the very large number of its vegetable productions mentioned by Theophrastus and others: Alcman and Theognis also celebrate its wines: vines were planted up to the very summit of mount Taygetus, and laboriously watered from fountains in forests of plane-trees;(261) the country was in this respect able to provide for its own wants. But the most valuable product, in the estimation of the new inhabitants, was doubtless the iron of the mountains.(262) More fortunate still was the situation of the country for purposes of defence, the interior of Laconia being only accessible from Arcadia, Argolis, and Messenia by narrow passes and mountain-roads; and the most fertile part is the least exposed to the inroads of enemies from those quarters: the want of harbours(263) likewise contributes to the natural isolation of Laconia from other lands. Euripides has on the whole very successfully seized the peculiar character of the country in the following lines, and contrasted it with the more favoured territory of Messenia:(264) Far spreads Laconia’s ample bound, With high-heap’d rocks encompass’d round, The invader’s threat despising; But ill its bare and rugged soil Rewards the ploughman’s painful toil; Scant harvests there are rising. While o’er Messenia’s beauteous land Wide-watering streams their arms expand, Of nature’s gifts profuse; Bright plenty crowns her smiling plain; The fruitful tree, the full-ear’d grain, Their richest stores produce. Large herds her spacious valleys fill, On many a soft-descending hill Her flocks unnumber’d stray; No fierce extreme her climate knows, Nor chilling frost, nor wintry snows, Nor dogstar’s scorching ray. For along the banks of the Pamisus (which, notwithstanding the shortness of its course, is one of the broadest rivers in Peloponnesus), down to the Messenian bay, there runs a large and beautiful valley, justly called _Macaria_, or “The Happy,” and well worth the artifice by which Cresphontes is said to have obtained it. To the north, more in the direction of Arcadia, lies the plain of Stenyclarus, surrounded by a hilly barrier. The western part of the country is more mountainous, though without any such heights as mount Taygetus; towards the river Neda, on the frontiers of Arcadia, the country assumes a character of the wildest and most romantic beauty.