So dense was the foliage that we would not have been able to force our way through it, and would not have dared to make the attempt, had it not been for a sharply cut path which wound in leisurely curves and undulations close to the river’s brink. It was not like one of those paths which nature occasionally plans, or which are due to the tracks of wild beasts, for it had a regularity of design and an evenness of width that proved it to be unmistakably the work of man. Yet what man could have penetrated before us into these uncanny sunless depths? At the mere thought that others might have preceded us we involuntarily shuddered; we were half convinced that we were intruders into a tomb closed ages ago. But despite this conviction, we kept a constant, half-terrified outlook for sign of human presence. It was not long before our vigilance was rewarded. Abruptly the path before us widened, until it was of the size of a broad highway; and above the dense masses of vegetation, we beheld in astonishment the looming marble pillars of a Grecian colonnade. Toward this the road led in long and graceful curves; and it was but a few minutes before we found ourselves at the entrance of a covered walk or “stoa” that brought back to me vivid memories of “the glory that was Greece.” On both sides of us the palely-tinted Ionic columns rose to a majestic height, daintily ornamented at the base with the acanthus design, and curving in symmetrical proportions that brought to mind the perfection of the Parthenon; while the marble floor on which we walked and the marble ceiling above us were frescoed with figures that seemed drawn bodily from the romance of the ancient world. They were not wholly Greek. I knew these pictures of sportive mermaids and lightning-hurling gods and dragon-slaying heroes and misty caves of twilight and the throbbing lyre; but there was something suggestively Greek about them all; and steeped as I was in the lore of ancient Hellas, I had the singular feeling that the hand of time had been turned backward two thousand years or more.