§ p5   PREFACE.
ALTHOUGH the Four Journeys in Northern Greece which form the subject of these Volumes, are not strictly consecutive, in order of time, to the two Journeys, which constituted my “Travels in the Morea,” the present Work is in all other respects a continuation of the former, on the same plan; and the Preface of those volumes will equally apply to these.
If the diurnal record of the traveller be not always the form of narrative most agreeable to the reader, it is, or ought to be, more faithful than any other, and consequently more useful to those who visit the countries described, especially when those countries have been little explored. That form, therefore, has been continued in these volumes, though the length of time which has elapsed since the Journeys were undertaken has justified the omission of many observations, which would now

§ p6   appear trifling, and may have given to those which are left no more interesting character than that of a memoir in aid of history, serving also to exemplify manners and language, in which little or no change has yet been effected by the new political state of a part of Greece.
Ancient history and geography having been the Author’s chief objects, their illustration occupies a large portion of the work; and, in consequence of its form, the remarks upon them are introduced, I must confess, with little observance of order or connexion. The only remedy for this inevitable defect was a copious Index. The opinions on those subjects were generally formed upon the spot, on a careful examination of the ancient testimonies, by means of portable editions of the works which more particularly treat of Greece, or by extracts from others, made previously to the several journeys. It has indeed happened occasionally, that a new light has been thrown upon such questions by authorities of less frequent occurrence, to which I had no access when in Greece; but in these cases I have not thought it necessary to refer to the circumstance when citing the author, as it has no effect upon the conclusion, and cannot be of any interest to the reader.

§ p7   The general map appended to these Volumes has been constructed like that which accompanied my “Travels in the Morea,” from the measurement of a great number of angles with the sextant or theodolite from every eligible station, which was accessible to me, no opportunity having been omitted of obtaining a complete triangle, when circumstances admitted of it. In applying these geometrical observations, I have had the benefit of some valuable information from John Hawkins, Esquire, of Bignor Park, in Sussex, who has had the kindness to communicate to me some important angles measured by him from the summits of the mountains Ossa and Pelium, and from two other stations in the eastern part of Thessaly. The coast-line has throughout been copied or corrected from the Admiralty surveys, executed under the direction of Captains Smyth and Copeland, of the Royal Navy, of which those made under the orders of the latter officer are still unpublished. For this assistance I am indebted to His Majesty’s Hydrographer, Captain Beaufort.

§ p8   In the interior country, the Journal will sufficiently distinguish the parts examined by me, from those in which the defects of distant or partial observations could be supplied only by such oral information as can be gathered from an ignorant and uneducated people. It is scarcely necessary to add, that in these parts the map is to be considered only as a first approximation.
Many circumstances of no public interest have retarded the appearance of these volumes, far beyond my wish and intention. The delay, however, has afforded me the means of marking on the map the boundary-line, which, for the present, forms the continental frontier of liberated Greece. LONDON, December, 1835.

§ 1.001   FIRST JOURNEY. CHAPTER I. EPIRUS.
DEC. 9, 1804.—Aulon, which preserves its ancient name in the usual Romaic form of Avlona, converted by the Italians into Valona, is about a mile and a half distant from the sea-beach, and has eight or ten minarets. On the sea side there is a tolerable wharf, with an apology for a fort, in the shape of a square inclosure of ruinous walls, with towers and a few cannon.

§ 1.002   The town occupies a hollow thickly grown with olive trees, among which are some gardens of herbs mixed with cypresses, poplars, and fruit trees. Beyond, are rugged hills entirely covered with olives, and to the northward a woody plain extending for a considerable distance, and forming a low shore except just at the northern entrance of the gulf, opposite to the island Sazona, where are some white cliffs of small elevation separated from the plain by a lagoon, containing salt works and a fishery.
Two miles southward of the town rises a steep hill, on the summit of which is the ruinous castle of Kanina, and on a ridge branching from it to the southward the scattered houses of a Turkish village of the same name overtopped by two small minarets. Kanina is a name which occurs in the Byzantine history. It was built upon a Hellenic site, as appears by some remains of masonry of that age among the walls. Not far to the southward of the height of Kanina, begins a range of steep mountains separated only by a narrow valley from the Acroceraunia, which mountain presents the same forbidding aspect on this side as towards the sea, and forms a narrow steep ridge, woody, rocky, and terminating in a sharp summit which closes the valley about ten miles from the extremity of the gulf. This valley is a part of the district of Khimara, and contains a large village named Dukai, in Greek Dukadhes, below which at the southern extremity of the gulf is the harbour named Pashaliman by the natives, and Porto Raguseo by the Italians, near the mouth of a river which flows from the peak of the Acroceraunia through the valley of Dukadhes.

§ 1.003   Eastward of the mouth of the river is a succession of lagoons, in the midst of which are the ruins of Oricum, on a desert site now called Erikho--the last syllable accented as in the ancient word, and E substituted for O, which was not an uncommon dialectic change among the ancients. The river of Dukadhes would seem from Ptolemy to have been the Celydnus, although its position does not exactly agree with his order of names, which places the Celydnus between Aulon and Oricum. Porto Raguseo I take to be the Panormus which Strabo describes as the port of Oricum.
The gulf of Avlona being surrounded, for the most part, by high mountains, is subject to sudden and violent squalls. When the wind blows strong from the westward, the road of Avlona is not considered safe, and the usual anchorage is under Sazona, the ancient Sason, notorious among the Romans as a station of pirates. This island is most conveniently placed to shelter this great bay just at the mouth of the Adriatic, and affords a safe entrance on either side into the bay; for the cliffs in front of the lagoons of Avlona, the island itself, and the cape which forms the extreme point of the Acroceraunian ridge, are all equally bold.

§ 1.004   The latter remarkable promontory is now called Glossa (perhaps its ancient name), and by the Italians Linguetta. The depth of the gulf between Sazona and Avlona is from 10 to 15 fathoms, and towards the southern extremity much greater, except near Oricum, where, as well as near Avlona, the depth is from 2 to 4 fathoms. Every where the bottom is a tough mud, deposited from the surrounding mountains.
Among a few ships now lying in the road of Avlona, is a Ragusan vessel loading fossil pitch from the mine mentioned by Strabo. The mountain, at the foot of which this mineral is found, is about three hours to the eastward of Avlona, and being conspicuous from off the coast, is marked in the Italian charts under the name of Montagna della Pegola. Its real name is Kudhesi. Another ship is from Constantinople, bound to Palermo with corn; a third, which has been three months from Venice, is of the species of Adriatic vessels called a Pielago, which differs not much from the Manzera and Trabaccolo. It has a main-mast of a single stick from Fiume, almost as large as the main-mast of our ships, and twice as long. These vessels make quick passages with a fair wind, but are very unfit to contend with the Etesian breezes of summer, and still less with the equally obstinate and much more violent southerly gales in the autumn and winter. In the month of October, 1802, I made a passage of ten days in one of these vessels, from Corfu to Trieste, through the Dalmatian islands, touching at several of them in the way. In the present season it is not uncommon for them to be four months in making the passage in the opposite direction between the two ports. During the Etesian winds in summer, instances often occur of these vessels putting into the Rhizonic Gulf, or Bocche di Cattaro, with a contrary wind, when the masters proceed to Venice by land, make an agreement for the disposal of their cargo, and return to the Bocche before the ship has sailed. In the winter the Bocchesi seldom pass their gulf, but leaving a man and boy aboard, join their families on shore, and there remain till the spring.

§ 1.005   Dec. 10.—Having sailed out of the gulf in the night with a light breeze at north, we speak a vessel from Alexandria bound direct to Tunis, with pilgrims returning from Mecca.
Dec. 11.—At noon at the foot of the Acroceraunian peak, on the slope below which stands the village Palasa, a name resembling that of the place where, according to Lucan, Caesar landed from Brundusium previously to his operations against Pompey in Illyria, but which Caesar names Pharsalus. There can be little doubt that, in this instance, the poet is more correct than the great captain, who was so negligent of geography, (in Greece at least), that he has not named the place in Thessaly, where he gained the greatest of all his victories: so that this is the only passage in the commentaries where the word Pharsalus occurs. Caesar’s chief consideration in selecting his place of debarkation on this coast, was to avoid the harbours likely to be in the hands of the enemy, and to make himself master of Oricum, Apollonia, and Dyrrhachium, before Pompey could arrive from Macedonia. Trusting, therefore, to his protecting fortune to carry him through the perils both of the enemy and the season, he embarked seven legions and six hundred cavalry at Brundusium, in ships of burthen, for want of any others, arrived on the day after his departure at the Ceraunia, where he found a quiet station for the ships in the midst of rocks and dangerous places; and having immediately landed his troops, sent back the ships to Italy the same night. By this promptitude, Pompey arrived from Candavia in time only to save Dyrrhachium. Appian, though he does not specify in what part of the Ceraunian mountains the landing was made, shows that it was very near to Oricum, for he agrees with Caesar in representing Oricum to have been taken within a day from the time of the landing: he adds that Caesar marched by night; that on account of the rugged and difficult country, he divided his forces into several bodies, which were reunited at daybreak, and that the Oricii having declared their unwillingness to resist the Roman Consul, the commander of the garrison delivered up the keys to Caesar.

§ 1.007   The distance of the site of Oricum from the shore below Palasa, seems perfectly to agree with these circumstances; and there is in fact a small harbour below Palasa, though it seems rather diminutive for the force which Caesar disembarked.
The Strada Bianca, so called in the Italian charts, and known to the Greeks by the synonym Aspri Ruga, is a broad torrent-bed very conspicuous at sea, which, originating in the summit of the mountain of Palasa, descends directly to the sea to the northward of that village. To the southward of Palasa is a succession of villages on the side of the mountain, as far as the entrance of the Channel of Corfu, all formerly belonging to the Khimariote league; but these, from Port Palerimo southward, are now in the hands of Aly Pasha. Khimara, which now gives name to the Acroceraunian range, is a town, a little to the northward of Port Palerimo, the ancient Panormus, described by Strabo as a harbour in the midst of the Ceraunian mountains.
The great summit at the northern end of Corfu, named Pandokratora, and by the Italians Salvator, is now a conspicuous object to the south by east, and a little to the eastward of it the northern Cape of Corfu, named St. Catherine. Maslera and Salmastraki are in a line off the north west Cape of Corfu, and farther eastward Όθωνούς (Ital. Fanu), forming an equilateral triangle with the two former. Othonus, or Othronus, is an ancient name, and appears from Procopius to have been applied in the plural number to all the three islands.

§ 1.008   DEC. 13th to 20th.—In quarantine at Corfu, in consequence of the fever at Gibraltar. The quarantine ground is a small level space on the shore below the gate of the city, which still bears the French inscription Porte d’Epire, but by the Greeks is called the gate of St. Nicolas, from a small church which, with an adjoining apartment, is the only building on the ground. St. Nicolas is the patron of sailors, and his churches are often found near the shore. His feast-day being on the 18th, the priest and his deacons were employed for two or three days previously in weaving garlands of myrtle to adorn the pictures, and in preparing branches of bay and myrtle to stick about the walls of the church.

§ 1.009   Dec. 20.—From the quarantine at eleven a.m. I cross over to the Forty Saints, a harbour on the Epirote coast, in an open boat, which carries a cargo of oranges and lemons; these fruits, with figs, rice, and oil, form the export trade of Corfu with the Skala of the Forty Saints, from whence are brought in return, grain, fish, botargo, cattle, and wood. We row over in six hours, against a light adverse air.
Kyr G. Z., to whom I have a letter of recommendation from our minister, is collector of the customs of the Forty Saints, which is the chief port of Delvino and its district. Having a share also in the fishery of Buthrotum, he sells fish, both fresh and salted, and retails wine and other commodities imported from Corfu. All these affairs are transacted in a small stone building: three-fourths of the space within the walls are destined to the shop and store which are on the bare ground, the remaining fourth, in which he dwells, is separated from the rest by a floor half way up the wall, and a wooden partition in front, having two windows looking down into the store. Around the apartment are ranged trunks and shelves containing the collector's property and domestic utensils. Among them are some boxes full of salted κεφαλοί, or grey mullets, making a powerful addition to the various odours, none of them very agreeable, which are diffused through the apartment. At one end is a hearth, but no chimney, the smoke serving, as it effects its escape through the tiles, to cure the botargo, or roes of the mullet, which, enclosed in the natural membrane as extracted from the fish, are suspended to the rafters, and after the smoking will be dipped in melted wax. The kefalos is produced in abundance in all the lagoons and lakes of Greece, which like that of Buthrotum have a communication with the sea; and the botargo is a great resource to the Greeks during the severer fasts, when only a bloodless fish diet is allowed.

§ 1.010   Dec. 21.—On the north-western side of the harbour of the Forty Saints are some extensive ruins, situated on a gentle slope by the sea side, at the foot of the bare rocky hills of which all this part of the Epirote coast consists. The ruins are those of a town of the better times of the Lower Empire. The walls forming an exact semicircle, the diameter of which is the sea beach, are flanked by about twenty towers; and contain within them the remains of churches, cisterns, and houses. At present the inclosure serves as a fold for the flocks of some Albanians, who have left their native mountains, now covered with snow, in search of pasture, and who are accompanied by their families; some living in tents, others in καλύβια or huts of light materials. This is the common practice of the mountaineers of northern Greece, the far larger proportion of whom are Christians, either of Albanian or Vlakhiote race, but the present party are Musulman Liape, from the mountains near Tepeleni.
Between the walls of the ancient town and the modern houses of the Limeni, Skala, or Skaloma are the remains of a suburb of the ruined town, and close to the houses of the Skala those of a large church, which has long been in ruins, but still retains the name of its saint, St. Basil. On its southern side are the ruins of a smaller church of the same date, sacred to St. Nicolas.

§ 1.011   The summit of the hill which rises at the back of the Skala is crowned by the ruins of the church of the Forty Saints; which gives to this place the name of στους Αγιους Σαράντα, A village on a height, separated only from that of the church by a hollow, through which leads the road to Delvino, bears the same name, as well as a small square white-washed fort to which there is a paved zig-zag path leading up the mountain from the Skala. The village was built three years ago by Aly Pasha, and is peopled by the cultivators and pastors of the neighbouring plain, from the former of whom, Aly having lately made the land his own, receives a third of its produce. The fortress was added this summer: it has two round towers at two of the opposite angles, and within the walls a dwelling for the bulu-bashi. The church of the Forty Saints is said to have been part of a monastery, but nothing more remains at present than the ruined church, of the annexed form, which was covered with three domes and seven semi-domes.
It was evidently coeval with the town below; though part of the materials of the church, particularly in the round arches of the windows, are Roman tiles, derived probably from some town of an earlier age, which stood on the site of the existing ruins on the shore of the harbour.

§ 1.012   At Kassopo in Corfu, nearly opposite to the Forty Saints, are similar ruins of a town not so large as that of the Forty Saints, with those of a castle, irregular in shape, and haying no ruined buildings within its inclosure, and which stands on the summit of a hill rising from the shore of the harbour of Kassopo.
The heights of the Forty Saints are rugged, sharp, honey-combed rocks of brown marble, with a little soil in the intervals, which bear squills and other plants usual on similar sites in Greece. At the Skala, a rough mole incloses a little cothon or basin sufficient for the use of the small boats which alone frequent the harbour, though it would be both secure and convenient for large vessels, were the commerce of this part of Epirus sufficient to require them, as the bay has good anchorage and is well protected both from south-easterly and northwesterly gales; in the latter direction, by a remarkable cape called Kefali. which with Cape St. Catherine, or the northern extremity of Corfu, forms the entrance of the channel from the northward; in the opposite direction the harbour is protected by the projecting coasts both of the continent and island. Today, though it blows a gale of wind from the southward, there is no sea in the port.

§ 1.013   As there is nothing between the Forty Saints and Port Palerimo deserving the name of a harbour, though there are creeks under the villages of Nivitza, Lukovo and Pikernes, where small vessels take shelter and are drawn up on the beach, the Forty Saints can alone correspond to the ancient Port Onchesmus, which was the next to the southward of Panormus, according to Ptolemy as well as Strabo. It would seem from Cicero that Onchesmus, in his time, was a place of some importance, and that it was the ordinary point of departure from Epirus to Italy, the south-easterly breeze which was favourable for making the passage, having been called an Onchesmites. Under the Constantinopolitan emperors the name Onchesmus assumed the form of Anchiasmus, which probably obtained the preference over Onchesmus in consequence of a tradition noticed by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, that the town was named after Anchises, father of Aeneias. Anchiasmus was a city of the government of Old Epirus, together with Phoenice and Buthrotum; the signature of the bishops of Anchiasmus is found to the acts of the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon in the fifth century. The other bishops of Epirus whose names are annexed to the acts are those of Dodona, Nicopolis, Eurhoea, Phoenice, Hadrianopolis and Corcyra.

§ 1.014   Dec. 22.—A Scirocco, which detained me yesterday, still continues, but though the gale has abated and the rain ceased, the Agoiates, (Italice vetturini,) are unwilling to go, and my host will not take upon himself to oblige them, until some person arrives from Delvino, who will report the rivers practicable. The consequence is, that I am not only detained this day, but the 23d Dec. likewise; for although some horsemen arrived yesterday, about 3 p.m., who had crossed the river, it was then too late to depart, and at night the rain set in again in torrents with thunder and lightning, penetrating the bare tiles of the collector’s roof, and pouring down all night a black stream from the smoky tiles. The tempest continues the greater part of the day, but the wind having come to the north promises a change of weather.
The feasts, the fasts, and the fears of the Greeks, are a great impediment to the traveller. During their feasts they will not work; the fasts, when prolonged and rigidly observed, render them unequal to any great exertion, while timidity is the necessary consequence of the Turkish yoke following long ages of the debasing tyranny and superstition of the Byzantine empire. But through this unamiable covering the ancient national character continually breaks forth; to which, in this mountainous part of the country, is added a considerable portion of the industry and activity of a northern race. Every traveller will occasionally be disgusted with the meanness, lying, and cowardice of the people, in the towns and in the parts of the country most frequented by travellers; but it should be remembered that their vices arise from their condition, that deceit is the only defence which their tyrants have left them, and that such defects are greater in proportion to that natural genius which is indisputably inherent in the race. They have a proverb, that the sweetest wine makes the sourest vinegar, which is well exemplified in their own character by means of a most corrupt despotic government acting upon a fine natural genius.

§ 1.015   Dec. 24.—At 10, a.m., we set out in the rain from the Limeni, cross the hollow between the monastery and the village of the Forty Saints, and at the end of three quarters of an hour ford a small stream descending from Nivitza into the Pavla, which is the principal river of the plain of Delvino. The passage of this tributary is so difficult in consequence of the rain, that there seems little chance of the main stream being passable. Our conductors, moreover, are ignorant of the πέραμα, or proper ford of the latter river; we are obliged therefore to follow its bank upwards, until immediately below Nivitza we meet a party of horsemen, who have been making an attempt to cross without success. We retire, therefore, for the night to Nivitza.
The mountain on the mid-slope of which this village stands, is separated on either side by a valley from the rest of the maritime range, and is fortified to the eastward as well by the steepness of the mountain as by the rapid river at the foot of it. So rugged is the ascent, and so bad our cattle, that we are two hours in reaching the village from the river, the mules having fallen several times under their loads.

§ 1.016   The Vezir’s Bulu-bashi, a rough Albanian Musulman, receives us kindly as the friends of his master, and we take up our lodging at the best Greek house in the place. Many of the soldiers and inhabitants speak Italian; one of them is son of a major in the Reali Cacciatori Albanesi of Naples, in which corps he himself served many years.
Nivitza was once a large and flourishing town, and the most important of the independent Christian communities, which then extended along the whole coast from Buthrotum to Avlon. By means of the strength of its position it resisted all the attempts of Aly Pasha to reduce it, until the year 1798, when he persuaded the French to connive at his conveying a body of Albanians in his own vessels through the Straits; an operation which had constantly been interdicted, by the Venetians on the strength of their treaties with the Porte, but which was conceded on this occasion by the French, as they were then anxious to conciliate Aly with a view to their designs upon Turkey, and little suspected perhaps the use which he intended to make of their permission. He landed his troops at the Skales of Nivitza and the Forty Saints; and the better to ensure success, made choice of the morning of Easter Sunday for the time of attack, when the inhabitants were all disarmed and engaged in prayers. He thus made an easy conquest, not only of Nivitza, but of two other villages to the northward, the possession of which has now given him all the coast as far as the town of Khimara. Nivitza and the two villages are now little better than ruins; their lands, divided into portions, are numbered among the Pasha's tjiftliks; and it is for the use of those who cultivate them that the Pasha has built the new village of the Forty Saints, while many of the inhabitants of Nivitza have been sent to labour on his farms near Trikkala in Thessaly.

§ 1.017   Dec. 25.—A mile to the northward of Nivitza, on the same mountain, stands Aio Vasili, one of the villages which shared the fate of Nivitza: a little below it a ridge which connects the mountain with the range to the northward, is occupied by a small square fortress, similar to that of the Forty Saints, and which was erected by the Pasha soon after he had obtained possession of Nivitza. About a mile below this castle is the Skala of Nivitza and St. Basil, called Spilia. The rugged hills below Nivitza, to the eastward, are planted with olives and vines: the plain produces Mesiri (maize), kalambokki (Guinea corn), fasulia (kidney-beans), rizi (rice), wheat, barley, and tobacco. Having descended the mountain, we cross the river at the extremity of the plain, near the opening where it issues from the mountains:

§ 1.018   it is not very deep, but extremely rapid, and the stony bed is such an insecure footing for the horses, that they tremble in crossing it. Both horse and rider must trust to the guide who walks on foot beside them, supports both, and repeats his recommendation to the rider to look at the bank, and not at the water, which causes giddiness. I did not experience that effect, but the illusion of appearing to remain stationary, while really moving, was perfect. The sources of this river are in the mountains eastward of Khimara, and its course, for the most part, is through a narrow valley, in which is situated Kaliasa. Half an hour beyond the river, we cross the torrent of Delvino, and at noon enter the pass of Delvino, from which the torrent flows. Kyr Khristo Kanaki, to whom I had letters, happens to be in the country, superintending his vineyards, but I am received in his house, and he returns home in the evening. Dhelvino, or Delvino, is situated in an opening of the lower ridges of a high range of mountains which have a S.S.E. direction. The town is chiefly inhabited by Musulman Albanians, who have eight or ten small mosques. Of Greeks who occupy only the eastern suburb called Laka, there are about thirty families, ten of which bear the same surname as Kyr Khristo. The Bishop and K. are the chief men; the former, who is now absent, styles himself Bishop of Khimara and Delvino, and is a suffragan of the Metropolitan of Ioannina. The Turkish houses occupy the sides of the hills on either side of the torrent, for a distance of two miles, being situated as usual in Albanian towns, at great distances from one another, with a view to the frequent quarrels and wars among the φαραις, or family alliances, into which all Albanian communities are divided. The effects of these, and of a war between the Pashas Aly and Mustafa, which lasted seven years, have left many of the houses in ruins. The war ended by putting Aly in possession of Delvino, and sending Mustafa to take shelter in Tjamuria, where he now resides at Vakalates, a small town two or three hours eastward of Buthrotum.
At the entrance of Delvino, on a conspicuous height, stands the deserted serai of Selim Bey Koka, a connection of Aly Pasha, but who, having taken part with Mustafa, has not thought himself safe here, and has retired to Konispoli, where, however, he still enjoys the revenue of his landed property in the district of Delvino. A little within the opening of the hills, a conical rock, projecting over the ravine, is crowned with a small castle in bad repair. The ground on either side of the ravine abounds in springs and streamlets falling down to the torrent, and although the most uneven imaginable, bears olives and other fruit trees. The Pasha’s palace is a heap of ruins, but there still remain in the same quarter, on the northern side of the town, some good houses, pleasantly situated among gardens, in which are orange-trees, cypresses, and poplars.

§ 1.020   The Christians of Delvino make wine, and comb and spin some imported hemp into yarn, from which they manufacture shoes. Swords too, such as the Albanians wear, are made here, and every part of their muskets except the barrels. Below the castle there is a miserable bazar.
On account of the difficulty of passing the river, I had no opportunity of examining a Paleo-kastro at Finiki (Φοινίκη), of which I received information. The name, however, is sufficient to show it to be the Phoenice of Strabo and Polybius, which the former describes as being near Buthrotum, and which the itineraries place exactly in this position between the Acroceraunia and Buthrotum: it stood on an insulated hill, in the middle of the plain between the river of Kaliasa, and another, named Vistritza, which flows from the northeast, and beyond Finiki pursues a course nearly parallel to the former river, as far as the lake, into which they separately fall.
My host complains to me, in the usual style, of the hardships which his nation suffers from the Turks, and asks why the great powers of Europe, but particularly the English, will not assist in liberating their fellow-Christians. It is not a very agreeable task to explain, that nations seldom act but from self-interest, that we have a cruel war on our hands, and that our present policy is to support the Turkish empire. The poor Greeks have not much more to hope for at present from any other nation. If either French or Russians, in their military occupation of the country, were obliged to derive their resources from it, the Greeks might find the necessities of a French or Russian general not less fatal to their liberty and property than those of Aly, whose officers are kept in the best possible order, however relentless his own extortion may be. The sentiments of the Greeks, as well in this as in other parts of Greece which I have visited, show that the conduct of the Russians in the Greek expeditions of Catherine, as well as in the administration of the Septinsular Republic, has left a very unfavorable impression: so far from desiring the presence of these brethren of their church, as might have been supposed, they much more commonly bestow upon them the appellations of Κλέφτες and Ζώα. On the other hand, they seem quite ready to hail the arrival of the French, though they are cautious of giving utterance to these sentiments, not so much from any fear of their own government, for at this moment they have perhaps more liberty of speech upon such subjects than any people on the continent of Europe; but from doubts lest they should give offence to European governments or their agents, whose influence with the Turks might be fatal to an offending individual. My host admits, that were any pretended deliverers to land, there would hardly be the Greek who would venture to furnish them provisions, much less to join them, so much do they dread the Turkish sabre, and so little energy have they to act in their own behalf.

§ 1.022   Dec. 26.—At half past eight this morning we begin to ascend the mountain at the back of Delvino. Its sides are covered with extensive vineyards, yielding a light pleasant wine, but which generally turns sour before the summer. The pass leads between rugged and barren hills, two of the highest summits of the range, until, at half past ten, we arrive at the little village of Kardhikaki, where are the sources of one of the streams which contribute to form the Vistritza. Here we fall in with some Musulman Albanians, hunting hares with greyhounds of a large breed. The peasants are ploughing the ground, with a light plough drawn by two oxen; they afterwards break the clods with a hoe. At 11.10 a hollow country is on our right, four or five miles in diameter, surrounded by an amphitheatre of mountains, and watered by several streams, which unite to form the Vistritza. The slopes, although intersected and broken by the torrents in the most rugged, and wildest manner, are well clothed with vineyards and olive-trees.
Having skirted the edge of this basin as far as the village of Morzena, we there join the road from Vutzindro, which is hardly passable at this time on account of the rivers. A little beyond Morzena is a Derveni, or guard-house, in a spot where the road begins to descend into the plain of Arghyrokastro through a narrow opening between two very steep and lofty summits.

