But, whatever the sobriety and intelligence of these Greek mariners, they cannot escape the fate which has overtaken the small trader and the handicraftsman throughout the world. The cheap vessels of the Greeks may be able to contend for a long time against the steamers of powerful companies, but in the end they must succumb. The country will lose its place amongst the commercial nations of the world unless its agricultural and industrial resources are quickly developed, {83} and railways are constructed to convey the products of the interior to the sea-coast. Greece, even now, has only a few carriage roads, not so much because the mountains offer insurmountable obstacles, but because its heedless inhabitants are content with the facilities for transport offered by the sea. It would be impossible in our day to travel from the Pylos to Lacedæmon in a chariot, as was done by Telemachus; for the road connecting these places leads along precipices and over dangerous goat paths. Greece and Servia are the European states which remained longest without a railway, and even now the former is content with a short line connecting Athens with its harbour. It has certainly been proposed to construct several lines of the utmost importance, but, owing to the bankrupt condition of the Greek exchequer, these works have not yet been begun. The public income is not sufficient to meet the expenditure, the debt exceeds £15,000,000, and the interest on the loans remains unpaid.[22] The poverty of the majority of the inhabitants of Greece is equal to that of the State. The peasants are impoverished by the payment of tithes, and of a Government impost double or even treble their amount. Though naturally very temperate, they are hardly able to sustain life; they dwell in unwholesome dens, and are frequently unable to put by sufficient means for the purchase of clothing and other necessaries. The young men of the poorest districts of Greece thus find themselves forced to emigrate in large numbers, either for a season or for an indefinite period. Arcadia may be likened in this respect to Auvergne, to Savoy, and to other mountain countries of Central Europe. The Ætolians, however, exchange their fine savage valleys for foreign cities only very reluctantly, though they, too, suffer intensely from the weight of taxation. In ancient times, before their spirit was broken by servitude, they would have resisted the tax-gatherer with arms in their hands. They now content themselves with sallying forth from their villages, in order to pile up a heap of stones by the side of the high-road, as a testimony of the injustice with which they have been treated. This heap of stones is _anathema_. Every peasant passing it religiously adds a stone to this mute monument of execration, and the earth, the common mother of all, is thus charged with the task of vengeance.