Few things can be more delightful than this ride through the pine-woods. It was a bright October day when I passed through them on my way to Solos; in many places the forest was carpeted with ferns, now turned yellow, and between the tree-trunks we could see across the valley the great slopes of Mount Cyllene, of a glowing purple in the intense sunlight. From time to time, too, we had views backward over the blue waters of the lake of Pheneus embosomed in its dark pine-clad mountains. Added to all this were the delicious odour of the pines and the freshness and exhilaration of the air at a height of about six thousand feet. But the culmination of beauty, so far as distant views go, is reached on the summit of the ridge, before we begin to descend the northern slope towards Zarouchla. On the one side, toward the south-east, we look back to the lake of Pheneus and the great mountains which encircle it, Mount Cyllene above all. On the other side, toward the north-west, we gaze down into the long narrow valley of the river Crathis, hemmed in on either hand by high mountains, above which soars the bare sharp peak of Mount Chelmos on the south, while at the farther end of the valley the view is closed by the blue Acarnanian mountains across the Gulf of Corinth. From the ridge we now descend through the forest by a steep, winding, stony path, till we reach the bed of a stream flowing among romantic rocks and woods to join or rather to form, with other streams, the Crathis. In the bottom of the valley the richness of the vegetation even increases. We rode through thickets of planes, growing as great bushes or small trees, so dense that we had constantly to stoop to the horses’ necks to prevent our faces from being brushed by the branches. Other trees and plants, of which I did not know the names, grew in profusion around us. And above all this Eden-like verdure of woods and lanes and thickets shot up the huge sharp peaks of Chelmos and its sister mountains, blue and purple in the sunlight. In this paradise lies the village of Zarouchla. Beyond it the path follows the valley of the Crathis, keeping for the most part on the right bank of the stream. The valley is very narrow, and is enclosed by immense steep mountains, the sides of which, wherever it is practicable, are terraced for vines or other cultivation. The Crathis, when I saw it, was a clear rushing stream, easily fordable at any point. At first the path runs in the bottom of the valley through tangled thickets. Here and there, where the dale is wide enough to admit of it, a patch of maize is grown. But soon, as we proceed, the valley contracts too much to allow even of this, and so the path, often rough and difficult for horses, ascends and leads along the barer mountain-side at some height above the stream.