duit, restored in late years, but originally constructed by the Turks, who rival the ancient Romans and shame modern European nations by their love of a copious supply of pure water. Around this fountain, and reaching down to the edge of the channel, was the cemetery of the Leucadians, as appears from the numerous sepulchral inscriptions, vases, &c., discovered in this vicinity. Two excursions-first, to Karus or Skarus, and, secondly, to the Leucadian promontory, or Sappho's Leap, will enable the traveller to see what is most remarkable in the interior of the island. 1. The hill of Karus forms the angle at the S.W. extremity of the channel separating Leucadia from Acarnania. Four hours' riding over rough mountain-paths are required to reach the summit from the town. The sides of the hill are covered with a primeval oak-forest, full of deep dells and dark thickets, which recall Dante's opening of the Inferno' : "In mezzo del cammin di nostra vita Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura." And yet but a few steps lead the traveller forth into the bright sunshine of Greece, and lay before him, framed by the overarching branches, one of the most magnificent prospects in the world, with the waters of Actium on the one hand, and those of Lepanto on the other. To the N. the river is bounded by the peak of San Salvador in Corfu, whence the eye ranges along the shore of Epirus, and the peaks of Pindus, down to the plain of Nicopolis, the minarets and forts of Prevesa, and the low promontory whence it may "Ambracia's gulf behold, where once was lost A world for woman." In fine weather that beautiful inland sea shines like a vast mirror, reflecting on its surface the giant pinnacles of the surrounding mountains. In Greece, Nature, as Shakspeare says of fair woman, is "ever making mouths in a glass." Immediately below Karus to the N. are the ruins of the ancient city of Leucas, crowning the rocky summits of the hills which line the strait;-the modern Fort Santa Maura, insulated amidst the lagoons; the level headland on which Amaxíchi, embosomed in groves and gardens, is situated; and, across the narrow channel, the wild Acarnanian Mountains, whose utter desolation contrasts strikingly with the flourishing villages and cultivated slopes of the island. The bay of Vliko is a very beautiful feature in the landscape. To the S. the horizon is bounded by the mountains of the Peloponnesus, and by the curiously jagged outline of Mount Skopos in Zante. To the S.W. are Ithaca and Cephalonia, between which and the mainland the sea is dotted with groups of islets of every picturesque form and of every glowing colour. Karus is the last stronghold of the wolves in the Ionian Islands. They do considerable damage among the flocks and herds, but are rarely known to have attacked men. It is asserted in Leucadia, and the story, if correct, is a curious one, that wolves had become quite extinct in this island before the Greek war of independence; but that, when the insurgents had been driven to the dens and caves of the mountains, these beasts of the wilderness, dislodged by the intrusion of man from their usual haunts, crossed the narrow and fordable channel, and took refuge under British protection. Jackals are still found in the islands. 2. It requires 8 or 9 hrs. to ride from the town to Sappho's Leap. It will be necessary, therefore, to make provision for sleeping one night on the excursion, and for that purpose it is advisable to procure a letter of recommendation to a hospitable contadino, or peasant proprietor, in the village of Attáni, 6 hrs. from Amaxíchi, in whose roomy cottage the English stranger is sure of a hearty and primitive welcome. After leaving the olive-woods around the town, the road ascends a steep hill, and thence sometimes winds along the western coast, sometimes strikes across the central heights. The interior of the island wears everywhere a rugged aspect. | Love, of Light, and Poesy." The There is but little cultivation, except prospect is very extensive, but inferior where terraces have been formed on the mountain sides, and planted with vineyards. The scene is occasionally enlivened by a grove of evergreen oaks embosoming a church, or by a village surrounded with clumps of olives and cypresses. During a portion of the winter, the highest ridge of Santa Maura, rising about 3000 ft. over the sea, is robed in snow and mist, as it appeared to the eyes of Æneas (Æn. iii. | 274): "Mox et Leucate nimbosa cacumina montis, Et formidatus nautis aperitur Apollo." In like manner, the deep water, the strong currents, and the fierce gales which they there encounter, have preserved among the Greek sailors of the present day the evil fame