Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/121

Rh leave of our hosts. The Greeks will not accept money for this sort of hospitality, but their servants and children do not object to a little bakshish; so the expense of board and lodging comes to about the same as at an inn. November 10, 1852.

just returned from a very interesting excursion in the western part of the island, the object of which was to visit Eresos, now Ereso, the birthplace of the celebrated Sappho, and which is on the S.W. coast of Mytilene. This route gave me an opportunity of studying the peculiar configuration of the island, which gives a great variety of scenery. On the S.W. side—that is, on the side most distant from the opposite Asiatic coast—are the two vast harbours, or rather gulfs, Olivieri and Kalloni, which I have already mentioned, and which run so far inland as to leave a very narrow isthmus in the middle of the island. At the head of each of these gulfs is a level plain formed by alluvial deposit, fertile, but marshy, and full of malaria. Between these two gulfs the hills rise very abruptly, forming a rocky isthmus, of which the part I have traversed contains forests of the pitch-pine, where are wild deer. In these pine forests the air, impregnated with the aroma of the pitch, is most refreshing.

The first day I proceeded from Mytilene to