The great Persian War and its preliminaries : $b A study of the evidence, literary and topographicalGrundy, G. B. (George Beardoe)
History
The great Persian War and its preliminaries : $b A study of the evidence, literary and topographical
Grundy, G. B. (George Beardoe)
Greece -- History -- Persian Wars, 500-449 B.C.
beautiful, finer, I think, than anything I have seen in Greece. As the
track leads through a country inhabited, in so far as it is inhabited
at all, by semi-civilized Vlach shepherds, it would be unadvisable to
attempt to traverse it, at present, at any rate, save with a fairly
large party.
I append a detailed description of the path.
Beginning at the mouth of the Asopos ravine, it goes through that chasm
almost to its far extremity, a distance, I should say, of two and
three-quarter or three miles. For a man or loaded mule the track is not
difficult, and is still greatly used in spite of the making of the new
road. The new road involves a terrific climb. The bottom of the ravine
ascends but slowly; and it is possible to reach the Dorian plain from
its southern extremity without attaining any high elevation.
After passing through this ravine, you begin to ascend a valley whose
sides are dotted, if I remember rightly, by a scanty covering of small
fir-trees. You ascend this valley in a general direction eastwards,
until you emerge, after going from two to two and a half miles, on the
new road, at a height of perhaps two thousand feet. Crossing that, you
proceed through a more or less wooded country for some two miles, to
the monastery of the Panagia, along a very rough track. The monastery
is about two thousand to two thousand five hundred feet above the
plain. From it a steep ascent begins through low, thick forest on the
north side of the ridge of Œta, which at this point rises about one
thousand feet above you on the right, _i.e._ on the south. The forest
is largely composed of oak, but there are many fir-trees and some
planes. The track is so narrow that you are obliged to walk in single
file. About three miles from the monastery, when the height attained
cannot be less than three thousand two hundred feet, the forest alters
in character, and large fir-trees now predominate, which appear to the
non-botanical eye to be what are called Scotch firs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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