Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/65

 44 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. by an accumulation of leaves and twigs. There are times however when all human efforts are unavailing ; when for example the trunk of a tree or a huge stone has got in the water-course. Then, for a whole season, sometimes for years, the waters slowly but steadily ascend ; there is no telling what might happen did not their tremendous pressure work the desired remedy, by sweeping away the obstruction one fine morning. Then the sheet of water begins to sink, and the submerged cornfields gradually reappear. But new troubles are in store. Land boundaries have either been displaced or lie buried under loam and gravel, where attempts are made to discover them ; the recollections of the bystanders are appealed to, but these are often vague and made to serve personal interests. When after much wrangling the contending parties have agreed to some sort of arrangement, they set to clearing the ground of the mud and stones with which it is overlaid, and drains are dug to facilitate the drying up of the sodden earth. At the time of my visit to the hamlet of Phonia, its inhabitants were engaged in a very similar job to that described above. The rising of the lake had been going on for close upon twenty years ; but a week before our arrival the aperture of the conduit had suddenly been cleared, when the Ladon, which before was no more than a runlet, was suddenly turned into an impetuous stream, whilst the lake level was fast sinking. As we listened to the villagers' story, and what this lucky accident meant to them, the elders, surrounded by a large noisy crowd, walked along the muddy fringe left by the flood, where each was intent upon finding out his own ground-plot. The elders meanwhile heard all the parties, and tried to settle amicably the disputes brought for their arbitration. Even on spots where the waters were not imprisoned within rocky barriers, man's interference was needed in many ways, either to stem them in or direct their flow. Embankments had to be constructed at those points of the rivers where they otherwise would overflow fertile tracts ; whilst swamps left between mountains and sea, in front of the sandy and pebbly delta formed by the torrents, were drained. Vainly did corn struggle to grow amidst thick jungles of reeds and bulrushes, out of which arose marsh effluvia which played great havoc among the surrounding population. Hence tradition attributed