proprietor arrived. The latter had neither wife nor child, tho a few
chicks, and took our burglarious occupation very good-humoredly. We
shared the same leaky roof with our horses, and the abundant fleas with
the owner's dogs.

TIRYNS AND MYCENAE[60]

BY J. P. MAHAFFY

The fortress of Tiryns may fitly be commented on before approaching the
younger, or at least more artistically finished, Mycenae. It stands
several miles nearer to the sea, in the center of the great plain of
Argos, and upon the only hillock which there affords any natural scope
for fortification. Instead of the square, or at least hewn, well-fitted
blocks of Mycenae, we have here the older style of rude masses piled
together as best they would fit, the interstices being filled up with
smaller fragments. This is essentially cyclopean building. There is a
smaller fort, of rectangular shape, on the southern and highest part of
the oblong hillock, the whole of which is surrounded by a lower wall,
which takes in both this and the northern longer part of the ridge. It
looks, in fact, like a hill-fort, with a large inclosure for cattle
around it.

Just below the northeast angle of the inner fort, and where the lower
circuit is about to leave it, there is an entrance, with a massive
projection of huge stones, looking like a square tower, on its right
side, so as to defend it from attack. The most remarkable feature in the
walls are the covered galleries, constructed within them at the
southeast angle. The whole thickness of the wall is often over twenty
feet, and in the center a rude arched way is made--or rather, I believe,
two parallel ways; but the inner gallery has fallen in, and is almost
untraceable--and this merely by piling together the great stones so as
to leave an opening, which narrows at the top in the form of a Gothic
arch. Within the passage, there are five niches in the outer side, made
of rude arches in the same way as the main passage. The length of the
gallery I measured, and found it twenty-five yards, at the end of which
it is regularly walled up, so that it evidently did not run all the way
round. The niches are now no longer open, but seem to have been once
windows, or at least to have had some lookout points into the hill
country.

It is remarkable that, altho the walls are made of perfectly rude
stones, the builders have managed to use so many smooth surfaces looking
outward, that the face of the wall seems quite clean and