rooding over his own fancies, for a
cold and reluctant reception from his countrymen, found himself
greeted at once with a welcome so cordial and respectful as not only
surprised and flattered, but, it was evident, sensibly touched him.
Among other hospitalities accepted by him was a dinner with the
officers of the garrison, at which, on his health being drunk, he is
reported to have said, in returning thanks, that "he was doubtful
whether he could express his sense of the obligation as he ought,
having been so long in the practice of speaking a foreign language
that it was with some difficulty he could convey the whole force of
what he felt in his own."

Having despatched messengers to Corfu and Missolonghi in quest of
information, he resolved, while waiting their return, to employ his
time in a journey to Ithaca, which island is separated from that of
Cephalonia but by a narrow strait. On his way to Vathi, the chief
city of the island, to which place he had been invited, and his
journey hospitably facilitated, by the Resident, Captain Knox, he
paid a visit to the mountain-cave in which, according to tradition,
Ulysses deposited the presents of the Phaeacians. "Lord Byron (says
Count Gamba) ascended to the grotto, but the steepness and height
prevented him from reaching the remains of the Castle. I myself
experienced considerable difficulty in gaining it. Lord Byron sat
reading in the grotto, but fell asleep. I awoke him on my return, and
he said that I had interrupted dreams more pleasant than ever he had
before in his life."

Though unchanged, since he first visited these regions, in his
preference of the wild charms of Nature to all the classic
associations of Art and History, he yet joined with much interest in
any pilgrimage to those places which tradition had sanctified. At the
Fountain of Arethusa, one of the spots of this kind which he visited,
a repast had been prepared for himself and his party by the Resident;
and at the School of Homer,--as some remains beyond Chioni are
called,--he met with an old refugee bishop, whom he had known
thirteen years before in Livadia, and with whom he now conversed of
those times, with a rapidity and freshness of recollection with which
the memory of the old bishop could but ill keep pace. Neither did the
traditional Baths of Penelope escape his research; and "however
sceptical (says a lady, who, soon after, followed his footsteps,) he
might have been as to these supposed l