Most of our journey was not, however, through pastures and plains, but up and down steep ravines, where riding was so difficult and dangerous that we were often content to dismount and lead our horses. Every hour or two brought us to a fountain springing from a rock, and over it generally a great spreading fig-tree, while the water was framed in on both sides with a perfect turf of maiden-hair fern. The only considerable valley which we saw was that of Cleonæ, which we passed some miles on our left, and about which there was a great deal of golden corn, and many shady plane-trees. Indeed, the corn was so plentiful that we saw asses grazing in it quite contentedly, without any interference from thrifty farmers. We had seen a very similar sight in Sicily, where the enormous deep-brown Sicilian oxen, with their forward-pointing horns, were stretching their huge forms in fields of half-ripe wheat, which covered all the plain without fence or division. There, too, it seemed as if this was the cheapest grazing, and as if it were unprofitable labor to drive the cattle to some untilled pasture. As for the treading-out of corn, I saw it done at Argos by a string of seven horses abreast, with two young foals at the outside, galloping round a small circular threshing-floor in the open field, upon which the ripe sheaves had been laid in radiating order. I have no doubt that a special observer of farming operations would find many interesting survivals both in Greece and the Two Sicilies. Toward evening, after many hours of travel, we turned aside on our way down the plain of Argos, to see the famous ruins of Mycenæ. But we will now pass them by, as the discoveries of Dr. Schliemann, and a second visit to the ruins after his excavations, have opened up so many questions, that a separate chapter must be devoted to them. The fortress of Tiryns, which I have already mentioned, and which we visited next day, may fitly be commented on before approaching the younger, or at least more artistically finished, Mycenæ. It stands several miles nearer to the sea, in the centre of the great plain of Argos, and upon the only hillock which there affords any natural scope for fortification. Instead of the square, or at least hewn, well-fitted blocks of Mycenæ, we have here the older style of rude masses piled together as best they would fit, the interstices being filled up with smaller fragments, and, as we now know, faced with mortar. This is essentially Cyclopean building.(161) There is a smaller castle of rectangular shape, on the southern and highest part of the oblong hillock, the whole of which is surrounded by a lower wall, which takes in both this and the northern longer part of the ridge. It looked, in fact, like a hill-fort, with a large enclosure for cattle around it.