s that the harbor was right
opposite. Yet we came nearer and nearer, and no harbor could be seen.

The barren rocks of the coast seemed to form one unbroken line, and
nowhere was there a sign of indentation or of break in the land. But
suddenly, as we turned from gazing on Psyttalea, where the flower of the
Persian nobles had once stood in despair, looking upon their fate
gathering about them, the vessel had turned eastward, and discovered to
us the crowded lights and thronging ships of the famous harbor. Small it
looked, very small, but evidently deep to the water's edge, for great
ships seemed touching the shore; and so narrow is the mouth, that we
almost wondered how they had made their entrance in safety. But we saw
it some weeks later, with nine men-of-war towering above all its
merchant shipping and its steamers, and among them crowds of ferryboats
skimming about in the breeze with their wing-like sails. Then we found
out that, like the rest of Greece, the Peiraeus was far larger than it
looked.

It differed little, alas! from more vulgar harbors in the noise and
confusion of disembarking; in the delays of its custom-house; in the
extortion and insolence of its boatmen. It is still, as in Plato's day,
"the haunt of sailors, where good manners are unknown." But when we had
escaped the turmoil, and were seated silently on the way to Athens,
almost along the very road of classical days, all our classical notions,
which had been seared away by vulgar bargaining and protesting,
regained their sway.

We had sailed in through the narrow passage where almost every great
Greek that ever lived had some time passed; now we went along the line,
hardly less certain, which had seen all these great ones going to and
fro between the city and the port. The present road is shaded with great
silver poplars, and plane trees, and the moon had set, so that our
approach to Athens was even more mysterious than our approach to the
Peiraeus. We were, moreover, perplexed at our carriage stopping under
some large plane trees, tho we had driven but two miles, and the night
was far spent. Our coachman would listen to no advice or persuasion. We
learned afterward that every carriage going to and from the Peiraeus
stops at this half-way house, that the horses may drink, and the
coachman take "Turkish delight" and water. There is no exception made to
this custom, and the traveler is bound to submit. At last we entered the
unpretending ill-buil