The way to Argos is a good carriage road through the passes of Mount Parthenion, and is not unlike the bleak ride through Mænalus, though there is a great deal more tillage, and in some places the hillsides are terraced with cultivation. It was in this mountain that the god Pan met the celebrated runner Phidippides, who was carrying his despatch about the Persian invasion from Athens to Sparta, and told him he would come and help the Athenians at Marathon. This Mount Parthenion, bleak and bare like Mount Mænalus, and yet like it peculiarly sacred to Pan, “affords tortoises most suitable for the making of lyres, which the men who inhabit the mountains are afraid to catch, nor do they allow strangers to catch them, for they think them sacred to Pan.” We saw these tortoises, both in Mænalus and Parthenion, yet to us suggestive not of harmony but of discord. Two of them were engaged in mortal combat by the road side. They were rushing at each other, and battering the edges of their shells together, apparently in the attempt to overturn each other. After a long and even conflict, one of them fled, pursued by the other at full speed, indeed far quicker than could be imagined. We watched the battle till we were tired, and left the pursuer and the pursued in the excitement of their deadly struggle. The traveller who goes by the new railroad over this ground will never see sights like this. These were the principal adventures of our tour across Arcadia. The following night we rested in real luxury at the house of our old guest-friend, Dr. Papalexopoulos, whose open mansion had received us two years before, on our first visit to Argos. CHAPTER XIII. CORINTH—TIRYNS—ARGOS—NAUPLIA—HYDRA—ÆGINA—EPIDAURUS.