We rose in the morning eager to start on our three hours’ ride to Bassæ, where Ictinus had built his famous but inaccessible temple to Apollo the Helper. The temple is very usually called the temple of Phigalía, and its friezes are called Phigalian, I think, in the British Museum. This is so far true that it was built for and managed by the people of Phigalía. But the town was a considerable distance off,—according to Pausanias forty stadia, or about five miles,—and he tells us they built the temple at a place called Bassæ (the glades), near the summit of Mount Kotilion. Accordingly, it ought to be consistently called the temple at or of Bassæ. The morning, as is not unusual in these Alps, was lowering and gloomy, and as we and our patient mules climbed up a steep ascent out of the town, the rain began to fall in great threatening drops. But we would not be daunted. The way led among gaunt and naked mountain sides, and often up the bed of winter torrents. The lateness of the spring, for the snow was now hardly gone, added to the gloom; the summer shrubs and the summer grass were not yet green, and the country retained most of its wintry bleakness. Now and then there met us in the solitude a shepherd coming from the mountains, covered in his white woollen cowl, and with a lamb of the same soft dull color upon his shoulders. It was the day of preparation for the Easter feast, and the lamb was being brought by this picturesque shepherd, not to the fold, but to the slaughter. Yet there was a strange and fascinating suggestion in the serious face surrounded by its symphony of white, in the wilderness around, in the helpless patience of the animal, all framed in a background of gray mist, and dripping with abundant rain. As we wound our way through the mountains we came to glens of richer color and friendlier aspect. The sound of merry boys and baying dogs reached up to us from below as we skirted far up along the steep sides, still seeking a higher and higher level. Here the primrose and violet took the place of the scarlet and the purple anemone, and cheered us with the sight of northern flowers, and with the fairest produce of a northern spring.