Protected on the land side by mountains difficult to be traversed, and presenting towards the sea an inhospitable harbourless coast, Laconia seems marked out by nature to be the abode of an unsocial people. Like that of many Swiss cantons, its climate is generally harsh and rude, vexed by cold winds alternating with burning heats, and appears to communicate analogous qualities to the minds of its inhabitants, who have been in all ages remarkable for valour untempered by humanity. In such a country the nobler arts can never be completely naturalised. The virus imbibed from nature will find its way into the character, and defy the influence of culture and of government. Messenia presents, in every respect, a contrast to Laconia. Along the sea-coast, indeed, particularly from Pylos to Cape Aeritas, its barrenness is complete; neither woods nor thickets, nor any vestige of verdure being visible upon the red cinder-like precipices beetling over the sea, or sloping off into grey mountains above. But having passed this Alpine barrier, we find the land sinking down into rich plains, which on the banks of the broad Pamisos were anciently, for their luxuriant fertility,[188] denominated “the Happy.” North, and about the sources of the Balyra, the Amphitos, and the Neda the scenery grows highly romantic and picturesque, the eye commanding from almost every elevated point innumerable narrow meandering glens, each with its bubbling streamlet circling round green eminences, clothed to their summits with hanging woods. Messenia, which, as soon inhabited, must have been wealthy, appears to have been a favourite resort of poets in remote antiquity. Here the Thracian Thamyris, in a contest, as was fabled, with the Muses, lost his sight, together with the gift of song; and in a small rocky island on its coast,—the haunt, when I saw it, of sea-mews and cormorants,—Sparta received from an Athenian general of mean abilities one of the most galling defeats recorded in her annals. Footnote 188: Cf. Sibth. in Walp. Mem. i. 60.