other days to Minerva and Neptune, and still surmounted by fifteen columns of an ancient temple. Another isolated mountain group to the south of Attica, and occupying the entire width of the Isthmus of Megara, served the Athenians as a rampart of defence against their neighbours of the Peloponnesus. This is the mountain group of Gerania, the modern Pera Khora.[14] Having passed beyond it, we find ourselves upon the Isthmus of Corinth, properly so called, confined between the Gulfs of Athens and of Corinth. It is a narrow neck of land, scarcely five miles across, whose arid limestone rocks hardly rise two hundred feet above the sea. This neutral bit of territory, lying between two distinct geographical regions, naturally became a place for meetings, festivals, and markets. The remains of a wall built by the Peloponnesians across the isthmus may still be traced, as may also the canal commenced by order of Nero. * * * * * The limestone mountains of Greece, as well as those of the Epirus and of Thessaly, abound in lakes, but all the rivers are swallowed up in “sinks,” or _katavothras_, leaving the land dry and arid. Southern Acarnania, a portion of which is known as Xeromeros, or the “arid country,” on account of the absence of running water, abounds in lake basins of this kind. To the south of the Gulf of Arta, which may not inaptly be described as a sort of lake communicating with the sea through a narrow opening, there are several sheets of water, the remains of an inland sea, silted up by the alluvial deposits of the Achelous. The largest of these lakes is known to the natives as Pelagos, or “big sea,” because of its extent and the agitated state of its waters, which break against its coasts. This is the Trichonius of the ancient Ætolians. Reputed unfathomable, it is, in truth, very deep, and its waters are perfectly pure; but they are discharged sluggishly into another basin far less extensive, and surrounded by pestilential marshes, and through a turgid stream they even find their way into the Achelous. The hills surrounding Lake Trichonis are covered with villages and fields, whilst the locality around the lower lake has been depopulated by fever. The country, nevertheless, is exceedingly beautiful to look upon. Hardly have we passed through a narrow gorge, or _klisura_, of Mount Zygos before we enter upon a bridge over a mile in length, which a Turkish governor caused to be thrown across the swamps separating the two lakes. This viaduct has sunk down more than half its {49} height into the mud, but it is still sufficiently elevated to enable the eye freely to sweep over the surface of the waters, and to trace the coasts which bound them. Oaks, planes, and wild olive-trees intermingle beneath us, their branches hung with festoons of wild vine, and these, with the blue waters of the lake and the mountains rising beyond it, form a picture of great beauty. [Illustration: Fig. 12.—LOWER ACARNANIA.