When we first visited the place it was in the afternoon of a splendid summer’s day; the fields were yellow and white with stubbles or with dust, and the deep gray shadow of a passing cloud was the only variety in the color of the upper plain. For here there are now no trees, the corn had been reaped, and the land asserted its character as _very thirsty_ Argos. But as we ascended to higher ground, the groves and plantations of the lower plain came in sight, the splendid blue of the bay began to frame the picture, and the setting sun cast deeper shadow and richer color over all the view. Down at the river-bed great oleanders were spreading their sheets of bloom, like the rhododendrons in our climate, but they were too distant to form a feature in the prospect. I saw the valley of Argos again in spring, in our “roaring moon of daffodil and crocus;” it was the time of growing corn, of scarlet anemone and purple cistus, but there too of high winds and glancing shadows. Then all the plain was either brilliant green with growing wheat, or ruddy brown with recent tillage; there were clouds about the mountains, and changing colors in the sky, and a feeling of freshness and life very different from the golden haze and dreamy calmness of a southern June. [Illustration: The Argive Plain] I can hardly say which of these seasons was the more beautiful, but I shall always associate the summer scene with the charm of a first visit to this famous spot, and still more with the venerable and undisturbed aspect of the ruins before they had been profaned by modern research. It is, I suppose, ungrateful to complain of these things, and we must admit that great discoveries outbalance the æsthetic damage done to an ancient ruin by digging unsightly holes and piling mounds of earth about it; but who can contemplate without sorrow the covering of the finest piece of the Cyclopean wall at Mycenæ with the rubbish taken away from over the tombs? Who will not regret the fig-tree which spread its shade over the portal of the House of Atreus? This fig-tree is still to be seen in the older photographs, and is in the woodcut of the entrance given in Dr. Schliemann’s book, but the visitor of to-day will look for it in vain. On the other hand, the opening at the top, which had been there since the beginning of this century, but which was closed when I first visited the chamber, had been again uncovered, and so it was much easier to examine the inner arrangement of the building.