GREECE.

FROM Malta I took shipping, in the French steamship of war Leonidas, for the Archipelago. From distress of weather we were obliged to put into the Island of Milo. From thence we passed on to Syra.

Syra is, like scores of the other islands in the Archipelago, a barren and forbidding rock, almost destitute of the least cultivation, having on the harbour side two small, curious Greek towns, the old and the new; the former on the shore, the latter on the side of the mountain, and reaching near to the top. The houses are small, white stone edifices, built without order or regularity, or any reference to streets for carriages, most of them being only intended for the passing of mules and human pedestrians. Those islands which are inhabited, and have clusters of houses, are cheering as you approach them from the dreary monotony of the watery waste. Syra is now made of some importance by the French and Austrian steamers, which meet here from various points of the Mediterranean and the Adriatic.

On our arrival at Syra, we found there would not be any conveyance to Athens for seven days, as the regular boat had left the evening before. Our voyage from Malta was retarded by most tempestuous weather, and we had been compelled to put into the Island of Milo for shelter from the storm. A Greek prince who came on with us from Malta being as anxious as ourselves to get on to Athens, undertook to procure for that purpose a suitable conveyance for us all. He accordingly went on shore at Syra with that intent, and what did he get?

An open boat, which, however, he assured me was perfectly safe, and a usual conveyance.

When I arrived by the side of her from our steamer, I positively refused to go; but his confidence and the willingness of my companions made me yield, though contrary to my better judgment. The wind, however, being fair, all seemed to hope for a speedy trip. In we all got with our baggage, and in a few moments were under full sail out of the harbour of Syra. The boat was literally crammed, what with my companions and my servant Henry, the prince and his servant, three young Italians with their two servants, also on their way to visit Greece. Together with those we have enumerated, there were also thirteen Greek passengers, including four women. Such confusion, such utter want of comfort, I never saw or experienced, and did not expect to find at my time of life. Boxes, trunks, portmanteaus, and the entire effects of one or two whole Greek families on board, were rolling and tumbling about in every direction, so that there was no room to sit down, and scarcely any to stand.

In this condition we started at two P.M., and in this landed at the Piræus, the port of Athens, the next after- . noon about five, having passed the night in the most uncomfortable manner, without anything to sleep upon but the heaps of luggage, and with the starry canopy for our roof; the weather fortunately proving favourable until half an hour before we landed, when it commenced pouring in torrents. The boat proved to be a good sailer and safe. But the filthy and wretched condition of the Greeks on board, and our close proximity to them, created an atmosphere that not even the fragrant gales of "Araby the blest" would have rendered endurable.

In passing from the Egean Sea to the narrow strait that leads to the capacious harbour of the Piræus, we have the memorable battle scene near Salamis on the left, and the tomb of Themistocles on the right.

After encountering for some time in our open caique a heavy rain, which drenched ourselves and baggage, we stepped ashore at the quay of the ancient Piræus, once itself a great city and the principal seaport of Athens, and abounding in temples, porticoes, arsenals, &c., now a small village, showing only some slight evidences of a revival of trade, which consists principally of fruit, wine, and olives from the islands of the Levant.

At the Piræus we succeeded in getting a crazy old English vehicle of the omnibus species, into which we stowed baggage and all, including, besides myself, three others of my own countrymen and my faithful German servant Henry; which latter was such a perfect polyglot, speaking eight or nine languages, that he never was fairly brought up, as the sailors say, with a round turn, till he landed in the country of Epaminondas and Demosthenes. Here he encountered the modern Greek, which he pronounced the most ferocious language he had ever heard, and infinitely more formidable and jawbreaking than his own Teutonic tongue, or even the Russian, with which he was perfectly familiar. I was very much amused afterward, from time to time, in the interior of Greece, with his altercations with the agoates, or men who conduct the baggage-horses. Understanding only now and then a straggling word which they had caught of Italian, he was in a state of great vexation and apprehension for his life, as he well might be from their savage and vindictive features. Repeatedly in our journeyings about he would ride up to me in great agitation, and declare that they were going to as

sassinate him. I confess that I myself often felt uneasy, but less from them than from the parties whom we met in the lonely mountain passes, and who appeared to be straggling and loitering about for no other purpose than depredation.

Premising this episodial tribute to our worthy equery, we proceed in our narrative. We started in our omnibus, which, by-the-by, was not dissimilar to a Long Island stage of the olden time, and passing over a beautiful macadamized road, constructed by the Bavarian soldiers on the former ancient via which led from the Piræus, we arrived, after a distance of about three miles, to the city of Athens, and were conducted to the Hotel de France. This is a hotel, indeed, but only an apology for one, the accommodations being wretched.

As we were now fairly within the domain of the most consecrated classic land, in every sense, that ever existed, and as we were favoured with the opportunity to make a more particular examination of its celebrated monuments than those of any other we visited, we shall be excused for dwelling upon them in some detail. Not deeming that a theme so delightful can ever tire, however often revived, and not doubting that my own countrymen will perhaps be the more gratified with the cursory remarks and reflections I may have to make upon what fell under my own eye, since very few, if any Americans, perhaps, have ever travelled as extensively in Greece as myself, and none certainly under more favourable auspices to see and learn all that there is to be known.

Though not pretending to any very nice or exact antiquarian knowledge, I can scarcely in justice travel through such a country without discoursing of that hallowed Greece, where every foot of ground almost, and

every pointed crag, deep ravine, dell, grotto, grove, and gushing brook, it may be said, has been embalmed in fable or heroic verse, and uttered by every tongue and engraved on every memory for the last 2000 years. First, then, of that ancient port of Piræus, and afterward of the walls which connect the port with Athens. Athens had three harbours closely adjoining each other: the principal or Piræus; the next to the east, called Munychia; and, lastly, and the smallest and the farthest east, the Phalerus.

The Piræus was, in fact, a great city, with its superb marble basins, piers, and quays, one of which the gallant naval captain and general, Themistocles, the conqueror of the Persian fleet at Salamis, appropriately selected for an excavation for his tomb. Around the circuit of the harbour were magnificent armories and arsenals, which, with the walls to Athens, were all destroyed by Lysander, on the reduction of Attica, at the termination of the Peloponnesian war. Within the harbour could be moored 300 triremes, and the city boasted of its gorgeous temples, porticoes, theatres, statues, &c. The two walls to Athens were each about 40 stadia long and 40 cubits high, built externally with immense blocks of stone without cement, but the unhewn stones of the interior clamped with lead and iron, and wide enough on the top to afford a double carriage track. They were flanked by square or semicircular towers for defence. When Athens became overpopulated these towers were inhabited. One of the walls was erected by Pericles, the other by Themistocles.

To the recently-published and learned work on ancient Athens, by my excellent friend Mr. PITTAKYS, a Greek savant and native of that city, of whom I shall speak more particularly hereafter, we are indebted for a vast amount of new, and curious, and most valuable in