CHAPTER XIX MESSENIA “A land where fruit trees blossom, myriad fountains flow And flocks and herds are grazing in the meadows fair. Nor wintry are the winds of winter, nor too near The flaming Sun comes driving in his four-horse car.” EURIPIDES, Fragment of the _Cresphontes_. Telemachus, in search of his father, sailed down the western coast of the Peloponnesus, landed at “sandy Pylos,” the home of Nestor, and by this old friend was sent across country to Menelaus at Lacedæmon. The long drive was broken by a night at Pheræ. According to a tradition that still has its supporters the modern site of Pylos is Navarino, in the centre of the western coast of Messenia, while Pheræ is represented by Kalamata, on the northeastern shore of the Messenian Gulf. A growing tendency to push Nestor’s realm further up the coast, out of Messenia, and to place Pheræ in Arcadia is due, in part, to the discrepancy between the lot of modern travellers on their way from Kalamata to Sparta and that of the two young princes of the Homeric story. Telemachus and the son of Nestor mounted an inlaid chariot at early dawn, their two horses, touched lightly by the whip, flew eagerly onward, and at sunset, as all the ways were darkening, the wheat-bearing plain of Lacedæmon opened before their eyes. Moderns, whether merchants or sightseers, must spend an equally long or longer day in riding on mules or plodding horses over the difficult paths of Mount Taygetus, whose massive bulk forms an almost impenetrable barrier between Messenia and Laconia. The narrow bridle paths of the Gorge of the Nedon, which is the trade route, and the savage beauty of the Langada Gorge exclude highways for royal cars and on-rushing steeds. Whether or no Kalamata was once an insignificant way-station between two princely domains, it is now one of the most prosperous towns of the new nation, separated from Athens only by a day’s ride in an express train, and the natural starting point for excursions in Messenia.