which the Cape of Leucadia bore of old. Nothing but the substructions of the once farfamed Temple of Apollo now exist on the promontory. At a short distance from it. a small monastery, dedicated to St. Nicholas, the patron of mariners, nestles in a sheltered nook. It is a graceful feeling which has often induced men, both in ancient and in modern times, to cover with a temple or a church the cliffs of their native land. The temple of the Leucadian Apollo, and that of Athene on Sunium, are but the forerunners of such shrines as the chapels of Our Lady above Honfleur and Marseilles, whence the "Star of the Sea" guides the sailor from afar to his home, and recalls his wandering thoughts to that other haven which awaits him when the storms and troubles of life shall have passed away. A broken white cliff, rising on one side perpendically from the sea to the height of at least 200 ft., and sloping precipitously into it on the other, is the "ancient mount" beneath whose shadow Childe Harold "saw the evening star above Leucadia's far-projecting rock of woe." Its summit is strewn with fragments of ancient pottery, glass, and hewn stones, the relics of the temple of Apollo; and the coins discovered on the spot generally bear a harp in honour of "the God of to that from Karus, described above. The ancient associations of the spot form its chief charm. At the annual festival of Apollo it was the custom to cast down a criminal from this headland into the sea; to break his fall birds of various kinds were attached to him, and if he reached the water uninjured there were boats ready to pick him up (Strabo, x.; Cicero, Tusc., iv. 18; Ovid, Heroid., Ep. xv. 165). This appears to have been a kind of ordeal, or rather an expiatory rite; and it gave origin to the famous Istory that lovers leaped from this rock in order to seek relief from the pangs of love, as Sappho when enamoured of Phaon. That well-known legend, which vanishes at the first approach of criticism, is prettily set forth by Moore in his Evenings in Greece' : "The very spot where Sappho sung Her swan-like music, ere she sprung On the island there is too little cover to furnish any quantity of game; but in Acarnania magnificent sport may be enjoyed in a magnificent country. During an easy excursion from Fort Santa Maura there may be found reddeer, fallow-deer, roe, wolves, jackals, &c., as well as an abundance of woodcocks, and every kind of wild fowl, from pelicans to jacksnipes. The best places to land at are Saltoná and Encheleovivari (Εγχελεοβιβάρι, ἐγχελεύς, vivarium, i. e. eel-pond), which are only a short row across the lagoons. Farther to the southward, and nearly opposite to Ithaca, there is good shooting near the bay of Tragamesti, and at the mouth of the Achelous. Unless the traveller should intend to make a tour in Albania, he ought by no means to omit visiting, while in this island, the Turkish town of Prevesa, and the ruins of Nicopolis, about 3 m. from it. With favourable weather, and a good boat, this excursion can easily be made in a few hours; going and returning the same day. It the neighbouring islands, and from the mainland of Greece, by whom it was repeopled. Here, therefore, all our recollections are concentrated around the heroic age; every hill and rock, every fountain and olive-grove, breathes Homer and the 'Odyssey;' and we are transplanted by a sudden leap over a hundred generations to the most brilliant period of Greek chivalry and song. is only 9 m. by sea from Fort Santa | tant of privileges offered by the VeneMaura to Prevesa. In the West of tian Government to the settlers from Europe, though there are distinct languages in different states, yet the traveller will observe generally only small and progressive. varieties of customs and dress. But here the scene is suddenly shifted, and there are presented to his eyes at once many of those appendages of Oriental character, manners, and landscape, by which Englishmen perhaps owing to their early knowledge of the Bible-are so powerfully attracted. From the habits Like so many other names of classiof civilized life the English traveller cal geography, Ithaca was said to be who crosses to Prevesa is immediately derived from a chieftain of primitive introduced into the solemn stillness times called Ithacus, who is menof the East. The sedate and bearded tioned by Homer (Od., xviii. 207). Ottoman, veiled women, latticed The measurement of the island, as harems, are around him; and the given by Strabo (x. 2), is very wide of Albanian mountaineers, with their the truth; its extreme length from singular stateliness of carriage, and arrayed in the most picturesque costume of the world. There too is the fantastic tracery of the mosque, and the tall slender minaret from which the Imaum prays with his face to Mecca. 