The mountains of Greece have many and great charms; and they have this pre-eminent claim on our attention, that they are the unchanged witnesses of the past. Poor villages occupy the Cadmeia and the site of Sparta; waves of immigration have swept over Greece to such an extent that one may be in honest doubt whether the people who walk these dirty streets have any more claim to be the heirs and representatives of Leonidas and Epaminondas, whose names perchance they bear, than we have. The plains and rivers remain, except that the former have lost their trees and the latter their water. But Taygetos, "rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun," remains as it was. The great men of Greece knew the mountains, and were known of them. Alkman and Pindar had held converse with Taygetos and Kithæron, which now remain as their sole surviving companions. Six years ago I had approached Sparta from Messenia _through_ Taygetos, and had arrived at evening when the sun sent its rays almost level through the orange-trees loaded with fruit and redolent with blossoms. I feared that any different approach might bring a sort of disappointment. But when, after a morning at Mantineia, in the upland plain of Arcadia, we gained the top of the last height of the pass, and saw the long ridge of Taygetos towering before us with the sun just sinking behind it, we stood leaning over our bicycles and gave way to silence like that of "stout Cortez and his men." What went through my mind could hardly be called reflection, unless I could so designate an acceptance of the propriety of the one epithet, περιμήκετος, which Homer chose for this mighty mass, whether he intended it in the sense of "stretched out" or "high towering." Night was beginning to fall before we could break the spell and move down into the valley of the Eurotas, and it was already dark when we crossed the bridge of the Eurotas and entered Sparta. The object of this journey was not so much to visit Sparta as to climb Taygetos; but, while waiting until the afternoon of the next day for another contingent of the American School to come after us from Tripolitza by carriage, we used the time to visit the site of Amyklæ, and to hunt up the mound from which came the celebrated Vaphio cups, the finest product of the goldsmith's art left to our wondering eyes by the Achæan civilization of Greece. [Illustration: SPARTA WITH TAYGETOS IN THE BACKGROUND]