Vacation days in GreeceRichardson, Rufus B. (Rufus Byam)
History
Vacation days in Greece
Richardson, Rufus B. (Rufus Byam)
Greece -- Description and travel
When at last we came to the bridge which spanned the chasm separating
the cliff on which stood the monastery of St. Stephen from the body of
the mountain our attendants shouted and cracked their whips over the
reverberating chasm until a sleepy monk put his head out of a window
in a third story and said, in a sleepy voice: "What time is it now?"
On being told that it was ten o'clock he seemed disinclined to admit
our claim, which the gendarmes urged vehemently. We made out that the
gist of the claim was that here were strangers who had come all the
way from America, ten thousand miles away, just to see that monastery.
Suddenly the parleying was stopped by the shutting of the window. We
thought that we were shut out; but the gendarmes lingered as if they
thought their appeal had taken effect; and, in fact, after a delay of
several minutes, which seemed to us much longer, we heard the clapping
of wooden soles along the stone flagging inside the oaken door, which
was soon after swung open. We went to sleep that night congratulating
ourselves on having restored by our own good legs, aided by a kind full
moon, a programme that had been broken by a shiftless driver.
The next morning, after climbing up St. Trinity by means of a series
of ladders arranged in a cleft of the rock, we caught the train which
took us to Pharsala at noon. From there we walked to Domoko, since
made famous by the stand made by the Greek army in the war of 1897,
and called in ancient times Thaumakoi, "the wonderful," on account of
the superb view of the great plain of Thessaly which it affords. On
the following day we reached the port of Lamia, slightly stiff from
the bare tables on which we had slept at Domoko, and there ended our
Thessalian trip.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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