Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/123

Rh surface till there was nothing left. Imagine the pages of ancient history ground away to make colours wherewith to daub a wretched image of the Panagia! However, I found a very intelligent Greek monk acting as schoolmaster, who had collected a number of fragments of inscriptions in his house. He was a fair scholar, and had studied at Athens. I was astonished to find such a man in so wild a place; a monk thus enlightened by education is a rare phenomenon in this part of the Levant. He took me to see the Acropolis of Ereso, of which the situation is most striking. It crowns the summit of a rock rising straight out of the sea. An old Genoese castle, called Pateo Castro, now occupies the site of the Hellenic citadel.

At the west end of the castle is part of an Hellenic wall built of squared blocks, the inside filled with well-compacted rubble.

In the same part of the castle is a tunnel-roofed cistern which seems mediæval.

At the foot of the Acropolis, on the E. side, is a piece of ancient wall, composed partly of polygonal, partly of isodomous blocks, built on the rock, which is cut in beds to receive it. One piece of this wall is 27 feet in length, its present height is 8 feet, but the upper courses have been removed. Another piece, a few feet distant, is 18 feet 8 inches in length, and a third, 7 feet 6 inches. On the W. side of the base of the Acropolis is the mouth of a square well, the sides of which are formed of good Hellenic masonry. The fields on the N. side are strewn with fragments of ancient pottery. Many columns