Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/126

98 the palladium of the little chapel; and between cupidity and fanaticism, I broke down in my attempt, and finding nothing to be done, beat an ignominious retreat, taking with me my yoke of oxen.

It may be not uninteresting to you to know what is the present aspect of the land which gave birth to Sappho. The country about Ereso is mountainous; in the valleys there is rich land abounding with corn and wine. No olives are grown here, and the inhabitants being forced to labour constantly for their bread, have more industrious habits than in the districts near Mytilene. The lowlands are not squeezed up into ravines as much as they are about Mytilene, but expand into small plains, so that there is more space and elbow-room in the landscape. In most parts of the island, I always feel pent up as it were in a rocky prison, from the want of level ground for exercise. The mountains are of considerable height, rising into most picturesque and abrupt forms. The rocky crags near the summits of these mountains are full of caverns and holes, the fastnesses of the eagle and the hawk, who are seen for ever wheeling in mid- air, watching for the partridge in the valleys below. The voice of Æolian minstrelsy is heard no more in the birthplace of Sappho, but the echoing hills resound with the cry of shepherds calling to each other, the bleating of new-born lambs, and the melodious tinkling of thousands of sheep-bells. The verdure at this season is as fresh and tender as that of the spring in England. This Theocritean landscape was all the more agreeable to