§ 1.023   The descent is long and rugged; and it is not until 2 p.m. that we arrive in the plain at the Derveni of Garbitzi, or Grabitza, so called from a small neighbouring village. Here the opening is no more than a torrent-bed between lofty rocks. The wretched mules which we took from the Forty Saints move so slowly that the horizontal distance from Delvino to this place is probably not more than 9 geographical miles. Nothing can be less inviting or picturesque than the present appearance of the valley of Arghyrokastro, though undoubtedly it presents a very different appearance in spring, as its numerous villages and extensive cultivation show that it is one of the most flourishing districts in Albania. Those parts which are now little better than a marsh in consequence of the perfect level, are in summer richly covered with corn, maize, and tobacco. Opposite to Garbitzi the plain is about five miles broad, bounded by two parallel mountains of varied surface, woody, and studded with villages in the lower parts, and rising above to steep ridges of calcareous rock, the summits of which are now covered with snow, and the bare sides furrowed with white charadrae, or beds of winter torrents: along the middle of the valley flows a river in a direction from south to north. Our road on emerging from the pass, changes from an eastern to a north-western direction, along the foot of the mountain; and at the end of three miles we halt for the night, at the little village of Theriakhates. The Papas, in whose house I lodge, is a cultivator of land, holding it of the Musulman lord of the village, who supplies seed and cattle, and takes half the produce. He asserts that in summer, not only the plain is quite dry, but the river also, and that the air is not unhealthy. This perhaps is chiefly owing to the situation of the villages on the sides of the hills. They are for the most part surrounded with vineyards and a few olives. Opposite to Theriakhates is the town of Libokhovo, situated, like Delvino, in an opening through which appears a parallel range still higher than that which borders the plain, and with a greater quantity of snow upon it. This high ridge is called Nemertzika. The pass of Libokhovo leads to Permeti, or Premedi, which stands on the eastern foot of Mount Nemertzika, in the vale of the Viosa. In the hollow country between the two ranges behind Libokhovo, and extending from thence along the mountains towards Tepeleni, is the Albanian district of Lientjas, in Greek Λιουντζαριά, the country of the Λιούντζιδες. These people are noted for their skill in the irrigation of land, and the management of aqueducts, and in that capacity obtain employment at Constantinople, and in other distant parts of the Turkish empire. To the south of the Lmntzidhes is the district called Pogoniani, or Pogoyani, of which Dhelvinaki is the chief place; and to the north-east ward, that of Zagoria. The Zagoriani inhabit the banks of a stream, which joins the Viosa between Klisura and Tepeleni.

§ 1.025   Below Libokhovo, on the skirts of the plain, are seen some buildings where the snuff is made for which this valley is celebrated; and in the mid plain, which is here about four miles across, the Papas points out to me a mound near the left bank of the river, which by the description seems to be a small theatre. It is now inaccessible, the plain being a marsh quite up to the rocks of Theriakhates. The whole valley is called by the Greeks Deropoli, which the Albanians pronounce Deropugl: the river is named Dhryno, or Dryno, or Druno, or river of Deropoli. Arghyrokastro, the chief town, contains about 2000 Musulman families; Libokhovo half that number; in each are about 100 Christian houses.
The road to Ioannina from the derveni of Grabitza follows up the plain of Deropoli to the southward. At a quarter of an hour it crosses a branch of the Dryno, half an hour further another branch; and a quarter of an hour beyond, the main stream of the river. The road soon afterwards ascends the eastern hills, from which many torrents descend into the river, after having turned some more snuffmills. It then enters Pogoyani, leaves Dhelvinaki on the left, crosses again to the left bank of the Dryno, which originates in the mountains around Dhelvinaki, passes through the valleys of Xerovalto and Tzerovina, crosses the Kalama near its sources, and from thence proceeds into the plain of Ioannina.

§ 1.026   Dec. 27.—At half-past seven this morning we continue to skirt the foot of the mountain in a northerly direction, advancing very slowly through rocky ground, or along the edge of the marshy plain, and leaving several small villages on the heights above us, until ten, when we arrive at the point of a low projecting ridge, where the river, wide, deep, and rapid, approaches so near to the heights as to leave only a passage for the road. On the point stands the village of Kuloritza, and on a similar projection, two miles further, the town of Arghyrokastro.
Not thinking it right to visit this place, as Aly Pasha and the Kastrites, or rather a powerful party in the town, are at present in a state of mutual obversation, we leave it on the left, and crossing a high narrow bridge of four arches below the town, halt a little beyond it for twenty minutes at a fountain. The plain here is not more than a mile and a half in breadth, and is all in pasture. Arghyrokastro occupies a large space of ground, being divided into separate clusters of houses, which are defended from one another by deep ravines. The mountain on which it stands is bare and deficient in water, and it is difficult to imagine a more disadvantageous situation, except with a view to the interminable disputes among the Albanian fares, for here the hostile families, separated from each other by rocks and ravines, may cherish their quarrels for years together without any effectual result.
In the plain between Libokhovo and Arghyrokastro, the Dryno is joined by the Sukha, which rises in Mount Nemertzika, and after watering the fertile valley of the Liuntzidhes, to the eastward of Libokhovo, enters the plain through a narrow opening on the northern side of that town. Having reached a projection of the eastern hills, we coast them for two or three miles, strike again across a part of the plain, and at 1:15 arrive at a Khan called Valare, or in the Albanian pronunciation, Valiare, situated on the right bank of a torrent which descends obliquely from the mountain into the Dryno. The Khan is reckoned five hours from Tepeleni; the road thither lying along the foot of the mountain, and over some low heights which project from it. Finding it impossible, with such cattle as we have, to reach Tepeleni to-night, we follow the torrent at the foot of the eastern mountain, which here projects considerably into the valley, and forms a variety of lower heights.

§ 1.028   Instead of stopping at Gariani, which is at the entrance of these hills, we are induced, in search of better accommodation, to proceed to Labovo, which is asserted to be only half an hour higher on the mountain. We ascend accordingly by a winding path, which is not the better for being paved, as half the stones have been displaced by the torrents, but see nothing of Labovo for two hours, nor until we had entered the clouds, which have settled upon the hills with a southerly wind, and brought on rain.
Λάμποβος, vulgarly pronounced Liabovo, according to the guttural sound of the L in Albanian, is situated not far below one of the highest summits of the range, but in a situation where a more gradual slope than that which we ascended admits of space for the scattered houses of the village, and for some vineyards and fields of kalambokki. It is entirely Christian, and there are eight or ten churches, besides those in the detached quarters, for, like the larger Albanian villages in general, Labovo consists of several detached makhalas. They suffered last year from a deficient harvest, and derive no advantage from being near Tepeleni, as the Vezir Aly, when he visits his native place, calls upon Labovo among other neighbouring places to furnish him with provision for his household, particularly eggs, poultry, and wood. On the summit of the ridge above Labovo stands Tjaiube, in a situation so exposed to storms, that it is necessary to pile stones and earth upon the roofs to prevent them from being blown away, although composed of heavy masses of stone. From a peak of this ridge, called Strakavetzi, the monastery of Aghio Naum, near Bitolia, is said to be visible.

§ 1.029   Dec. 28.—Very soon after quitting Labovo, (at half-past eight,) the town of Kardhiki, or Gardhiki, appears over the northern extremity of the range of Arghyrokastro, on a height surrounded by a valley through which the Belitza river takes its course to join the Dryno. The junction of these two streams occurs a little below the Khan Valiare, between it and a bridge over the united river.
The slopes of the mountain of Labovo, as far as the river Viosa, are well cultivated, and contain many villages. One of the largest of these, named Khormovo, resisted for a long time the growing power of Aly Pasha, when at length, about nine years ago, he took it, murdered the male inhabitants, and burned alive the Prift, who commanded the village, in revenge for the ill-treatment which Aly’s mother and sister had suffered from this man and others, when they were made prisoners, by the allied forces of Khormovo and Gardhiki, soon after the death of Aly’s father.
In something less than two hours we arrive at the foot of the mountain, on the right bank of the Dryno, which, between the bridge of Arghyrokastro, where we crossed it, and this place, has received, besides the Belitza and torrent of Valare, a contribution much larger than either from a source at the foot of the mountain about midway between Arghyrokastro and the Belitza, so that here the river is almost twice as large as at the bridge of Arghyrokastro. The great source just mentioned is said to be the only portion of the river permanent in very dry seasons. The stream now enters a narrow vale between two mountains; that to the west is united with ridges which inclose on every side the valley of Gardhiki; the eastern, on which stands Khormovo, is a westerly projection of the mountain of Labovo. We cross the river by the bridge of the Subashi, so named; which has three arches resting upon piers, with arched openings in them. The middle arch, which is much the largest, is pointed at the top, and its height is equal to about two thirds of the span. The roadway is so narrow and roughly paved, and the structure so high, that it is scarcely ever passed but on foot. From the bridge to Tepeleni, the distance is about six miles—two thirds along the Dryno, and the remainder on the bank of the Viosa, after it has received the Dryno. The road has been paved, but as the mountain rises immediately above it, the torrent has carried away the pavement in many parts, and left a track just passable.
The fortress and serai of the Vezir, standing on a tabular projection, surrounded by cliffs towards the river, have an imposing appearance at a distance, and are quite in harmony with the sublime scenery around. The village of Tepeleni, indeed, which consists of not more than eighty or ninety Musulman families, with a small detached suburb of Christians, is no great embellishment to the scene; but upon the whole, the palace is one of the most romantic and delightful country-houses that can be imagined.

§ 1.031   The height is the termination of one of the counterforts of a snowy range of mountains, bordering the vale of the Viosa to the west, and is defended on the northern side by the ravine of a stream called Bantja. which, though sometimes dry in summer, now pours a large supply into the Viosa. The village is surrounded by vineyards which produce a poor red wine; beyond which, wheat and barley are the produce of the higher lands around; and kalambokki that of the low level on the banks of the river.
Immediately above Tepeleni, the piers of a ruined bridge stretch across the Viosa, the arches of which were carried away three years ago by an inundation, and are now supplied by a temporary wooden communication. From the opposite bank of the river rises a steep and lofty mountain, named Trebushin; on the side of which are a Tekieh, or convent of dervises, and a village named Petzisti.
Mount Trebushin is separated only from the similar mountain of Khormovo by the Viosa, which at two miles above Tepeleni emerges from a boghazi, or narrow gorge, between the two mountains, and joining the Dryno, spreads over a space of near half a mile; where the river is divided by sand-banks into several streams now deep and broad, but some of which have no existence in summer.

§ 1.032   Mount Trebushin sends forth a branch to the northward, which extends to the Illyrian plains, between Berat and Avlona, bounding the vale of the Viosa, below Tepeleni, on the eastern side, opposite to the parallel ridge before mentioned, of which the highest summit (not seen from Tepeleni), is named in Albanian Griva (grey), from its being constantly covered with snow, except for a short time in the middle of summer. The southerly and westerly winds, which have now prevailed for a fortnight, have melted the snow on the western side of all the mountains, but have left it in considerable quantity on the opposite face of them.
The narrow ravine between Trebushin and the mountain of Khormovo, from which the Viosa emerges, is called τά Στενά της Βιώσας, or the Straits of the Viosa. It extends four hours to the eastward, throughout which distance the river flows between two high mountains, every where steep, and in some places perpendicular. The Stena terminate at the village of Klisura, above which the valley widens, and from thence continues to be nearly of the same breadth for a considerable distance beyond Premedi. At Klisura Aly has built a fortress, in a lofty situation, above the right bank of the river, and is thus master of both ends of this important defile.
There can be little doubt that this pass is the celebrated Fauces Antigonenses, or Aoi Stena, near Antigoneia, in which Philip, son of Demetrius, attempted in vain to arrest the progress of the Roman consul, Titus Quinctius Flamininus, through Epirus.

§ 1.033   Dec. 31.—The road from Tepeleni to Nivitza leads along the river Bantza (in Albanian Benja), through a hollow in the range of Griva, from which that river descends. This pass conducts to Pregonati, situated at the head of the valley of the Sutzista, which descends to Nivitza, and joins the Viosa in the plain of Apollonia. Thus Tepeleni, in all the four quarters, is approached by a narrow valley; from the east and north by that of the Viosa, from the south by the valley of the Dryno, and from the west by that of the Bantza. On the left bank of the Bantza, three or four miles above Tepeleni, is a ruined castle, bearing the same name as the river. It occupies the summit of a height, and incloses about two acres. Nothing is left but the foundations, except at the upper end, where are some remains of a round tower, of very thick and regular courses of masonry, cemented with a great quantity of mortar. The shape and position of the castle, and its citadel at the round tower, incline me to think that the fortress is ancient, although no part of the masonry resembles the massy and beautiful constructions of the southern Greeks. On the opposite bank of the river, not a mile above the ruins, is the small village Bantza, which is said to have been built about thirty years ago by one of the fares, or family alliances of Pregonati, which, in consequence of the internal disputes of that town, and the superiority acquired by their opponents, had been obliged to leave it.

§ 1.034   Several other small villages were founded at that time in the country around Pregonati from the same cause. It may be thought, perhaps, that Bantza is a corruption of Amantia, and that it proves that ancient city to have stood either at Bantza or at Tepeleni, but Amantia was certainly much nearer to Aulon, and Bantza may, perhaps, be the ancient name, with scarcely any change. Below Tepeleni the Viosa continues to flow for twelve hours between the two ranges of mountains already mentioned, as far as Gradista, sometimes closely confined between rocky banks, at others leaving small plains, or cultivated open heights, on either side, and thus the country is divided by nature into districts, each of which contains several villages, generally small. The first of the plains below Tepeleni is that of Lopesi, pronounced Liopesi by the Albanians, of which the chief village is named Dukai, in Greek Dukadhes. Here is a ruin on the left bank of the river, similar to that of Bantza. Opposite to Lopesi, a quarter of an hour from the right bank of the river, stands Vasari, or Vashari, according to the usual Albanian and vulgar Greek pronunciation of the sigma. On the opposite side, one hour from Dukai, is Sarali, distant half an hour from the left bank of the river, from whence there is a road across Mount Griva to Nivitza, by a ravine called Grobate Pliakes, or the vale of the old woman, so called because a woman was once frozen to death in passing. Continuing from Sarali on the way to Avlona, occurs, at the end of an hour and a half, Dhumbliani, containing three hundred houses, and situated at the same distance from the Viosa as Sarali; three hours beyond it is Kudhesi, of five hundred houses, the chief town of a district containing several villages, and situated on the mountain, which commands the fork of the rivers Viosa and Sutzista.
On the river side, below Lopesi, is the district of Kalutzi, separated from that of Lopesi by a rocky shore, on which stands another ruined fortress, near the village of Lunji, which is about half way between Tepeleni and Gradista. Another rocky shore terminates Kalutzi on the left bank, beyond which the country begins to open towards the plain; then occurs Karvundri, a town of Kudhesi, then Gradista, on the right bank, and Selenitza on the left, where are the mines of fossil pitch described by Strabo; and then the junction of the Viosa with the Sutzista, or river of Nivitza.

§ 1.036   From all I can learn, the most considerable Hellenic cities in this part of the country were at Gradista and Nivitza. If the latter was Amantia, as I can hardly doubt from the strong testimony of the ancient authors, the former was probably Byllis, or Bullis, for Byllis, Amantia and Apollonia were the three principal cities in the vicinity of the Gulf of Aulon.
This evening the Dervises mount to the top of Mount Trebushin; and on their return declare the new moon visible, though the sky is so clouded that the sun could not have been seen, had it been above the horizon. Several guns are then fired at intervals of five minutes, and the rioting of the Bairam begins.
Knowing how little the Musulman Albanians care for the ceremonies or the doctrines of their religion, I was surprised to find them, on my arrival, keeping the Ramazan so correctly. Not a pipe was to be seen till the muezzin had called the evening prayer from the minaret of the Pasha’s mosque.

§ 1.137   But the Vezir, though he generally drinks wine openly at table, seems to think it right to set a good Musulman example to the wild Toskidhes and Liapidhes of his native mountains, whose ancestors probably adopted the fast the more readily from its resembling one of the observances of the church from which they apostatized, without being so severe a penance as the Christian Lent. In fact, the Ramazan is no mortification at all in winter, when the short days leave the Musulmans at liberty to feast as early as five in the evening.
Aly’s sons, Mukhtar and Vely, were born by a daughter of Kaplan Pasha, of Delvino. His third son, Salih, who is only three or four years old, was by a slave. It does not appear that the sons have been educated in such a manner as can adapt them for preserving the power which the father has founded, or that he himself looks much farther in this respect than other Turks. Indeed, a Turk, or Musulman Albanian, not short-sighted, avaricious, or intent upon momentary advantages, would be a rarissima avis. Aly is his own Kehaya and Hasnadar, trusts not even his own sons, and transacts every thing himself, except where writing is required, when he dictates to a Turkish or Greek secretary. His own writing is execrably bad, and his Greek orthography worse; the little that he learnt when a boy having been almost lost by that want of practice caused by the custom common in every part of the east among the great, of always employing a secretary.

§ 1.138   Turkish he can read, but never attempts to write, though it formed a part of his education: in fact it is not much wanted, except for some formal letters to the Porte, or to some of the Pashas of Rumili; his communications with the government being chiefly carried on in Greek by means of his Kapi-Tjokhadar, or acknowledged agent, residing at Constantinople. With the Albanians his written correspondence is in Greek, except perhaps in a few rare cases where he wishes his missive to be publicly read in Albanian, in which case it is written in that language with Greek characters.
The person of most importance under the Vezir is Suliman, the Seliktar Aga, now absent. It is said that his influence in southern Albania is such, that in the event of the Pasha’s death, he might place himself at the head of a party at least equal to those of Mukhtar or Vely, for little doubt seems to be entertained that the two brothers will be opposed to each other. Already the symptoms of this future civil war are apparent. Mukhtar, knowing that by money he can always command the affections of the Albanians, is a thesaurizer, while his brother, who is a mere sensualist, but with much more talent than Mukhtar, is much less provident.
Another person in whom the Vezir places great confidence, is Yusuf Aga Arapi, nominally His Highness's Hasnadar, in whose house, now occupied by his son, Bekir Aga, I am lodged. He has always been employed by the Vezir in the management of the Dervenia, and hence is thoroughly acquainted with the country, from the frontiers of Dalmatia to the isthmus of Corinth. He is described as a man of talent and activity, extremely attached to his master, brave, ferocious, active, and cruel. Two other officers, whom the Vezir generally keeps near him, are Tatza Bulubashi, a Musulman, and Athanasi Vaia, a Christian, the ready instruments of many an atrocious act of cruelty. All these persons, including the Pasha's sons, are usually dressed in the Albanian fashion, with a coat or jacket covered with gold lace, and a shirt falling down in folds over the drawers, resembling the drapery of the Roman statues. When new and clean it is a beautiful costume; but a clean shirt is not a weekly luxury even with all the higher classes; and among the soldiers it is sometimes worn out without ever being washed, though occasionally taken off, and held over the fire, that the animals contained in it, intoxicated by the smoke, may fall into the fire, when a crackling announces the success of the operation. Sometimes during the first two or three weeks of a new shirt or waistcoat, or when particularly desirous of making a favourable appearance, they wear a collar of cotton, impregnated with oxyde of mercury, which forms a barrier to the more aspiring natives, and keeps them out of sight. The same want of cleanliness pervades every class in proportion, in all their domestic arrangements.

§ 1.040   Aly himself has been so accustomed to the rudest Albanian life in his youth, that the dirtiness of his people gives him little disgust, and as policy obliges him to receive the lowest Albanian with familiarity and apparent confidence, to allow them to approach him, to kiss the hem of his garment, to touch his hand, and to stand near him while they converse with him, his dress is often covered with vermin, and there is no small danger of acquiring these companions by sitting on his sofa, where they are often seen crawling amidst embroidered velvet and cloth of gold.
A Divan Effendi and a Turkish Secretary, both πολίταις, or natives of Constantinople, form a part also of Aly’s court. They preserve the Turkish costume, and look upon the Albanians with that mixture of fear and contempt, which is the general feeling of the Turks towards this nation. Through the medium of the Constantinopolitans residing with him, and that of his own resident at the Porte, Aly manages the good understanding, which he has the policy to keep up with the supreme government. He makes frequent presents to the Valide Sultana, and her powerful Kehaya Yusuf. He has augmented his dominions as much by the intermarriages of his family with the chieftains around him, as by his military or political skill. Arghyrokastro and Libokhovo have been brought under his influence chiefly by the marriage of his sister, Khainitza, with Suliman, of Arghyrokastro, sometime Pasha of Trikkala, whose son, Adem Bey, now resides with his mother, as Governor of Libokhovo, under the orders of the Vezir, having succeeded in this post to his brother, Elmas Bey, who died not long since at Ioannina.

§ 1.041   Aly has no other relatives except his grandchildren. His sister, before she married Suliman of Arghyrokastro, was the wife of Suliman’s brother, Aly, by whom she had a daughter married to Vely, Bey of Klisura. It is said that Aly, of Arghyrokastro, was murdered by his brother, in concert with Aly of Tepeleni, and his sister: it is certain, at least, that Suliman, very soon after his brother's death, married the widow. Eight years ago Aly obtained possession of Klisura, by murdering his nephew-in-law, the Bey, together with his younger brother, whom he had enticed to Ioannina, to assist at the nuptials of his son Vely with the daughter of Ibrahim Pasha, by which alliance the peace between the two Vezirs was ratified. Aly pretended to have discovered that not only the Bey, but his brother, who had accompanied him, had been engaged in a plot against the Vezir. By this act Aly cleared away all the claimants to Klisura: a most important point, which secures Tepeleni and Premedi, and opens the road to Berat.
At Arghyrokastro, as in other independent towns of Albania, the power was formerly divided among several leagues, whose chieftains were continually at war. At present, Morteza Bey, brother of Suliman Pasha, chiefly by his alliance with Aly, is at the head of the strongest party.

§ 1.042   Mutja Hushuf (Albanian for Musa Yusuf, or Moses Joseph) was the name of Aly’s great grandfather, from whom the family are called in Greek οι Μουτζαχουσσάτες. My host, Bekir Aga, asserts, that Hushuf conquered all Albania with his sabre, which, though a mere amplification, shows that his power was considerable. His son, Mukhtar, accompanied the expedition of Kara Mustafa, the Seraskier of Sultan Hamid III., in union with the fleet of the Kapitan Pasha Djanum Khodja against Corfu, in the year 1716, when the island was defended by Marshal Schulemberg, whose statue still remains in the Citadel, erected by the Venetian republic, in gratitude for this defence of the island. Mukhtar was killed in the siege, having fallen in the assault of the fortress; and it is believed in Albania that his sword is still kept at Corfu, among the trophies of that expedition. Vely, the father of Aly, was the youngest of three brothers, or half-brothers, but having succeeded in destroying the two elder, became the head of the house. He died at an early, age, leaving Aly a child in the care of his mother Khanko, daughter of a Bey of Konitza, who was of the same family as Kurt Pasha of Berat, at that time the most powerful chieftain in Albania. Aly has now been a Vezir for about four years, and is not a little proud of the third tail, which the Porte has generally been very unwilling to confer upon Albanians. Having bestowed it upon Aly, they gave it also to the two Ibrahims, in order to keep the balance of power even.

§ 1.043   Aly disgusts all the Franks who come to seek their fortune in his service, by his parsimony. He scarcely ever gives them any fixed pay, whatever he may have promised, but confines himself to making them presents in clothes and money, when they perform any particular service. If they are not married, he is always anxious to provide them with wives, that he may have hostages to prevent their leaving the place. Those who have to provide for the different departments of his household, are said to be the only persons who enrich themselves in his service.
The Franks at present in the Vezir’s service are a Milanese, who had previously been employed by the Pashas of Berat and Skodra, and who has undertaken to complete a foundry at Ioannina: there are also a French engineer, a carpenter, who makes gun carriages, a Dalmatian watchmaker, and an Italian smith. These people, though really able men in their professions, will soon be forced to leave his service from the want of encouragement.
Plutarch informs us, that Pyrrhus was an assiduous courtier, and studious when young of acquiring the friendship of powerful persons. This is generally the Albanian character. They are anxious to secure the favour of their superiors, and faithful to them while regularly paid. Their revolts which so often occur, are generally caused by the ill-faith of the employers, who often begin an enterprize without sufficient pecuniary means, trusting to success for an augmentation of them.

§ 1.044   The Albanians, being generally poorer than the Turks, are more moderate in their expectations, more patient and persevering, more familiar with hardships from their infancy, but equally greedy of money, and much more saving. The Albanian soldier will either plunder or live on the hardest fare, as circumstances may require, to save his pay; his prime object being to return home with a well-filled girdle; for the zone, as among the Romans, is the treasury of the Albanian. Their military qualities are rather shown in the οδόν ελθέμεναι, than in the ανδρασιν ιφι μάχεσθαι, and their wars consist entirely in stratagem, rapine, and ambuscade, though few of them are deficient in personal courage, when the occasion calls for it. One of the advantages of the Albanians is their independence of other countries for the greater part of the manufactures of that rude kind with which they are content. Their arms are all made in Albania, with the exception of the gun-barrels, the greater part of which are from the north of Italy, though an inferior kind both of musquet and pistol-barrels are made at Skodra, Prisrend, Kalkandere, Pristina, and Grevena: gun locks are made both in Greece and Albania; some I have seen from Karpenisi, in Aetolia, which have a polish (if that be any merit) equal to those of England. The kind of musquet, however, which the Albanians use is very inconvenient, and is adapted only to their own irregular discipline, being long and heavy, without any balance of weight in the stock, which is particularly thin and light, and the piece is thus incapable of an aim without resting.

§ 1.045   The coarse woollen cloth used for the outer garments of the Albanians is chiefly made at Skodra. It is a thick white coarse cloth, which wears well, and when adorned with a broad lace, forms one of the handsomest national costumes in Europe. It is much superior in quality to that of the black kapa, or outer cloak, made in all the mountains of Northern Greece, and which is very generally worn by the shepherds, peasants, and lower orders both of Greece and Albania, as well as by the mariners of the Greek and Adriatic seas.
The Pasha asserts, that in the country, of which Tepeleni gives him the command, there are not less than 16000 men armed with musquets, who are considered among the best soldiers in Albania. However correct this numeration may be, it is certain, at least, that Albania is better peopled than any equal portion of European Turkey, that notwithstanding the great number of the soldiery employed abroad, it maintains its population, and that every male, from his infancy, is familiar with the use of arms. The Vezir describes Albania as 200 hours in length; in one half of which his own influence predominates, while the remainder is about equally divided between Ibrahim Pasha of Berat, and Ibrahim Pasha of Skodra. He admits, however, that there are still some chieftains who do not acknowledge the authority of the three. Nor is it likely that the country will ever quietly submit to a single hand, although this is evidently the object of all the Vezir’s actions. The quarrels of the chieftains are the delight of the inferior classes, and a constant source of profit to them. As the former are of every degree of power, the minor agree with the more powerful for the hire of their service, and that of their followers. When the hostile parties are persons of great authority, one of their first considerations is the employment of skilful agents to treat for the services of the inferior chieftains, or to make any other bargains useful to the cause.
It often happens in the course of a campaign, between two contending powers, that a village, a single house, a tabia, a meteris, or an occupied position, is bought from the possessors by the opposite party, and though the villages on the hostile frontier generally suffer, yet, as Albanian houses are quickly constructed, such injuries are often unworthy of consideration compared with the advantage which the inhabitants derive from their purchase by the contending parties. Sometimes the head of a family, who is known to be able to command a certain number of tufeks, privately meets the emissary of the chief who wishes to engage his services; he endeavours to raise the lufe, or daily pay, of each man as high as possible; next requires so many lufes for those whom he is to engage to take care of his house in his absence;

§ 1.047   then a farther acknowledgment, perhaps, to enable him to raise a meteris in some important spot for the defence of the house, or any other pretext of the same kind. When the bargain is finally made, he ties round his waist all the money paid in advance, makes the best provision he can for the care of his family, and comes into the field with half, or at most two thirds, of the men whom he is paid for, and remains, perhaps, only until he can make a new bargain with the opponents. Such treachery, however, although not uncommon among the poorest tribes of Albania, is not held in estimation, unless upon a very large scale, and for some great object. It may easily be conceived, that with such customs the Albanians have a particular objection to a muster. I have seen a Grand Vezir attempt it, when, instead of effecting his object, he had the upper part of his tent perforated in a hundred places with musquet-shot. The operations of Albanian warfare in the field being chiefly confined to dodging behind trees and firing at long distances from cover, and few but the chiefs being in earnest, their campaigns are tardy and expensive, and their wars seldom of any great duration, or productive of decisive results. Ultimate success, of course, is sure to attend the treasury which is the best provided.
The Albanians are fond of the chase, and almost every man of landed property keeps greyhounds for coursing the hare, which is their favourite sport. The Vezir has an establishment here, and a few days ago brought home six hares and a fox. He sent me his horses and dogs one day, with an order to Bekir Aga to accompany me, but the weather prevented us from going.

