may be, they still retain the names which poetry has connected with all that is idyllic and peaceful. Alexis is one of the commonest. As our labourers had left us, there was nothing for it but to work ourselves. We were doing so and had just lit upon some beautiful caissons, when a man on drums horseback, Greek or Turk (they dress so much alike there is no distinguishing them), rode up accompanied by four Albanians all armed. He told us he was the owner of the land, and, although he was very civil about it, he forbade our digging any more. We asked him to eat with us, but being a fast day in the Greek Church, he declined. Finally, after writing to Andritzena, he left us. After so many objections being made to our excavations we felt it would be too dangerous to go on at present, and promised ourselves to come again next year in a stronger party and armed with more peremptory and explicit authority to dig, and in the meantime there was nothing to do but to get through our drawings and studies as quickly as we could. The uneasiness of our janissary Mahomet, since our camping out began, gave us serious doubts of his courage, and a plan was invented for testing it. This was to raise an alarm at night that we were attacked by klephts. Our Arcadian shepherds entered into the joke with surprising alacrity and kept it up well. Just after supper a cry was heard from the mountain above that robbers were near. In an instant we all sprang up, seized pistols and swords, and made a feint as though we would go up the hill. Our janissary, thunderstruck, was following, when we proposed that he should go on alone. But he would not do that. In the first place he was ill; in the next place, Would it not be better to go to Andritzena? He begged we might go to Andritzena." CHAPTER VIII ANDRITZENA-CARITZENA-MEGALOPOLIS-BENIGHTED "WE left the style and went down to Andritzena by a shorter road. In going up, the drivers, to be able to charge us more, had taken us round a longer way. Andritzena is not only beautiful in its situation, the people who live in it are charming. Everyone seemed to think it the proper thing to show some attention to the strangers. The girls-and some of them were very pretty-brought us each as a present a fruit of some kind, pears or figs, and did it in the prettiest and most engaging manner; so that we had more than we could carry home with us. Disinterested urbanity is so unusual a feature in Greek character that we were surprised, and I must confess that it was the only time such a thing ever occurred to us in Greece. The Turks tax these poor wretches unmercifully. To begin with, they have to pay the Government onefourth of their produce. Then there is the karatch or poll tax, which seems to be rather variable in amount, and the chrea or local tax levied for the local govern ment, which together make up about another fourth; so that the taxes amount to half the yearly produce. Of course the people complain. I can't tell you how often I have been asked 'When will the English come and deliver us from the Turks, who eat out our souls?' 'And why do they delay?' One Greek told me he prayed daily that the Franks might come; and while I am on the subject I may as well mention here, though it was said a few weeks later, when we were near Corinth, by a shepherd, 'I pray to God I may live to see the Morea filled with such Franks.' They like us better than they do the French, because they have heard from Zante and elsewhere that we treat our dependencies more honourably than they do. We were five days at Andritzena. Haller made drawings of the village, and I finished up my memoranda of Phigaleia. Besides that, as I thought we ought not to leave the neighbourhood without making a final effort to complete our explorations at the style, and that, the Pasha Veli being absent from the Morea, we might perhaps get leave from the Waiwode of Fanari, Foster and I rode over to see him. We found him exceedingly courteous, perfectly a man of the world; and although his house and the two old cushions in the corner of a dilapidated gallery on which he was propped when he received us did not bespeak great affluence, his manner was not that of a man to whom one could offer a bribe. He said he regretted very much having had to write the letter we had received forbidding us to go on digging, but that it was absolutely necessary that we should cease, and there was an end of the matter. At the same time he hoped there had been no expression in it to offend us. 'Veli,' said he, 'is very peremptory about no bouyuruldu or permission being given by anyone but himself; for he insists on knowing all about travellers who move about in his pashalik, and upon periodically inspecting them and their firman and approving it. The mere fact of my having allowed your party to remain ten days at Phigaleia, no matter whether you dug or not, was enough to ruin me; for these Albanians [that is, Ali Pasha and his sons] ask but few questions [listen to no excuses].' So we had to go back to Andritzena without having effected anything beyond seeing an Albanian Turkish wedding on our way. When we came upon them they were gorgeously dressed, playing the djerid and brandishing their swords. I never saw anything so picturesque. The party were on their way to fetch the bride from Fanari. They had an Albanian red and white banner, with a silk handkerchief tied to the top of it, which was the token sent by the bride to her lover as an invitation to him to come and fetch her. After sunset she is taken to his house on horseback, closely veiled. Hearing of some columns in an old castle not far off, as the account was a tolerably, rational one, I G |