Sights and Thoughts in Foreign Churches and Among Foreign Peoples (Volume 2) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1842. Excerpt: ... siderable distance, and found two old Venetian towers on its banks. After leaving the river we went over a tract of rugged, sterile ground, with occasionally a flowery, aromatic hollow, and almost always with fine views of Pentelicus and Parnes. On reaching the heights above Oropo the view was really magnificent, mountain, wood, plain, the Euripus, and the lofty headlands of Eubcea over the sea. Indeed, both on the road from Athens to Marathon, and again from Marathon to Oropo, the scenery was more interesting than we had expected to find it. Oropo, the scene of the old Amphiaraean games, retains no vestiges of antiquity to interest and delay the traveller. We left it the next morning and proceeded to Egripo. The road lay along the shores of the Euripus, the scenery of which very much resembles the salt-water lochs of Argyllshire. We passed under Mount Ktypa, crossed the narrow bridge from the continent, and entered Euboea, the modern Egripo. The town of Egripo is singularly oriental. The old walls and fort do not seem Turkish; but the mosques with their thin pillar-like tower, and the crescent still standing on them, the cypresses of the Turkish cemetery, the ruins of old Turkish palaces, and one tall palm-tree which hangs its fanlike leaves over the wall, give the place a completely eastern character. The water under the bridge, though a strong current, does not run so vehemently as we had expected. We were almost vexed to find it so like other currents: yet the green hills of Eubcea, and the exquisite sky of Greece, and the memory-peopled locality, made our visit to Egripo very pleasant. When we surmounted the lower part of Mount Ktypa, a hill abundantly peopled with land-tortoises, harmless colonists, we gained our first view of the strange, green pla...