Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/120

92 ever travelled on; but Mytilene mules are capable of crawling up any path where a man can climb without requiring the assistance of his hands. After passing through some very picturesque well-wooded ravines near Ayasso, we came to very high ground covered with a forest of the pitch-pine, which produces a good deal of pitch every year. The average quantity of this article exported from the whole island is about 330 tons. The fallow deer runs wild in these forests.

After passing through this forest, we came upon the vast and silent harbour of Kalloni, which reposes like an inland lake within an amphitheatre of mountains, and with hardly a sail to enliven its surface. This port is entered by a narrow strait called in antiquity the Euripus of Pyrrha.

On arriving at our destination, we found that the Thaumata did not amount to very much, though there was enough to indicate the site of an ancient city. Massive foundations running into the sea are probably the remains of an ancient mole to protect the harbour. On a rocky hill overlooking the shore are steps and seats cut in the rock, a sure sign that the Greeks have been there. Here then was probably an acropolis with temples.$38$ On the shore of the Gulf of Kalloni, at the distance of three-quarters of an hour to the S.E. of Pyrrha, is a place which still retains the Hellenic name of Temenos. Here are ancient foundations; the ground is strewn with fragments of red pottery. We returned in the evening to Ayasso, and home again in the morning, having taken an affectionate