and a scarlet blare of poppies. Now it was early autumn, and Delphi appealed somehow graver and more mature.
There seemed, moreover, to be an added austerity in the scene. Far away, beyond the olive groves, the Gulf was brittle cobalt enamel that had hardened within dusty -golden cloison of the shore. The mountain slopes which once were vivid with green were now ash-grey paling in the distance into smoke- blue, save where the newly shaven cornfields added an ochreous tinge to the neutral palette. In half an hour the car climbed the twelve hundred feet which sunder Delphi from Arachova. The town sprawls lazily athwart a sloping ridge of Parnassus, and its two sharply projecting promontories are like the upturned toes of some bucolic sleeper. Its spirit is Romaic rather than Hellenic. Turning its back upon the lordly dwellers on Parnassus it takes pride rather in the beauty of its women, the vigour of its mountain shepherds, the victory that liaraiskakis won here, and the pyramid that he made of Turkish heads, the wool and the black and white rugs for which the town is famed through- out Greece. Everywhere among those irregular, stone-built, balconied- houses washed in -white and blue we carne upon women spinning. The five hours' ride, to the monastery of St. Luke in Phocis was tiring by reason of its monotony, although our limbs surrendered themselves without discomfort to the jolting gait and the rug-covered wooden saddles. In two hours we had turned our backs on the towering cliffs of Parnassus and the Schiste, the " divided road " where Oedipus slew his father. The monks received us kindli in their cell-encircled court- yard. We ate chicken and drank resinated wine with the, bearded Abbot, and slept on divans in the-"guest-chamber. There were fleas, mosquitos, sand-flies and bugs. The very house-flies bit.
The night was an alternation of storm and flooding moon- light. The morning dawned through a chill drizzle, and an opaque mist clothed the range which we were to cross that day. We rose cheerlessly and descended into -the courtyard. The shaggy monks who had been droning their morning service offered us uncooked maize in their bare palms.
The church was built of weathered red brick arranged in the Byzantine manner in decorative patterned courses. Inside- were the mosaics, some of the finest examples of that eternally. misunderstood Byzantine art, as essentially subjective and representational as Hellenic art is objective and rational. Through the scaffolding erected for their preservation the Pantokrator looked down upon us with a baleful glare, and the five Archangels stared us out of countenance.
As we clambered down into the deserted valley and up a rocky path, half track, half stream, the sun dispersed our miasmic forebodings. Soon we were winding up the muse- haunted slopes of Helicon where the yellow autumn crocuses shone like glow-worms among the dusky fir-trees. Soon we were on a high woody ridge near the summit, hailing as we' passed them the grey-smocked, black-capped shepherds. Soon, all too soon, we had lowered ourselves down a very ladder of a path on to a barren plateau at the far edge of which we almost tripped over the first hidden houses of Livadia. - Here was that oracle of Trophonius of which Pausanias has left an account that is fascinating. Beyond the busy water-mills, at the spot where the Herkyna seems to issue from the vast rock whereon the Catalans built their citadel we found a maze of caves and niches which may well mark the, springs of Lethe• and Mnemosyne. But Lethe has triumphed, for the exact site has been forgotten.
In the afternoon we caught a train which brought us back to Athens forty-eight hours after we had left it. We had' " hustled " perhaps. But it is mental and not physical " hustling" which destroys the soul. With all that we had seen we had -not surfeited ourselves. Our tour had been •an epitome of Hellenic eivilization, the ancient, the mediaeval and the modern. We had appreheriad the glory that was 'Grcece,' the lgtamoint .that • was _Byzantium, and the-sturdy Romaie peasant culture. All Hellas in a day . . . .
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