The investigation of the ruined fortifications on this slope, it may be observed, is a matter of some difficulty, for the slope is not only very steep but overgrown with prickly shrubs and cumbered with huge fallen blocks. The antiquary who picks his way painfully among these obstacles is mortified by the contrast between his own slow progress and that of the village urchins who accompany him; for they climb and skip like goats on the top of the walls, now appearing suddenly on the highest pinnacles and then again leaping from stone to stone with wonderful confidence and agility. The remains of the walls in the village, on the other hand, can be examined without discomfort, and they better repay study. Here on the north and north-west the wall, flanked by square towers, is standing in an unbroken line for a considerable distance. As a whole, the masonry of the walls and towers is splendid, massive, and almost quite regular, without being absolutely so. The beauty of these venerable walls is much enhanced by the thick green veil of ivy and other creepers which clothes their sides and droops in graceful festoons from their summits. Such a mantle of clinging verdure is very rare in Greece, where the ancient temples and fortresses, unlike the ivy-clad abbeys and castles of England, remain for the most part to this day as bare as when they were built, without even a patch of moss to soften their hard outlines and to tell of the lapse of ages. Distant views complete the charm of Tithorea. From its ivied walls, rising among the gardens and houses of the village, we look up at the huge grey crag that hides the higher slopes of Parnassus, or down the long gradual declivity to the wide valley of the Cephisus and across it to the hills, somewhat low and tame, at whose foot lie the scanty ruins of Elatea.