I have already spoken (p. 154) of the position of the pass of Daphne, and how it leads the traveller over the ridge which separates the plain of the Kephissus from the Thriasian plain. I have also spoken at length of the country about the Kephissus, with its olive woods and its nightingales. When we go through the pass of Daphne—of its monastery I shall speak in another chapter—a perfectly new view opens before us. We see under us the Thriasian plain, well covered with ripening corn and other crops; we see at the far side of the crescent-shaped bay the remains of Eleusis. Behind it, and all round to the right up to where we stand, is an amphitheatre of hills—the spurs of Mount Parnes, which from Phyle reach due south down to where we stand, and due west to the inland of the Thriasian plain, till they meet and are confounded with the slopes of Cithæron, which extend for miles away behind Eleusis. On the sea-side, to our left, lies the island of Salamis, so near the coast that the sea seems a calm inland lake, lying tortuously between the hills. Many points of Greek history become plain to us by this view. We see how true was the epithet “rocky Salamis,” for the island, though it looks very insignificant on our maps, contains lofty mountains, with very bare and rocky sides. The student of Greek geography in maps should note this feature. Thus, Ithaca on the map does not suggest the real Ithaca, which from most points looks like a high and steep mountain standing out of the sea. We begin also to see how Salamis was equally _convenient_ (as the Irish say) to both Megara and Attica, if we consider that Eleusis was strictly a part of Attica. The harbor of the Peiræus, for example, would be quite useless if an enemy were watching it from Salamis. But we also come to see the sense of the old legend, that Eleusis had originally a separate king or government from that of Athens, and that the two cities once carried on war against each other. The towns are but a few miles apart; but their respective plains are so distinctly and completely separated by the pass of Daphne, that not one acre of the territory of Eleusis can be seen from Athens, nor of Athens from Eleusis. So also, lastly, we come to feel how natural is the remark of Thucydides, that the population of Athens, when the Lacedæmonians invaded Attica, and came no farther than the Thriasian plain, did not feel the terrors of a hostile invasion, as the enemy was not in sight; but when he crossed the pass, and began to ravage Acharnæ and the vale of Kephissus, then indeed, though Eleusis was just as near, and just as much their own, they felt the reality of the invasion, and were for the first time deeply dejected. This is a good example of that combined farness and nearness which is so characteristic about most neighboring cities in Greece. [Illustration: Salamis from Across the Bay]