The passage from Elis into Arcadia is nowhere marked by any natural boundary. You ride up the valley of the Alpheus, crossing constantly the streams, great and small, which come flowing into it from the spurs of Erymanthus, from northern Arcadia, and the adjoining highlands of Elis. The stream called Erymanthus, which is the old boundary, though called a _λάβρος ποταμὸς_ by Polybius, does not strike the traveller here as it does higher up in its course, and the only other confluent water worth mentioning is the Ladon, which meets the Alpheus at some hours’ ride above Olympia, but which counted of old as a river of Arcadia. This Ladon seems to have specially struck Pausanias with its beauty, as he returns to it several times; and later observers, such as M. Beulé, have corroborated him, saying that on the banks of this river you may indeed find the features of the poetical Arcadia—grassy slopes and great shady trees, without the defiles and precipices so common in the inner country. The Ladon and its valley in fact, though in Arcadia, partake of the character of the neighboring Elis: it is the outer boundary of the real Alps. The Alpheus, on the contrary, which is a broad, peaceful stream when it passes into tamer country, comes through the wildest part of central Arcadia; and if you follow its course upward, will lead you first past the ancient site of Heræa, a few miles above the Ladon, and then through rugged and savage mountains, till you at last ascend to the valley of Megalopolis, round which it winds in a great curve. We did not follow this route, nor did we ascend the valley of the Ladon, in spite of its reputed beauties. For we were bound for Andritzena, a ride of eleven hours from Olympia, which lay to the S. E., and within easy distance of the temple of Bassæ. We therefore forded the Alpheus, just above the confluence of the Ladon, where the two rivers form a great delta of sand, and the stream is broad and comparatively shallow. The banks were clothed with brushwood, and above it with a green forest, along the grassy margin of which scarlet anemones were scattered like our primroses among the stems of the trees, and varied with their brightness the mosses and hoary lichen. From this point onward we began to cross narrow defiles, and climb up steeps which seemed impossible to any horse or mule. We entered secluded mountain valleys, where the inhabitants appeared to live apart from all the world, and looked with wonder upon the sudden stranger. We rested beside tumbling rivers, rushing from great wooded mountain sides, which stood up beside us like walls of waving green. The snow had disappeared from these wild valleys but a few weeks, and yet even the later trees were already clothed with that yellow and russet brown which is not only the faded remnant, but also the forerunner, of the summer green. And down by the river’s side the gray fig trees were putting forth great tufts at the end of every branch,