I sat for a long time on this strange tomb, in the shadow of the rustic watch-house, and looked out over the plain. It is quite flat, and is now cultivated, though there are some bare tracts of unfruitful ground. In all directions I saw straggling vines. Not far away was one low, red-tiled house belonging to a peasant, whose three small, dirty, and unhealthy-looking children presently approached, and gazed at me from below. In the distance a man on a white horse rode slowly toward the pine-woods, and to my left I saw a group of women bending mysteriously to accomplish some task unknown to me. No other figures could I see between me and the bright-blue waters that once bore up the fleet of Persia. Behind me were stony and not very high hills, ending in the slopes down which Miltiades made his soldiers advance “at a running pace.” One hundred and ninety-two brave men gone to dust beneath me; instead of the commemorative lion, the little watch-house of brushwood and wheat and maize, silence the only epitaph. The mound, of hard, sun-baked earth, was yellow and bare. On one side a few rusty-looking thorn-bushes decorated it harshly. But about it grew aloes, and the wild oleander, with its bright-pink flowers, and near by were many great fig-trees. A river intersects the plain, and its course is marked by sedges and tall reeds. Where the land is bare, it takes a tawny-yellow hue. Some clustering low houses far off under the hills form the Albanian village of Marathon. Just twenty-two miles from Athens, this place of an ancient glory, this tomb of men who, I suppose, will not be forgotten so long as the Hellenic kingdom lasts, seems very far away, hidden from the world between woods and waters, solitary, but not sad. Beyond the plain and the sea are ranges of mountains and the island of Eubœa. A figure slowly approaches. It is the guardian of the vineyards, coming back to his watch-house above the grave of his countrymen, smiling, with a cigarette between his white teeth. As I go, he calls out “Addio!” Then he mounts his ladder carefully and withdraws to his easy work. How strange to be a watcher of vineyards upon the tumulus of Marathon!