e on,
the greatest consternation and terror among the inhabitants, and
producing on all sides scenes of indescribable anguish and suffering.
They came into the valley of the Cephisus, a beautiful river flowing
through a delightful and fertile region, which contained many cities and
towns, and was filled every where with an industrious rural population.
Through this scene of peace, and happiness, and plenty, the vast horde
of invaders swept on with the destructive force of a tornado. They
plundered the towns of every thing which could be carried away, and
destroyed what they were compelled to leave behind them. There is a
catalogue of twelve cities in this valley which they burned. The
inhabitants, too, were treated with the utmost cruelty. Some were
seized, and compelled to follow the army as slaves; others were slain;
and others still were subjected to nameless cruelties and atrocities,
worse sometimes than death. Many of the women, both mothers and maidens,
died in consequence of the brutal violence with which the soldiers
treated them.

The most remarkable of the transactions connected with Xerxes's advance
through the country of Phocis, on his way to Athens, were those
connected with his attack upon Delphi. Delphi was a sacred town, the
seat of the oracle. It was in the vicinity of Mount Parnassus and of the
Castalian spring, places of very great renown in the Greek mythology.

Parnassus was the name of a short mountainous range rather than of a
single peak, though the loftiest summit of the range was called
Parnassus too. This summit is found, by modern measurement, to be about
eight thousand feet high, and it is covered with snow nearly all the
year. When bare it consists only of a desolate range of rocks, with
mosses and a few Alpine plants growing on the sheltered and sunny sides
of them. From the top of Parnassus travelers who now visit it look down
upon almost all of Greece as upon a map. The Gulf of Corinth is a silver
lake at their feet, and the plains of Thessaly are seen extending far
and wide to the northward, with Olympus, Pelion, and Ossa, blue and
distant peaks, bounding the view.

Parnassus has, in fact, a double summit, between the peaks of which a
sort of ravine commences, which, as it extends down the mountain,
becomes a beautiful valley, shaded with rows of trees, and adorned with
slopes of verdure and banks of flowers. In a glen connected with this
valley there is a fountain of water springing