Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/289

Rh The sculpture seems of the Roman period, and is executed in white marble. It was found in a field near the church.$113$

Between Villa Nova and Trianda is the village of Kremastò, where there is a castle built by the Knights with the arms of the Grand Master Fabrizio del Carretto. Here is a fine new church with a spacious courtyard, and small rooms all round it for the recep- tion of visitors at the great feast or Panegyris, as at Zambika. (See ante, p. 183.) The interior of the church is richly decorated in the gaudy style which the Greeks are so fond of in their modern churches. At the distance of about five minutes from Kremasto, on the road to Rhodes, I noticed on the left several fragments of columns of a late period, which probably mark the site of an ancient church.

As far as I have yet seen, Rhodes is very inferior in scenery to Mytilene. The mountains are lumpish in form. The pine forests are much disfigured by clearings and thinnings; the peasants burn patches here and there, and sow corn. The cultivation in the more mountainous and central parts of the island is very rude, and the population scanty, but comfortably lodged, clothed, and fed. Here and there the barrenness of the district is relieved by a little verdure, where abundance of water has produced a luxuriant growth of fig and other fruit-trees. During this journey we saw great numbers of red-legged partridges; they ran on before us, and would not get up without being actually fired into. I saw sometimes packs of about sixty birds get up in a cloud. The peasants here never fire at them on the wing, but