5. ITHACA. N. to S. is really about 17 m.; its greatest breadth does not exceed 4. It may be regarded in fact as a single narrow ridge of limestone rock, everywhere rising into rugged hills, of which the chief is the mountain of Anoge (Avwyn), in shape and size not unlike Benlomond-towering over the N. shore of the great harbour. This, as being the highest and greatest mountain in the island, is, of course, identified with the "Neritos ardua saxis" of Colonel Mure has remarked that Virgil (Æn., iii. 271), and the Nipthere is, perhaps, no spot in the world Tov eivoriquλλov of Homer (Od., ix. where the influence of classical asso-21), although the forests which once ciations is so lively or so pure as in the island of Ithaca. The little rock retired into obscurity immediately after the age of its great mythological warrior and of his poet, and so it has remained for nigh 3000 years. Unlike many other places of ancient fame, it is indebted for no part of its interest to more recent distinctions, or to the rival associations of modern history-so much as the name of Ithaca scarcely occurs in the page of any writer of historical ages, unless with reference to its poetical celebrity. Indeed, in A.D. 1504, it was nearly, if not quite uninhabited, having been depopulated by the incursions of corsairs, and during the fury of the wars waged between the Turks and the Christians; and record is still ex "waved their leaves" on its sides have now disappeared. That fact is the reason why rain and dew are not so common here now as they were in the poet's time; and why the island no longer abounds in hogs fattening upon acorns, and guarded by “godlike swineherds"-successors of Eumæus. In all other points Homer's descriptions are still as accurate in Ithaca as they are elsewhere-proving him to be the great father of History and Topography as well as of Poetry. His verses present a perfect picture of the island as it now appears :— Ἐν δ ̓ Ἰθάκῃ οὔτ ̓ ἄρ ̓ δρόμοι εὐρέες οὔτε τι λειμών· Αἰγίβοτος καὶ μᾶλλον ἐπήρατος ἱππου βότοιο Οὐ γάρ τις νήσων ἱππήλατος οὐδ ̓ εὐ- | by Ulysses, have puzzled all the comλείμων Αἳ θ ̓ ἁλὶ κεκλίαται· Ιθάκη δέ τε καὶ περὶ πασέων. (Od., iv. 603. Cf. also Od., xiii. 242.) mentators, both ancient and modern :Αὐτὴ δὲ χθαμαλὴ πανυπέρτατη εἶν ἁλὶ (Vide Nitzsch. Cf. also Od., x. Strabo (x. 2) discusses the 196). passage, and perhaps his explanation is the most satisfactory of any. He supposes that by the epithet x@auan the poet intended to express how Ithaca The general aspect is one of rugged-lies under, as it were, the neighbouring ness and sterility; it can hardly be mountains of Acarnania; while by that said that there are a hundred yards of of Tavuπeρтárn he meant to denote its continuous level ground in the whole position at the extremity of the group island; which warrants the expression of islands formed by Zacynthus, Ceof Cicero that Ulysses loved his country phallenia, and the Echinades. For "not because it was broad, but because another explanation see Wordsworth's it was his own." Nevertheless the Grecce.' scenery is rendered striking by the bold The whole population of the island and broken outline of the mountains amounts to about 13,000. It is divided and cliffs indented by numerous small officially into 4 districts. The inhabitharbours and creeks, the Auéves á- ants are extremely laborious both by Vopuo of the Odyssey' (xiii. 193). land and sea, cultivating with patient And Ithaca is not without scenes of a industry the light and scanty soil of softer character-in the cultivated de- their island, and maintaining at the clivities of the ridges, and in the opensame time a considerable part of the ing out towards the sea of many narrow coasting trade of Greece, as well as ravines, where the water is fringed of the general carrying commerce of with feathery woods of olives, oranges, the Mediterranean and the Euxine. and almond-trees, and the slopes are Almost every family possesses a few clothed with vineyards, or with ever-roods of land of its own, as well as a green copses of myrtle, cypress, arbutus, mastic, oleander, that beautiful rhododaphne or rose-laurel of the ancients, and all the aromatic shrubs of the East. Here and there too among the rocks little green lawns glitter gaily with a thousand wild flowers. The climate of Ithaca is very healthy, and its inhabitants are famous for their longevity. So it is from no empty patriotism that Ulysses says of his fatherland, Τρηχεῖ ̓ ἀλλ ̓ ἀγαθὴ κουροτρόφος· οὗτοι ἔγωγε shores; And none, ah! none so lovely to my sight, (Od., ix. 27). The lines immediately share in one or more of the