§ 1.048   There is no want of red-legged partridges on the hills, but netting is the only mode by which they are taken.
The greater number of Aly’s subjects being Christians, he is very watchful over the bishops, often employs them as instruments of extortion, and is careful that every act of theirs shall tend to the stability and extension of his own power. He often requires their attendance at Ioannina, or wherever he may happen to be, and shows them favour, so far as to support their authority over the Christians, and sometimes to assist them with a little military force if it should be necessary for the collection of their dues, which consist chiefly in a fixed contribution from every Christian house. They are not exempt, however, from those occasional calls upon their purses, from which no man within his reach is free whom he considers capable of paying. The most important of his ecclesiastical ministers is the metropolitan bishop of Ioannina, a Naxiote by birth, whose diocese comprehends the greater part of Epirus. I overtook him at the bridge of the Subashi, on his way to court.
His επαρχία, or province, contains four subordinate sees; namely, 1. Vela, Βελας; 2. Dhrynopoli, Δρύινοιόλεως; 3. Delvino and Khimara, Δελφίνον και Χίΐμάρας; 4. Vuthroto and Glyky, Βουθρωτοΰ και Γλυκίως. Of these, Delvino and Khimara only remain, the two others being traceable only by their ruins; of the first the residence is Konitza; of the second, Arghyrokastro; of the fourth, Paythia. The northern limit of the bishopric of Drynopolis, or Arghyrokastro, is the bridge of Tepeleni. To the eastward it comprehends Zagoria, and borders upon the province of Κορυτζα, a town situated a day’s journey from Premedi, to the north-eastward.
In the episcopal province of Ioannina the number of Musulmans bears a small proportion to that of the Christians, but in that of Korytza there are many villages entirely Mahometan; in some, Mahometans are married to Greek women, the sons are educated as Turks, and the daughters as Christians; and pork and mutton are eaten at the same table. The province of Beligrad, or Berat, borders on that of Korytza to the westward; its metropolitan is styled bishop of Velagrada, the form which the Greeks have given to the Sclavonic word Beligrad. In the provinces of Korytza and Velagrada, as well as further north, the Musulman faith is supposed by the bishop of Ioannina to be rapidly increasing. Instances have occurred of the apostasy of whole villages at a time. This happened in particular among the Karamuratates, who inhabit Mount Nemertzika, and the neighbouring valley of the Viosa.
Such examples, with the advantages, which a nation of mercenary soldiers cannot but find in belonging to the dominant religion, instead of one which renders them objects of contempt and ill treatment to those in power, are powerful motives to a rapid increase of apostasy. Meantime, the Christians who are employed in a larger proportion than the Musulmans, in pursuits of agriculture or trade, have a tendency to retreat from the oppression of their countrymen of the adverse faith, or to occupy lands in Greece or elsewhere, where labour is wanted;

§ 1.050   and thus there is every prospect of Albania, once a Christian country, becoming, at no distant period of time, almost entirely Mahometan. Apostasy has had similar effects among the Sclavonic nations of European Turkey, extending from Greece to the Danube, but by no means in the same proportion, unless it be in Bosnia.
The bishop relates to me that the Khormovites were notorious robbers before they were reduced by the Vezir. Their favourite place of action was the Pass of Tepeleni, where one of their priests used to enter a hollow tree which stands between Tepeleni and the bridge, while others lay in wait by the side of the road, and stopped the passengers until this Dodonaean Oracle was consulted. If the passenger was a Mahometan, the oracular voice generally ordered him to be stripped and hung upon the tree; if he was a Christian, belonging to a hostile village, he was perhaps dragged through the river. In other cases the Oracle was generally satisfied with sending the unlucky wight forward on foot, after his horse or ass had been taken from him.

§ 1.051   Jan. 2, 1805. —In consequence of a violent rain last night, the Bantza and Viosa have swelled to a great height, so that the former occupies the whole of its bed, which at the mouth is three or four hundred yards across, and the Viosa, which is nearly half a mile broad below the junction, pours even above it such a flood of water against the bridge of Tepeleni, that it has almost over-topped the old piers, and threatens with ruin some masses of masonry which the Pasha has erected on the piers to support the wooden planks, now serving instead of the four arches which were carried away. Passengers still continue to cross from either bank, but the Vezir, fearful not so much for their safety perhaps as for that of the bridge, sits all the afternoon in a kiosk at one corner of his harem, looking towards it with anxiety. A Dervish observing him, goes out and dances upon the bridge, harangues the trees brought down by the stream as they pass through it, and at last makes a kurban, or sacrifice, of a black lamb and two white ones, pouring the blood upon one of the piers. After this ceremony the populace seems satisfied that the safety of the bridge is insured, and in fact no accident occurs.
Both the ruined work and the temporary repair were erected by a Greek engineer who is building, with better success, a massy tower at the Serai. The piers have openings, with pointed arches and large spurs opposed to the current, but the whole work is obviously deficient in solidity, and the Aous will probably continue to be indignant of a bridge, until it has a master more liberal of expence, and who will employ an architect better acquainted with modern improvements in this branch of his art. The Albanians endeavour to supply the place of solidity by making the arches of their bridges of an excessive height, which method they allege is subject only to the inconvenience of obliging the traveller to dismount, while it admits of a great economy of materials, the breadth of a bridge being of little moment in a country where there are no wheel carriages.

§ 1.052   The Vezir expresses great disappointment at the failure of his attempts to establish a bridge at Tepeleni, as it causes a detour by that of the Dryno, and by another in the Stena, in order to reach the opposite bank when the river is not fordable; and, moreover, obliges his Highness on these occasions to enter the Pass of Klisura, where, if the stout Toskidhes of the neighbouring villages should prove rebellious, he might find himself in danger.
Adjoining to a mosque which he built near his palace some years since, is a garden, which was then laid out for him by a Frenchman. On the wall which bounds it towards the river three guns are mounted, and two small kiosks are built. The garden is now in a neglected state, serving only to include the poultry which the Pasha obliges the villages around to supply. There are now between five and six hundred fowls in the garden, forty or fifty of which die every day in consequence of exposure to the rain, and want of food; not because there is any deficiency of barley or kalambokki, but because the purveyor sells it, laying the fault upon the weather and want of shelter, and knowing that as fast as the fowls die, the deficiency will be supplied by the villages.
It is said, that Tepeleni once formed an alliance with two other villages; namely, Damesi, two hours to the north-east, on the direct road to Berat, over Mount Trebushin; and Dragoti, which stands a little within the Pass of the Viosa above its right bank, and that at the head of the league was a woman named Helen. May not Tepeleni be τάφος Ελένης? The Turks call it Tepedellen; the Albanians, Tebelen. There is a superstitious belief, that the houses in the village can never exceed one hundred. The Greek suburb, at the western extremity of the promontory on the edge of the hill over the Bantza, had lately so increased as to approach the Turkish quarter, and to give hopes that the spell would be broken; but last year a plague, which swept off whole families, put a stop to the increase of houses, and has left its marks in numerous recent graves, some of which have been opened by the late heavy rains.
Jan. 4.—Many Albanian chiefs have arrived here within these few days to pay their homage to Aly; among others Abdulla Pasha of Elbassan. They all come attended with followers armed to the teeth, in numbers proportioned to the power and rank of the chiefs. Their array in approaching, and their introduction to the Vezir, afford some fine pictures of feudal life, which carry one back in imagination to Europe in the tenth century; for the Turkish conquest of Albania has not merely prevented this country from partaking in the improvement of the rest of Europe, but has carried it in manners some centuries further back than it was at the time of the conquest, and, with the extension of the Mahometan religion, will render it every day more savage, and less capable of improvement.

§ 1.054   Among other persons who have arrived, is Mehmet Effendi, Aly’s secretary for foreign affairs. This Mehmet is a Roman, whose name was Marco Quirini. He was a member of the inquisition at Rome, lived six years at Aleppo as a missionary of the Society de Propaganda Fide, and would have succeeded, so he says, to the bishopric of Bombay, had he not, in a fit of ennui, left Aleppo a year before the term of his residence expired. Happening to be at Malta at the time of the arrival of the French expedition to Egypt, he was appointed by Buonaparte, in consequence of the knowledge of Arabic which he had acquired at Aleppo, his secretary-interpreter, but becoming tired of his situation at the end of three months, he sailed for Europe, was taken by a Dulciniote cruizer near Cape Stylo, and brought prisoner to Ioannina. Here, in despair of acquiring his liberty, and having persuaded himself that the Turkish religion would suit him, or at least recommend him to the Pasha, whose service he was tempted to enter, he renounced the errors of his youth, became a true believer, and now argues, with much Italian eloquence, that the Islam is the only reasonable faith existing. At Aleppo he acquired a little English, together with his Arabic. He is a man of acuteness, sense, and learning, and assuredly will most bitterly deplore the impatience of temper which has caused him to exchange such inconsiderable privations as he met with at Aleppo, or in Egypt, for the hard service of an Albanian master, among comrades with whom he can scarcely exchange an idea. The Pasha has, according to his usual policy, already persuaded him to take a wife, and now that he has him in his power, scarcely gives him the means of existence.

§ 1.056   CHAPTER II. EPIRUS.
JAN. 6.— This afternoon I return from Tepeleni, by the same road as far as the bridge of the Subashi. The village of Dragoti being only hid from Tepeleni by a projection of Mount Trebushin, soon becomes visible, and opposite to it Kotra, on a height above the junction of the Viosa and Dryno; then farther southward, on the western face of the same mountain, Lekhli; and then Khormovo. Opposite to Lekhli we pass under the village of Lizati, of two hundred houses, and meet Aidin Aga of Kaliasa with a long suite of palikaria on foot, on their way to court. A little short of the bridge of the Subashi is the hollow plane-tree where the robbers of Khormovo formerly lay in wait for travellers. Here, on both sides of the river, the space is very narrow at the foot of the mountain, and on both sides there is a road; that which proceeds from the bridge along the foot of the mountain of Khormovo and Lekhli enters the Stena, and follows the left bank of the Viosa as far as the vale of Kieperi, which is watered by a tributary of the river. The bridge over the Dryno was formerly below Khormovo, but having been swept away by the river, it was replaced higher up by that of the Subashi, which has now resisted the floods for several years.
Leaving the bridge to our left, we proceed in the direction of Arghyrokastro. On the face of its mountain, nearly opposite to Kariani, is seen Maskoluri, a large village, and above it the monastery of Trypi, just below the summit, which terminates the mountain at the opening of the valley of Kardhiki. A small village called Tzepo stands more to the northward in the middle region of this mountain, and below it is Khumelitza opposite to Stepezi, which latter stands on the northern side of the opening leading from the valley of Deropugl into that of Kardhiki. The Belitza, which waters the vale of Kardhiki, flows in a ravine through the opening, and joins the Dryno in the plain as already stated. At Stepezi we halt for the night. At first the people were not willing to receive us; and when the Bulu-bashi who accompanies me threatened them, “We are poor,” they replied, “and have nothing; we can but lose our lives;” but soon change their tone on learning, that contrary to the remonstrances of the Bulu-bashi, I had given directions to pay for every thing, and declare that if the King of England wants soldiers, the whole village, to the number of three hundred, is ready to enter into his service. “It would be easier,” observes one of them, “to maintain fifty Albanian soldiers than one English.” My konak is a hut which, like most of the houses in the Albanian villages, has no chimney, the fire being in the middle, and the smoke, after circulating for a while about the hut, finding its way out through the crevices of a roof covered with rude unformed tablets of calcareous stone, called πλάκες, anglice flakes. These being large and thick, are for the most part held in place by their own weight alone, but sometimes great stones are laid upon them. The rafters within are generally hung with the store of maize, here called mesiri, in the state in which it is brought from the field. Above Stepezi, near the top of the mountain, is seen the small village of Petzari; besides which, there are two or three others on the mountain not visible, so wretched as to be described in terms of compassion even by the Stepeziotes.
Below in the plain, about half-way between Stepezi and the Khan Valiare, I perceive the ruins called Dhrynopoli, written in Greek Δρνϊνούπολις, which appears to have been a fortress, or small fortified town of the time of the lower empire. It stands nearly opposite to the junction of the Belitza with the Dryno, and close by a ruined bridge over the torrent, which descends from the mountain of Labovo.

§ 1.059   Jan. 7.—I had intended to proceed from Stepezi by land to Palerimo, halting this evening at Kaliasa, but the weather obliges us to alter our route. Soon after setting out, at 8.40, a distant movement in the plain towards Libokhovo announces the approach of Vely Pasha, who is coming to visit his father at Tepeleni. We cross over the heights forming the lower part of the mountain of Stepezi: the land is little cultivated, but we pass some large flocks of sheep and goats, the shepherds bear staves headed with hooks of copper. Woods of oak diversify the scene, but there are no trees of any great size. At the end of three hours we arrive on the Belitza, in the valley of Kardhiki, which is inclosed on every side by steep and lofty mountains.
Kardhiki, or Gardhiki. is situated on the side and summit of a steep hill, on the right bank of the Belitza, at the junction of a torrent flowing from the south-west through a ravine which forms a precipice on that side of the town. The situation of the place is one of the wildest that can be conceived, and its appearance is rendered more so by the season of the year. We are no sooner arrived, than a heavy fall of snow puts an end to our day’s journey, and makes me well satisfied with a lodging in the house of Demir Aga till the morrow. Demir, commonly called Demir Dost, enjoys a degree of power such as few Albanian chiefs possess, and Kardhiki has the consequent advantage of internal tranquillity;

§ 1.060   for in general power is so nearly balanced between the leading parties in Albanian towns, that no one chief has sufficient influence to establish order. The unlimited power of Demir over the district of Kardhiki is at present chiefly owing to his good understanding with Aly Pasha. His government, he tells me, contains twenty villages, of which there are only three or four Greek. One of these is Khumelitza, famous for its tobacco, from which a snuff is made at Kardhiki, much esteemed by the Albanians, who, among other points in which they resemble the Highlanders of Scotland, are great snuff-takers. There are eight hundred Musulman families in Kardhiki, and twenty or thirty Greek houses on the opposite side of the ravine.
The mountains to the westward and northward of the district, as far as Khimara, Demir describes as inhabited by half-naked wretches living in villages, one of the hardiest and poorest races in existence: he calls them Gulimidhes, they form a subdivision of the great tribe named Liape, in Greek Liapidhes, a colony perhaps of the Lapithae of Thessaly. One of the villages of the Gulimidhes, called Poliona, and exactly resembling Petzari, is in sight from Kardhiki to the north-west, near the summit of the mountain.
The Musulmans of Kardhiki are not less anxious to serve the king of England, than the Christians of Stepezi; they observe that the use of the musket is their only art and their only property. The care of their fields and flocks they leave to the Christians.

§ 1.061   Demir gives me a very particular and undoubtedly accurate account of the general topography of Albania, and of the divisions of its tribes; of which the following is the substance: Rejecting the political chorography which has arisen since the Turkish conquest, the only important divisions of the Albanians are four: the Ngeghe, Toshke, Liape and Tjame, in Greek Γκεγκεδες, Τόσκιδες, Λάπιδες, or Λιάμπιδες, and Τζάμιδες: their respective countries are in Greek written Γκεγκεριά, Τοσκεριά, Λιαμπουριά, and Τζαμουριά. The Ngeghe possess the districts of Skodra, Kavaya, Kroya, Tyrana, Duras (in Italian Durazzo), Pekin, a part of the district of Elbasan, the two Dibras, and Djura on the Drin, Kurtzova, Kalkandere, and Pristina. There is a large proportion of Latin Christians of this tribe, called Merdhites, in the district of Skodra, who pay sixty paras a house to the Pasha of Skodra. They are considered as good soldiers as any of the Ngeghe. The Toshke extend northward from the frontier of Delvino to that of Pekin and Elbasan, bordering to the west upon the Liape, and possessing Gardhiki, Arghyrokastro, Libokhovo, Premedi, Dangli, Kolonia, Skrapari, Berat, Malakastra, Mizakia, Avlona. The Liape inhabit the entire maritime country to the southward and westward of the boundaries of the Toshke, and as far south as Delvino, where begin the Tjame, who occupy all the maritime country, as far as Suli inclusive, and inland to the Greek districts of Pogoniani and Ioannina. Thus it appears that Tepeleni is in Liaburia, and Aly Pasha a Liape; but as the whole of this tribe is in disrepute among the other Albanians for their poverty and predatory habits, he thinks proper to consider Tepeleni a part of Toskeria, and who dares dispute his geography?
Demir Aga has a khodja in his house, as preceptor to his family, who has learned Arabic at Cairo, Turkish at Constantinople, and Greek at Agrafa. Demir takes no pains to conceal his dislike and suspicions of Aly, though he has always been on good terms with the Pasha, made war in conjunction with him against Khormovo, and is still nominally his ally. By these means he maintains his authority at home, and hopes to save his country from falling entirely into the hands of the Vezir. Aly, he says, has a Jew now in prison at Ioannina, from whom he has already extracted one hundred and forty purses, by threatening him with the loss of his head. But this mode of refreshing a treasury is no novelty in any part of the east; and I well remember the noseless and one-eyed victims of Djezzar to be seen in the streets of Acre. The Pasha never loses an opportunity of gratifying his resentment against those who took part against him in the war of Khormovo. Only two days ago, on the representation of some person that a certain Labovite had been active against him on that occasion, he sent for the man and his son and put them both to death. The son received the order after the imprisonment of his father, and obeyed it, though he might easily have escaped, and was fully persuaded of the Vezir’s intention.

§ 1.063   At Kardhiki are some ruins of a castle, said to have been built by Sultan Bayazid, when he conquered this country, but which is probably more ancient. There can be little or no doubt of its having been an Hellenic site, though I cannot find any remains of those times. The heights around the town are, for the most part, clothed with vineyards, producing a pleasant light wine, almost colourless, and which the Musulmans of the place have no scruple in drinking. Some wheat and barley are grown on the lower heights; the bottom of the vale produces scarcely any thing but kalambokki, the soil being poor and stony, and subject to be overflowed by the river. Such situations are well adapted to that kind of grain which requires much moisture to feed its large succulent stems, and succeeds best therefore in levels which are either inundated by nature in the winter, or capable of artificial irrigation in summer; the abundant return of the grain also is very acceptable to a poor and numerous population like that of Albania. It is to the culture of maize and tobacco that some of the Albanians chiefly owe that skill in the conducting of water, for which they are noted in other parts of Turkey, and by means of which, as I have before remarked, the Liuntzidhes in particular obtain employment at Constantinople and other places.

§ 1.064   Jan. 8.—At 8.30 we move from Kardhiki in the direction of an opening in the mountains to the south-west, called the Pass of Skarfitza; and at 9.45 arrive on the bank of the Belitza, here flowing to the north, but which, after making the half tour of the hill of Kardhiki, has an eastern course through the opening of the valley between Khumelitza and Stepezi. Zulati, which stands on the left bank of the river, on the lowest heights of the mountain, is on the road from Kardhiki to Bordji, a castle and village on the sea-coast between Nivitza of Delvino and Khimara. In approaching the pass of Skarfitza, we have a summit on the left, which lies between Arghyrokastro and Delvino, and near which is the village of Sopoti. A torrent descends from thence through a woody valley called Skotini (dark), which is the resort of numerous flocks in summer. Having crossed two streams which join the Belitza to our right, we begin soon after ten, the snow falling very thick, to ascend the mountain called Pilo-vuni, which bounds to the east the vale of Kaliasa. The mountain is clothed with oaks, beeches, and planes, and many paths are seen, made by the shepherds and the cutters of timber and fire-wood: the oaks are not large.
The pass of Skarfitza separates the summit called Pilo-vuni from the mountain of Sopoti, the name Skarfitza is specifically applied to a Turkish fountain on the summit of the ridge, where the road begins to descend towards the plain of Delvino. At 10.45, not far from that fountain, we join the road from Khimara by Zulati to Delvino, and then descend by a very difficult passage over rocks covered with snow, and along torrents bor, until we arrive in sight of Nivitza, and soon afterwards of Kaliasa, in a vale to the right. The river Pavla, which enters the plain of Finiki below Nivitza, leaves Kaliasa on its right bank above the opening.

§ 1.065   At 1 p.m. we come suddenly upon Senitza, a Greek village on the side of the mountain of Sopoti, divided only by a ravine from the Turkish village Vergo, and looking down upon the plain of Delvino. The lower parts of the hills under these two places, though worn into the most rugged forms by the torrents, are richly covered with vineyards, mixed with poplars, olives, and cypresses. In the descent, Paleavli (old court), a Turkish village, remains to the left, and above it the ruins of Kamenitza, which has been in the same state beyond the memory of the present race. Then turning still more to the eastward we arrive, at 4.15, at Delvino, where I reoccupy my lodging in the Greek quarter, sending the Albanian soldiers and suridjis (postillions), with their horses, to find a konak, according to the tenor of the Vezir’s letter.
Jan. 9.—When preparing to set out this morning for the Forty Saints, the Bishop of Delvino comes to express his regret at my not having made his house my lodging, but was not sorry probably to escape the inconvenience attending the Turk and the horses. The bishop is of opinion, that in the district of Delvino, as in most other parts of Albania, the Musulmans are nearly equal in number to the Christians.

§ 1.066   Sending forward the baggage to the Forty Saints, I proceed to Finiki, which lies to the left of the direct road, about seven miles from Delvino, and do not arrive at the Skala until 4 in the afternoon. The entire hill of Finiki was surrounded by Hellenic walls. At the south-eastern extremity was the citadel, 200 yards in length, some of the walls of which are still extant, from twelve to twenty feet in height. The masonry is of the third kind, that is to say, it is laid in courses, but which are not very regular or equal, nor are the stones all quadrangular, although fitted to one another with the same nicety as in the second, or polygonal, and in the fourth, or most regular kind of Hellenic masonry. A stone in one of the fragments of wall is eight feet by six on the outside, and appears to be nearly as solid. In no part are there more than four or five courses remaining.
The modern village of Finiki, consisting of a few huts, lies directly under the citadel to the south-west. About the middle of the height is the emplacement of a very large theatre, the only remains of which are a small piece of rough wall, which encircled the back of the upper seats: at the bottom in the place of the scene is a small circular foundation, apparently that of a tower, of a later date. The theatre looked directly towards the village of the Forty Saints and Corfu. Between it and the north-western end of the citadel are the remains of a Roman construction, built in courses of tiles, alternating with a masonry formed of rough stones, mixed with a great quantity of mortar, and faced with square stones laid regularly in the mortar, but with the angles instead of the sides uppermost:

§ 1.067   this mode of building was not uncommon in the decline of the Roman empire, and the beginning of that of Constantinople. There are some ruins of houses also of a still more modern construction, showing that Phoenice continued to flourish to a late period, when the chief part of the town appears to have been towards the river Vistritza, which defended this height to the eastward, as the Pavla, or river of Kaliasa did to the west.
In agreement with these appearances we find Phoenice to have been one of the cities of the government of old Epirus, under the successors of Constantine. It was among the places of this province, repaired by Justinian, who, as it had suffered inconvenience from the lowness of the situation, placed the new constructions on a neighbouring height. On the hill of the acropolis I find accordingly some remains of columns in situ, of that polygonal, instead of circular shape, which exactly marks the taste of the age of Justinian.
About the time when the Romans first gained a footing in Greece, Phoenice was the strongest, most powerful, and richest city in Epirus; notwithstanding which, it was taken without a blow by the Illyrians, in the year B.C. 230. The ships of Agron having gained a victory over the Aetolians on the coast of Acarnania, and brought back a rich booty to Illyria, the king, in the height of his exultation, indulged to such an excess in pleasures of the table, that his death was the consequence. His widow, Teuta, who to the inheritance of his authority added a feminine disregard of consequences, ordered her officers to plunder all the ships which they should meet, and thus commissioned them to make war on all the world. Their first object was a descent on Elis and Messenia; but the fleet having previously anchored on the coast, near Phoenice, for the purpose of obtaining a supply of provisions, the commanders there entered into a conference with some Gallic mercenaries, who, to the number of 800, were employed by the Epirotes to garrison Phoenice, and by their assistance made themselves masters of the city.
The Epirotes seem to have been quite prepared to receive the Roman yoke; for their imprudence in trusting an important charge to a people notorious for perfidy, was not more remarkable than their defective discipline in some of the transactions which followed, though their first operation was well judged. Having collected their forces, and taken up a position on the bank of the river which flowed by Phoenice, they removed the planks of a bridge which communicated with the city, with the view of securing their camp against the Illyrians within the walls, and then sent a reinforcement to Antigoneia for the defence of the passes of the Aous against Scerdilaidas,

§ 1.069   a prince of the royal family of Illyria, of whose approach with 5000 men they had received information. Too well satisfied with these precautions, they neglected all further vigilance, and indulged without caution in the plenty which the rich district of Phoenice afforded. The Illyrians in the city soon took advantage of their fault: issuing at night from the town, they replaced the planks of the bridge, drove the Epirotes from their position, and the next morning beating them in the field, killed and captured many, and forced the remainder to retreat into Atintania. Soon afterwards Scerdilaidas arrived at Phoenice, apparently without having encountered the enemy’s forces at the pass of Antigoneia. The Epirotes meantime obtained succour from the Aetolians and Achaians, and again marched toward Phoenice. The opposing forces met at a place named Helicranum, but no action ensued, partly in consequence of the difficulty of the ground, and partly because Teuta, alarmed by a defection of a part of the Illyrians to the Dardani, had sent orders to recall her forces from Epirus. Scerdilaidas, therefore, retraced his steps through the pass of Antigoneia, after having made a treaty by which Phoenice, together with the free prisoners, were restored to the Epirotes, and the slaves and plunder were embarked in the Illyrian ships.

§ 1.070   So great was the booty, and such the encouragement which it gave to Teuta, that she thought of nothing but plunderiug the cities of Greece, while the ungrateful Epirotes soon afterwards joined the Acarnanes in an alliance with Illyria against their benefactors of Achaia and Aetolia. It is probable that the route of Scerdilaidas, both in coming and returning, was by the way of Gardhiki and the pass of Skarfitza, and that the Epirotes retreated as well as returned by the pass of Morzena or Delvino, that having been the route from Phoenice towards Atintania. Helicranum I take to have been the modern Delvino, for the castle hill at the entrance of a very important pass is such a position as could hardly have been left unoccupied by the ancients; and the rugged ground about it accords exactly with the words of the historian.
The ascertaining of the position of Phoenice is extremely useful in illustrating the topography of all the adjacent part of Chaonia, and greatly assists in forming an opinion on the difficult question of the site of Antigoneia. How it happened that Scerdilaidas met with no opposition at the Antigoneian passes, the historian has not stated, but he expressly asserts that the prince took this road both in going and in returning. As Scodra was the royal residence, we cannot doubt that, after crossing the open maritime country of Illyria, he entered the mountains of Epirus near Bullis, now Gradista, and followed the valley of the Aous to Tepeleni. The only other road he could have taken was by the modern Berat to Klisura, which was not only more circuitous, but more dangerous, since it would have obliged him to traverse the defile of the Viosa in its whole length, and afterwards that of its tributary the Dryno, above the junction, or in other words, the passes both of Klisura and of Tepeleni. In the other case he not only avoided the pass of Klisura, but followed a shorter road. It can hardly be questioned, therefore, that the Stena of Antigoneia intended by Polybius, was the pass to the southward of Tepeleni which leads from that town along the left bank of the Dryno towards Arghyrokastro.
But this could not have been the same pass where Philip, son of Demetrius, was defeated by the Romans under Quinctius, though Livy describes it as being at Antigoneia, and applies to it the same Greek word Stena, which Polybius employs on the former occasion; for Philip was not defending the approach to Illyria, but that which led from the western coast of Epirus through the interior of this province into Upper Macedonia and Upper Thessaly, whither the Romans proceeded in pursuit of the enemy after having forced the Stena.
It is evident, therefore, upon examining the places themselves, that there were two passes, or rather a pass with two branches, one of which communicated from the maritime parts of Epirus in a northerly direction to the maritime plains of Illyria, the other leading eastward from the same country towards Upper Macedonia and Thessaly.

