Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/138

110 Liman. Near Anoiktò is a village called Mariantliyia, where are ancient fragments. Immediately to the S. of this the land bends in, forming a bay; it will be seen by the chart that this is the narrowest part of the neck of land between the Gulf of Kalloni and the N.E. coast. Somewhere here then must have stood Ægiros, placed by Strabo on this coast where the isthmus was narrowest. The fragments which I noticed at Anoiktò may belong to this place, though Strabo speaks of it as only a village—.$47$

From Mandamatha we went to Molivo, the site of the ancient Methymna. Here I presented my credentials from the Governor to an aga, who could not read,—a retired Janissary. He sat turning the letter different ways in despair. I could talk no Turkish, and had no dragoman with me; luckily I had a letter for the Greek schoolmaster of the town, a pleasant, well-educated person, who gave us a very hospitable welcome. The Greek schoolmasters are always the most intelligent persons in the villages: their education at Syra or Athens gives them some glimmering of European ideas. He showed me three inscriptions, which took me a whole day to decipher; one of them was an alliance between the Romans and Methymnæans, but very mutilated: these I afterwards foimd to be unpublished.$48$ I could hear of no coins in the place. There is a curious little harbour, what the ancient geographers called a, or "closed port," evidently unchanged from antiquity, with an ancient mole, and the ships crowded together like little boats. I went over the fortress, which