Our way led us up a river course, as usual through fine olive-trees and fields of corn, studded with scarlet anemones, till after a mile or two we began to ascend from the level of the coast to the altitudes of the central plateau, or rather mountain system, of the Morea. Here the flora of the coast gave way to fields of sperge, hyacinths, irises, and star of Bethlehem. Every inch of ascent gave us a more splendid and extended view back over coasts and islands. The giant tops of the inner country showed themselves still covered with snow. We were in that district so little known in ancient history, which was so long a bone of contention between Argos and Sparta, whose boundaries seem never to have been fixed by any national landmark. When we had reached the top of the rim of inland Alps, we ascended and descended various steeps, and rounded many glens, reaching in the end the village of Hagios Petros, which we had seen before us for a long time, while we descended one precipice and mounted another to attain our goal. It was amusing to see our _agogiatæ_ or muleteers pulling out fragments of mirror, and arranging their toilette, such as it was, before encountering the criticism of the Hagiopetrans. One of these men was indeed a handsome soldierly youth, who walked all day with us for a week over the roughest country, in miserable shoes, and yet without apparent fatigue. Another, a great stout man with a beard, excused himself for not being married by saying he was _too little_ (_εἶναι μικρός_), and so we learned that as they are all expected to marry, and do marry, twenty-five is considered the earliest proper age. One would almost think they had preserved some echo of Aristotle’s views, which make thirty years the best age for marriage—thirty years! when most of us are already so old as to have lost interest in these great pleasures.