Studies of Travel: GreeceFreeman, Edward A. (Edward Augustus)
History
Studies of Travel: Greece
Freeman, Edward A. (Edward Augustus)
Greece -- Description and travel
But how is Nemea to be reached? It is perhaps a tribute to the ancient
greatness of Mykênê that it is there that civilization in one important
branch may be said to come to an end. From Nauplia the journey by
Tiryns and Argos may be made in a carriage; but it cannot be said that
the latter part of the road from Argos to Mykênê is made according
to the principles of Macadam. Indeed, we think it would be possible
to carry the drive a little further than Mykênê, or, to speak more
accurately, than Chorbati. But as such a drive would not take the
traveller to any point in particular, and as he certainly could not
continue it to Corinth, we may say that the carriage-road ends at
Mykênê. Mykênê is the last point which the traveller can examine by
that mode of journeying. At Chorbati he will begin his really Greek
journey. He will have to go after the fashion of the country so far as
to travel, as one of a cavalcade, on one of the small and hardy horses
of the country, which seem, very much like their guides or drivers, to
be able to do anything and to eat nothing. Perhaps however he may not
so far conform to the fashion of the country as himself to become a
package on the back of his pack-horse, and to sit there with both his
legs on one side. Such a manner of going, besides other things to be
said against it, has this manifest disadvantage, that it compels the
traveller to take a one-sided view of the land which he goes through.
On a journey on which the traveller has to take everything with him,
he will hardly forget to take European saddles also. But, even with a
European saddle, it needs a calm head and good horsemanship to take in
much of the view, or to call up many of its associations, when you are,
not indeed, like General Wolfe, “scrambling up,” but, if the phrase be
accurate, “scrambling down”
... Rough rugged rocks
Well nigh perpendiklar.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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