After some hours’ drive we reached a grassy dell, shaded by large plane-trees, where a lonely little public-house—if I may so call it—of this construction invited us to stop for watering the horses, and inspecting more closely the owner. There was the usual supply of such places—red and white wine in small casks, excellent fresh water, and _lucumia_, or Turkish delight. Not only had the owner his belt full of knives and pistols, but there was hanging up in a sort of rack a most picturesque collection of swords and guns—all made in Turkish fashion, with ornamented handles and stocks, and looking as if they might be more dangerous to the sportsman than to his game. While we were being served by this wild-looking man, in this suspicious place—in fact, it looked like the daily resort of bandits—his wife, a comely young woman, dressed in the usual dull blue, red, and white, disappeared through the back way, and hid herself among the trees. This fear of being seen by strangers—no doubt caused by jealousy among men, and, possibly, by an Oriental tone in the country—is a striking feature through most parts of Greece. It is said to be a remnant of the Turkish influence, but seems to me to lie deeper, and to be even an echo of the old Greek days. The same feeling is prevalent in most parts of Sicily. In the towns there you seldom see ladies in the streets; and in the evenings, except when the play-going public is returning from the theatre, there are only men visible. After leaving this resting-place, about eleven in the morning, we did not meet a village, or even a single house till we had crossed Cithæron, after six in the evening, and descried the modern hamlet of Platæa on the slopes to our left. But once or twice through the day a string of four or five mules, with bright, richly striped rugs over their wooden saddles, and men dressed still more brightly sitting lady-fashion on them, were threading their way along the winding road. The tinkling of the mules’ bells and the wild Turkish chants of the men were a welcome break in the uniform stillness of the journey. The way becomes gradually wilder and steeper, though often descending to cross a shady valley, which opens to the right and left, in a long, narrow vista, and shows blue far-off hills of other mountain chains. One of these valleys was pointed out to us as Œnoe, an outlying deme of Attica, fortified in Periclean days, and which the Peloponnesian army attacked, as Thucydides tells us, and failed to take, on their invasion of Attica at the opening of the war. There are two or three strong square towers in this valley, close to the road, but not the least like any old Greek fort, and quite incapable of holding any garrison. The site is utterly unsuitable, and there seemed no remains of any walled town.