Βοιωτία ὗς. Pind. Olymp. vi. 151. Cram. ii. 200.—Thick and foggy atmosphere. Hipp. de Aër. § 55. Plat. De Legg. v. t. vii. p. 410. seq—Cicero observes:—“Etenim licet videre acutiora ingenia et ad intelligendum acutiora eorum, qui terras incolant eas, in quibus aër sit purus ac tenuis, quàm illorum, qui utantur crasso cœlo atque concreto.” De Nat. Deor. ii. 16. “The purple and the grey heron frequent the marshes of Bœotia.” Sibth. in Walp. Mem. i. 76. To proceed, however, with an outline of the country: along the shores, more especially towards the west, rugged cliffs of great elevation impend over the deep, and in stormy weather present an appearance highly desolate and forbidding. But descending the Ionian sea, and doubling Cape Crio, the south westernmost promontory of Crete, the approach towards the tropics is felt both in the air and in the landscape. The nights are beyond description lovely, the stars appear with increased size and brilliancy,[172] and morning spreads over both land and wave a beauty but faintly reflected even in poetry. Every rock and headland, clothed with the double light of mythology and the sun, emerges from the obscurities of the dawn glittering with dew and fresh as at the creation. The slopes of the mountains, feathered with hanging woods, lead the eye upwards to those aspiring peaks, the cradle of many a Hellenic legend, where snows pale and shining as those of Mont Blanc,[173] descending on all sides in wavy gradations to meet the forests, rest for ever, and at the opening and the close of day exhibit that crimson blush which we observe among the higher Alps. All the lowlands at their base are meantime covered, perhaps, with heavy mists, while lighter and more fleecy vapours hang here and there upon the mountain tops, augmenting their grandeur by allowing the imagination like a Titan to pile them up as high as it pleases towards heaven. The coasts of eastern Hellas, including those of Eubœa, along the whole line of Thessaly to the confines of Macedonia, are bold and rocky, frowning like the ramparts of freedom upon the slaves of the Asiatic plains. Footnote 172: I never saw the Pleiades appear so large as on the coast of Messenia. See Coray, Disc. Prel. ad Hipp. de Aër. et Loc. § 115. Footnote 173: Even the Cheviot hills are sometimes (as in 1838) covered all the summer with patches of snow, on which occasions the peasants are said to pay no rent. _Tyne Mercury_, July 1, 1838.