Next morning we followed the river up to the neighboring site of Psophis, so picturesquely described by Polybius in his account of Philip V., and his campaigns in Elis and Triphylia.(134) This town, regarded as the frontier-town of Elis, Arcadia, and Achaia, would well repay an enterprising excavator. The description of Polybius can be verified without difficulty, and ruins are still visible. We found out from a solitary traveller that our way turned to the north, up one of the affluents of the Erymanthus, and so we ascended in company with this worthy man to a village (Lechouri) under the highest precipices of Olonos. He was full of the curiosity of a Greek peasant—Who were we, where did we come from, were we married, had we children, how many, what was our income, was it from land, was it paid by the State, could we be dismissed by the Government, were we going to write about Greece, what would we say, etc., etc.? Such was the conversation to which we submitted for the sake of his guidance. But at last it seemed as if our way was actually at an end, and we had come into an impassable _cul-de-sac_. Perpendicular walls of rock surrounded us on all sides except where we had entered by constantly fording the stream, or skirting along its edge. Was it possible that the curiosity of our fellow-traveller had betrayed him into leading us up this valley to the village whither he himself was bound? We sought anxiously for the answer, when he showed us a narrow strip of dark pine-trees coming down from above, in form like a little torrent, and so reaching with a narrow thread of green to the head of the valley. This was our pass, the pine-trees with their roots and stems made a zigzag path up the almost perpendicular wall possible, and so we wended our way up with infinite turnings, walking or rather climbing for safety’s sake, and to rest the laboring mules. Often as I had before attempted steep ascents with horses in Greece, I never saw anything so astonishing as this.