§ 1.072   The first is that which I have called the pass of Tepeleni; the latter is the Stena itself, as the defile is still called, which conducts along the Viosa from Tepeleni by Dragoti and Klisura into the valley of Premedi. Antigoneia having given name to both passes, can only be sought for near their junction, where Tepeleni is the only place which has the appearance of an ancient site. We can arrive therefore at no other conclusion than that here stood Antigoneia. It may be admitted that in this case Antigoneia was too distant from the entrance of the Stena effectually to command that pass, but it entirely obstructs the other, and standing on a commanding height at the junction of a tributary, with the Aous, just at the point where the straits expand into a more open and fertile valley, it has all the requisites for the situation of a town of that importance which, from the ancient authorities, we may presume Antigoneia to have been.
The next question in the comparative geography of this part of Epirus is the situation of Phanote. In the winter of the year 170—169 B.C., Appius Claudius, anxious to repair the effects of his defeat in Illyria, marched from thence into Epirus, and laid siege to Phanote. But hearing soon afterwards that Perseus had entered Aetolia, and attacked Stratus, which was then defended by Popilius and his Aetolian allies, he raised the siege of Phanote, and began his retreat towards the plain of Elaeon.

§ 1.073   Clevas, the officer of Perseus, who with a strong garrison defended Phanote, followed the Romans, and, attacking them on a difficult road, by which they were obliged to pass along the foot of the mountains, killed 1000 and took 200 prisoners. Glevas, concerting operations with Philostratus, one of the Epirotes, who had endeavoured to betray Hostilius into the hands of Perseus in the preceding year, then crossed into the district of Antigoneia, and began to plunder the country, with a view to draw the garrison of Antigoneia into a valley, where Philostratus was placed in readiness to fall upon them. The stratagem completely succeeded, and the garrison of Antigoneia sustained a loss almost as great as that of Claudius. Clevas then moved towards the camp of Claudius in the plain of Elaeon; but the latter had no inclination to engage, and finding that nothing was to be gained in Epirus, he dismissed his Epirote allies, and returned with the Italians into Illyricum.
Every circumstance in these transactions tends to show that Gardhiki was the site of Phanote. The strength and remarkable situation of that town, in the midst of a valley surrounded by an amphitheatre of mountains, through which there are only two narrow passes, are a sufficient presumption that it was the site of one of the principal fortresses of Chaonia, and the position midway between the channel of Corcyra and the Antigoneian passes would render it particularly important to the Romans advancing from Illyria; and naturally the first object of Claudius, Antigoneia being already in the hands of the Romans or their allies.
The name of Phanote again occurs in a transaction which took place a few months earlier, and from which we learn that the most important military point on the Aous, in the line of communication between Macedonia and Epirus, was a bridge across that river, which, as Antigoneia is not mentioned on this occasion, would seem not to have been at that place or commanded by it. The consul, A. Hostilius Mancinus, proceeding to assume the command of the Roman armies in Thessaly, had arrived from Italy at Phanote, when the Epirote faction, adverse to the Romans, thought the time and place favorable to a design which they conceived of betraying Hostilius to Perseus, whom they urged by letters to hasten his march towards Epirus. But the Molossi, who were well disposed to the Romans, seized the bridge of the Aous, with the determination of preventing the Macedonians from crossing the river. Meantime the conspiracy was discovered, and revealed to Hostilius by his host, Nestor, of Oropus, upon which he returned to the sea-coast, embarked from thence for Anticyra, in the Corinthiac Gulf, and by that route proceeded into Thessaly.

§ 1.075   Applying this narrative to the country along the banks of the Viosa, and to the general geography of Northern Greece, there can scarcely be a doubt that the bridge alluded to by Livy was in the Stena, about midway between Klisura and Tepeleni, where the communication is now carried on by means of two bridges.
The route from Kardhiki towards Arghyrokastro, along the foot of the mountain, by Khumelitza, corresponds exactly to that in which Claudius was attacked by Clevas, if we suppose the plain Elaeon to have been that between Arghyrokastro and Libokhovo, and Claudius to have pitched his camp about midway between those two towns. The name of the plain Elaeon seems to show that a city Elaeus, which Ptolemy classes with Phoenice and Antigoneia among the interior cities of Chaonia, occupied a position in this valley; and the name is the more remarkable, as we may suppose it to have been originally derived from the abundance of olive-trees in the district, in which respect it is well adapted to this valley of the Dryno; for although surrounded by lofty mountains covered with snow during a great part of the year, and one of the coldest parts of Epirus, the valley itself is one of the few situations in Greece or Albania, distant from the sea, where olive-trees are now found. The town of Elaeus was probably situated on the heights, opposite to Arghyrokastro, where it is said that some remains of Hellenic walls still exist. The small theatre, and other ancient vestiges in the plain below Libokhovo, being of Roman construction, could not have existed at the time of the transactions related by Livy.

§ 1.076   They mark probably the position of a city which was founded by Hadrian and repaired by Justinian; and thence named first Hadrianopolis, and afterwards, but probably for a short time, Justinianopolis. Mention of Hadrianopolis occurs only in some authorities of the Byzantine empire of the sixth and seventh centuries, at which time it was one of the cities of the government of Old Epirus, as well as the see of a bishopric. The only authority which gives any indication of its exact situation is the Tabular Itinerary. In this document there are two roads from Apollonia to Nicopolis: one (noticed also in the Antonine) which led near the sea-coast by the Acroceraunia, Phoenice, and Buthrotum; the other by Amantia and Hadrianopolis, which last is placed about midway between the two extremities of the road. One route, therefore, passed through the plain of Delvino; the other, if Amantia was at Nivitza, ascended the vale of the Sutzista to that position, and from the head of the valley crossed by Pregonati, into the plain of Arghyrokastro, which it followed in its entire length. It would, therefore, have passed exactly by the theatre, which stands not very far from the middle distance between Apollonia and Nicopolis. No great accuracy is to be expected on this point, as several of the distances in both the Itineraries are obviously erroneous.

§ 1.077   The only objection to this position of Hadrianopolis is, that ten or twelve miles lower down the river are the ruins called Drynopolis, which name may easily be taken for a corruption of Hadrianopolis. These remains, however, and the theatre, are productions of two very different periods of time. The latter is a work of the Pagans during the Roman empire. Drynopolis was a fortress or small town of the Byzantine empire; the probability, therefore, is, that when Hadrianopolis fell to ruin, Drynopolis was built upon a different site, and became the see of the bishopric, first named from Hadrianopolis, then from Drynopolis, and which, after the ruin of the latter, was transferred to Arghyrokastro. Nor is Drynopolis a corruption of Hadrianopolis, but taken from the river on which it is situated, still called Dhryno, or Drino, or Druno, which may possibly be the ancient name still preserved of this branch of the Aous, and derived either from δρυς or from some native word which has given name also to another large river of Albania, the Drin, which flows from the lake of Akhridha into the Adriatic. As to Deropoli, or Deropugl, although this appellation is sometimes applied to the river, it belongs properly to the whole valley, and may perhaps be a corruption of Hadrianopolis, to which all this extensive plain probably belonged when the city was in its most flourishing condition.Although Arghyrokastro has no very marked appearance of an ancient site, the name may possibly be derived from that of the Argyrini, whom Lycophron, and two Greek authors cited by Stephanus, show to have been an Epirote people, and whom Lycophron leads us to look for in the northern part of Epirus, as he couples them with the Acro Ceraunii: in fact the word 'Αργυρινος is still sometimes applied to a native of Arghyrokastro.

§ 1.078   Jan. 10.—The scirocco has been constant at the Forty Saints since my departure, and the boat in which I crossed the channel was not able to return to Corfu till four days ago. Having prevailed upon the crew of another Corfiote boat, which had just arrived in the harbour with a lading of vallonea for Corfu, to defer their passage thither until they have taken me to Palerimo and back, we sail for that port at 9.30 a.m., and arrive there at 2. The distance is about eighteen miles; the wind was a gentle Onchesmite, like that which carried over Cicero to Brundusium.
Between the Limeni of the Forty Saints and Spilia, or the Skala of Nivitza, there are several small creeks where boats may find shelter. Spilia is a creek at the mouth of a glen, where stands the ruin of a magazine which was destroyed by Aly Pasha when at war with Nivitza. Beyond it is Lukovo, a small village on the side of the mountain, surrounded with terraces of vines and corn; two or three miles beyond which is Pikernes, somewhat larger; and two miles further Sopoto. Below Lukovo and Pikernes are sandy beaches, where boats anchor, and may be stranded in bad weather. Sopoto stands in a glen, and has a castle named Bordji, on the top of a steep rock commanded by Hadji Beddo Aga, a partizan of the Vezir. Here are the only Turkish families on this coast. Behind Sopoto a river descends in a very deep and rocky ravine. A little farther north is Kiepero, on the edge of a steep precipice, below which are a few fields, terminating in a beach which is separated from Port Palerimo only by the point which shelters that harbour to the southward and eastward. Palerimo, the ancient Panormus, which Strabo describes as a great harbour in the midst of the Ceraunian mountains, and thus clearly distinguishes from the Panormus of Oricum, is divided into two bays by a rocky peninsula, projecting into the middle of it, on the summit of which stands the kastro, or fortress. This castle is nothing more than a small square enclosure containing a house, a church, and two four-pounders. Having brought a letter to the Bulu-bashi, or commandant, I land as soon as we arrive, and take shelter from the rain in his small apartment, which is the only one in the place having a chimney. On the side of the hills bordering the southern division of the port are a few cornfields and vineyards, which, together with some sheep on the hills, are tended by the ten soldiers who garrison the fort. Five of these are Musulmans, including the Bulu-bashi and his son; the others are Greeks. At the extremity of the northern harbour the hills are well cultivated, but these form part of the territory of the town of Khimara, which possesses the exclusive right of fishery in that division of the bay.
A gale accompanied with rain, which comes on at night from the south-east, brings a ship of Dultjuni, in Italian, Dulcigno, into the harbour, bound to that place from Alexandria. As the Dulciniotes have the reputation of being inclined to piracy, the garrison is alarmed, and prepares for defence. Indeed they had already been put upon the alert by our arrival, for our boat being from Corfu, the governor suspected some Russian treachery, and before my cot was conveyed into the castle, it was searched, lest it should contain concealed arms.Last summer a French pirate boat, which was afterwards destroyed at Fanu by one of the British ships of war on this station, put into Palerimo, after having plundered some Maltese vessels under English colours; the Khimariotes formed a design of attacking it, on the plea of its being a pirate, but probably with a view of plunder; not agreeing however among themselves, the project failed.

§ 1.081   Jan. 11.—The wind shifts to the westward, and the weather clears up at noon. At 1, accompanied by a servant, and preceded by one of the Corfiote boatmen and a guard from the castle, I proceed on foot to Khimara, no beasts of burthen being procurable, and the road scarcely admitting of their being employed. The captain of the Dulciniote, a bearded Turk, about seventy years of age, had offered to land me in the Bay of Khimara, and thus to save the detour along the side of the mountain; but when we came alongside his ship, his authority proved insufficient to obtain a party to row the boat. It appears that they are afraid of the Khimariotes. After crossing the ridge at the extremity of the northern bay, and climbing along the side of the hills which overhang the sea beyond it, we arrive at the end of an hour’s walk from the castle, upon a little valley and beach where are some flocks. To the right, the sides of the mountains are grown with velanidhies, or oaks, which produce the vallonea; they still preserve their last year’s leaves, but can hardly be called evergreens. We meet some shepherds to whom the sailor, with a few words of greeting, presents his snuff-box, common compliment in Albania, and in these independent districts a necessary propitiation. In return the shepherds call off their dogs, which had made a general charge upon us.

§ 1.082   We soon arrive in sight of Khimara, situated on the top of a pointed hill, and enter upon the cultivated land which surrounds it, consisting of extensive vineyards, some fields of wheat just springing up, and others of barley, which the peasants are ploughing, and will sow as soon as they can catch a short interval of fair weather. On a high summit under the mountains on the right is a monastery of the Panaghia, on the left the port of Khimara, near the shore of which are some water-mills, turned by a rivulet from the mountain. The harbour is exposed to the west, but affords good shelter to small vessels from any other wind, and has a fine beach. There is another more open spiaggia, two miles farther to the north, immediately below the town, where boats are hauled up on the beach. Here is a small plain which, with the side of the hill between this plain and the village, is the best cultivated part of the territory of Khimara. Immediately below the village are some gardens, containing vines, olives, cypresses, and fruit-trees.

§ 1.083   At half-past three we arrive at the house of Capt. Zakharias, the son of George, vulgarly called Zakho-Ghiorghi, for whom I have a letter of introduction from Z. the collector, my host of the Forty Saints. Ther house is as humble a dwelling as any captain’s in Albania. In the inner room a fire in the middle of the floor, and a mattrass spread by the side of it, are the luxuries speedily arranged for me. Capt. George, who has attained the ordinary bounds of life, and has never been absent from his native village except three years passed in the Neapolitan service, expresses his delight at seeing an Englishman here for the first time. Two Germans some years ago, calling themselves Englishmen, left a certificate with Capt Constantine Andrutzi, which proves the imposture. Capt. Z.’s family consists of a son, the widow of another son killed in the service of the King of Naples, and two or three of his children. All are employed in preparing supper, but principally the widow. The dishes are baked, and a dingy towel spread close to the cinders, serves both for table and tablecloth. The Captain, and the sailor from the boat, who is honoured as a guest, are the only persons who join the table.
After supper all the heads of houses friendly to Zakho-Ghiorghi come in and seat themselves crosslegged around the fire. They relate their adventures in the Neapolitan or other services, for most of the Khimariotes seek a livelihood as soldiers abroad. One states that he was in the war of Italy with Buonaparte, who made many inquiries of him concerning this part of Albania, and told him at Trieste, that he meant to send 40,000 men to Corfu, and as many more to Avlona. They all speak with pride of their liberty, meaning their exemption from Turkish oppression, at the same time that they lament their own internal anarchy and dissensions, and agree that they should be happy to receive the blessing of good government from the hands of any sovereign in Europe except the Turk, whom they are always determined to resist.

§ 1.084   They neither pay the kharatj nor any other tax, except a contribution of thirty paras a head per annum to Ibrahim Pasha of Berat, for the liberty of trading to his ports. The right of pasturage on the lands of the town of Khimara, that of gathering velanidhi on the mountains, and that of fishing in the northern bay of Palerimo are enjoyed in common by all the inhabitants. Maize is grown in the plain adjacent to the northern beach, where the two torrents, which embrace the town, overflow in the winter, and prepare the land for receiving that grain. Wheat is produced within the territory, more than sufficient for the annual consumption of the place in favorable seasons; but for two or three years past they have hardly reaped enough for six months. Velanidhi, a small quantity of wheat in good years, and sometimes a little wine, which is of a dry kind and without flavour, are the only exports. The mountain behind Khimara is said to abound in firs suited for masts, which might be brought down at a small expense, and would be a profitable undertaking, if poverty and dissension admitted of it.

§ 1.085   The village, or city as the natives are pleased to qualify it, of Khimara, more commonly pronounced according to the Italian κακοφωνίa Tjimara, contains 300 families: divided into five principal alliances called parentie in Italian, and in Greek φρατρίαις, a classical word which I hardly expected to find in Albania. With one or other of these, all the inferior families are in alliance. The fratries are, 1. The Lyganates, consisting of sixty or seventy houses, at the head of which is Alexodhemo, son of Alexi; 2. The Tzakanates, of which my host Zakho-Ghiorghi is the πρώτος: it has upwards of eighty houses; 3. The Koykadhes, of which Zakharias Andrutzu is the chief: of these there are about forty-five houses; 4. The Mazates, of whom John Tragynus is the chief; and, 5. the Κοκουρτάδες, of whom Andrew Polus is the head. The first and second are the only families, at present, who are not on speaking terms, but last August there was a scuffle with sabres between Constantine, the brother of the chief of the third family, and Alexodhemo, the head of the first, in which some wounds were received before the quarrel was adjusted, and the contending parties restored to an exchange of words. Another brother of the Andrutzi is now lieutenant-colonel of one of the regiments of Cacciatori Albanesi in the Neapolitan service. His major is a native of the town of Vuno. Constantine Andrutzi informs me that he was twenty-eight years in the Neapolitan service, that he deserted to the French when they took Naples, but that not obtaining any employment or encouragement from them, he returned to his native country. When General Villettes was raising a corps of Albanians for the British service, C. Andrutzi was sent for to Corfu to agree upon the terms on the part of the Khimariotes. He speaks and reads Italian and French, is tolerably informed on the history and antiquities of this country, wishes much to enter the English service, and asserts that we may easily raise a body of 800 Khimariotes from the free villages of Khimara, and, with the permission of the Turks, twice that number in the neighbouring districts.
There are about 100 pensioners of the King of Naples in the town, officers included, who are paid by Capt. Zakho, for which purpose he visits Corfu every year to receive the pay from the Neapolitan consul, whose agent he is. He receives a pension of twelve ducats a month for his own military services, four more for the consolato or agency, and eight ducats for the widow of a son who fell in the service. So handsome a provision after a short personal service can only be considered as intended to secure an influential agent in the place, for Zakho-Ghiorghi is looked up to as the chief man in Khimara by all except those who side with the Lyganates, and who, of course, consider Alexodhemo the chief. The feud between the two parties is of long standing; the most remarkable contest occurred ten or twelve years ago, when many lives are said to have been lost. The heads of the fratries are those who possess the largest proportion of vineyards, cornfields, and flocks; and they form the council of the family league. Between friendly fratries disputes are easily made up, though even among them the foundation and last resource of the law is the lex talionis.

§ 1.087   As in Arabia, a murder may be acquitted for money. At Khimara 2000 Turkish piastres are the usual price of blood; at the next village of Vuno it is 1000. Until this be paid the retaliation goes on. The power of the heads of families, Capt. Zakho observes, is merely the influence of property and character, and is neither asserted nor acknowledged. “That man,” pointing to an attendant, “though he receives his pay from me, will do nothing I order unless he pleases.” He shows, however, at the same time, that he can desire the man to bring his kapa and lay it on his shoulders. There are several soldiers here on leave of absence, during which they receive their pay. One has a twelvemonth’s leave. The pay of a private is 28 grani per diem; that of a serjeant-major 34; of a captain 80 ducats a month; of a lieutenant-colonel 110; but they find their own arms and clothes. A Neapolitan soldier has not half as much. There are three or four Khimariote captains now recruiting here for their corps at Naples.
The Khimariotes often intermarry with the people of Vuno, the territory of which is separated only from that of Khimara by the crest of the ridge to the north-westward, which looks down upon Vuno. But notwithstanding these alliances, the two towns are generally on terms of suspicion, and often in open hostility. This, indeed, is the ordinary condition of two neighbouring towns in Albania, and, by a natural consequence, those which are separated from one another by a third territory are generally in alliance, which in fact is not uncommon on a larger scale in other parts of the world.

§ 1.088   The name of Khimara is generally applied to the whole of the ancient Acroceraunian ridge, from Cape Kefali to Cape Glossa, including the valley of Oricum. The towns are in the following order from south to north: Nivitza, Lukovo, Pikernes, Sopoto, Kiepero, Khimara, Vuuo, Dhrymadhes, Palasa, and Dukadhes. All these places stand on the western slope, of the Acroceraunia, except Dukadhes, which looks to the Gulf of Aulon. There are also a few smaller villages in Khimara, one of which, named Piliuri, is in sight from the town of Khimara to the eastward, towards the summit of the mountain, in a pass leading to the Turkish village of Kutzi. At Corfu I met a certain Count Gika, of Dhrymadhes, who described that place as very picturesque, with a river running through it; and added, that near Dukadhes are forests of fine oaks and pines, furnishing timber which might easily be brought down the hills into the lagoon of Erikho. All the towns have nearly the same semi-barbarous manners and customs. The Greek language is spoken by almost all the men, and the Italian by those who have lived abroad; but the women in general know little of any language but the Albanian.
Khimara being situated on a steep rocky height, protected on either side by the ravine of a torrent, and having all its exterior houses prepared for defence, has by its strength hitherto served as a barrier to all the northern part of the district against the arms of Aly Pasha. Three or four years ago, the Khimariotes fought with his troops on the hill above Palerimo. More recently, on visiting the latter place, he proposed to purchase a piece of land from the Khimariotes, for the purpose of building a castle, which they wisely refused. He has often recommended this harbour to the use of British ships; his principal object in which, as he confessed to me, is that by this appearance of support from us, he may find it more easy to bring the Khimariotes under his yoke. It was in a manner somewhat similar that he obtained Nivitza and Aio Vasili; and thus it is that he always endeavours, in his transactions with the powers of Europe, to convert them into instruments of his own aggrandizement. From Khimara to Tepeleni is reckoned a four days’ journey in this season, though the direct distance is not more than 20 G. miles: the first day is to Kutzi, the third to Nivitza on the Sutzista, which, like the other streams of this country, is difficult to pass in seasons of rain. Nivitza is inhabited by Musulman Liape, and is described as situated on a peaked rock, surrounded by deep ravines and torrents, where considerable remains of ancient walls are preserved, and in the castle particularly an entire door. It is agreed by all who have seen these walls, that they exactly resemble some pieces of Hellenic work, which now serve as foundations to several of the modern houses of Khimara. The masonry approaches to a regular kind not any of the blocks of stone having more than five sides. These relics, together with the name, leave no question that Khimara stands upon the exact site of the ancient Chimara, which I believe is noticed only by Pliny. I was informed of an inscription in a private house, but as it belonged to one of the adverse faction, I could not obtain permission to see it.

§ 1.090   Jan. 12.—As neither the season, nor the engagements of the boat in which I came to Palerimo, nor the doubtful politics and civilization of the Ceraunians, will admit of my exploring Khimara any farther, still less of being able by this route to examine the topography of Amantia, Oricum, Bullis, or Apollonia, I am under the necessity of returning to Palerimo and Corfu. The people of Dukadhes, who possess the valley above Oricum, are the principal difficulty, having a reputation something like that of the Kakovuliotes of Mani.
Though the wind is favorable this morning for returning by sea to the Forty Saints, and the weather delightful, Captain Zakharias, pushing the laws of hospitality to a semi-barbarous extent, will not allow me to walk back to Palerimo, until a lamb, which he sends for from the hills, has been baked and served up on the floor.
After this Homeric breakfast we descend to Palerimo, accompanied for two miles by Captain Constantine Andrutzi: two guards, formerly Neapolitan soldiers, armed with musquets, walk with us as far as the boundary of the territory, between the northern Bay of Palerimo and the isthmus of the castle. Here, having received a present, they fire off their musquets and return.

§ 1.091   We embark at 2 p.m. with a light northerly breeze, which soon' falls to a calm; and, rowing all the way, arrive at half-past nine at the Forty Saints by a fine moonlight.
In all this part of Albania it is a prevailing idea, not uncommon also in many parts of Greece, that the country formerly belonged to the Spaniards, and that all the ruins are the work of that people; those at the Forty Saints, the castle of Delvino, the ruins in the plain of Deropugl, the remains of an old Turkish castle at Tepeleni, and even the Hellenic walls of Phoenice are supposed to be of Spanish construction. It is difficult to understand how this opinion originated, for the Catalans, the only Spaniards who made any permanent settlements in Greece, were not in this quarter, nor can any one of the ruins in Epirus with any probability be ascribed to them.
I had made an agreement with the Corfiotes to proceed to Vutzindro, and Parga, and from thence to Corfu, but this being the Greek new year’s day, and feast of St. Basil, the sailors get drunk and insolent, and the bargain breaks off.

§ 1.092   Jan. 14.—Having found another vessel, we sail along the coast to the Bay of Buthrotum, passing between the two rocks off Kassopo, which are such a dangerous impediment to the safe navigation of this channel. They lie midway between the castle of Kassopo and a wide bay on the shore of Epirus, which is separated only from the lake of Vutzindro by a long ridge of land, not broader in some parts than a mile. The bay is called Examili, in allusion to the isthmus, that name being often attached by the modern Greeks to an isthmus, whatever may be its breadth. It is thus applied to the Isthmus of Corinth, and to that of the Thracian Chersonese, near Cardia. The Bay of Examili is open and exposed to the west, but the southern part is well sheltered by four islets, which have given to the anchorage within them the name of Tetranisa. Beyond this there is a rugged coast, parallel to the eastern extremity of Corfu, and forming with it the narrowest part of the channel. The most projecting point on the continent is probably the Cape Posidium of Ptolemy and Strabo. Between Onchesmus and Posidium, Ptolemy places a Cassiope, which he clearly distinguishes from the Cassiope of Corcyra, by describing the former as a harbour, the latter as a town and promontory. Cassiope of Epirus, therefore, if Ptolemy is correct, would seem to have stood in the harbour of Tetranisa. It is on the strength of this evidence of Ptolemy, that Strabo has been supposed to allude to a Cassiope on the coast of Epirus, in stating that the distance from port Cassiope to Brundusium was 1700 stades. I have little doubt, however, that he intended the harbour of Cassiope in Corcyra, from whence it is more probable that vessels should begin their passage to Italy, than from any port on the Epirote coast to the southward of Onchesmus. If Strabo did not intend a place in Corcyra, why should he have described Phalacrum, (which we know from Ptolemy and Stephanus to have been a promontory of that island), as lying to the southward of Cassiope; or why should he have returned to Onchesmus before he described the ports of Posidium and Buthrotum? This seems clearly to show that all which occurs between his first mention of Onchesmus, and his return to it, relates to Corcyra only; that his Cassiope was the modern Kassapo, and his Phalacrum the north-western point of Corfu. It is true that this cape is nearly due west of Kassopo, instead of being to the south; but errors of bearing are among the most common of ancient inaccuracies. Strabo’s distance of 1700 stades cannot assist in deciding the question, because the difference of distance from Brindisi to Kassopo in Corfu, or from Brindisi to any point on the Epirote coast, is too small on so long a line to lead to any certainty, especially in reference to so incorrect an authority or text as those of Strabo.

§ 1.094   His imperfect knowledge of the general form of these coasts is shown, not only by his mistaken bearing of Phalacrum from Cassiope, but by his statement also that the distance from Phalacrum to Tarentum is equal to that from Cassiope to Brundusium, there being a great excess in the former line whether the latter be measured from the coast of Corcyra, or from that of Epirus. As to the mention supposed to have been made by other authors beside Ptolemy, of a Cassiope in Epirus, it is clear that they all, without exception, intended the Cassope, of which the territory bordered on the Ambracic Gulf.
If Phalacrum was the north-western cape of Corfu, the southern extremity, or Cavo Bianco, was probably the Amphipagus of Ptolemy; for although the words Leucimne and Bianco have a similar import, the modern name Alefkimo is a much stronger proof of the identity of the ancient Leucimne with the low cape advancing into the channel of Corfu, eight miles to the northward of Cape Bianco. The name Amphipagus corresponds to such an abrupt and rocky height as Cavo Bianco, and with the more propriety, as it is a contrast to the low sandy promontory of Alefkimo. It is observable also, that the placing of Amphipagus at Cavo Bianco agrees with the order of names in Ptolemy, which is as follows:

§ 1.095  Cassiope (Kassopo); Ptychia (Vido); Corcyra (Corfu); Leucimne (Alefkimo); Amphipagus (Cavo Bianco); Phalacrum (Cape Drasti, or the N.W. Cape). The only remarkable promontory in Corcyra, which seems here omitted, is that at the southern entrance of the Channel of Kassopo.
As we approach Vutzindro, the water becomes muddy, and in the bay is almost fresh. This bay is very shallow on the northern side, and the bar at the mouth of the river will even now, when the water is at the highest, but just admit of the entrance of καΐκια or small coasting vessels. We row three or four miles up the river, through a plain once perhaps the property of Atticus, the friend of Cicero, and now peopled with horses from the neighbouring villages. We then arrive at the Vivari, or more vulgarly Livari; that is to say, the principal fishery, which is on the left side of the river, at its exit from the lake, nearly opposite to the peninsula which was anciently occupied by Buthrotum. The only buildings at the Livari are a ruined house of Venetian construction, and near it an old triangular castle, occupied by a dirty bilibash of the Vezir, and fifteen or twenty soldiers. The place is called Βουτζιντρόν, vulgarly pronounced Vutjindro: the territory comprehends all the lake, and a part of the surrounding hills. In the house live the superintendent of the fishery and fourteen Greeks, who are employed by him. The fish are caught by means of a strong permanent dam, made of large beams, crowned with a palisading of reeds. At intervals are small chambers in the dam, where the fish are taken in passing out of the lake. A man who is on the watch, gives a signal for shutting the door as soon as the chamber is full. There is a second dam above the first, for the purpose of breaking the force of the water, but the late violent rains have carried away great part of it, and injured the fishery for the remainder of the season, which usually lasts from September to March. The yearly average quantity of fish caught is 350,000 litres, or Greek pounds, which are the same as the Venetian. This year, though the season is only half over, they have caught 400,000. The fishery is farmed from the Vezir for fifty-five purses by N. Y. of Kalarytes, the bishop of Ioannina, and G. Z. of the Forty Saints. In the same farm is included the fishery of a smaller lake named Riza, to the south-eastward of the great lake; that of a lagoon called Armyro on the northern side of the mouth of the river, the pasturage of the marshy land near the river and lake, and the privilege of cutting wood (but not construction timber) in the forests and marshes of the territory of Vutzindro, as it was defined by treaty between Venice and the Turks. Beyond that line the wood-cutters pay for the privilege to Konispoli, which possesses all the south-eastern part of the fine plain, extending from the southern extremity of the lake to the foot of the hills which border the Channel of Corfu in face of the city.
The right of fishing with nets in the lakes, lagoons, and river, is underlet by the farmers to Corfiotes, who employ many boats in this manner.

