catching now and then a glimpse of the bay, following the crest of the ridge into the valley beyond.  On one of the undulations of the path we passed over the site of an ancient city, evidenced only by that most sure sign, a soil thickly covered with potsherds.  No classic writer mentions it, no inscription gives it a name; perhaps the careless traveler would pass without a suspicion that he was treading on the street, or forum, or temple of a once thriving town.  Striking soon into the carriage-road from Napoli to Tripolitza, and descending into a charming little valley with the euphonious name of Achladhokamvo, we were not sorry to find a khan, and take up our quarters for the night.  We found the family sitting on the floor around a fire blazing on a hearth in the middle of a room, and here we placed ourselves, watching the women spinning and Dhemetri making his preparations for supper.  Out of the afore-mentioned basket quickly came all the afore-mentioned articles.  A lamb was killed, and shortly an excellent supper was served up to us.  Soon the guest-chamber was announced to be ready for us, a large open room having a fire at one end, and containing our beds, spread on the floor, a cricket three inches high, that served as a table, two windows closed by shutters instead of glass, and a large quantity of smoke.

The next morning a steep and picturesque path over Mount Parthenion—­the same path, I suppose, on which Phidippides had his well-known interview with the god Pan—­brought us to Arcadia.  And at the name of Arcadia let not the fond mind revert to scenes of pastoral innocence and enjoyment, such as poets and artists love to paint—­a lawn of ever-fresh verdure shaded by the sturdy oak and wide-spreading beech, watered by never-failing springs, swains and maidens innocent as the sheep they tend, dancing on the green sward to the music of the pipe, and snowy mountains in the distance lending repose and majesty to the scene.  Nothing of this picture is realized by the Arcadia of to-day, but the snowy mountains, and they, indeed, are all around and near.  No, let your dream of Arcadia he something like this:  A bare, open plain, three thousand feet above the level of the sea, fenced in on every side by snow-topped mountains, and swept incessantly by cold winds, the sky heavy with clouds, the ground sown with numberless stones, with here and there a bunch of hungry-looking grass pushing itself feebly up among them.  Not a tree do you behold, hardly a shrub.  You come to a river—­it is a broad, waterless bed of cobble-stones and gravel, only differing from the dry land in being less mixed with dirt, and wholly, instead of partly, destitute of vegetation.  But your eye falls at last on a sheet of water—­there is surely a placid lake giving beauty and fertility to its neighborhood.  No, it is a katavothron, or chasm, in which the accumulated waters of the plain disappear.  For as these Arcadian valleys are so shut in by mountains as to leave no natural egress