During his stay in Zante my father made many elaborate drawings of the Phigaleian bas-reliefs, with a view to determining their relative positions for the book, and he now returned to Athens to go on with it. He arrived on the 11th of July. But his health was no longer able to bear an Athenian summer. In August he writes: "A most tiresome fever has been worrying me for the past month, sometimes leaving me for a few days, at others rendering me incapable of doing anything. Few people, even natives, escape it, either in this or any other summer. Such is the fine climate of Greece, which poets would persuade you is a paradise, whereas really hyperborean England, with all her fogs, has still the best in the world.... I am summing up a few observations, wonderfully _savant_ and deep, on the temples we are preparing for publication, and the Grecian architecture in general. Between you and me, I verily flatter myself, we understand it practically better than anybody--as indeed we ought to. I arrived from Zante on the 11th July. While I was there I received a very fresh (!) letter from home of twenty-nine days. I was rejoiced to find here my friends and old schoolfellows, Spencer Stanhope and his brother. Conceive our pleasure talking at Athens over Westminster stories and all our adventures since we left. He, poor fellow, has been a prisoner in France for two and a half years, having been taken in Spain owing to the treachery of a Gibraltar vessel, which took him into the port of Barcelona. He is now exploring and excavating (at his own expense) for the French Government as the condition for his freedom! A few days later he and I made a trip to Marathon. We proceeded to Rhamnos, and sleeping a night at a fountain near by, visited in the morning the Temple of Nemesis and stayed there the whole day. It had been well examined, and by this time will have been published by Gell[47] and Gandy. We then went on to a village near which we had the good fortune to find Tanagra, the situation of which had never yet been known. We could trace the whole circuit of the walls and a theatre. Thence to Aulis, the walls of which are easily traceable; then we crossed the bridge over the Euripos into Euboea. The town of Negropont is a wretched place, inhabited by nothing but Turks. The fortress is ruined and contemptible, and the cannon out of order, as usual, although it is by way of being one of the principal fortresses in these parts. The more one sees of the Turks the more one is astonished at their prolonged rule in these countries. We visited a bey in this place who had a set of maps, and was considered one of the most enlightened men in the town. He produced them immediately he saw us, and boasted of his extensive knowledge on the subject, and the respect the bystanders paid this philosopher was perfectly delightful. The usual custom, before making a visit to these great personages, is to send them an offering of