the Pierian plain; and I
tried to distinguish the two mounds which mark the place of the great
battle near Pydna, one hundred and sixty-eight years before Christ,
between AEmilius Paulus and King Perseus, which gave Macedonia to the
Roman Empire. Beyond, almost ten thousand feet in the air, towered
Olympus, upon whose "broad" summit Homer displays the ethereal palaces
and inaccessible abode of the Grecian gods. Shaggy forests still clothe
its sides, but snow now, and for the greater part of the year, covers
the wide surface of the height, which is a sterile, light-colored rock.
The gods did not want snow to cool the nectar at their banquets.

This is the very center of the mythologic world; there between Olympus
and Ossa is the Vale of Tempe, where the Peneus, breaking through a
narrow gorge fringed with the sacred laurel, reaches the gulf, south of
ancient Heracleum. Into this charming but secluded retreat the gods and
goddesses, weary of the icy air, or the Pumblechookian deportment of the
court of Olympian Jove, descended to pass the sunny hours with the
youths and maidens of mortal mold; through this defile marks of
chariot-wheels still attest the passage of armies which flowed either
way, in invasion or retreat; and here Pompey, after a ride of forty
miles from the fatal field of Pharsalia, quenched his thirst.

At six o'clock the Cape of Posilio was on our left, we were sinking
Olympus in the white haze of morning, Ossa, in its huge silver bulk, was
near us, and Pelion stretched its long white back below. The sharp cone
of Ossa might well ride upon the extended back of Pelion, and it seems a
pity that the Titans did not succeed in their attempt. We were leaving,
and looking our last on the Thracian coasts, once rimmed from Mt. Athos
to the Bosphorus with a wreath of prosperous cities. What must once
have been the splendor of the AEgean Sea and its islands, when every
island was the seat of a vigorous state, and every harbor the site of a
commercial town which sent forth adventurous galleys upon any errand of
trade or conquest!...

We ascended Mt. Pentelicus. Hymettus and Pentelicus are about the same
height--thirty-five hundred feet--but the latter, ten miles to the
northeast of Athens, commands every foot of the Attic territory; if one
should sit on its summit and read a history of the little state, he
would need no map.

Up to the highest quarries the road is steep, and strewn with broken
marble, and after t