§ 1.097   The fish are salted on the spot, and the greater part sent to Corfu, which depends upon Vutzindro and the Gulf of Arta for its supply of fish during the long fasts of the Greek church; the rest are sold in the villages around for a great distance. From hence also Corfu is chiefly furnished with firewood, and with staves to make casks for its oil and wine. These circumstances explain the importance which Venice always attached to the possession of Bucintro. The wood is chiefly procured on a mountain rising steeply from the eastern side of the lake and plain, and called Milia-vuni, from a little village near the summit, which is in sight from Corfu. The French are said to have formerly procured from thence some good timber for shipbuilding. Under its south-eastern extremity, between it and another mountain, is the lake Riza, which is three or four miles long, and sends forth a stream which enters the lake of Vutzindro, nearly opposite to the ruins of Buthrotum. Along the eastern side of the lake Riza passes the direct road from Delvino to Mursia, a village at the southern extremity of the plain, from whence it continues to Konispoli and Filiates. The road from the Livari to Delvino follows the western side of the same lake, and joins the former road at the upper or northern extremity of the lake, near a source of salt water. On some low eminences rising from the southern bank of the lake Riza are the villages Zara and Zaropulo, which are comprehended in the district of Vutzindro. The fishery of this lake, as I before remarked, forms a part of the farm of the great livari, but is subject to the payment of one hundred and eighty okes of fish to Selim Bey Koka, who owns the neighbouring land.

§ 1.098   Konispoli is a scattered town of four or five hundred Albanian families, conspicuous from Corfu by its situation on the summit of the maritime ridge, which stretches from the plain at the mouth of the Kalama, as far as the bay of Vutzindro. Inland the plain extends southward from Vutzindro behind this ridge, for a distance of about five miles, and a river flows through it into the lake. The southern part of the plain belonged to a Hellenic city, of which remains are found on the edge of the plain, to the northward of Konispoli; the other end was obviously a part of the territory of Buthrotum.
About twenty days ago there was a battle at Konispoli, between the two parties which divide the town; at the head of one is Mahmud Daliani, whose niece was married to Mukhtar Pasha some time ago, but divorced by him and then married to Selim Bey, of Delvino, who now resides at Konispoli. The other chief is Ismail Aga, a friend of the Vezir, whose assistance he demanded; but before it could arrive Ismail had made up matters with his adversary. The Vezir’s party at Konispoli and Filiates are called Jacobins by their opponents, in imitation of the party appellations of the Corfiotes. Aly was displeased with Ismail for not allowing time for his interference; but still hopes, by his means, to obtain possession of Konispoli, which would be a great step towards his object of subjugating the whole of Tzamuria.

§ 1.099   Wild swine are very numerous among the thickets along the edge of the lake, particularly in the peninsula of Buthrotum; and the place is infested with jackals, which at night make as hideous a noise as those in the plains of Palestine. Woodcocks are very numerous, and the lake is now covered with ducks.
A Greek of Ioannina, who is employed at the Livari, had established, at the expence of six hundred piastres, a small shop and wine-store, which was totally carried away by the late inundations. Of the two years he has dwelt here, he has been ill the greater part of the last. In summer the air is extremely unhealthy; and there is no drinking water, but that of the river, which in winter is extremely turbid.
As one of the states of Epirus, Buthrotum has not received any more notice from history than the cities of this province in general. It was occupied by Caesar soon after he had taken Oricum, and before the time of Strabo had become a Roman colony. Virgil had a most imperfect idea of the place, when he applied to it the epithet of lofty; and its resemblance to Troy is very like that of Monmouth to Macedon. It would be difficult even to find the dry torrent to which the followers of Helenus had given the name of Xanthus.

§ 1.100   The words which the Latin poet applies to the Phaeacian citadel are better chosen, and exactly describe the two rocky summits or κορυφαί, which have given its modern name to Corcyra.
Strabo was so far acquainted with the site of Buthrotum, as to know that it stood on a chersonese; but in placing it at the mouth of the harbour Pelodes, he was either greatly misinformed, or the word λιμένος has been improperly substituted in his text for λίμνης, and the name Pelodes belonged to the lake as well as the harbour; for Ptolemy, Plutarch, and the word itself, sufficiently identify Pelodes with the muddy bay of Vutzindro. Ptolemy, indeed, distinguishes between the Bουθρωτοΰ κόλπος and the Πηλωδης λιμην; placing the former next to Cape Posidium: possibly port Pelodes was the modern Armyro, which may have been converted in process of time by the deposit of the river, from a well-sheltered harbour into a lagoon on the northern side of the river’s mouth.

§ 1.101   The ruins of Buthrotum occupy a peninsula which is bounded on the western side by a small bay in the lake, and is surrounded from the north to the south-east by the windings of the river just above its issue. The walls of the Roman colony still exist in the whole circumference, which is about a mile, and are mixed with remains both of later and of Hellenic work, showing that the city always occupied the same site. Within the inclosure are the ruins of a large church, of two or three small ones, and of some cisterns, baths, and houses. There are also some fragments of granite columns and of other marbles. The towers which flank the walls were built with a salient angle, and some of them were of this form. The citadel was towards the bay of the lake, where the side of the peninsula is the highest and steepest. Of the Hellenic remains there is a very perfect piece of wall on the south-eastern side, which, as it consists of regular courses, is probably not much older than the time of Pyrrhus. There is also a fine remnant on the western side, of which the courses are nearly equal and parallel, and appear entirely so at a distance; but on a nearer inspection, few of the stones are found to be quadrangular, nor the courses regular. Immediately opposite to the house of the fishery are some other ruins which appear to be Venetian; among them is a tower resembling those on the coast of Malta. There is a similar one in the pass behind the Limeni of the Forty Saints.

§ 1.102   Jan. 15.—A rocky summit on the western side of the ruins commands a fine view of the Epirote coast, from the cape near Palasa to the islands of Syvota, as well as of all the eastern side of Corfu. The plain of Delvino is seen beyond the lake, together with the surrounding mountains. On the narrow ridge which separates the lake from the bay of Examili, stands the monastery of St. George, surrounded with gardens, olive-grounds, and vineyards; it is now occupied by Aly as a military post. A little beyond the southern point of the bay of Vutzindro is a small port called Glyfa, a little within Cape Stilo: then occurs the harbour of Ftelia, or Aftelia, which is well sheltered, and though small is a good anchorage for ships of commerce; then Kataito, a little open port, then Bagania, a good harbour for merchant ships. Beyond Bagania, the villages, Konispoli, Liopesi, and Saiadha, crown the hills which border the coast. Under Saiadha is a sandy shallow bay, exposed to the north-west, in which is a skala called Kerasia, which is the ordinary landing-place from Corfu on the way to Filiates and Ioannina, and from whence the island is usually supplied with cattle, sheep, hogs, and other provision.

§ 1.103   At the mouth of the river Kalama, the ancient Thyamis, there is an island or peninsula affording good shelter, immediately beyond which is the bay of Gomenitza, a fine harbour for ships of any size and number; the entrance is narrowed by the shoals formed by the Kalama, which extend from Kerasia all the way round to the bay of Gomenitza. Close to the mouth of the river, on the north, is the insulated mountain called Mavronoro, which seems once to have been an island, as all around it are low sandy points. It seems to be the projection which Ptolemy entitules the promontory or promontories of Thyamis; the low promontories around it would justify the plural number. Five or six miles to the southward of Gomenitza are the islands Sybota, which still bear the ancient name. They shelter a small bay, where on the shore of the main land stands a village of Musulman Albanians named Vrakhana or Murto. Strabo has not noticed any place between Buthrotum and Sybota: an unfortunate omission, as there must have been anciently some important towns in the rich districts near the mouth of the Thyamis, concerning which no author has left us any precise information. Torone would seem from Ptolemy to have stood in one of the bays between the mouth of the Kalama and Syvota.

§ 1.104   The country which lies to the southward of the districts of Vutzindro and Delvino, as far as the Kalama, is called Parakalamo. Φιλάτες, pronounced Filiates by the Albanians, is the principal town of Parakalamo. With the exception of a few Christian artisans and shopkeepers, it is entirely inhabited by Musulman Albanians, contains several handsome mosques, and about 2000 houses, which, as in the generality of Albanian towns, are dispersed over a great space; the ground is hilly, and the place is situated at a distance of some miles from the plain of the Kalama. Ibrahim Demis and Ibrahim Stambulis are the two principal chieftains, and can bring two or three thousand armed Musulmans into the field.
Plessaritza is a large Greek village on a rocky hill to the northward of Filiates, and situated above the western side of a valley which forms the natural communication between the vale of the Kalama and that of Delvino. Beyond Plessaritza, towards Delvino, are Kotzika and Verva, in the narrowest part of the valley abovementioned: this pass, and that of Neokhori, in the mountains which separate the valley of the lower Kalama from the districts of Paramythia and Margariti, are the only two entrances into that valley on the land side, except the difficult route which leads into it along the river from the north-eastward. Hence Parakalamo, Daghi, to the south of the Kalama, Magariti, and Paramythia, have hitherto remained independent of Aly Pasha.

§ 1.105   Jan. 16.—Return this morning to Corfu, in a boat of that island with a gentle scirocco. At two thirds of the distance down the river stands a house built by a Corfiote, who owns also part of the plain; but his speculation having failed, the house is now in ruins. Aly Pasha having already made so much progress in gaining possession of the Ex-Venetian places, is desirous of purchasing this property from the Corfiote.

§ 1.106   CHAPTER III SECOND JOURNEY. AETOLIA.
June 12, 1805.—At 11 p.m. I embarked with two servants and a Tatar courier in a boat of Kefalonia from the Skala of Patra for the opposite coast; but a light breeze, blowing directly against us from the lagoon of Mesolonghi, and our boat being furnished only with two oars, it was not until the morning of June 13, at 8.30, that I landed at the ruin of a tower of Venetian, or lower Greek construction, at the foot of Mount Varassova, as that immense pile of rock is here called which closes the plain of the Evenus to the eastward,

§ 1.107   but which is more commonly known at Patra by the name of Mount Galata, from a village of that name. The other steep mountain or promontory towards Epakto, which at Patra is generally called Paleo-vuni, is here better known by the name of Kaki-skala. The landing-place of Varassova is in an angle, where the level coast at the mouth of the Evenus terminates, under the cliffs of the mountain, which rise almost perpendicularly to the summit. Several copious streams of the purest water issue from the foot of the mountain, and form a pond and marsh near the beach, from which a stream flows into the sea. Most of these fountains are within fifty yards of the beach; and there is one which rises in the sea itself ten or twelve feet from the shore, forcing its way to the surface, and making the water all around it fresh. From these sources the place receives the name of Krio-nero.
Some return mules, which have brought hither plank from the interior mountains to be transported to Zakytho, afford the means of forwarding my baggage to Galata. At noon I leave the sea-beach on foot, but soon meet some horses, sent from the village by order of Osman Bey, a Turk of 'Epakto, who owns Galata. The plain is very marshy near the sea, but farther inland is fertile; and near Galata and Bokhori produces maize, corn, oil, wine, silk, and rice. Of the latter grain a great quantity might be grown, as there are large uncultivated tracts in the plain well adapted to it.

§ 1.108   Two or three miles to the northward of Galata and Bokhori, the valley of the Evenus, now called Fidhari, branches from the maritime plain. It is inclosed by hills clothed with oaks, and has a rich and beautiful appearance.
Galata is a Turkish village of thirty houses, distant 2 ½ miles north, 60 west, from Krio-nero; it is situated in the midst of olive plantations and cornfields, and though surrounded also by rice marshes, is said to be not unhealthy. The peasants are now employed in reaping barley. The Turk who brought the horses conducts me to his cottage, provides a dinner, and accompanies me in the afternoon to Mesolonghi. We are prevented from setting out till 4.53, by a heavy rain, accompanied with thunder, an occurrence almost daily in the mountainous parts of Greece in the early summer. The clouds begin to collect on, the mountains about 9 o’clock, and the storm is generally over by 3 or 4 p.m., but sometimes it is later. Though it happened every day during the fortnight I remained at Patra, the rain never reached that place. While travelling in the Morea, I remarked that these meridian storms were more constant in the mountains of Rumili than in the Peninsula. At 5.15 we cross the Fidhari about the same place where the centaur Nessus, of old, transported passengers across the river in his arms, and where he suffered from the arrows of Hercules for his rudeness to Deianira, for hereabouts is naturally the most convenient passage. Nessus would seem to have been no more than a mortal horseman, who gained a few pence by his employment.

§ 1.109   The river well illustrates the story, as it requires a guide for the ford even in this season, the water reaching to the stirrups. The water is clear and rapid, running over a wide gravelly bed, which in winter is often entirely covered. The river separates the district of Epakto from that of Zygos.
Having reached the right bank, we pass through Bokhori, a Greek village situated amidst plane trees, cornfields, fruit-gardens, and plantations of the same productions which grow near Galata. Derivations from the Evenus here turn several mills. At the hamlet of Kurt-aga, near the point where the last slope of the mountain on the north-western side of the vale of the Evenus advances into the plain of Bokhori, are foundations of the walls of a large Hellenic polis, not far from the right bank of the river. The position corresponds so exactly to that of Calydon, as indicated by Pliny, that one can hardly doubt of the identity. Without this testimony, there might have been some doubts on the question. Strabo, by his citation of two conflicting authorities, without deciding between them, clearly shows that he never was here; but though his text, as it now stands, is unintelligible, it requires only the transposition of two of the paragraphs,

§ 1.110   and the addition of the single word ουκ (not), to be made perfectly applicable. The passage occurs in a description of the maritime places in their proper order from Leucas to Antirrhium. With the proposed alteration his remarks will be as follows: “Next to the lake Cynia, which has a communication with the sea, is Pleuron, then the town Licyrna, above which, thirty stades inland is Calydon, and near it the temple of Apollo Laphraeus; then the Evenus, to which, from Actium, there is a distance of 670 stades, and beyond it the mountain Chalcis, which Artemidorus calls Chalcia; then the mountain Taphiassus; then the city Macynia; then Molycreia, and near it Antirrhium, the boundary of Aetolia and Locris, to which, from the Evenus, there is a distance of 120 stades. Artemidorus, however, differs respecting the mountain Chalcis, or Chalcia, placing it between the Achelous and Pleuron. Apollodorus, on the other hand, places both Chalcis and Taphiassus, as I before stated, above Molycreia, and Calydon between Pleuron and Chalcis, unless, indeed, we suppose that Mount Chalcia near Pleuron was different from Chalcis near Molycreia.”

§ 1.111   As it cannot be doubted that the Chalcis and Taphiassus here named were the two great mountains situated between the river Fidhari and the Castle of Rumili, or ancient Antirrhium, it follows that Chalcis was Varassova, or the western mountain, and Taphiassus the eastern, now called Kaki-skala. And as there is no appearance of an ancient site between the river and Mount Varassova, we may infer that Chalcis or Hypochalcis, the Χαλκις αγχίαλος of Homer, and the Chalceia of Polybius, stood in the valley between the two mountains, where is now a harbour called Gavrolimni. It would seem also, that the site of Macynia was between Taphiassus and Molycreia, which last, as I have already remarked, was on the first rise of the hills behind the castle of Rumili. I was informed at Patra, from whence the whole of this coast is well seen, that there are still some remains of a Hellenic fortress, now called Ovrio-kastro, between the mountains, and some vestiges also on the eastern side of Kaki-skala both of them confirming the preceding conjecture, the former being the remains of Chalcis, the latter of Macynia. Ptolemy places Molycreia in Locris, but Strabo makes Antirrhium the boundary, and ascribes Molycreia to Aetolia.

§ 1.112   The modern name Μποχώρι is obviously a corruption of Υποχώριον in allusion to its position, that is to say, an outlying quarter of Calydon below the city. In some vineyards near Kurtaga a sepulchral stele has lately been found and brought to Bokhori. It has that common form which is an imitation of the end of a sarcophagus, and is inscribed with the names Philumena, Antimachus, where the precedence of the lady’s name without anything to indicate the relationship between the two is uncommon.
The evening is unfortunately too near its close to allow me to examine the ruins of Calydon. Proceeding therefore from Bokhori we pass through fields of oats, barley, grinia [wheat of a middle hardness and generaly with a black beard and fine full grain; in the Morea it is chiefly produced on the banks of the Alpheius], guinea corn, and maize,

§ 1.113   and at 6.20 leave on the left a village which has recently been built in the level near the sea, on the edge of the eastern extremity of the Lagoon of Mesolonghi, and hence called Neokhori. The mountains on the right are well cultivated at the foot, and above are covered with trees. Having descended upon the lowest level at something more than a mile from the edge of the lagoon, we proceed over a desert space inundated by the late rains; at 7.10 enter a suburb of Mesolonghi consisting of thatched huts, and at 7.25 arrive at the house of a merchant on the seaside.
Mesolonghi was evidently so named from its situation in the midst of the λόγγος, or wilderness of woods and marshes, which, under the Romans, gradually enveloped all the ruined cities of maritime Aetolia, until the position, like that of Venice, was chosen for its security during the middle ages, to which period of Greek literature the name belongs. The town contains about 1000 families, residing in houses which indicate a great variety of conditions, and occupy a large space, as well along the shore of the lagoon as in the adjacent marshy level. The lagoon is separated from the sea by a narrow ράμμα, as it is called, or thread of low land, and is divided into two nearly equal parts by, a projection from the marshy level, which advances to within a short distance of the ramma. In the eastern division of the lagoon, and in the middle of a bay at its northern extremity, is the town of Anatoliko, entirely covering a small island.

§ 1.114   The entrance from the roadsted of Mesolonghi into the lagoon is at a distance of four miles from the town, where is a small island called Vasiladhi, and upon it a fort and custom-house. Large boats cannot approach within a mile of the houses, nor can they advance so far unless when empty: all the remaining navigation of the lagoon, therefore, is carried on by shallow monoxyla, or canoes, which are made of hollow trunks of oaks from the neighbouring mountains. In the town, salt water rises every where on digging to the depth of three or four feet; but so near as the gardens which surround the town, wells of a greater depth furnish an abundance of fresh water which maintains the gardens in perpetual verdure. The water for drinking is brought by an aqueduct from Mount Zygos between the foot of which and the gardens there is a plain covered with currant plantations, vineyards, and fields of corn, but which do not supply the place with more than a four months’ consumption of bread.
I was surprised to hear that the air of Mesolonghi is not considered unhealthy, and to observe that the appearance of the people, who are a handsome race, corresponds to this opinion. It is admitted, however, that the back part of the town is not so healthy as the seaside, where the best houses are situated. The fishery of the lagoon, and the commerce of this the only emporium in Aetolia, are the productive labors of the Mesolonghites.

§ 1.115   The fish are taken in a variety of modes, but in the greatest numbers by means of a palisading near the stomata or mouths of the lagoon, of which there are several communicating with the sea. Here, after breeding in the shallows, they are intercepted on their return to the sea, in passages or in chambers into which the passages conduct. Each kind of fish has a different season during the summer and autumn for going out. Besides the quantity consumed in the town, or in the villages around, either fresh, half salted, or thoroughly salted, 200,000 litres are exported every year. The other exports of Mesolonghi are 5000 barrels of oil every two years, 1500 barrels of wine, 300,000 litres of currants, 1000 okes of silk, and all the surplus corn of the southern parts of Karlili. The merchant, in whose house I am lodged, carried last year a cargo of maize to Tunis. The currants, shipped here, are partly produced in the plain of Vrakhori [Agrinio], and as they form part of the cargoes of the British ships trading to Patra, a consul or agent has been appointed at Mesolonghi, who is the son of a Kefalonite merchant residing here, and who acts also for the Septinsular Republic.
June 14.—A ride of a little more than one hour from Mesolonghi conducts me to some ruins in a lofty situation on Mount Zygos, just as the usual postmeridian storm of rain and thunder is coming on. Fortunately it lasts only half an hour. The remains which are now known by the name of TO Καστpov της Κυρίας Ειρηνης, ΟΓ the Castle of Lady Irene, are those of the entire circuit of the ruined walls of a small polis, about a mile in circumference, enclosing the western face of a very steep and rugged height, the summit of which formed an acropolis.

§ 1.116   The masonry is generally of the third order. The lower courses of the principal gate exist, on one side of which is a stone measuring seven feet by four. It seems to have been a common practice among the Greeks to place the largest masses near the principal entrance, to excite respect in a stranger for the fortifications. In the centre of the wall, which defended the lower side of the town, is a square tower, and at one extremity of the same wall another tower, having very long flanks. The most remarkable remains within the enclosure are a theatre about 100 feet in diameter, and above it, on the side of the hill, a cistern, 100 feet long, 70 broad, and 14 deep, excavated on three sides in the rock, and on the fourth constructed of masonry. The excavation is on a slope, and between the excavated side at the upper end, and a wall which closes the lower, there are four other parallel, though not equidistant walls reaching from the one side of the excavation to the other, and consisting of courses of regular masonry, of a single stone in thickness, and which have openings at the bottom in the form of a triangle, very acute at the upper angle. The intention of these walls and openings in such an excavation it is not very easy to explain. Close to a small side-gate on the north are the foundations of a building, and to the eastward the remains of two parallel walls, enclosing a terrace twenty-four yards long and eleven wide; near the great gate are those of a small quadrangular building, like the cell of a temple, the stones square and accurately cut, but without any appearance of a peristyle or any fragments of columns.

§ 1.117   In the acropolis are some remains of Doric shafts of white marble, about three feet in diameter; they belonged, perhaps, to the identical temple of Minerva at Pleuron, noticed by Dicaearchus, for I have little doubt that these are the ruins of Pleuron. Strabo remarks, that the more ancient Pleuron was destroyed by Demetrius II. son of Antigonus Gonatas; that it stood in the plain towards Calydon, and that the Pleuronii afterwards built a new town on Mount Aracynthus. From his description also of the Evenus, though he was mistaken in supposing the course of that river above Calydon to have been easterly, it is evident that the territory of Pleuron bordered upon the Calydonias.

§ 1.118   Dicaearchus, in naming Pleuron between the Achelous and Calydon, agrees with Apollodorus, who places Calydon between Pleuron and Chalcis. If the situations therefore which I have assigned to Calydon and Chalcis be correct, there can be no question that Pleuron was near Mesolonghi. In farther admitting the transposition which I have proposed in the text of Strabo, we may add to the preceding testimonies that of Artemidorus. Nor is the concurrence of Thucydides wanting, who, in describing the march of Eurylochus the Spartan from Locris into Aetolia, in the sixth autumn of the Peloponnesian war, relates, that he moved from Molycrium to Calydon, Pleuron, and Proschium, in which places he remained until he proceeded against Amphilochia .
There is every reason to believe that Mount Zygos, upon a part of which the castle of Irene stands, is the ancient Aracynthus, and the ruins accord with those of the later Pleuron, inasmuch as they have no appearance of remote antiquity, and are exactly those of such a small town as we may suppose New Pleuron to have been from the circumstances of the people at the time of its foundation. I remarked, moreover, some pieces of Hellenic wall at the foot of the mountain on the edge of the plain of Mesolonghi, as well as on a small height in that plain now called Ghyfto-kastro, situated precisely where the words of Strabo would lead one to look for Old Pleuron. The name Ghyfto-kastro allows the conjecture, that greater remains once existed there, and that the materials have been removed for the use of modern constructions at Mesolonghi.

§ 1.119  Proschium, from a comparison of Strabo with Thucydides, in the places just referred to, seems to have occupied the western part of the ridge of Zygos. and to have possessed the plain, at its foot, now belonging to Anatoliko. The high situation in which Proschium was founded when the low position of the Homeric Pylene was abandoned seems to accord with that of the monastery of St. George in Mount Zygos, between Anatoliko and Anghelokastro, where considerable remains of a Hellenic city are said to exist. Pylene may have received its name from the remarkable cleft called the Klisura, which extends through the whole breadth of Mount Zygos, and which was exactly such a place as the ancient Greeks called a πύλη or gate. In this case it is probable that Pylene was situated at the maritime end of the Klisura, over against Anatoliko.
Apokuro, a sub-district of the Turkish kaza of Karpenisi, to the north-eastward of Zygos, seems evidently to have derived its name from Mount Curium and the Curetes; for it comprehends nearly the same country in which Homer places that people, as well as Strabo, who says that Pleuron was situated below the mountain Curium, whence it seems that Curium and Aracynthus were the same, or different parts of the same, mountain.

§ 1.120   Having descended the hill of Kyria Irini on foot, through the rocks and shrubs with which it is entirely covered, we regain, in half an hour, the direct road from Mesolonghi to Khierasovo, at a distance of three quarters of an hour from the former; and soon after having entered the mountain, and lost sight of the maritime country, leave on the right, at 5.20, a tumulus, covered with stones, situated in a little valley, along which a torrent flows; on its opposite bank is a Hellenic foundation. These are possibly the sepulchre and shrine of one of the ancient heroes of Aetolia. After ascending for an hour over a rugged road, we arrive on the side of a stream shaded by large plane-trees: follow a path still worse than before along the side of the same torrent through a forest of planes, oaks, and pirnaria, as far as a hollow between two summits of Mount Zygos; and at the end of another hour reach a height which commands a view of the lakes of Vrakhori, and of the great mountain to the north-east of that town, called Kyria Evghenia (Lady Eugenia), or vulgarly Mount Viena. Descending from hence, through a forest for three quarters of an hour, we arrive, at 8.30, at the village of Khierasovo, beautifully dispersed among vineyards and gardens on the slope of the mountain, in the midst of a forest of chestnuts. The gathering of the nuts and the carrying of them to Anatoliko and Mesolonghi, from whence most of them are transported to Zakytho or the other islands, together with the tending of their sheep and goats on the mountain, form the principal employments of the people of Khierasovo.

