A dusty ride of two hours, relieved now and then for a moment by the intense perfume from the orange blossoms of gardens fenced with mighty aloes, brought us to the noisy and stirring town of Pyrgos.(115) We found this town, one of the most thriving in Greece, quite as noisy as Naples in proportion to its size, full of dogs barking, donkeys braying, and various shopkeepers screaming out their wares—especially frequent where young shrill-voiced boys were so employed. Nowhere does the ultra-democratic temper of new Greek social life show itself more manifestly than in these disturbed streets. Not only does every member of human society, however young or ill-disposed, let his voice be heard without reserve, but it seems to be considered an infraction upon liberty to silence yelping dogs, braying donkeys, or any other animal which chooses to disturb its neighbors. The whole town, like most others in Greece, even in the Arcadian highlands, is full of half-built and just finished houses, showing a rapid increase of prosperity, or perhaps a return of the population from country life into the towns which have always been so congenial to the race. But if the latter be the fact, there yet seems no slackening in the agriculture of the country, which in the Morea is strikingly diligent and laborious, reaching up steep hillsides, and creeping along precipices, winning from ungrateful nature every inch of niggard soil.(116) This is indeed the contrast of northern and southern Greece. In Bœotia the rich plains of Thebes and Orchomenos are lying fallow, while all the rugged mountains of Arcadia are yielding wine and oil. The Greeks will tell you that it is the result of the security established by their Government in those parts of Greece which are not accessible from the Turkish frontier. They assert that if their present frontier were not at Thermopylæ but at Tempe, or even farther north, the rich plains of northern Greece would not lie idle through fear of the bandits, which every disturbance excites about the boundaries of ill-guarded kingdoms. The carriage road from Pyrgos up to Olympia was just finished, and it is now possible to drive all the way from the sea, but we preferred the old method of travelling on horseback to the terrors of a newly-constructed Greek thoroughfare. There is, moreover, in wandering on unpaved thoroughfares, along meadows, through groves and thickets, and across mountains, a charm which no dusty carriage road can ever afford. We soon came upon the banks of the Alpheus, which we followed as our main index, though at times we were high above it, and at times in the meadows at the water-side; at times again mounting some wooded ridge which had barred the way of the stream, and forced it to take a wide circuit from our course, or again crossing the deep cuttings made by rivulets which come down from northern Elis to swell the river from mile to mile.