As we ascended the long saddle of country which lies between Pentelicus and Hymettus, we came upon a fine olive-wood, with the same enormous stems which had already excited our wonder in the groves of Academe. Indeed, some of the stems in this wood were the largest we had seen, and made us think that they may have been there since the days when the olive oil of Attica was one of its most famous products, and its export was even forbidden. Even then there were ancient stumps—_μορίαι_, as they were called—which were sacred, and which no man who rented or bought the land might remove; a restriction which seems hard to us, but was not so in Greece, where corn grows freely in the shade of trees, and is even habitually planted in orchards. But at all events, these old, gnarled, hollowed stumps, with their tufts of branches starting from the pollarded trunk, are a really classical feature in the country, and deserve, therefore, a passing notice. When we had got well between the mountains a new scene unfolded itself. We began to see the famous old Euripus, with the mountains of Eubœa over against us; and down to the south, behind Hymettus, till we reach the extremity of Sunium, stretched a long tract of mountainous and barren country which never played a prominent part in history, but where a conical hill was pointed out to us as the site of the old deme Brauron. It is, indeed, surprising how little of Attica was ever celebrated. Close by the most famous city of the world are reaches of country which are as obscure to us as the wilds of Arcadia; and we may suspect that the shepherds who inhabited the _φελλέα_, or rocky pastures in the Attic hills, were not much superior to those whom we now meet herding their goats in the same region.