Early in the morning we embarked on a Zantiote felucca, lent us for the occasion, and in an hour and a half reached the opposite coast of the bay, near the ruins of a village, of which we were told that it was destroyed and its inhabitants carried off for slaves by the Barbary pirates. Ever since this event the villages have been built farther from the coast. The village of Dolus, to which we were going, is an hour's walk from the shore. Our friend's brother and a number of other men, all armed to the teeth, met us on the beach and saluted us, as soon as we were recognised, with a discharge of guns and pistols. Then we landed, and set off for the village. A difference in the appearance of the country struck me at once. Instead of the deserted languid air of other parts of Greece, here was a vigorous prosperity. Not an inch of available ground but was tilled and planted with careful husbandry, poor and rocky as the soil was. The villages were neater and less poverty-stricken, and the population evidently much thicker than in the rest of Greece. The faces of the men were cheerful and open; the women handsomer, and their costume more becoming. Liberty seemed to have changed the whole countenance and manner of the people to gaiety and happiness. Everyone saluted us as we passed along, and when we arrived at Dolus the mother of our entertainer came out with the greatest frankness to meet us. Others came, and with very engaging manners wished us many years, a rare civility in Greece. The boys crowded round, and said Englishmen were fine fellows, but why had we no arms? How could we defend ourselves? Then they shook their fists at the Turkish shore, saying those ruffians dared not come amongst Mainiotes. Our host's family had cooked us some chickens. While we were sitting eating them a multitude of visitors, women especially, who had never seen Franks before, came in, gazed, and asked questions. There was a great deal of laughing and talking, but every man was heavily armed. After dinner we went out for a walk and visited some remarkably pretty villages. The name of one was Malta, the others I could not make out; all more in the interior. The churches were very pretty. Each had a tall steeple in the Gothic style with bells, which a boy, proud of his freedom and anxious to show it, running on, would ring as we came up; for, as you know, neither bells nor steeples are allowed by the Turks. We saw a new tower, the tower of the beyzesday, or captain of the Mainiotes, armed with two thirty-pounders which had been given him, and though not very solidly built, standing in a fine position. We were told that all these towers are provisioned for a siege, and one of those near Kalamata has food for five years--not that I believe it. All slept together, ten of us covering the whole floor of a tiny room.