large and excellent ships which belong to their port, and are continually built and fitted out there. If we call to mind that Ulysses, with the whole force of the neighbouring islands of Cephallenia and Zacynthus, only mustered 12 galleys as his contingent to the Trojan expedition, it must be admitted that Ithaca has no reason to complain of any falling off in her naval establishment since the heroic age. (I., ii. 631, 637.) The late Earl of Guilford, who founded the Ionian University, had intended, if insuperable difficulties had not been thrown in his way, to establish that institution in Ithaca. Here -amid mountains and rocks hallowed by a thousand memories-the scholar might have delighted his hours of leisure with the fair visions of Greek hand there is no evidence to determine whether the agricultural slaves were exterminated by the barbarian invaders of the Hellenic soil, or were absorbed into the mass of the Sclavonian or Byzantine population. These questions prove how uncertain all inquiries into the direct affiliation of the modern Greeks must be. Of what value is the oldest genealogic tree, if a single generation be omitted in the middle? "The gospel and the laws of Justinian blended all classes of citizens into one mass, and facilitated the acquisition of the boon of freedom by every Christian slave. But poetry and philosophy, for which the summer stillness of a Grecian sky appears a natural and congenial accompaniment. There is in Ithaca, as in the other Ionian islands, a good secondary, or grammar school, supported by Government; and in which ancient Greek, mathematics, history, geography, Italian, and English are taught. Primary schools also have been established in the chief villages. There are very few peasants who do not possess at least the rudiments of a good education; and, along with all the courtesy and good humour, they have even more than their share of the usual ready tact and cleverness (ayxívola) of the lower orders through- a Christian church which was neither out Greece. The higher classes re- Greek nor Roman arose and created semble those of the neighbouring to itself a separate power under the islands. Among the Ithacans, as wher-name of Orthodox, forming à partnerever else in Greece there is little ad-ship with the imperial authority, and mixture of Venetian, Albanian, or acquired a power greater than any other foreign blood-the traveller will generally remark that Hellenic cast of features so familiar from ancient statues and coins. With reference to the claims of the Greeks to pure Hellenic descent, "Two questions," says Mr. Finlay, "still admit of doubt and discussion. The one relates to the number of the slave population employed in agriculture when Greece was in its most flourishing condition, and the other, to the proportions in which the free population and the slaves were diminished in the general depopulation of the country that preceded the Sclavonian emigration. A large proportion of the slaves employed in agriculture were of foreign origin as we know from the enormous extent of the slave-trade. We nationality could have conferred. A social organization at variance with all the prejudices of ancient private and political life was framed, and the consequence was that the change created a new people. Such seems to be the origin of the modern Greeks.” -Mediæval Greece,' chap. i. p. 7. Revised Edition. The three principal clans into which the Ithacans are divided are called Petalas, Karabias, and Dendrinos. Nearly all the chief families of the island either bear these names, or, wherever branches of them have taken other appellations, the new patronymics were generally derived from some sobriquet applied to one of their ancestors. For instance, the family of Zabos is a principal branch of the Petalades, and came to be designated by its present name because its immediate founder had that epithet (Caẞós, i.e. awkward) given to him. Numerous parallel examples occur in the genealogies of the clans of Ireland and Scotland. know also that under the domination of the Romans the higher classes of Greece either died out or lost their nationality by adopting the names and assuming the manners of Roman citizens. It seems therefore probable that pure Hellenic blood began to be greatly adulterated about the time when the Among the natives of Ithaca there ancient dialects fell into disuse. Still is no other but the national religion. there can be no doubt that the Greek The carved woodwork in the altarpopulation retired before the Scla- screen of the cathedral is worth a vonian emigration, and did not mingle visit; but none of the churches are with the intruders; but on the other remarkable for architectural spl |