We could have gone up from Messene by a very long day’s ride to Bassæ, and so to Olympia, but we had had enough of riding and preferred to make a short day to the sea at Kyparissia, and thence by steamer to Katakolo, from which rail and road to Olympia are quite easy. So we left the convent in the morning and descended into the valley, to turn north and then north-east, along the river courses which mark the mule-tracks through the wild country. We crossed a strange bridge over the junction of two rivers made of three arches meeting in the centre, and of which the substructure were certainly old Greek building. We then passed through bleak tracts of uncultivated land, perhaps the most signal case of insufficient population we had seen in Greece. All these waste fields were covered with great masses of asphodel, through which rare herds of swine were feeding, and the sight of these fields suggested to me that by the “meadow of asphodel” in Homer is not meant a pleasant garden, or desirable country, but merely a dull waste in which there is nothing done, and no sign of human labor or human happiness. Had there been night or gloom over this stony tract, with its tall straggling plants and pale flowers, one could easily imagine it the place which the dead hero inhabited when he told his friend that the vilest menial on earth was happier than he. After some hours the mountains began to approach on either side, and we reached a country wonderful in its contrast. Great green slopes reached up from us far away into the hills, studded with great single forest trees, and among them huge shrubs of arbutus and mastich, trimmed and rounded as if for ornament. It was like a splendid park, kept by an English magnate. The regularity of shape in the shrubs arises, no doubt, from the constant cropping of the young shoots all round by herds of goats, which we met here and there in this beautiful solitude. The river bank where we rode was clothed with oleander, prickly pear, and other flowering shrubs which I could not name. At last woods of ancient olives, with great gnarled stems, told us that we were nearing some important settlement, and the pleasant town of Kyparissia came in view—now, alas! a heap of ruins since the recent earthquake. Here we took leave of our ponies, mules, and human followers; but the pathos of parting with these intimate companions of many days was somewhat marred by the divergence of their notions and ours as to their pay. Yet these differences, when settled, did not prevent them from giving us an affectionate farewell. CHAPTER XV. MYCENÆ AND TIRYNS.