Studies of Travel: GreeceFreeman, Edward A. (Edward Augustus)
History
Studies of Travel: Greece
Freeman, Edward A. (Edward Augustus)
Greece -- Description and travel
The scrambling up is well enough; it is with the scrambling down, that
the hardship comes. It is easy to convince one’s intellect that there
is really no danger, that the beast on which one is mounted, most
unfairly called ἄλογον, knows thoroughly what he is about, and is far
wiser than the ζωὸν λογικόν whom he carries. To give him his head, and
to let him go where he pleases, is the dictate of common-sense; but
there are moments when common-sense will not be heard. At such moments
the traveller begins to wish that he was like Pheidippidês--most
rightly named as sparing horses and not sparing his own feet--to whom
the journey from Mykênê to Corinth would clearly have been no more than
a pleasant morning’s walk. Or better still would it be, if the days
of Pausanias could come back, as there is indeed fair hope that they
soon may, and that the whole road from Nauplia to Corinth may again be
passed by the help of wheels. To the young and adventurous the novelty
and roughness of the mode of going seem to have their charms. The
traveller more advanced in life would be better pleased even to go on
his own feet, and he might think it better still if he might enjoy the
Eastern luxury of going
ἐφ’ ἁρμαμαξῶν μαλθακός κατακείμενοι.
One thing however is certain--a land without inns is in every
way better than a land with bad inns. The travelling party is
self-supporting, and carries along with it all the necessaries of life,
as well as some of its comforts and conveniences. It is wonderful
how shortly and how thoroughly a sleeping-room and a well-furnished
dinner-table can be called as it were out of nothing. It may be better
not to ask too minutely what becomes of the hospitable inhabitants
who so readily turn out to make way for the strangers. Certain it
is, that for the native part of the travelling party, reasonable and
unreasonable, any quarters for the night will do. One point, however,
calls for a protest; if the man chooses to look on his fustanella and
his other garments as an inseparable part of himself, that is his
own look-out; but it is hard to treat the unreasonable beast as if
his pack-saddle were an inseparable part of him, and to give him no
rest from his burthen either by day or by night. As for the traveller
himself, he certainly would not exchange the fare, he might not always
be anxious to exchange the lodging, which he makes for himself in
the museum at Mykênê or in the house of the single priest of fallen
Corinth; for those that he could get in some lands where, as there are
inns, people do not take everything with them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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