It was our fortune to come into Greece by night, with a splendid moon shining upon the summer sea. The varied outlines of Sunium on the one side, and Ægina on the other, were very clear, but in the deep shadows there was mystery enough to feed the burning impatience to see it all in the light of common day; and though we had passed Ægina, and had come over against the rocky Salamis, as yet there was no sign of Peiræus. Then came the light on Psyttalea, and they told us that the harbor was right opposite. Yet we came nearer and nearer, and no harbor could be seen. The barren rocks of the coast seemed to form one unbroken line, and nowhere was there a sign of indentation or of break in the land. But, suddenly, as we turned from gazing on Psyttalea, where the flower of the Persian nobles had once stood in despair, looking upon their fate gathering about them, the vessel had turned eastward, and discovered to us the crowded lights and thronging ships of the famous harbor. Small it looked, very small, but evidently deep to the water’s edge, for great ships seemed touching the shore; and so narrow is the mouth that we almost wondered how they had made their entrance in safety. But we saw it some weeks later, with nine men-of-war towering above all its merchant shipping and its steamers, and among them crowds of ferry-boats skimming about in the breeze with their wing-like sails. Then we found out that, like the rest of Greece, the Peiræus was far larger than it looked. [Illustration: Along the Coast from the Throne of Xerxes]