Towards the Ægean Sea the mountain mass of the Katavothra is continued by a coast range running in a direction parallel to the mountains of the island of Eubœa. This range should be described rather as a series of mountain-groups separated from each other by deep hollows, extensive depressions, and even by river valleys. These mountains, though low and intersected by numerous roads, are nevertheless difficult of access, for their slopes are steep, their promontories abrupt, and their precipices sudden, and in the times of the ancient Greeks a small number of men repeatedly defended them against large armies. At one extremity of this range is the passage of Thermopylæ; at the other, on the eastern foot of the Pentelicus, the famous plain of Marathon. The mountain groups on the northern shore of the Gulf of Corinth, and to the south of Bœotia, may be looked upon as a range running parallel with that following the channel of Eubœa, but far more beautiful and picturesque. Every one of its summits recalls the sweet memories of poetry, or conjures up the image of some ancient deity. To the west we find ourselves in the presence of “double-headed” Parnassus, to which fled Deucalion and Pyrrha, the ancestors of the Greeks, and where the Athenians celebrated their torchlight dances in honour of Bacchus. From the summits of the Parnassus, which rival in height those of the Khiona, raising its pyramidal head towards the north-west, nearly the whole of Greece, with its gulfs, islands, and mountains, lies spread out below us, from the Thessalian Olympus to the Taygetus, at the extremity of the Peloponnesus; and close by, at our feet, lies the admirable basin of Delphi, the place of Peace and Concord, where Greeks forgot their animosities. The mountain group towards the east next to Parnassus is quite equal to it. The valleys of the Helicon, the seat of Apollo and the Muses, are still the most verdant and the most smiling in all Greece. The eastern slope of the Helicon is more especially distinguished for its charming beauty, its woods, its verdant pastures, gardens, and murmuring springs, which contrast most favourably with the bare and arid plains of Bœotia. If Mount Parnassus may boast of the Castalian spring, Mount Helicon possesses that of Hippocrene, which burst forth from the ground when struck by the hoof of Pegasus. The elongated summit of the Cithæron, the birthplace of Bacchus, joins the mountains of Southern Bœotia to those of Attica, whose marble has become famous through the neighbourhood of the city which they shelter. Mount Parnes rises to the north of Athens; to the east of it, like the pediment of a temple, rises the Pentelicus, in which are {48} the quarries of Pikermi, rendered famous through their fossil bones; on the south appears Mount Hymettus, celebrated for its flowers and its bees. Farther away, the Laurium, with its rich argentiferous slags, stretches towards the south-east, and terminates in Cape Sunium, consecrated in