Vacation days in GreeceRichardson, Rufus B. (Rufus Byam)
History
Vacation days in Greece
Richardson, Rufus B. (Rufus Byam)
Greece -- Description and travel
Probably if the question which is the highest mountain in Greece
were proposed to a lot of candidates for admission to college, whose
equipment in Greek geography is better than it is likely to be at any
other time, the majority of the suffrages would go to either Olympus
or Parnassus. But Olympus, with all its Greek associations, is, alas!
a mountain in Turkey; and as for Parnassus, it is overtopped by nearly
two hundred feet by a mountain to the west of it. This mountain, called
Kiona, a part of the group known in antiquity under the name of Korax,
"Crow Mountain," has the honor of being the highest mountain in the
Kingdom of Greece. Parnassus, to be sure, by the greatness of its fame
more than overcomes the lacking two hundred feet, just as Erymanthus,
on account largely of its famous boar, is of more importance than
its higher neighbor to the east, Aroania. But there are always a few
spirits who wish to scale the highest heights.
The American School at Athens has, in the various persons representing
it, scaled most of the mountains of Greece; but not until 1898 had it
scaled the highest. We had hoped to do it with a considerable force;
but late in June the men get scattered. There remained but four of
us together at the close of the campaign in Corinth. When I told the
Government Ephor, attendant upon our work, that we proposed to shake
off the dust of our excavations by climbing Kiona, he developed a
sudden interest in my welfare, and begged me not to venture it, or at
least to take along a posse of soldiers. When I said that I had climbed
most of the mountains of Greece without harm or fear, he said that this
particular part of Greece, Ætolia, and at this particular time, was
dangerous. The men of that section were, he said, particularly bad men.
I had so often heard men of other villages and sections called in the
lump bad men, when they in reality proved no worse than those who gave
them that bad name, that I was not shaken until our overseer also, an
intelligent man, begged me not to go. He said that the shepherds of
Kiona were a bad lot and known as such all over Greece. I did not so
much mind taking my own life in my hand, but felt some scruple about
hazarding that of my fourteen-year-old boy, whose party it really was.
So when we awoke at midnight at New Corinth to find that the boat which
was to take us to Itea had, after the manner of Greek boats, gone
through the canal without turning toward Corinth at all, I proposed
that, taking this as a sort of "judgment of God," we should return to
Athens. But others of the party said that they felt ashamed to give
up an enterprise that had been so much talked about. So, considering
ourselves a sort of society with an object, we did not dissolve. We
had lost one day; but, taking the west-bound train to Ægion, which we
reached at two o'clock in the afternoon, with a delay of only fifteen
minutes we were aboard a sail-boat with a stern wind driving us toward
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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