The next morning we proceeded a mile or more along the shore to the east, until we identified the ruins of the ancient port of Delphi, Kirrha, which, we are told, the Amphictyons twice destroyed in a rage, though it seems quite un-Greek to do so unreasonable a thing as to destroy the harbor through which one must continue to land. Leaving Kirrha, and putting ourselves about on the track of the old visitors of the holy place of Delphi, who came from Peloponnesus, we passed through miles of the finest olive orchard in Greece to the site of the ancient Krissa at the head of the plain, the old Homeric town which appears to have yielded reluctantly to rising Delphi the control of this region. After the joy of the plain came the joy of climbing the rugged rocks for hours until it seemed as if Delphi must be in the clouds. This double reward for the double initiation suddenly ended when, turning a sharp spur of rock, we found ourselves in the grand natural theatre which was Delphi. Even to one who had never read of it, and did not know what it was to the Greeks, the mere sight of the place must still be one of the finest views in the world. But to one who has come to look on the sanctuary of ancient Greece it is this and more also. The Phædriadæ, which rise sheer behind the wretched village of Kastri, shutting out the higher snow-clad Parnassus from view, seem like no earthly rocks. The Pleistos seems like no earthly river, as it murmurs far below, as if about to tell the sea that it had passed Delphi. Mount Kirphis, fronting the Phædriadæ, and closing the great theatre, seems privileged to have been allowed to stand silently gazing on all that went on in that holy place, and to have been its appointed warder, shutting it in from the eyes of all who would not struggle up here through the mountain passes. But from reverie to fact the little village of Kastri rudely recalls us. Villagers inform us of a "_megale catastrophe_." Two nights before, at midnight, a mountain torrent had come down over the Phædriadæ, tearing through the village, sweeping away two of the miserable houses, and rendering several of the adjacent ones unsafe. One child was killed, and everybody thoroughly frightened. All inquired anxiously whether there was not a chance of the village being soon purchased for purposes of excavation. Visitors from the neighboring town of Arachova, who seemed happy that they were not living in Kastri, said that probably many Kastriots would soon leave their homes anyway, and move to Arachova.