The road from Thebes to Lebadea (Livádia) leads along the foot of Helicon all the way—Helicon, which, like all celebrated Greek mountains, is not a summit, but a system of summits, or even a chain. Looking in the morning from the plain, the contrast of the dark Cithæron and the gentle sunny Helicon strikes the traveller again and again. After the ridge, or saddle, is passed which separates the plain of Thebes from that of Orchomenus, the richness of the soil increases, but the land becomes very swampy and low, for at every half-mile comes a clear silver river, tumbling from the slopes of Helicon on our left, crossing the road, and flowing to swell the waters of Lake Copais—a vast sheet with undefined edges, half-marsh, half-lake—which for centuries had no outlet to the sea, and which was only kept from covering all the plain by evaporation in the heats of summer. Great fields of sedge and rushes, giant reeds, and marsh plants unknown in colder countries, mark each river course as it nears the lake; and, as might be expected in this lonely fen country, all manner of insect life and all manner of amphibia haunt the sites of ancient culture. Innumerable dragon-flies, of the most brilliant colors, were flitting about the reeds, and lighting on the rich blades of grass which lay on the water’s surface; and now and then a daring frog would charge boldly at so great a prize, but retire again in fear when the fierce insect dashed against him in its impetuous start. Large land tortoises, with their high-arched shells, yellow and brown, and patterned like the section of a great honeycomb, went lazily along the moist banks, and close by the water, which they could not bear to touch. Their aquatic cousins, on the other hand, were not solitary in habit, but lay in lines along the sun-baked mud, and at the first approach of danger dropped into the water one after the other with successive flops, looking for all the world a long row of smooth black pebbles which had suddenly come to life, like old Deucalion’s clods, that they might people this solitude. The sleepy and unmeaning faces of these tortoises were a great contrast to those of the water-snakes, which were very like them in form, but wonderfully keen and lively in expression. They, too, would glide into the water when so strange a thing as man came near, but would presently raise their heads above the surface, and eye with wonder and suspicion, and in perfect stillness, the approach of their natural enemy. The Copaic eels, so celebrated in the Attic comedy as the greatest of all dainties, are also still to be caught; but the bright sun and cloudless sky made vain all my attempts to lure this famous darling of Greek epicures. We noticed that while the shrill cicada, which frequents dry places, was not common here, great emerald-green grasshoppers were flying about spasmodically, with a sound and weight like that of a small bird.