XXI. NEMEA.—Between the valley of Cleonae on the east and the valley of Phlius or St. George on the west is interposed the valley of Nemea, running like its sister valleys from south to north. It is a narrow dale, some two or three miles long, and from half to three-quarters of a mile broad. At its northern end it contracts to a mere gully. Through the bottom of the valley, which is almost a dead flat, meanders like a thread the brook Nemea, fed by the numerous rills which descend from the neighbouring hills. When swollen by heavy rain, these tributaries, having an insufficient outlet through the gully at the north end, keep the bottom of the valley green, moist, and marshy. The dale is thus better adapted for pasturage than tillage; indeed from the rich pastures which clothe its bottom and the lower slopes of the hills it received its name of Nemea, ‘the pastoral vale.’ But if the valley itself, especially after rain, is green and smiling, the surrounding hills, scarred and seamed with the beds of torrents, are of a dark and melancholy hue, and, combined with the absolute solitude—not a human habitation being visible through the length and breadth of the dale—affect the mind with a sense of gloom and desolation.[7] The solitude is only broken by the wandering herds of cattle, and from time to time by a group of peasants, who come over from St. George to till their fields in this secluded valley. A white track winds up the western slope to the mouth of a glen which opens in the hill-side. Through this glen is the way to St. George and Phlius. ----- Footnote 7: The valley has been less solitary since the village of Herakleia was founded near the ruined temple of Nemean Zeus. ----- XXII. THE PASS OF THE TRETUS.—At the southern end of the valley of Cleonae there rises like a wall of rock the mountain of Tretus, which forms the watershed between the Corinthian and the Argolic gulfs. A straight toilsome path led from Cleonae in antiquity, and still leads past the village of Hagios Vasilios, over the mountain, descending into the Argolic plain at the ruins of Mycenae. But the more convenient way from the valley of Cleonae to the plain of Argos bends round to the west, where the mountain is not so high, and runs up a gradually ascending gully. This was the pass of the Tretus, the chief line of communication between Corinth and the south. In antiquity it was, as Pausanias tells us, a driving road, and the ruts worn by the chariot-wheels can still be seen in many places. The defile, though long and narrow, shut in by high mountains on either hand, is nowhere steep, and the rise is not considerable. The road runs by a deeply worn watercourse, at the bottom of which a clear and shallow stream finds its way amid luxuriant thickets of oleander, myrtle, and arbutus. The lower slopes of the mountains are also green with shrubs, but their upper slopes are grey and rocky.