It may be here worth giving a word of encouragement to the sensitive student whom these hints are apt to deter from venturing into the wilds of Greece. In spite of frequent starvation, both for want of food and for want of eatable food; in spite of frequent sleeplessness and even severe exercise at night, owing to the excess of insect population;(102) such is the lightness and clearness of the air, such the exhilarating effect of great natural beauty, and of solitary wandering, free and unshackled, across the wild tracts of valley, wood, and mountain, that fatigue is an almost impossible feeling. Eight or ten hours’ riding every day, which in other country and other air would have been almost unendurable, was here but the natural exercise which any ordinary man may conveniently take. It cannot be denied that the discomforts of Greek travelling are very great, but with good temper and patience they can all be borne; and when they are over they form a pleasant feature in the recollections of a glorious time. Besides, these discomforts are only the really classical mode of travelling. Dionysus, in Aristophanes’s _Frogs_, asks, especially about the inns, the very questions which we often put to our guide; and if his slave carried for him not only ordinary baggage, but also his bed and bedding, so nowadays there are many khans (inns) where the traveller cannot lie down—I was going to say to rest—except on his own rugs. The next day was occupied in a tour across the plain to Orchomenus, then to Chæronea, and back to Livádia in the evening, so as to start from thence for the passes to Delphi. Our ride was, as it were, round an isosceles triangle, beginning with the right base angle, going to Orchomenus north-east as the vertex, then to Chæronea at the left base angle, and home again over the high spurs of mountain which protrude into the plain between the two base angles of our triangle. For about a mile, as we rode out of Livádia, a wretched road of little rough paving-stones tormented us—the remains of Turkish engineering, when Livádia was their capital. Patches of this work are still to be found in curious isolation over the mountains, to the great distress of both mules and riders; for the stones are very small and pointed, or, where they have been worn smooth, exceedingly slippery. But we soon got away into deep rich meadows upon the low level of the country adjoining the lake, where we found again the same infinitely various insect life which I have already described. A bright merry Greek boy, in full dress (for it was again a holiday), followed in attendance on each mule or pony, and nothing could be more picturesque than the cavalcade, going in Indian file through the long grass, among the gay wild flowers, especially when some creek or rivulet made our course to wind about, and so brought the long line of figures into more varied grouping. As for the weather, it was so uniformly splendid that we almost forgot to notice it.