Monastic Zitza, from thy shady brow, Thou small but favoured spot of holy ground, Where’er we gaze,—around, above, below, What rainbow tints, what magic charms are found! Rock, river, forest, mountain,—all abound; And bluest skies that harmonize the whole. Beneath, the distant torrent’s rushing sound Tells where the volumed cataract doth roll Between those hanging rocks which shock yet please the soul. Footnote 175: Æl. Var. Hist. iii. 1. Holland 291–95. Clarke iv. 290–97. Dodwell, 109. sqq. Gell. Itiner. of Greece, 280. Footnote 176: Aristotle accounts for what every traveller will have remarked, the extreme blueness of this sea, which he contrasts with the whitish waves of the Pontos Euxeinos. In the latter case, he observes, the air, thick and whitish, is reflected from the surface of the turbid waters; while, in the Ægæan, the sea, transparent to a great depth, reflects the bright rich colour of the sky.—Prob. xxiii. 6. He adds that the sea is more transparent during the prevalence of the north wind. Footnote 177: Though this country be not generally included by geographers within the limits of Hellas, I have considered it as a part of Greece, because Homer evidently so thought it. He reckons the Perrhæbi and Ænianes, and the dwellers about the cold Dodona, among the followers of Agamemnon, that is classes them among the Greeks.—Il. β. 749–755. The ancient name of the country is said to have been Æsa.—Etym. Mag. 39. 19. Cf. Steph. Byzant. _v._ Δωδών. p. 319. d. sqq. Clusters of islands clothed with poetical verdure stretch along the coast thickly indented by diminutive bays and embouchures of rivers. On a point of the Acarnanian shore[178] in the mouth of the Ambracian gulf, the Commonwealth of Rome which had foundered so many rival states suffered final shipwreck, and the shores of avenged Hellas were strewed with the wrecks of Roman freedom. Ætolia, Doris, Locris, Phocis, in which was the mystic navel of Gaia,[179] and the deep valley of Bœotia, divided from each other by mountains or by considerable rivers, minutely intersected by streams, and broken up into a perpetual succession of hill and dale, conduct us southward to the Corinthian Gulf and the borders of Attica. Footnote 178: Where stood a celebrated Temple of Apollo.—Thucyd. i. 29. Footnote 179: The “rocky Pytho” afterwards Delphi. Iliad, β. 519.