Of this, the passage through the valley of Enneochoria (the nine villages) will remain in my memory as the most delightful pastoral landscape I have ever seen, and the ideal of Greek pastoral poetry.  A beautiful brook, to the perennial flow of whose waters the abundant water-cresses testified, which is a very rare thing in an Aegean scene, meandered amongst mingled sycamores and olives, and gave freshness to glades where the sheep fed under the keepership of the antique-mannered shepherd lads and lasses; and in the opening of the bordering trees we saw the far-off and arid mountains, rugged and picturesque peaks.  The Cretan summer for three or four months is rainless, and a valley where the vegetation is fed by the springs so abundantly as to sustain a perpetual flora is rarely to be met in one’s travels there.  I saw many new flowers there, and amongst them a perfectly white primrose, in every other respect like the common flower of the English hedgerows.  The scenery had that attractive aspect which can be found only where immemorial culture, without excessive invasion of the axe, has left nature in the undiminished possession of her chief beauties, without a trace of the savage wildness—­a nature which hints at art.  It was classic without being formal, but no description can give an idea of the charm of it in contrast with the general aridity of the Cretan landscape.

As we rode through the villages we found the population animated by that joyous hospitality which belongs to an antique tradition, to which a stranger guest is something which the gods have sent, and sent rarely so that no tourist weariness had worn out the welcome.  Something of the welcome was, no doubt, due to the reputation I had acquired in former times as a friend of the Christians of the island, but I found that in Crete, where the invasion of the foreign element had been at a minimum and the people were most conservative, ancient usages and ancient hospitality had retained all their force, as, to a lesser extent, I had found them in the Peloponnesus, while in continental Greece I never found hospitality in any form.  The Cretans are probably the purest remnant of the antique race which resulted from the mixture of Pelasgian, Dorian, Achaian, Ionian, and the best representative of the antique intellect.

It was almost impossible to travel in the interior of the island, where the Christian element still held its own unmixed, without coming in contact with remnants of the most ancient superstitions.  In one place my guide pointed out to me a cave where Janni the shepherd one day gathered his sheep in the midday heats to fiddle to them, when there came out of the sea a band of Nereids, who begged him to play for their dancing.  Janni obeyed and lost his heart to one of the sea damsels, and, sorely smitten, went to a wise woman to know what he should do to win her, and was told that he must boldly seize her in the whirl of the dance and hold her, no matter what happened.  He