The mountainous island of Salamis, long and calm, with gray and orange rocks, lies like a sentinel keeping guard over the harbor of the Piræus. It is so near to the mainland that the sea between the two shores looks like a lake, lonely and brilliant, with the two-horned peak called “the throne of Xerxes” standing out characteristically behind the low-lying bit of coast where the Greeks have set up an arsenal. Whether Xerxes did really watch the famous battle from a throne placed on the hill with which his name is associated is very doubtful. But many travelers like to believe it, and the kind guides of Athens are quite ready to stiffen their credulity. The shores of this beautiful inclosed bit of sea are wild. The water is wonderfully clear, and is shot with all sorts of exquisite colors. The strip of mainland, against which the liquid maze of greens and blues and purples seems to lie motionless, like a painted marvel, is a tangle of wild myrtle and dwarf shrubs growing in a sandy soil interspersed with rocks. Gently the land curves, forming a series of little shallow bays and inlets, each one of which seems more delicious than the last as you coast along in a fisherman’s boat. But, unfortunately, the war-ships of Greece often lie snug in harbor in the shadow of Salamis not far from the arsenal, and, as I have hinted already, their commander-in-chief has little sympathy with the inquiring traveler. I shall not easily forget the expression that came into his face when, in reply to his question, “What did you come here for?” I said, “To visit the scene of the celebrated battle.” A weary incredulity made him suddenly look very old; and I believe it was then that, taking a pen, he wrote on the margin of his report about me that I was “a very suspicious person.” It is safer, especially in war-time, to keep away from Salamis; but if you care for smiling wild places where the sea is, where its breath gives a vivid sense of life to the wilderness, you may easily forget her myrtle-covered shores and the bays of violet and turquoise. Of the many wonderful haunts of the sea which I visited in Greece, Cape Sunium is perhaps the most memorable, though I never shall forget the glories of the magnificent drive along the mountains between Athens and Corinth. But Sunium has its ruined temple, standing on a great height. And in some of us a poet has wakened a wondering consciousness of its romance, perhaps when we sat in a Northern land beside the winter fire. And in some of us, too, an immortal painter has roused a longing to see it, when we never thought to be carried by our happy fate to Greece.