The uneasiness of our janissary Mahomet, since our camping out began, gave us serious doubts of his courage, and a plan was invented for testing it. This was to raise an alarm at night that we were attacked by klephts. Our Arcadian shepherds entered into the joke with surprising alacrity and kept it up well. Just after supper a cry was heard from the mountain above that robbers were near. In an instant we all sprang up, seized pistols and swords, and made a feint as though we would go up the hill. Our janissary, thunderstruck, was following, when we proposed that he should go on alone. But he would not do that. In the first place he was ill; in the next place, Would it not be better to go to Andritzena? He begged we might go to Andritzena." FOOTNOTES: [24] Afterwards Sir Richard Church, and commander-in-chief of the Greek forces up to his death in 1872. [25] An epitome of the following appears in Hughes's _Travels in Sicily, Greece, and Albania_, p. 190. [26] Olympia was thoroughly excavated by the Germans in 1875-76, when the Hermes of Praxiteles and the Victory of Pæonios were discovered. [27] _Der Apollotempel zu Bassae._ CHAPTER VIII ANDRITZENA--CARITZENA--MEGALOPOLIS--BENIGHTED--KALAMATA. "We left the stylæ and went down to Andritzena by a shorter road. In going up, the drivers, to be able to charge us more, had taken us round a longer way. Andritzena is not only beautiful in its situation, the people who live in it are charming. Everyone seemed to think it the proper thing to show some attention to the strangers. The girls--and some of them were very pretty--brought us each as a present a fruit of some kind, pears or figs, and did it in the prettiest and most engaging manner; so that we had more than we could carry home with us. Disinterested urbanity is so unusual a feature in Greek character that we were surprised, and I must confess that it was the only time such a thing ever occurred to us in Greece. The Turks tax these poor wretches unmercifully. To begin with, they have to pay the Government one-fourth of their produce. Then there is the karatch or poll tax, which seems to be rather variable in amount, and the chrea or local tax levied for the local government, which together make up about another fourth; so that the taxes amount to half the yearly produce. Of course the people complain. I can't tell you how often I have been asked 'When will the English come and deliver us from the Turks, who eat out our souls?' 'And why do they delay?' One Greek told me he prayed daily that the Franks might come; and while I am on the subject I may as well mention here, though it was said a few weeks later, when we were near Corinth, by a shepherd, 'I pray to God I may live to see the Morea filled with such Franks.' They like us better than they do the French, because they have heard from Zante and elsewhere that we treat our dependencies more honourably than they do.