§ 1.121   June 15.—A descent of fifty minutes from Khierasovo through the forest of chestnuts, conducts us, at 7.5, nearly to the base of the mountain, where a torrent shaded by planes turns some mills, and flows down a valley opening into the plain of Vrakhori. At 7.40, just at the entrance of the plain, we pass a zevgalati. or hamlet, dependent on Khierasovo, and called Ston Gambo, or “at the plain” but which is sufficiently high to command a view over a great part of the extensive plains and lakes around Vrakhori, with the opposite mountains. This prospect is alone sufficient to identify Mount Zygos with Aracynthus; since, according to Dionysius the geographer, Mount Aracynthus bounded to the southward the great plain of the Aetolians. There are three lakes in this plain, one to the right of the river Aspro, or Achelous, the two others to the left of it; but the latter are separated only by a marshy and often inundated tract, full of large trees and underwood, through which is a causeway of stone, forming the only road from Vrakhori to Anatoliko, Mesolonghi, Bokhori, and the adjacent coast, whether by Khierasovo or by Klisura.

§ 1.122   The latter route, after having crossed the causeway, turns to the right of the former, and passes by Papadhates, which stands on an extremity of Mount Zygos, not far from the borders of the middle lake; it then enters the pass of Klisura, which natural opening by avoiding the ascent and descent of the mountain, is often preferred as the road from Vrakhori to Mesolonghi, although circuitous. Above Papadhates are considerable remains of a Hellenic city, probably Lysimachia. Leaving Papadhates a few miles on the left, we enter on the causeway at 8.10, and ride through a most agreeable shade of oaks, wild olives, and planes, festooned with wild vines, and intermixed in the more marshy parts with large reeds. The causeway, which rests on a great number of arches, is said to be two hundred years old, and to have been built by a certain bey of Vrakhori, who probably took advantage of the foundations of a more ancient work. A gentle stream flows through the arches from right to left. We arrive at the end of the causeway at 8.30, cross the remainder of the plain, and, ascending the last slope of the heights which border it on the north, arrive at 9.45 at Vrakhori [Agrinio].
This town occupies a large space of ground, and contains about 500 Turkish, 100 Greek, and 40 Jewish families. It was entirely Turkish not many years ago, but the present Aga has encouraged the Greeks to reside. The Turkish houses have large gardens attached to them, with high stone walls to hide the windows of the harem, and they are built in a more antique Turkish taste than is commonly seen in Greece.

§ 1.123   The Greek houses are small, and situated in the lower part of the town. In the afternoon I visit Yusuf Aga, the Musellim of Karlili, of which district Vrakhori is the chief town. Yusuf, who has resided here during the last seven years, with the exception of one, owes his promotion to his cousin of the same name, who is the powerful Valide Kiayassy, and, like his relative, a native of Khania in Crete. In consequence of the Musellim’s interest at court, Aly Pasha finds it necessary to treat him with respect; received him lately with great distinction at Nicopolis, and affects to place his Derveni troops under Yusuf’s orders, which is believed by many to be nothing less than a trap laid by the crafty Albanian to bring Yusuf into disgrace; for not long ago, a hasne, which the latter had forwarded from Kravari with 40 soldiers, in its way to Constantinople was attacked by the robbers at Makrinoro, which is not very likely to have happened without the Pasha’s connivance. ['Hasne' is applied to any portion, however small, of the imperial revenue. To rob the hasne by open violence is one of the most heinous of offenses in the eyes of the Turkish government; to do so by any other means, is the object and practice of every official man in Turkey.]
The royal farms of the revenue in this part of Greece are divided as follows: Karlili, Mesolonghi, 'Epacto, Kravari, Badrajik, (Neopatra), and Karpenisi.

§ 1.124   Aly Pasha has Mesolonghi, to which is attached Magula, a village of 50 houses, and Neokhori of 150; chorographically these form part of Karlili, as well as Vonitza at its opposite extremity, which is separated from it politically, as being one of the ex-Venetian places. As the inferior branches of revenue in Turkey are often farmed separately from the miri, Yusuf has that of the kharatj in Badrajik, Karpenisi, Kravari, and Epakto.
Karlili, besides the towns of Vrakhori, Mesolonghi, Anatoliko, and Vonitza, contains 140 villages of various sizes; many of these, situated in the plain of Vrakhori, are mere tjiftliks belonging to the Turks of this town. The kaza, which contains all Acarnania, and a great part of Aetolia, is divided into four parts: Vlokhos, and Zygos, to the left of the Aspro Valto and Xeromero, to the right. The two first are separated from one another by the northern bank of the middle lake, which is all included in Zygos, as the eastern lake is entirely in Apokuro, which district is bordered to the eastward by Kravari, as Zygos is by Venetiko, or the district of Epakto. Apokuro is included in the Turkish kaza of Karpenisi; but Kravari is considered a separate district, of which the chief town is Lumbotina. Vlokho borders, northward, on Agrafa, and Valto on the Arta kazasi; the latter includes the Makrinoro, and follows the course of the Aspro as far as a line drawn from the south-eastern extremity of the Gulf of Arta, until it meets the Aspro, about Anghelo-kastro.

§ 1.125   All the country westward of that line between the Aspro and the Gulf of Arta, constitutes Xeromero, which thus corresponds nearly with the ancient Acarnania. Βάλτος, though the ordinary meaning of the word is marsh, is said to be so called, as being for the most part a woody desert. Xeromero seems to have derived its name from its deficiency in water, when compared with Zygos, Valto, aud Apokuro, and Zygos from the ridge of Aracynthus, though it contains also the level and lake at the foot of this mountain on either side. Apokuro, as I before hinted, appears to be an ancient name corrupted.
The whole of Karlili, with the exception of the principal town, has suffered excessively from the wars carried on between the kleftes and the Dervent Aga, so that at present it does not contain, exclusively of the towns which I have named, a population of 20,000 souls.
Anghelo-kastro, which is a conspicuous object from Vrakhori, is a ruined castle on the summit of a low peak at the north-western extremity of Mount Zygos, not far from the Aspro. At the foot of the height, towards the river, is a small village of the same name. There are said to be some Hellenic foundations on the hill, as well as in the plain below it, marking probably the site of Conope, afterwards called Arsinoe.

§ 1.126   June 16.—A beautiful little bronze figure of Hercules, wanting an arm, which I observed yesterday in my lodging, and which my host stated to have been brought from Vlokho, a monastery on a lofty hill to the eastward of Vrakhori, where he described some extensive ruins, at once points out the probability of that place being the site of Thermus; which, at the time when Greek art was in perfection, was noted for its numerous statues. Setting out this morning, therefore, at 5.5, and riding through currant grounds and vineyards, among which, on the left, are a kiosk and gardens of Yusuf Aga, I cross, at 5.50, the river Ermitza, which issues from a ravine among the hills between Vrakhori and Vlokho; in winter it covers a wide gravelly bed, and even now is a respectable stream. The name is encouraging to a search for Thermus, as it seems to be a corruption of that word. Instead of ascending to Vlokho by the nearest way, we leave it on the left, and follow the plain towards the shore of the eastern lake, or lake of Apokuro, for the purpose of visiting another Paleo-kastro which has been described to me: pass through some fields of maize and corn, and numerous plane trees, and at 7.5 arrive at the remains of a Hellenic fortress, situated on a height one third of a mile distant from the edge of the lake, between which and the ruins stands a tjiftlik, or zevgalatia, called Kuvelo.
The entire circuit of the ancient fortifications still subsists, surrounding a height which forms the last slope of Mount Viena. The circumference is about a mile.

§ 1.127   On the summit are the ruins of an oval acropolis, ninety-five yards in length, flanked with towers on the exterior side, and towards the town defended by a double wall without towers. At the southern extremity of the oval, a semi-circular tower, twenty-three feet in diameter, looks down upon and enfilades the whole line of the southern walls, of which a great part of the towers and curtains are still standing. This semi-circular tower is nearly complete, and has three windows in the middle of the curve. At the northern end of the acropolis are two towers formed of small stones and mortar, raised upon the ruins of the ancient walls, (a repair probably of the time of the lower Greeks or Franks,) and adjacent to them, on the northern town-wall, three or four of the ancient towers, with the intermediate curtains: of the rest of that front, which follows in a curve line the crest of the height towards a narrow vale grown with corn, there is very little left, and still less of the western side towards Kuvelo and the lake. This fortress, standing on the foot of the mountain a little above the lake, was well placed to command the passage along the shore to the eastward or southward, or in other words, the ancient route from Thermus and every part of the great Aetolian plain, in the direction of the vale of the Evenus and Naupactus. Beyond the fortress, at the southeastern end of the lake, the mountains descend quite to the water, and leave only a difficult road along the margin.
This is far the largest of all the lakes of Acarnania and Aetolia, and is so deep towards the extremity that it has the reputation of being unfathomable: it abounds in fish, but they are caught only in the shallows towards the causeway, by means of monoxyla, one of which is now lying near the shore at Kuvelo.

§ 1.128   On the opposite shore of the lake, the slope of Mount Aracynthus is more gradual than it is on the shore of the western lake, or lake of Zygos, where, especially beyond Papadhates, the woody mountains extend to the water side. At the foot of the mountain, south-eastward of Ston Gambo, and opposite to Kuvelo, there is a cultivated tract containing the village of Gavala, or Kavala, and several tjiftliks. It is probably the territory of Trichonium, from which the lake took its ancient name.
From Kuvelo, after returning for half an hour by the same road, we turn out of it to the right, and begin to ascend the mountain of Vlokho, which is very steep, and covered with a thick wood of oak, ilex, and holly-oak. The ilex affords the best timber; its stem resembles that of the holly-oak; the leaves are larger, (and not so prickly) smooth, small, and dark-coloured, oblong, pointed, and serrated, with serratures very long and close. Besides these trees, there are many ordinary shrubs, among which are wild olives, brambles, and wild vines, making the ride cool and agreeable, though the path is so bad that Philip and his army could hardly have taken more time to reach the summit than I do with a couple of Albanian soldiers.

§ 1.129   At length we arrive at a small grassy level surrounded by woody heights, and crossed by a brook shaded with planes, which descends from the summit of the hill. From hence upwards to the village of Vlokho the path is still steeper than before, and is traced in a zigzag among corn-fields, olive plantations, and pear trees, bearing a small well-flavoured fruit now ripe: the wild pear also abounds. At the distance of an hour and a half from the kastro of Kuvelo we pass through Vlokho, where are the sources which supply the rivulet, and about ten inhabited houses, with a large one in ruins, dispersed among some large walnut-trees. Two or three hundred yards higher up the hill, is another collection of cottages, with a little garden ground. These villages and cultivated ground occupy a hollow under the summit of the mountain on the southern side, and stand about the centre of the site of the ancient city.
At the upper village we find a monk belonging to the monastery which stands on the summit of the hill, and invite ourselves to dine there. He speedily procures a lamb, places it on the shoulders of one of the villagers, and thus accompanied we proceed to the monastery. From the upper huts of Vlokho the ascent is very steep. Half-way to the summit we arrive at a part of the ancient wall, which followed the crest of a, ridge descending from the citadel to the south-west. The wall was constructed of great masses of various shapes, accurately fitted to one another; higher up, near the foot of the acropolis, the stones are still larger.

§ 1.130   One of them, a trapezium, measures ten feet by the largest diagonal, and is six feet four inches broad; another on the surface is equal to a square of seven feet and a half. Few are less than three or four feet. The acropolis and its rocks are still towering above our heads, but we reach at length, by a zigzag road, a narrow passage between two parallel walls, which was evidently the approach to the gate of the acropolis, and arrive at the monastery at the end of half an hour's ride from the upper Vlokho.
This building, dedicated to the Virgin and called the Panaghia of Vlokhos, stands on an oval tabular level, bordered on all sides by steep rocks, but rather less difficult of approach on the western side, where we ascended. To the north-eastward the mountain slopes rapidly to a deep ravine between slopes cultivated with corn, on the opposite side of which rises the great mountain of Viena, or Kyria Evghenia; an appellation which, according to the kaloyeri of the convent, was derived from a βασιλοπούλα, or princess Eugenia, who concealed herself, when pursued by her enemies, in a cavern which the monks point out to me just under the highest summit of the mountain, and there died. Who these ladies, Eugenia and Irene, were, whose names remain attached to two of the mountains of Aetolia, it would be vain to conjecture with our scanty knowledge of the history of Aetolia under the Byzantine empire, for to that time the names are evidently to be referred.

§ 1.131   The other summits of Mount Viena, which from its magnitude and central situation I conceive to be the Panaetolium of Pliny, are distinguished by the names of the nearest villages, the whole being called Viena, which is probably nothing more than a Bulgarian corruption of Ευγένεια. The range terminates to the north in a peaked summit above the village of Arakhova, in the district of Karpenisi. Half way down from the retreat of the unfortunate princess, and immediately opposite to Vlokho, stood a village of fifteen houses, named Lykokhori, which about eight years ago fell down the side of the mountain, and disappeared with all the adjoining soil; the inhabitants fortunately had retired, having taken warning from the previous trembling and cracking of the earth. Aware of what was likely to happen, the monks watched the place, but it slipped off in the night, and they heard only the awful crash.
While our dinner is preparing, one of the monks guides and assists me in climbing up the rocks of an upper summit, by a path known only to themselves. This height, which is named Ogla, is 200 yards long and 30 broad, similar in shape to the entire summit of which it constitutes about a fourth part; and thus forming a sort of keep to this natural castle; its precipices on the further side from the monastery are a continuation with an increased height of those on the eastern side of the entire hill.

§ 1.132   The summit of Ogla is level and carpeted, like the larger summit, with a delicate herbage. This fine geographical station comprehends in its view to the southward Mount Khelmos beyond Kalavryta, and to the northward the vast serrated rock of Djumerka beyond Arta, points distant from each other more than 100 miles in a straight line. The mountains of Agrafa are seen to the right of the latter, and other points more distant to the east, which are probably a part of Othrys. Oeta and Parnassus are hid by Mount Viena. The summits near the head of the Gulf of Arta are visible to the left of Djumerka, then the mountain of Suli, the Acarnanian heights near V0nitza, Varnaka and Tragamesti, and then the range of Zygos, above which appear the great mountain of Kefalonia, and the rocks of Oxia and Kurtzolari. Above the lofty hills at the end of the lake of Apokuro appear the mountains Varassova and Kaki-skala, and that of Rigani, above Epakto, beyond which are the great Peloponnesian hills Olono, Voidhia, and Khelmos. The plain of Vrakhori is extended in front of the prospect, with its three lakes, and the broad white bed of the Achelous, from which the modern name, Aspro, was evidently derived. The nearer country, at the back of the hills of Vlokho and Vrakhori, is very rugged and mountainous as far as can be seen, nor do I perceive any cultivation, or a single village. Deep ravines surround the hill of Vlokho on every side excepting to the south. On the west a stream shaded with planes follows the foot of the hill, traverses half-way down a little cultivation round a metokhi of the monastery, and joins one of the lakes, near the causeway.

§ 1.133   Farther westward is a narrow valley watered by the Ermitza, the sources of which are at a considerable distance to the north. The springs at Vlokho form a branch of the rivulet flowing along the ravine which separates the hill of Vlokho from the mountain of Kyria Evghenia. Their junction and subsequent discharge into the lake of Apokuro are not far westward of Kuvelo.
It is curious that Vlokho, though of so little importance at present, not only stands on the site of the ancient capital, but still gives name to a great part of Aetolia, of which it is in fact the natural citadel. The modern name is Sclavonic, and seems to indicate, that when the barbarians of that race conquered this part of Greece, in the decline of the Byzantine empire, the advantages of the site caused it to be their principal fortress, and the chief place of a large district. When the French were at Prevyza, and an invasion was expected, the Turks of Vrakhori prepared to retire for security to Vlokho.
The form and position of Thermus were such as the Greeks seem generally to have considered the most advantageous; namely, a triangle on the slope of a pyramidal hill, bordered on either side by a torrent flowing in a deep ravine, and having a summit convenient for an acropolis. The citadel was generally the apex of the triangle, and often itself, therefore, of a triangular form, but when the summit of the hill was level, the citadel was sometimes oval, such as I have already described at Kuvelo, and at the ruins of Phigaleia and Theisoa in the Morea.

§ 1.134   But this was probably a very ancient manner of fortifying, which was seldom followed in the meridian ages of Greece, when square towers and straight curtains were the general method. In the instance of Vlokho the ground was formed by nature for an oval acropolis.
The entire circumference of the city was about two miles and a half; the walls are in best preservation on the western side. Here the foundations, with some of the lower courses of masonry, are to be seen, following the entire crest of the ridge; in some places there are considerable pieces of the wall, all of polygonal masonry, though generally of smaller stones than those which I described below the acropolis.
There were no towers, but only short flanks at intervals of 60 or 100 yards: on the eastern side I could not trace any remains of the wall between the citadel and a small level about half-way down the hill, which was not far from the south-eastern angle of the city. But the fall on this side being much steeper, there was not so much necessity for defence as on the other side, where the easier declivity not only required a stronger fortification, but has been the means of preserving it better than on the eastern side, where the materials as they have fallen may have rolled down the hill. To the south, the walls crossed some transverse ridges, on the borders of the hollow in which the two villages are situated, but considerably below the lower village. Little more than foundations are traceable on this side.

§ 1.135   The only remains of a public edifice within the walls of this capital of one of the most influential people in Greece, and which, when it was taken by Philip, was noted for its riches, is a square pyramidal shapeless mass of stones, on a line with the cottages of upper Vlokho, near the western wall. I inquired in vain for medals, or other remains of antiquity.
At a little before 5 we begin to descend from the monastery, which is soon afterwards occupied by some guests less welcome; namely, a body of armatoli, ranging the country, and living at the public expense. Turning at the upper huts of Vlokho, to the right of the road, by which we mounted the hill, we cross the western wall, and descend the ridge along the outside of it as far as the southwestern angle, where the southern wall of the town began to cross the valley. In the latter, a little beyond the angle, is a semi-circular retiring of the wall, about ten yards in diameter, with a plain unornamented opening in it which was evidently one of the principal gates of the city. The gate is not in the middle of the semi-circle, but a little to the left, and the whole construction furnishes an example of one of the many ingenious modes devised by the Greeks for strengthening their gates and the approaches to them. The semi-circle had the same intention as the square court which is sometimes found before the gates of Hellenic cities; in the present instance it not only admitted of a concentration of missiles, particularly on the right or unshielded side of the enemy, but exposed him, when he had reached the gate, to the reverse of the western wall.

§ 1.136   [sketch of gate] Leaving this spot at 5.45, we descend by zigzag paths, among the hills, to the ravine on the western side of the city, and having crossed the stream which flows along it, enter soon afterwards the plain of Vrakhori; we then ride over a fine soil quite uncultivated, in a direction parallel to the foot of the mountain, enter the currant grounds and vineyards of Vrakhori, and at 7 cross the Ermitza at the mills where we passed it in the morning, following the same road from thence as before, and at halfpast 7 re-entering Vrakhori.
June 17.—This morning, at a few minutes before 6, I proceed northward along the plain, in a direction parallel to the foot of the hills, and at 6.25 arrive at Zapandi, a village of 120 houses, two thirds of which are Turkish. After waiting a quarter of an hour for a guide, to ford the river, we begin to cross it at 7.20. In winter the passage is seldom attempted, the waters often filling the entire bed, which is not less than three quarters of a mile in width; but at present the river is divided into five or six rapid streams, two of which only are large, and require a guide: not so much on account of their depth as because the bottom is a loose gravel and sand, with many holes and quick-sands;

§ 1.137   and the peramata or safe places for passing, shifting frequently, are well known only to those who reside on the spot. In the present season the afternoon’s storms in the mountains sometimes produce sudden floods which are dangerous, but in the forenoon the river is generally passable. The water is now not higher than a Turkish stirrup, and we find no inconvenience except from the round stones at the bottom, which make the horse stumble occasionally. But the guide who walks alongside on foot, and leads the horse, quickly raises him when he makes a false step, encouraging him by his voice, and recommending to the rider to look at the bank, that the current may not make him giddy. A little below the ford the bed is wider than where we cross it, and takes a turn to the westward. The dry part is covered with trunks of trees, the wintry spoils of the woods of Pindus.
After a halt of half an hour on the right bank, we reach at 8.24 the ruins of a large Hellenic town, undoubtedly Stratus; for Stratus, according to the ancient authorities, stood on the right bank of the Achelous, in the same plain which contained the lake Trichonis, and at a distance of 200 stades from the sea, by the course of the river: all which accords perfectly with this place.

§ 1.138   The eastern wall of the city followed the bank of the river, just at the point where it touches the last falls of the hills of Valto, which are here low, but rise gradually to the north-north-west, and extend to the head of the Gulf of Arta, where they terminate abruptly in the pass of Makrinoro: a parallel ridge rises gradually from the plain not far to the southwestward of Stratus, and ends at the Gulf of Arta in the hill called Sparto-vuni. Between these two ridges lies a long valley commencing at the ruins of Stratus, and at a village opposite to it called Lepenu, and terminating to the north-west in an easy pass, through which is a descent into the plain of Xerokambo, near the south-eastern corner of the Gulf of Arta. It is evident from this construction of the country, that Stratus was a military position of importance. Being situated at the point where the valley of Lepenu meets that of the Achelous, and where they both open into the great Aetolian plain, it commanded two of the principal approaches to that plain from the northward, at the same time that it was not far removed from a third, which I shall presently have occasion to mention.
The first object in the ruins of Stratus that strikes the traveller after crossing the river, is a small door in the south-eastern angle of the town wall. Thirty yards below it, on the water side, are some foundations, whether those of the peribolus of a temple, or belonging to a wharf, it is impossible to say. The door has a semicircular top, not constructed on the principles of the arch, by hollowing the horizontal courses of stone into a semicircular form,, in the same manner as is seen in many places, both in Greece and Egypt.

§ 1.139   The door is 10 feet high, and 5 feet 6 inches wide; the stones very large, and, as commonly occurs in Greek fortresses, larger than in the other parts of the wall. This door leads into an uneven space about a mile in circumference, surrounded on all sides by remains, more or less traceable, of the town walls, which are of the third kind of masonry, in some parts nearly approaching to the most regular species. Half way from the door, towards the highest part of the inclosure which is diagonally opposite to the gate, are the remains of a theatre, situated in a hollow, having its right side near the western wall of the above-mentioned enclosure, and fronting the south. Its interior diameter below is 105 feet, and there seem to have been about thirty rows of seats, all of which might probably be brought to light by excavation. But this inclosure towards the river, which contained the theatre, was not much more than a third of the whole city. The remainder stood on lower and more even ground, and the circuit of its walls, which are every where traceable, occupied the summits of several heights which border the valley of Lepenu, or follow the contour of the ridges uniting those heights. The wall which parted the two portions of the city terminates at the north-western summit before mentioned. Here seems to have been a small citadel, but it was scarcely higher than the adjoining part of the same ridge on the outside of the walls, and at the distance of two or three hundred yards was commanded, together with almost the entire site, by the external heights.

§ 1.140   A gate remains in the partition wall, near the summit, a little beyond which, to the westward, are some ruined huts, and some fruit-trees, once belonging to the village of Sorovigli. In the northern wall of the greater or western inclosure, a little below the summit, are some towers and intervening curtains, which are almost perfect. The circumference of the western inclosure appears to be between two and three thousand yards, and the entire circuit of the city about two miles and a half. The arm of the Achelous (for the river is here divided into several streams), which flows at the foot of the eastern wall, although narrow, is rapid, deep, and difficult to pass, even at this season, so that the river was a considerable protection to the place. As a fortress, however, Stratus could not have been considered very strong when poliorcetics were in the state of improvement which they reached after the time of Alexander.
The external ridge commanding the citadel illustrates one of the circumstances of the attempt made by Perseus to occupy Stratus, in the winter of the year B.C. 170—169. The king, who having undertaken the expedition at the request of the Epirotes, had marched through their country, was met on the frontiers of Aetolia by Archidamus, the strategus of Aetolia, who accompanied him to Stratus, then belonging to the Aetolian confederacy. But as usual in the states of Greece, there were two factions in Aetolia,

§ 1.141   and while Archidamus was proceeding to meet Perseus, the opposite party had sent for Popillius, who was at Ambracia, and who entered the city with a thousand men, on the very night that Perseus encamped upon the Achelous, near Stratus. Dinarchus also, commander of the cavalry of Aetolia, who had come ostensibly to meet Perseus, joined the adverse side, and entered the city. The king, nevertheless, having with him an army of 10,000 men, and the chief magistrate of Aetolia, still hoped that the Aetolians in the town would come out and join him, and with this view presented himself on the heights above the city; but finding that instead of any advances to a communication he was threatened with missiles, he retired five miles to the river Petitarus, and from thence to Aperantia.
The summit of the ruins commands a fine view of the Aspropotamo upwards, and of the hilly country near its banks, terminated by the mountains of Agrafa in the distance; the quantity of snow on which seems to show that the highest summits are nearly equal in height to Olono and Khelmos. At less than two hours above Surovigli, the river is joined, on the same side, by a tributary which originates to the eastward of Mount Makrinoro, and at an equal distance beyond the river are the ruins of another Hellenic city, at a village near the right bank, named Preventza. The river I take to be the Petitarus, if this name be correct in the text of Livy, and the ruins those of the town of Aperantia, of which Preventza may be a corruption.

§ 1.142   Livy indeed seems to allude to Aperantia only as a district; but Stephanus, in reference to the corresponding passage of Polybius, which is lost, shows the city also to have been named Απεράντεια. The general situation of the place accords with a transaction relating to Aperantia, which occurred twenty years before the expedition of Perseus, and which is recorded by Polybius and by Livy in nearly the same terms. When Amynander had recovered his kingdom of Athamania from Philip, the Aetolians who had assisted him thought the opportunity favourable for recovering Aperantia and Amphilochia for themselves. Nicandrus, the strategus, therefore, proceeding first into Amphilochia, probably because it was the more important of the two, although more distant from Aetolia, found the greater part of the people ready to receive him, and met with easy success; he then moved into Aperantia with the same result, and from thence proceeded into Dolopia, where the people, having never belonged to Aetolia, hesitated at first to receive him, but on learning the state of affairs, and that Philip had no farther hopes from their neighbours, the Athamanes, they joined the Aetolians.
While I was seated in the theatre, a drove of 300 Wallachian oxen, every one of which was white, passed through the ruins to Tragamesti to be shipped for the Islands. Besides these, which are on their passage from Wallachia, large herds and flocks are brought to feed in the winter and spring in the plains of Acarnania and Aetolia from Agrafa, and the other mountainous districts around Thessaly. The oxen of the latter countries are generally dark coloured.

§ 1.143   Leaving the ruins of Stratus at 10.15, we ascend the valley which branches from the plain to the north-westward, and arrive at 11 at Lepenu, or Lepenio village of forty families, on the side of the valley opposite to Surovigli. In the vale just below it, are some copious sources of water. Lepenu is one of the principal villages of Valto, but has much diminished in population, from the same causes which have annihilated Surovigli. Being quickly driven out of the house of the Proestos by the fleas, I remove to the gate of the court-yard, which having, as usual in this part of the country, a large tiled roof, affords sufficient shelter in this season.
The Proestos confirms several Hellenic positions which I have heard of, but not yet seen. In Aetolia those of Anghelokastro, Papadhates, and St. George, seem to be the most remarkable; the last is reckoned three hours from Anghelokastro. Some monks of St. George, who came here lately, affirmed that the kastro at Surovigli is not to be compared to theirs, by which perhaps they meant only that the walls of the latter are in better preservation. A peasant, whom I encountered in the ruins at Surovigli, remarked that the city was the capital of the surrounding country. He judged merely from their extent; for probably not an individual in Acarnania or Aetolia has ever heard of the name or history of Stratus.

§ 1.144   It is chiefly from the narrative given by Polybius of the capture of Thermus by Philip, son of Demetrius, that we obtain a knowledge of the ancient geography of the central part of Aetolia, or great inland plain now occupied by Vrakhori, from which the chief strength and opulence of this province of Greece has in all ages been derived. In the second year of the Social War B.C. 218, Philip, taking advantage of the absence of Dorimachus with half the Aetolian forces in Thessaly, raised the siege of Palaea in Cephallenia, and sailed to Leucas, from whence, after having caused his ships to be dragged across the Dioryctus, or sandy isthmus of Leucas, he entered the Ambracic Gulf, and reached Limnaea on the morning after his arrival at Leucas. Having been joined by all the forces of Acarnania, he moved from Limnaea towards the evening without baggage. At the end of sixty stades, he halted to allow his troops to repose and take their supper; and then, continuing his route all night, arrived at the break of day on the river Achelous, between Stratus and Conope. His treacherous counsellor, Leontius, wished to give time to the Aetolians to defend themselves; but the better advice of Aratus having prevailed, Philip gave orders for an immediate advance to Thermus, the Aetolian capital.

