The next morning we walked about his lands, which were indescribably picturesque. His castle stands on a rock in the bed of a river, about a quarter of a mile from the bank. It consists of a courtyard and a church surrounded by various towers. There is a stone bench at his door, where he sits surrounded by his vassals and his relations, who all stand unless invited to sit. The village people bring him presents, tribute as it were, of fruits, fowls, &c. On a lofty rock close by is a watch-tower, where watch is kept night and day. The whole gave us a picture of feudal life new and hardly credible to a nineteenth-century Englishman. Behind the tower the mountains rise precipitously, and culminate in the Pentedactylon--a prodigious mountain of the Taygetus range. Murgino made us an estimate of his dependents. He has about 1,000 men, over whom he has absolute authority to call them out or to punish them as he thinks fit. A few days before we came he had had an obstreperous subject, who refused to obey orders, executed. Moreover, he showed a well in which he said he put those from whom he desired to extort money. When times are hard and the olives fail he makes war upon his neighbours, and either robs or blackmails them. The old man assured me that one winter they brought back from 1,000 to 1,500 piastres, from 50l. to 80l., a day. Such was our host and his surroundings. As I told you, our object was to examine some remains we had heard rumours of, especially of a Doric temple said to exist in the southern part of Maina, and, by all we could hear, in a tolerable state of preservation; but when we saw the tremendous preparations made by our good captain we found the enterprise beyond all our calculations or means. He declared he could not ensure our safety without his own attendance with a guard of forty men at the least. At this we thought it best, however regrettable, to retire before the expenses we should incur should embarrass us in our return to Athens. So we only stayed two days with Murgino, and then returned to Kalamata. As you may suppose, I was very sorry to lose an opportunity of perhaps making another discovery of importance, but even as it was I did not regret to have made the visit into Maina. In no part of Europe at any rate, if indeed of the world, could one find such singular scenes or come upon a state of society so exactly like that of our ancient barons. The character of Murgino himself was a study. He was very hardy, bold, vigorous in mind and body, used from a boy to battle with all kinds of reverses.