Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/127

Rh our eyes from the promise it gave of abundance of milk and cream, such as Polyphemos offered and Galatea rejected. In this hope we were not disappointed. Our host, a jolly old Greek primate, gave us a delicious supper of homely but choice fare. Here we first tasted the protogala, or first milk aft-er the birth of the lamb. It is excessively thick, with a taste and consistency like that of Devonshire cream. The bread at Ereso is also excellent. It seems to have been highly esteemed in antiquity, for an old Greek poet, Archestratos, who wrote an epic poem on the art of cookery, says that, if the gods eat bread, it is to Breso that they would send Hermes to buy it.$41$

"We found in Ereso and the adjoining villages simpler manners and a more freehanded hospitality than anpvhere else in Mytilene. The women would be perfect studies for a painter. On festivals, they all go to church with white veils edged with a deep crimson border, which fall to the waist. They reminded me of the figures on Greek vases; and the veil is doubtless a relic of ancient costume.

We returned home from Ereso along the shore, over a road which can only be described as a rocky ladder, a goat-path, worn by dint of thoroughfare into a mule-path, along which the iron-shod hoofs of these persevering creatures have probably trod for 2,000 years.

In the middle of our journey, we came to a strange outlandish village called Mesotopo, or Half-way House. Here we halted for the night, and found a large party seated round a blazing hearth, over an