§ 1.145   Crossing the river, therefore, and marching with all speed towards that city, he passed, on his left, Stratus, Agrinium, and Thestia, and, on his right, Conope, Lysimachia, Trichonium, and Phytaion and thus arrived at Metapa, situated sixty stades from Thermus, in the defile of the lake Trichoma, the passage along which was rendered very narrow and dangerous by the rugged woody mountains on its margin. The Aetolians having abandoned Metapa, he occupied it with five hundred men, to serve as a protection to him, as well in advancing as in returning through the straits. He then conducted his army in column, protecting his right by some light troops thrown out on that flank, while his left was defended by the lake for a distance of thirty stades. At the end of this distance from Metapa, he arrived at a town named Pamphium, and leaving a guard there, then ascended to Thermus by a road which was thirty stades in length, very steep, bordered by dangerous precipices on either side, and in some places very narrow.

§ 1.146   Having arrived at Thermus considerably before the close of day, he gave permission to his army to plunder all the surrounding villages, to overrun the plain of the Thermii,. and to sack the city itself, which was well furnished with corn and other provisions, and abounded with riches of every kind, having long been the place of meeting of the national assemblies, the centre of the civil and religious as well as commercial affairs of Aetolia; and, from the strength of its situation, considered as the place of refuge and acropolis of all Aetolia. The temple of Apollo in particular, with its surrounding buildings, was full of valuable furniture and offerings. On the morning after their arrival, the Macedonians separated the part of the plunder which they intended to carry away, and burnt the remainder in heaps before their tents; in which manner they destroyed, among other things, an immense quantity of armour. They burnt, or razed to the ground, the temple, with its stoae, and threw down all the statues, breaking those which were not figures of the gods or inscribed with their names. The number of images thus demolished or subverted, was not less than two thousand.

§ 1.147   Such an act of destruction and impiety was very repugnant to the manners of Greece, and is severely censured by Polybius, notwithstanding the provocation which Philip had recently received in the similar conduct of the Aetolians at Dium and Dodona; against the former of which places their vengeance had been particularly directed, as being a Macedonian city. But the young monarch was not sufficiently gifted with magnanimity to abstain from retaliation on so fair an opportunity; indeed, it seems to have been the great object of his expedition, and accordingly he inscribed upon the ruined wall of the temple, a senarian iambic, composed by a young poet who accompanied him, for the purpose of reminding the Aetolians that the shaft of vengeance came from Dium. Philip then began his retreat by the same road by which he came. Three thousand Aetolians, under Alexander of Trichonium, who were lying in wait for the purpose, attacked the rear, consisting of mercenaries and Acarnanians, as they began to move from the city, and had put them to flight, when a body of Illyrians, whom Philip, with a view to such a contingency, had placed behind a certain height, met them in the pursuit, and killed or made prisoners between two and three hundred of them. The rear then set fire to Pamphium, passed the defiles, and joined the Macedonians, who had already arrived at Metapa.

§ 1.148   The next day the invaders, having destroyed Metapa, marched to Acrae, and on the following day to Conope, where they remained one day; they then followed the left bank of the river, as far as Stratus, crossed it near that city, and halted just without the reach of missiles from the walls, thereby offering battle to a body of three thousand Aetolians, who with some cavalry and Cretans had recently entered the place. But it was not until the Macedonians resumed their march that the enemy came forth. The rear then turned, drove back the Aetolians to the gates of the city, and killed one hundred of them; after which, Philip, prosecuting his march without further impediment, rejoined his vessels at Limnaea, and returned to Leucas.
The preceding narrative, when compared with Strabo, will enable us with some confidence to affix the ancient names to the principal existing remains of the cities of the interior of Aetolia, notwithstanding that there is one part of it which I have found impossible to reconcile with an actual view of the country. From the south-eastern extremity of the Gulf of Arta, where it is evident that Limnaea was situated, there is a route for the most part level of about twenty-five miles, as far as the Achelous below Stratus, so that it was not very difficult for Philip, by performing about a third of the distance on the evening of his departure from Limnaea, to effect the other two thirds in the course of the night. The remaining distance of about fifteen miles to Thermus seems equally conformable to the proceedings of the army on the second day,

§ 1.149   when we may easily conceive that the march to Metapa, which was not so rapid as to prevent Philip from burning and destroying the country, added to the preparations for the passage along the lake to Pamphium, and the usual loss of time in the course of such a march, may have consumed, together with the long and painful ascent to Thermus, all the forenoon and two hours of the afternoon, about which time the Macedonians seem to have arrived at the city. The difficulty in the narrative is, that Philip, in advancing from Metapa to Pamphium, should have marched with his left upon a lake; since, according to the present state of the country, there is no apparent reason why he should have approached either of the lakes, the route from the Aspro by Vrakhori to Vlokho, not passing within three miles of them. Or if we suppose that the woods noticed by Polybius then occupied so much of the plain below Vrakhori, as to force him to follow the margin of the lake, and that Metapa stood about the junction of the river Ermitza with the lake, the distance of that point from Vlokho being nearly equal to the sixty stades, which the historian assigns as that between Metapa and Thermus: still it is obvious that an army moving from thence to the foot of the mountain of Vlokho would have had its right and not its left towards the marshes. In order to have approached Vlokho with his left on one of the lakes, Philip must either have made the circuit of them both, along the foot of Mount Zygos, and then, after rounding the extremity of the lake of Apokuro,

§ 1.150   and passing by the foot of Mount Viena along the steep and woody mountains which overhang the lake, have emerged into the plain again near Kuvelo, or he must have crossed between the lakes by the line of the modern causeway, and entered the plain between Vrakhori and Kuvelo. On the former supposition Metapa would have been near the eastern extremity of the lake of Apokuro.
It was impossible, however, for the Macedonians, immediately after a forced march from Limnaea to the Achelous, to have performed even the shorter of these routes, which would have tripled the direct distance from the Achelous to Thermus; or certainly, if such a march were practicable, they could not have arrived at Thermus at the hour which the subsequent transactions of that day render necessary. Possibly it may be thought that the ruins at Kuvelο, although very short of 60 stades from Thermus, are those of Metapa, and that Philip, after having conducted his army directly from the Achelous across the plain of Vrakhori, occupied the fortress at Kuvelo, not with the view of retreating through the passes commanded by it, which lead along the lake in an easterly direction, but merely to protect his operation from any interruption on that side. The purpose seems useful, and the post well suited to it, and we might suppose that in consequence of his possession of it, the Aetolians were induced to attack his rear in a different place, just as it began to retire from Thermus. The deviation to Kuvelo would only have added another hour to his march, and in moving from Kuvelo to Vlokho the Macedonians might for a short distance have had their left on the lake.

§ 1.151   But it is impossible to be satisfied with this explanation. The historian gives positive testimony that the στενα, or passes on the borders of the lake, were between Pamphium and Metapa, from the latter of which on his return he proceeded by Acrae to Conope: it seems inevitably to follow, therefore, that Metapa was at the western entrance of the passes, about eight miles to the south-westward of Thermus. The only conclusion seems to be, that the words right and left have, by some negligence either of the historian or his copyers, been substituted for each other in the text. Experience proves that such an error, notwithstanding its importance, is one of the most common that occurs. With this change every thing is clear, Metapa having stood near the lake immediately below Vrakhori, around which site there were probably woods making the passage difficult. As to Trichonis having been the eastern lake, whereas I suppose Philip to have marched chiefly along the western, that is easily reconciled by the fact that they are only divisions of the same lake, which communicate at the causeway, whence in common parlance the larger division may often have given name to the whole.
I have not entertained the supposition that Thermus could have occupied any other site than that of Vlokho, the description of Polybius, but still more the magnitude of the ruins leaving scarcely a reasonable doubt on this head in the same manner as the extent of those at Surovigli are a strong confirmation of their being the remains of Stratus.

§ 1.152   If we were to suppose Thermus to have stood on the southern side, or at the eastern end of the lake of Apokuro, in which case Philip might certainly have approached it, with his left defended by the lakes, it would in that case have been situated on Mount Aracynthus, or on the mountain which separates that lake from the valley of the Evenus, and would have been at no great distance from Calydon and the sea-coast, instead of having been far in the interior towards the great mountains of Aetolia and the centre of the province, as every evidence respecting Thermus seems clearly to indicate.
Of the places which the Macedonian army left on either hand in their march towards Thermus, after having crossed the Achelous, namely, Conope, Lysimachia, Trichonium, and Phytaion on the right, and Agrinium and Thestia on the left, there can be little doubt that Conope stood at Anghelokastro; for, besides the testimony derived from Polybius in his narrative of the capture of Thermus, from which we learn that it was on the eastern side of the river at a considerable distance below Stratus, the same author in relating some movements of Philip in Acarnania, in the year preceding that of the capture of Thermus, indicates it as standing at about twenty stades from the Achelous, which perfectly agrees with the distance of Anghelokastro from the Aspro. Strabo, moreover, as well as Polybius, intimates that it was near one of the ordinary passages of the Achelous, which is now the case as to Anghelokastro, and arises in fact from permanent geographical causes.

§ 1.153  Conope having received considerable augmentation from Arsinoe, sister and wife of Ptolemy Philadelphus, assumed her name instead of that of Conope. Polybius, however, in relating transactions which occurred thirty years after the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, still names it Conope. The neighbouring city which stood at Papadhates, near the lake of Zygos, seems clearly to have been Lysimachia, for Strabo describes the ruins of that city to have been between Pleuron and Arsinoe, on a lake then called Lysimachia, but more anciently Hyria, which agrees perfectly with the position of Papadhates, supposing Pleuron to have been at Kyria Irini, and Arsinoe at Anghelokastro. This position of Lysimachia accords also with the march of Antiochus from the Maliac Gulf in the year B.C. 191, when, having appointed Stratus,as the place for meeting the Aetolians, he marched thither by Naupactus, Calydon, and Lysimachia. We may infer from the name of this city, that it was founded by Lysimachus, when, as King of Macedonia, his dominion extended over the greater part of Greece. If the site was occupied more anciently, the name of the town may possibly have been Hyrie, in like manner as in later times both town and lake were named Lysimachia.

§ 1.154   As Antoninus Liberalis, in relating the fable of the conversion of Cycnus into a swan, gives to the lake in which Cycnus destroyed himself the name of Conope. it is evident that the ancients considered the lake of Zygos as the scene of this fable, and it becomes probable, therefore, that Ovid, who in describing the same metamorphosis, couples the Cycneia Tempe with Hyrie, alluded by the former name to the Klisura of Zygos, which is precisely such a place as the Greeks denominated a Tempe.
The river Cyathus, which, according to Polybius, as quoted by Athenaeus, flowed near Arsinoe, corresponds to the stream which, issuing from the lake of Zygos, joins the Achelous, not far from Anghelokastro. The principal sources which form both the lakes are at the foot of the steep mountain overhanging the eastern, or lake of Apokuro; a current flows from east to west through the two lakes: and the river of Anghelokastro, or Cyathus, is nothing more than a continuation of the same stream. Acre stood perhaps at the place where the river emerges from the lake, this being about midway between the positions which I have assigned to Metapa and Conope.
Notwithstanding the opinion of the antiquaries of Strabo's time, who pointed out some ruins at the foot of Mount Aracynthus, near Pleuron, as those of the Homeric Olenus, there is difficulty in believing that Olenus and Pleuron were so near to each other. It seems more probable that Olenus occupied some advantageous site in the dominions of the Calydonian dynasty, such as that of Gavala, where Trichonium afterwards stood.

§ 1.155   The notice taken of Trichonium by several ancient authors, as well as the circumstance of its having given name to the largest of the Aetolian lakes, shows it to have been the principal town of the plains, which, according to Strabo, extended from Trichonium to Stratus. The occurrence of its name after that of Lysimachia, among the cities on the right of Philip in his progress towards Thermus, places it beyond a doubt towards the south-eastern extremity of the plains, where Gavala, in a fertile district on the southern side of the Lake of Apokuro, seems perfectly to correspond to the data. Phytaion, having been the last town on the right of Philip’s line of march, answers to the ruined polis at Kuvelo, that being moreover the only place, besides Gavala, where any open country is left between the woody mountains and the shore of the lake.
Agrinium and Thestia received their names from Agrius and Thestius, two Aetolian chiefs of the royal race of Calydon and Pleuron, who, in process of time, obtained possessions farther in the interior; for the Aetolians, who went with Thoas to the Trojan war, were all from the districts of Zygos and Apokuro.

§ 1.156   It is evident that Agrinium was not far from the Achelous, as well from the march of Philip as from an occurrence of the year B.C. 314, related by Diodorus, when Agrinium was in alliance with Acarnania against the Aetolians, and when Cassander marched from Macedonia into Aetolia to assist the Acarnanes. By his advice the Acarnanes concentrated their forces, by withdrawing from their smaller fortresses into Stratus, Agrinium, and Ithoria. As soon as Cassander departed, after leaving a garrison in Agrinium, the Aetolians besieged it; and when the inhabitants marched out upon capitulation, treacherously fell upon them in the route, and massacred the greater part of them. It may be inferred from the two testimonies, that Agrinium was not far from Zapandi. Thestia was probably on the heights above Vrakhori, towards the sources of the Ermitza. The river Campylus, upon which the historian states that Cassander encamped, and held a council with the Acarnanes on his arrival in Aetolia, seems, from all the circumstances mentioned by the historian, to have been that great branch of the Achelous, which joins it between Tetarna and Surovigli, not far below the former.

§ 1.157   CHAPTER IV ACARNANIA, EPIRUS.
JUNE 18.—The direct route from Lepenu to Amvrakia passes along the foot of the hill of Lepenu, and leaving on the left the lake of Lygovitzi, which discharges its superfluous waters into the right side of the Achelous, enters a pass between the ridges of Makhala and Lepenu, and then follows the eastern bank of the lake of Valto to Amvrakia, which village by this road is seven hours distant. Wishing to explore a little more of the district of Valto than the direct road affords, I send the baggage that way; and taking with me two of the Albanian escort, which Yusuf Aga provided for me, follow up the valley of Lepenui. It soon becomes narrow and quite uncultivated. As we advance, the hills on either side become higher, and the bushes below thicker, until at 5.45 we enter a wood of small oaks, mixed with ilex and prinus, ascending gently by a pleasant shady path,

§ 1.158   until having arrived at the summit of the pass we begin at 7 to descend, and at 7.15 arrive at the ruins of some Hellenic walls. One of them crosses the road; others are with difficulty traced among the trees. They are the outworks of a fortress which occupied a height to the left of the road, and was naturally strengthened on two sides by a deep ravine and torrent; thus placed, it commanded the access by this valley from Amphilochia to the great plain of the Achelous. Within the inclosure, a little to the left of the road, a circular excavation in the ground, thirty-four feet in diameter, is lined with regular masonry of nearly equal courses, one of the stones of which measures four feet six inches in length, and two feet eight inches in height. On one side of the circle there remain eight courses overgrown with trees and bushes, on the other the slope of the bank covers the masonry. Near the walls of the fortress, on the outside, there is an ordinary ancient sepulchre, which has never been opened. The ruins are called the Paleokastro of Kekhreniatza. The latter name is applied to the pass, and to a brook to which I descend in five minutes, after a halt of fifty minutes.
The wall which crosses the road follows it afterwards for three minutes towards the brook. It has in some places six courses of masonry of the third kind, nearly approaching to the fourth, and very accurately joined, except where trees growing on the top have displaced the stones, with their roots. The brook of Kekhreniatza winds through a little uneven vale, ending in a small plain on the shore of the Ambracian Gulf, which is called Xerokambo, from its want of water;

§ 1.159   for the brook is lost before it arrives there. It produces, however, corn and Kalambokki, and belongs to the village of Kekhrenia, situated on the side of the steep rocky mountain which borders the ravine of Kekhreniatza to our left, and which separates it from the valley and lake of Valto or Amvrakia. We now quit the road to Xerokambo, and turning to the left cross the ridge of Kekhrenia, passing about the middle of the ascent through that village, which contains thirty Greek families, some dwelling in good pyrghi. We left the brook at 8.18, halt ten minutes at Kekhrenia, and then, proceeding to climb its steep rocky ridge, arrive, at 9.40, at a church of St. Elias, on the summit which commands an extensive view of Xeromero and Valto. These districts are little cultivated or inhabited, but particularly the latter, which consists of woody mountains to the northward, and to the southward of steep ridges inclosing a valley, the greatest part of which is lake or marsh, according to the season. It is this valley which gives name to the sub-district.
Having descended the western side of the ridge, on foot, through a wood of oaks not growing very thickly nor of large size, we arrive, at 10.50, five minutes beyond the foot of the mountain on the edge of the lake; then turning the northern end of it ascend to Amvrakia, which is one-third of the way up a ridge parallel to the one we have passed, and equally steep and rocky. We arrive at 11.30. Sparto is another village on the same mountain, one hour northward of Amvrakia towards the sea.

§ 1.160   Stanu is a third, of the same size as Amvrakia, and situated at the same height above the lake, three quarters of an hour to the southward. The part of the Valto, or lake, below Amvrakia, is a narrow shallow creek, about three miles long, branching out of the deeper part of it which is under Papalates and the monastery of Agrilio.
Amvrakia, or more vulgarly Amvrakia, contains about forty houses, and as many more in ruins. The Amvrakiotes, to avoid further decay, are about to move their situation higher up the mountain, where they will be less exposed to Turkish passengers, to thieves, and to the hostilities of some of their neighbours, which have caused a part of the vale, on the side of the lake, to be at length quite uncultivated. Their new village is to be called Plato, the position being level, though lofty, and already, my host the Proestos, has spent, he tells me, twenty purses in building a house there.
In the evening I descend the mountain of Amvrakia, in 40 minutes, to its Skala, from whence are exported planks, velanidhi, grain, and cattle. It is called Kervasara l, and is situated in a valley at the head of a long bay which forms the southeastern extremity of the gulf of Arta. To the eastward of the valley rises the mountain named Spartovuni, a lower continuation of which extends to the entrance of the bay, and falls on the eastern side to Xerokambo.

§ 1.161   The latter valley terminates at Armyro, where is a skala and shallow harbour, separated from the sea on the west by a low coast, which appears from Kervasara projecting to the left of the cape of Spartovuni. To the westward of the bay of Kervasara rises the continuation of the ridge of Amvrakia, on which stands the village of Sparto, once perhaps situated on the opposite mountain which now bears that name, for, as we have seen in the instance of Amvrakia, villages have a locomotive faculty in this country.
At the inner point of the bay, south-east of the magazines of Kervasara, are the walls of a large Hellenic town, occupying a height which rises from the right bank of a torrent, and reaches to the sea side. The place was fortified like Stratus, that is to say, there is no appearance of an acropolis of the usual kind, but the inclosed space was divided by a transverse wall into two parts, which are here more equal than at Stratus: many towers remain on the land-fronts. The masonry is of various ages; some parts are entirely polygonal, others consist of regular and equal courses. But the greater part of the work is of the third order, or of a kind between the two former. There are remains also of repairs with mortar, of a much later period. Doubtless the post has always been one of importance, as commanding the most easy and natural access into Acarnania from Epirus, both by sea and land. The inclosed space is overgrown with the kharub, oak, wild olive, and a great variety of shrubs, which often give shelter to deer, and other wild animals abounding in the adjacent woods.

§ 1.162   Beyond Xero-kambo is the plain of Vlikha, where at the foot of the mountains are the remains of a Hellenic city, described as being of larger compass than those at Kervasara, but not so well preserved. It is probably the ancient Argos of Amphilochia. Beyond the plain of Vlikha begins the Makrinoro, a mountain covered with a forest of oaks, and falling steeply to the shore of the gulf. The road along its declivity, which is reckoned three hours in length, forms a pass resembling that of the Gates of Syria, at the head of the gulf of Skanderun. Returning to Amvrakia, some παλαιά μνήματα occur on the road-side. They are ancient sepulchres of the most ordinary kind, or formed of four slabs set edgewise in the ground, and covered with other slabs.
The existence of the name Άμβρακία attached to a modern village in this part of the country has a great tendency to confuse the ancient geography, as leading to the belief that the ruins at Kervasara are those of the ancient Ambracia. But Ambracia was certainly on the northern side of the gulf, at some distance from the sea. The fact is, that Amvrakia is a village of recent construction, to which the founders gave that name in consequence of a prevalent opinion, that the ruins at Kervasara are those of Ambracia. That the error is of long standing, we learn from Meletius, who himself fell into it, and who, having been Bishop of Arta, was probably the false luminary which led the founders of Amvrakia to give their village that name. I have little doubt that the ruins at Kervasara are those of Limnaea, from whence Philip began his march to Thermus.

§ 1.163   June 19.—At 5 we begin to climb the steep rugged mountain at the back of Amvrakia. At 5.40, arrive at the summit which forms the separation between Xeromero and Valto, and begin to descend. It is observable that this mountain, as well as the two parallel ranges, and the same may be said of many others in this part of Greece, are bare on the eastern side, and well clothed with trees on the western. As we descend, Katuna, a village of Xeromero, pleasantly situated on a hill, with a cultivated valley below it, is on the left, and rather behind us: beyond it towards the sea, distant 10 or 12 miles, rises a high ridge, on which stands Zavitza, not in sight. To the right of Katuna appears the bold round mountain called Bumisto, and more in front of us a lofty ridge with a peaked summit, named Varnaka, from a village on it towards the sea. On this side of it there is a fine vale, which extends to Katuna, and is well cultivated with com. Towards the Gulf of Arta appears a valley and a green marsh, overgrown with shrubs and timber trees. The mountain beyond it is covered with a thick forest. Having descended on foot through the wood, and arrived in the vale at 6.20, we leave, after a halt of ten minutes, the marsh to the left, and pass through a wood on the side of it. Cattle are feeding round it, and towards the southern end there are a few fields of wheat now falling under the sickle. At 7.20, near the head of the Bay of Lutraki, leaving to the right the road to the monastery of Kendromata, and to Vlikha, Makrinoro, and Arta, we ascend a height,

§ 1.164   and at 7.25 look down to the right, on the head of the Bay of Lutraki. The beach is covered with firewood, piled in stacks for embarkation; and farther on are some magazines, near which a polacca brig is at anchor, loading the wood. At 7.53 the road crosses a bridge over a torrent, which is shaded with planes, and bordered by slopes clothed with oaks and planes, festooned with wild vines, and where the kharub and the paliuri, covered with a profusion of blossoms, are mixed with the aromatic shrubs with which Greece so eminently abounds, and peopled with nightingales singing in the deep shade. After a halt of 12 minutes we pursue our route along the side of the forest of oak, which covers the mountain, with the gulf at a short distance on the right, and then pass through a narrow tract between the sea and the forest, where are a few fields of maize, watered by rivulets from the mountain.
At 8.35 occurs a tjiftlik belonging to Aly Pasha, named Balim Bey, situated half a mile from the sea. Here the French consul, Lasalle, about the year 1788, embarked the greatest part of the timber which he cut down in the neighbouring mountain, for the use of the naval yard at Toulon. There still remain however some very large trees, the finest I have yet seen in Greece. Soon afterwards we enter the thickest part of the forest, leaving the village of Nisi half an hour to the right. The road to Lefkadha turns off to the left about three quarters of an hour beyond Balim Bey.

§ 1.165   We lose our way in the wood, and are 40 minutes in recovering it. At 10.15 having gained the summit of a ridge, which terminates in a cape called Gheladha, on the eastern side of the Bay of Vonitza, this town opens to view, and to the left of it the lake called Vulkaria, with a woody and marshy tract on this side of it, around which is a little cultivation. Here the oaks are generally small, but there is an abundance of fine trees towards Lefkadha, in which direction the mountain of Plaghia intercepts the view to the Strait of Leucas, but admits a sight of the highest part of the island over it. The ridge to our left is continued as far as the western coast near Zaverdha, and rises in that interval to a lofty summit named Pergandi. Exactly in the spot where this view opens are some Hellenic foundations by the roadside, and some others in a neighbouring corn-field.
From hence to Vonitza the land is well cultivated with com. Leaving on our right a monastery, beautifully situated below a grove of oaks on the side of the mountain, we descend into the plain, and crossing it diagonally, arrive at Vonitza at 12.10. In the entrance of the town are the remains of a square redoubt and detached ravelin, which are recent works of the French.

§ 1.166   The district of Vonitza extends 4 or 5 miles round the town, including the slopes of the mountains on the eastern and western sides of the valley, and the valley itself in the direction of the Lake Vulkaria, nearly as far as Konidhari; a tjiftlik belonging to Aly Pasha, whose property now extends as far as the channel of Lefkadha, though in consequence of its exposure to the robbers, who take refuge in the islands, he derives little profit from it. Konidhari stands on a low ridge which connects the heights on the west of Vonitza with Mount Pergandi, and thus separates the plain of Vonitza from the Lake Vulkaria, as well as from another plain which reaches to the Bay of Zaverdha. Beyond the ridge, at the eastern extremity of the Vulkaria, are some thick woods, the abode of deer and wild hogs, and often the retreat of the robbers in those expeditions from the islands which have almost depopulated Acarnania.
The house in which I am lodged at Vonitza, that of the Greek primate Khalikiopulo, commonly called Logotheti, from his ecclesiastical office, stands on the shore, on the side of a strait about 200 yards in width, which communicates from the Bay of Vonitza to the Limni, a shallow harbour which widens to half a mile, and is about two miles long.
Vonitza contains 450 houses, divided into three separate quarters: namely, Recinto, which lies on the south-west, and is so called as being inclosed within two walls which descend to the shore of the shallow harbour from the summit of a conical hill, crowned with a ruinous and ill-constructed Venetian castle; secondly, Borgo, which is a suburb on the western side of the hill;

§ 1.167   and thirdly, Boccale, which is divided from Borgo by gardens, and stretches eastward along the shore of the Bay. The greater part of the houses of Vonitza are wretched cottages, constructed of mud and thatched. In Recinto are the ruins of a large church, having a Latin inscription over the door, placed there by the Venetians. A marshy tract extending towards the head of the limeni is occupied by gardens, and several private houses in an unhealthy situation. Immediately opposite to M. Logotheti’s house, on the opposite or northern point of the harbour’s mouth, is a small suburb consisting of a few houses upon the extreme point, together with a monastery prettily situated among olive trees. Both the monastery and suburb are known by the name of Myrtari.
Beyond Myrtari lies the great peninsula, formed by the Bay of Vonitza, the limeni of Vonitza, and the Gulf of Prevyza, and which terminates to the north-east in a high rocky point, separated from a similar cape by the strait which forms the entrance from the small ante-gulf of Prevyza into the main Gulf of Arta. The Bay of Vonitza is a very large semi-circular basin, opening into the gulf between the eastern side of the peninsula above-mentioned, and Cape Gheladha to the eastward. It is indented with several beautiful harbours, and has considerable depth quite to the shore of Vonitza. The commerce of this place consists chiefly in the exchange of grain, cattle, and firewood, for the articles of furniture and domestic use for which Greece is indebted to Europe, or Constantinople.

§ 1.168   As to government, it is in the same condition with Prevyza and Parga. The treaty of 1800, which formed the Septinsular republic, assigned these Venetian dependencies to the Porte, on the condition that they were to be governed by their own municipal laws, and to be exempt from the kharatj, but to pay the land tax and customs to an officer appointed by the Porte to receive them. The Aga charged with this office has a guard of five or six men. He complains much of his solitary situation, without a single Turk to speak to, even the soldiers of the garrison being Christians. “But I serve,” he says, “for the glory of my sovereign, and with the hopes of promotion.” In the meantime, he is in great dread of offending Aly Pasha, whose design of obtaining complete possession of the Ex-Venetian places is sufficiently evident. The poor Aga has recently been much alarmed at the conduct of his principal at Prevyza, who has openly shown his suspicions of the Pasha by not waiting upon him when he was lately at Mytika, on the borders of the district of Prevyza. Nor is he free from apprehensions from the chief Greeks at this place, whom he suspects of having been gained over by Αly to solicit his protection. Whatever may be the Pasha’s designs, the Turk is totally unable to prevent them, and will find it very difficult, therefore, to avoid falling into disgrace with his own superiors. “If the Greeks of Vonitza,” he observes, “abandon me, and I am left alone to oppose Aly’s wishes, I am certainly a lost man.” There seems to be too much reason for these fears,

§ 1.169   for already those among the Greeks, who were inclined to support him and his cause against Aly, have thought it prudent to quit the place; and the opposite party, convinced of the inutility of resistance, have joined the Vezir in some mercantile speculations, by which all the advantage they are likely to gain, is that of being the last devoured. His Highness derives great assistance in his designs from the robbers, who furnish him with a constant pretext for having a body of troops in the Ex-Venetian territories. Soon after the Turkish resident's visit, he sends me a present of a lamb and some lemons, —
June 20, and this morning accompanies me to the castle which commands a fine view of the western part of the Ambracic Gulf, bounded by the hills of Suli and Ioannina. The castle has a double inclosure, a ruined church on the summit, a good cistern, and a house built by Aly Pasha for the Albanian garrison, which he placed here after he had taken Vonitza from the French, and when he probably expected to have been left in quiet possession of it by the Porte. It is armed only with three small cannon on the southern side. The ruinous condition of the churches here, and in the Recinto, is said to have been caused by the Venetians having destroyed them to sell the materials when they evacuated the place.
The advantages of Vonitza are its fine bay for ships, its harbour at Myrtari for small vessels, its forests abounding in excellent timber and pasture for cattle; a fertile valley, an easy communication with Lefkadha,

§ 1.170   and a fortress in a position which commands the access into Acarnania and Aetolia from Epirus by the way of Prevyza, and which would be of the greatest importance if the strong Pass of Makrinoro, the only entrance by land, were closed, and the water communication in the hands of the defenders of Acarnania. On the other hand, Vonitza, in common with the other places in the gulf, partakes of the inconvenience of the shallowness of the Strait of Prevyza, and which is the more sensibly felt as the exterior coast, for a great distance both to the north and south of the entrance, affords no secure anchorage. Dhemata, at the northern extremity of the Strait of Leucas, is the best; but the entrance is commanded by the Castle of Santa Maura. Another disadvantage of Vonitza is its deficiency of fresh water, which is supplied by a canal derived from a stream at some distance in the valley; nor is the place exempt from malaria in the summer and autumn, caused by the stagnant waters at the head of the harbour, as well as by the land breezes which blow from the marshes near the Lake of Vulkaria.
The land of Vonitza belongs chiefly to nobles of Zante, Cefalonia, and Corfu, who became possessed of it under the Venetian government, and whose cultivators send the proprietors a fourth of the produce, being themselves subject to all the expences, including the land tax paid to the Porte. The Greeks of Vonitza have lately cleared tracts of land on the hills, which they are sowing on their own account. In the woods around, they are allowed to cut firewood and plank, but not for exportation, the woods being the property of the Sultan, and no persons being allowed to fell large timber without permission from the Porte.

§ 1.171   In the plain, a mile and a half S.E. of the town, and three quarters of a mile from the sea, rises a small conical height, called Magula, and behind it a similar one, but larger; both overgrown with bushes. On the summit of the smaller, a space of about three acres, now grown with corn, is surrounded by the remains of a Hellenic wall. On the northern side, the masonry is of the third order; and on the east there is a beautiful specimen of the fourth, or most regular kind. There is said to be another small castle of the same kind at Ruga, an inlet of the coast a little on this side of Nisi. The latter was probably a maritime dependency of a larger place, of which there are remains at Aio Vasili, on the side of the mountain above it, three hours from Vonitza. I have searched in vain for any vestiges of antiquity in the Castle of Vonitza, or on any part of the hill, though the situation could hardly have been, neglected by the ancients. In fact, ancient sepulchres are often found in the suburb of Boccale, and fragments in other places, sufficient to show that it was an ancient site.
June 21.—This morning, at 5.10, having sent my baggage off at midnight in a boat, I proceed by land from Vonitza to Prevyza, follow the southv era shore of the shallow harbour until 5.30, then leaving the direct road, which continues along the harbour at the foot of the mountain, turn to the left, and in eighteen minutes gain a summit which commands a fine view of the great Acarnanian peninsula, lying to the westward of the bays of Vonitza and Zaverdha.

§ 1.172   To the eastward of the isthmus, which, with the exception of the small ridge of Konidhari, is a level from the one bay to the other, rises the parallel mountain, of which the summit is named Pergandi. The middle of the peninsula is composed of low land, surrounding the lagoon of Vulkaria, and extending to Prevyza, and to the coast between it and Aia Mavra. All the southern part of the peninsula consists of a lofty mountain, on the slope of which, opposite to Lefkadha, stands the village Plaghia, and at its southern extremity another named Bogonia. Opposite to the latter, at the foot of the ridge of Pergandi, is Zaverdha. Both these places are at no great distance from the bay, which is usually named after the latter. The intermediate plain, and indeed the whole isthmus, is fertile, but little cultivated. The peninsula is for the most part a forest, which, especially on the southern and eastern side of the lagoon, and on the mountain of Plaghia, abounds in large oaks well adapted to naval construction. The lagoon, including the marshes on its edge, is four or five miles long, and as much broad. It communicates by a narrow stream with the head of Port Dhemata, on the southern side of which is the entrance of the canal of Lefkadha and the Castle of Aia Mavra.

§ 1.173   At the south-eastern end of Vulkaria, on a height rising amidst thick woods, is the Paleo-kastro of Kekhropula, so called from a small village no longer inhabited. To the left of Kekhropula the view comprehends Meganisi, 'Atoko, and a part of Kalamo, the remainder of which is hid by the Acarnanian coast. To the northward are seen Paxii and the coast from Parga to Salaghora, with all the northern side of the Gulf of Arta. Though it is difficult with confidence to adapt the names to the ancient positions in this part of Acarnania, there can be little doubt that the Vulkaria is the ancient Myrtuntium, being precisely as Strabo describes Myrtuntium. “a λιμνοθάλαττα, (or salt-water lagoon,) situated between Leucas and the Ambracic Gulf.”
At 7.15, descending from the mountain, and leaving the extremity of the limeni of Vonitza on the right, as well as a road to Aghios Petros, a harbour on the shore of the Gulf of Prevyza, where are some vestiges of a Hellenic polis, probably Anactorium, we proceed through woods and bushes, and arrive, at 7.50, on the margin of a beautiful little fresh-water lake, named Linovrokhi, on one side of which is a hanging forest of oaks. A peasant here describes to me a subterraneous stream which emerges from a cavity in the forest, near the Lake of Vulkaria.

§ 1.174   The road continues through an uncultivated country over grown with thorns and shrubs, and at 8.40 emerges on the beach of the Gulf of Prevyza, where lies some ship timber, principally knees, ready cut and prepared for an armed vessel which Aly Pasha is about to build at Salaghora. The builder calculates that it will pass the bar of Prevyza with the guns in, and have half a foot water to spare.
After following the beach for half a mile, we cross a low point for the most part covered with myrtle, at the northern extremity of the Strait of Prevyza, and at 9.10 arrive at the Tjiftlik of Punta. Here are a few fields of maize surrounding a quadrangular building, with towers at the angles, which contains the dwellings of the peasants who cultivate the fields and tend the flocks on this farm of Aly. Here also is a kula, or modern tower, and several remains of ancient buildings of Roman construction. At a projection to the southward of the tjiftlik, where the Strait is narrowest, and immediately opposite to the castle of Prevyza, the Vezir has constructed a serai and small fortress. There is every probability that the Roman ruins are remains of some of the buildings of Actium, established by Augustus, for the breadth of the Strait answers perfectly to the “less than 5 stades” of Polybius, or the “something more than four” of Strabo, or the “four” of Scylax, or the “500 Roman paces” of Pliny.

§ 1.175   Punta, it is to be observed, is the Italian translation of Ακρη, or Άκρον, which is the Greek name of this promontory, though in consequence of Prevyza having so long been a Venetian dependency, the word Punta is very commonly used by the Greeks themselves. But Akri, as well as Punta, is nothing more than the modern representative of Άκτη, a word descriptive, like Akri, of such a peninsula as that opposite to Prevyza, and from which the Apollo here worshipped was surnamed Actius, and his temple Actium. Besides the authors who have just been cited, we may refer to Thucydides and to Dio, in proof of Akri being the site of Actium. Strabo alone has left an expression which is not easily reconciled with actual appearances, in saying that the temple stood on a height.
June 22.—Prevyza, or Prevesa, for it is now written in both ways in Greek, though the latter form is probably Italian, contained 2,000 families, when the French arrived in 1798, but has now not more than 1200. When the Venetians took it in 1684, there are said to have been only 70; the rapid increase after that time is easily accounted for, by the commercial advantages of the position, and by the importance of this place, as well as of Parga and Vutzintro, to the safety of Corfu and its canal, which induced the Venetian government not only to protect the people against their Musulman neighbours, but to be vigilant in preventing their own proveditori and other officers from indulging in their accustomed rapacity.

§ 1.176   The houses are dispersed over a large space, each having a garden or small plot of ground attached to it, containing fig, walnut, and apricot trees, with a few culinary herbs. But the greater part of the dwellings are wretched huts, made of wattled branches plastered with mud. All the best houses, some of which, built in the Venetian style, show the former opulence of the place, are now in ruins. Prevyza is still, however, one of the best towns in Greece, and has an agreeable appearance, from the abundance of gardens, and from the olive plantations which cover the peninsula beyond them. The low point on which the town stands enjoys the sea-breeze in summer in perfection, but the gulf wind at night, and early in the morning, is reckoned unwholesome; that the situation, however, is not so, generally speaking, the robust constitution of the men, and the good complexion of the women sufficiently indicate, notwithstanding, that the latter, besides performing all the household drudgery, labour in the fields during the harvest of corn and olives, while the men are employed in the fisheries of the gulf, or in the trade and coasting navigation of Epirus, Acarnania, and the islands, or in smoking their pipes in idleness at home. One of the severest labours of the women is that of carrying large jars of water on their heads from the fountains, which being at the extremity of a very straggling town, are a mile distant from some parts of it.

§ 1.177   The water, which is excellent, rushes plentifully from the foot of a rocky cliff on the edge of the sea beach. Wherever a channel is made in this place, a stream immediately issues, and it can hardly be doubted, that if the Prevyzans were to dig wells, they would find water every where. The principal source is fitted up in the Turkish style.
Another employment of the women, but which is at once profitable and easy, is that of raising silkworms; they are now winding off the silk. The place produces annually 1500 pounds of raw silk, now sold at 10 piastres the pound. The grain of the territory, consisting of maize, wheat, barley, and oats, is about equal to the consumption of the place, sometimes insufficient, but sometimes so productive as to admit of the exchange of a portion of it for the wine of Lefkadha, or Thiaki. Of oil, which is of the best quality, superior even, according to the Prevyzans, to that of Corfu, or any other island, there is an annual average exportation of 10,000 tzukalia, or jars, of seven litres each, besides the consumption of the place: the present price is two dollars the jar.
The Turkish Bey, or resident of the Sultan, receives the tithe on land, which is let every year to the Greeks in lots, and the maritime customs, which are four per cent, on exports, and two per cent, on imports, as under the Venetians. The Bey commands a garrison of thirty-six soldiers, but takes all his directions for the management of the police from the Greek magistrates, who still preserve the Maggior Consiglio and other Venetian courts.

§ 1.178   The Consiglio consists of nobles, some of whom, as in the Seven Islands, may be found digging in their olive grounds. A body of forty of these elect the magistrates. Culprits are imprisoned on the requisition of the Proestos, and are tried by the proper tribunal, which, as under the Venetians, admits of an appeal to the primary court, at either of the two other ex-Venetian towns, Parga and Vonitza. The Prevyzans express themselves very grateful to Russia, whose consul takes care that no encroachments are made on these privileges, either by Aly Pasha or by the Bey. Hence, Prevyza at present is one of the happiest towns in Rumili, though with such a neighbour as Aly there is no saying how long this condition may last. The territory extends only an hour’s distance inland. Mytika. and the further part of the ruins of Nicopolis, are in Aly Pasha’s dominions: the nearer ruins, and the lagoon called Mazoma, belong to Prevyza. The situation in the entrance of this noble Gulf, surrounded by some of the most productive lands in Greece, at a point of ready communication with the islands and with Italy, would ensure to it some of those advantages which the same causes gave to its predecessor Nicopolis, if Greece were again to become a civilized country; though perhaps not to the same degree, in consequence of the shallow channel, less suited to modern than it was to ancient navigation. Nevertheless, it is probable that in every age Patrae and Nicopolis will prove the wisdom of Augustus in selecting these two places for the Roman colonies of the western coast of Greece.

§ 1.179   The soil of the peninsula is excellent. Barley is sown in November, wheat in December, and oats in January. Maize, as requiring plentiful irrigation, which is not to be obtained here, sometimes fails when the spring rains are not sufficiently abundant. It is generally grown among the plantations of young olives, is sown in April and reaped in August. The best oil is made from olives gathered by hand, though these do not yield half so much in quantity as the fruit which falls from the tree. It is not customary to sow under the full-grown olive-trees, which is common in many parts of Greece, oil being the most valuable production of Prevyza, and the opinion prevailing that the corn exhausts the soil and injures the crop of olives. Vines are supposed not to have the same effect, and are sometimes planted among the trees. Where no tillage occurs the grass is fed short, and the ground about the roots is opened. In many parts of the peninsula the land is covered with fern, which grows here rather too luxuriantly. It is cut down and put into holes at the roots of the trees, where some think it beneficial as manure, and the ground is then ploughed. One of the reasons for this treatment is to obviate accidents from fire in the summer, when the least spark among the dried vegetables, then abounding in uncultivated lands, creates a conflagration. Prevyza is said to have once lost one-third of its trees in this manner; and a similar accident, though not so destructive, occurred when the Vezir’s Albanians were here.

§ 1.180   These troops, when en bivouac, are in the habit of lighting fires, for the purpose, among others, να ψήσουν ταις φθείραις, that operation which is the Albanian substitute for washing the shirt.
The hill of Mikhalitzi, at the foot of which are the ruins of Nicopolis, although now uncultivated on this side, bears the marks in its artificial terraces of a different state when it belonged to the monastery of Zalongo; the Vezir, having appropriated it to himself, has built a house and some labourers cottages on the summit of the hill. His farmers furnish seed, cattle, labour, and farming utensils, and deliver to him the tenth of the gross produce as miri, and a third of the remainder. In new tjiftliks, or those which are of uncertain tenure, such as many of his were during the Suliote war, he was generally contented with a fourth of the produce. When to this obligation is added the kharatj, and the demands of Albanian troops, there seldom remains more for the peasant than is necessary to support life upon maize, salt fish, cheese, and garlic.
The channel between Prevyza and Akri is not only shallow and narrow, but the entrance is rendered dangerous by a long sandy shoal, which projects southward from the cape of Prevyza, and leaves only a narrow passage of twelve feet in depth between it and another shoal on the Acarnanian shore. Towards the northern, or interior extremity of the strait, and immediately opposite to the town, the strait widens, and forms the harbour of Prevyza.

§ 1.181   Half a mile beyond the springs, at the northern extremity of the town, is Vathy, a small bay, where the water is as deep as in the harbour of Prevyza, and where an armed brig of the Vezir, formerly an English sloop, is now lying. A creek branches from Vathy, which has a double termination; the western branch touches a part of the site of Nicopolis, and the eastern approaches the coast of the Gulf of Arta. On the shore of Vathy are ruins of the magazines of Lasalle, which formed a quadrangle and had two stories; the upper intended for grain, the lower for timber. In the inclosed court Lasalle built vessels on his own account, besides which he had a contract to deliver at the arsenal of Toulon, for five franks the cubic foot, oak timber, to be marked in the woods by persons appointed by the French government. He bargained with the Greeks οχ Albanians to bring the trees down to the waterside: the ambassador at the Porte procured permission from the Sultan, and Aly was paid forty or fifty purses yearly to cover his own claims as Dervent Aga, or for the Spahilik, where it existed. One year he extorted seventy purses from the French, on the pretence that he had received an order from the Porte to prevent the embarkation. Lasalle had the contract for five years, when it was renewed for five more; but at the end of two the French Revolution put an end to the contract, and an assassin to his life. The Suliotes brought a considerable quantity for him down the river of Luro.

§ 1.182   In the forest of Manina, in Acarnania, the oaks are chiefly of the veloni kind, which is seldom so large as the common oak, nor is the timber so good. Those of Makrinoro, Suli, and Vonitza, are the best in this part of Greece. Djumerka produces some fine firs.
It is reckoned that near four hundred Prevyzan families gain a subsistence by the fisheries of their own town, or by those of Arta and Acarnania, which are now farmed from the Porte by Aly Pasha. In the territory of Prevyza, shell-fish, eels, and grey mullet, are caught—the two latter in the Mazoma, or lagoon of Nicopolis. Of shellfish there is an inexhaustible supply in the shallows around the strait and near the town; a great quantity of these is sent to the islands in the time of Lent. Occasionally also an immense number of eels from the lagoons of Arta, suddenly make their appearance in the harbour of Prevyza. This happens always in tempestuous weather, and probably occurs only when in migrating to the sea from their breeding-places in the rivers and lagoons of the Gulf, they meet with a storm in passing out of the strait, which drives them back upon Prevyfca. The fisheries of Arta and Acarnania are conducted by the more opulent Prevyzans, who form societies, each of which hires a share of the fishery, and employs Prevyzan labourers, for whom they find nets and other necessaries. While the sale of fish is going forward, the money is laid by in a common purse, which, when the mukitesi has been paid, is equally divided between the merchants and the fishermen. This, and other modes of giving an interest in profits to all the individuals employed in any speculation, are common in the mercantile and even in the agricultural undertakings of the Greeks.

§ 1.183   The greater part of the maritime commerce and carrying trade is managed upon the same principle; and it often happens that every sailor is in part owner of the ship as well as of the cargo.
Such customs are at once an effect and a support of the republican spirit which it is curious to find pervading a people subject to such a despot as the Sultan. In its origin it is to be attributed to the geographical construction of the country, naturally dividing the people into communities, which have little dependence upon one another; its preservation since the conquest may be attributed, in great measure, to the bigotry, and exclusiveness of the Turkish system, which, neither admits the Christians to the rights of the governing people, nor interferes with the internal arrangements of the communities, unless by the effects of its universal oppression. It cannot be denied, that the Greek method of conducting affairs stimulates mental and bodily exertion, but it promotes also that undisciplined, intractable, envious, and contentious spirit, which is sure to break out whenever this people has sufficient liberty to display it.
Greek customs prevail at Prevyza in all their force, as in other places where by any accident the people enjoy a considerable degree of independence; among others, they observe strictly the forbidden degrees in regard to marriage ;—cannot take a wife more than three times ;—the priests more than once.

§ 1.184   Cousins cannot marry nearer than the seventh degree, nor can the god-son be united to the daughter of his god-father. This is a part of the custom of Κουμπαρια, which gives an alliance equal to relationship by blood to two men of different families who have been sponsors to the same child at the baptismal font. The Greek word formed from the Italian compare, and originally from the Latin compater, shows the origin of the custom. It may be doubted whether it gives the Greeks any advantages against their great enemy the Turk, and rather seems to be a proof only of barbarism and insecurity, and both cause and effect of their spirit of hostility and rivalship.
Mr. North, afterwards Earl of Guildford, gave five hundred piastres towards the establishment of a school, by means of which and other donations a small house was built at the gate of the principal church. It has since been converted into a court of justice; but there is a school in which writing is taught, with a sufficiency of ancient Greek to read the Testament.
Many of the women of Suli have taken refuge at Prevyza, since the capture of their mountain by Aly, and are employed as servants. A Σουλιώησσα, or Suliote girl, ten years of age, in the Vice-Consul’s family, has hired herself for twenty years, at the end of which she is to have one hundred and fifty piastres for a marriage portion.
Of the three other ex-Venetian places given up to the Porte, under conditions, by the treaty of 1800, we have seen the state to which Vonitza is now reduced.

§ 1.185   Parga is protected from Aly at present by a resident agent of the Porte, under whom the people enjoy their old municipal government unchanged. Vutzintro is entirely in the hands of Aly. At the instigation of the Russians, the Porte has sent the Pasha repeated orders for its evacuation; but he avoids them, affecting to believe that the Russians mean to make use of the place for the purpose of their designs against himself and the empire. He moreover alleges that he has purchased the farm of the fisheries from the Sultan for three years, and that he has not yet been paid his expenses in expelling the French.
June 24.—Strabo, who wrote soon after the foundation of Nicopolis, has thus described it: “Beyond port Glycys are two other harbours; the first and smaller is Comarus, which at Nicopolis the city founded by Augustus Caesar is separated by an isthmus of sixty stades from the Ambracic Gulf: the farther, and larger, and better port, is near the mouth of the gulf, about twelve stades distant from Nicopolis.

§ 1.186   Augustus founded this place because he saw that the neighbouring cities were much depopulated; and he gave it the name of Nicopolis in honour of the naval victory which he gained before the mouth of the gulf over Antony and Cleopatra, who was herself present. A sacred inclosure for the use of the quinquennial contest has been constructed in the suburb in a grove containing a gymnasium and stadium; there is another sanctuary on the sacred hill of Apollo, which rises above the grove. The Lacedaemonians have the superintendence of the games which are named Actia, as being sacred to Apollo Actius, and which have been declared Olympian. All the surrounding towns are now subordinate to Nicopolis.”
The ruins of Nicopolis are now called Paleoprevyza. The road thither leads for two miles through the olive plantations and vineyards, which occupy all the south-western part of the peninsula of Prevyza, and for another mile over a shrubby uncultivated plain. The first ruins that occur are some small arched buildings of brick, probably sepulchral; a little beyond which are the remains of a strong wall following the crest of a height which falls to the lagoon called Mazoma. The situation and direction of this wall, and the position of the sepulchres on the outside of it, seem to show that it was a part of the southern inclosure of the city.

§ 1.187   The Mazoma, which occupies about half the breadth of the isthmus, is separated only from the Gulf of Arta by a narrow ράμμα, or thread of land, which is a mile long and one hundred yards wide, and has two openings, where the fish are caught in great numbers as they enter the lagoon in the winter, and quit it in the summer. At the southern extremity of the narrow bank stands a tower, from whence, following the southern shore of the Mazoma, we arrive at a church of the Άνάληψις, or Ascension; two or three hundred yards beyond which are the ruins called the Paleokastro.
[map of Nicopolis]

§ 1.188   This is an extensive inclosure of irregular form, flanked with towers, and composed in great part of the materials of former ruins: courses of large squared blocks of stone, which seem to have belonged to Hellenic walls, alternate with thick strata of Roman tiles cemented with an abundance of mortar. The western side of the inclosure is the most perfect, and here was the principal gate, situated near the south-western angle between two semi-circular towers. The other towers are quadrangular. All of them internally have flights of steps supported upon arches, for the purpose of ascending to battlements on the summit of the walls.
Although these works are lofty and solid, they do not resemble those of the Augustan age; indeed the variety of marble fragments, and even remains of inscriptions, of the time of the Roman empire, inserted in the masonry, prove the whole to have been a repair, though upon the exact site perhaps of the original citadel, and restored so as to form an inclosure sufficiently large for the diminished population of the place. It may not improbably be the work of Justinian, who, we know from Procopius, repaired Nicopolis. A cross over a small gate called η πόρτα Άράβη seems contemporary with the rest of the work.

§ 1.189   In the middle of the Paleokastro is a pool of fresh water now called Vaieni, which appears to have been covered with a large arched building. A rivulet issues from it, and is consumed in some adjacent gardens. Not far from the spring to the north-west, a ruined building, called the Metropolis, is supposed to have been the episcopal church of the extinct see of Nicopolis. If so, it may be the oldest church in Greece, for the intention of St. Paul to winter here, expressed in his letter to Titus, would seem to indicate that he had a congregation at Nicopolis. Leaving the Paleokastro by the great gate, and proceeding in the direction of Mytika, where stands upon a cape of the western coast a small village of that name and a serai of the Vezir, the first remarkable object that occurs is a theatre, so overgrown with vegetation in the lower part that it is not easily examined. It appears to be about 200 feet in diameter: 15 or 20 rows of seats and the proscenium still remain. Being built on level ground, the back or highest part is entirely supported upon an arched corridor, 18 feet high, and 8 feet 6 inches wide, lighted by openings in the wall which slope outwards, and supporting the entire superstructure, which contains the seats, formed of tiles and mortar. The building is now called the Skotini, from its dark passages. The next ruins towards Mytika is named Bughis, and seems to have been a palace, as it has numerous apartments with many niches in the walls for statues, and some remains of a stone pavement.

§ 1.190   It stands just within an aqueduct supported upon arches, which enters the valley of Nicopolis on the western side of the hill of Mikhalitzi, and may be traced beyond the Skotini: in most parts the piers alone remain. Between the aqueduct and Mytika are remains of a building similar to that within the aqueduct, but of a more regular plan, and of smaller dimensions.
On the side of the last falls of the hill of Mikhalitzi stands the greater theatre, sufficiently elevated above the other remains of Nicopolis to be a very conspicuous object. In approaching it from Bughi, the remains of a solid wall occur, resembling that above the Analipsis, and which seems, when complete, to have stretched across the isthmus from the north-western angle of the fortress. Beyond it is a second source of water, which, with that in the Paleokastro, would seem to have been sufficient, by the aid of wells, for the supply of the city; but here, as at Corinth, another Roman colony, where local springs are still more abundant, the colonists were not satisfied with the water, either because it lay too low, or did not suit their taste, and constructed an aqueduct thirty miles in length. Near the fountain are the ruins of a building called Kalpetzaki, of the annexed form, and probably a bath. It stands on the lowest and narrowest part of the isthmus. A little above it are some other remains on the foot of Mount Mikhalitzi, from whence the stones of a pavement, and a statue of white marble, are said to have been transported lately to Prevyza.

§ 1.191   Both these and the baths belonged perhaps to the gymnasium; for the gymnasium, according to Strabo, was near the stadium, and the remains of the stadium occur immediately above the last-mentioned ruin, in a north-eastern direction, having its eastern extremity situated just below the south-western angle of the great theatre.
The stadium, by the peasants called το Καράβι, (the ship) is circular at both ends, unlike all the other stadia of Greece, but similar to several in Asia Minor, which have been constructed or repaired by the Romans. The length of the course, however, seems to have been the same as in the other stadia of Greece, namely, 600 Greek feet; for I measured 670 feet in the clear between the two curved extremities of the seats, which are now mere ruins overgrown with bushes. In winter the inclosed space is a pool of water. The ruins of the seats occupy a breadth of about 75 feet, but the total length of the construction was probably not more than 750 feet; underneath the seats are a range of arched chambers, intended apparently for no other purpose than to diminish the mass of masonry.
The great theatre was partly excavated in the side of the hill; but all the superstructure, with the appurtenances of the scene, and a vomitory on either side of the stage, was constructed of large flat Roman bricks, united with a great quantity of mortar, and was faced with stone. Although the corridor above the cavea has fallen in, and the stone seats have been removed, it is still one of the best preserved Roman theatres in existence, and well deserves to be accurately measured and delineated by an architect.

§ 1.192   The total diameter is about 300 feet, but the earth, which has been washed from the superincumbent hill during the fourteen centuries which have elapsed since the decease of Pagan civilization, renders an exact measurement unattainable without excavation; in the present season a dense vegetation is a farther impediment, and, in particular, a forest of gigantic thistles, now in the full strength of their growth, mixed with other plants, which are equally troublesome from being already pulverized by the heat, especially the Sfaka, or Verbascum, which at the least touch throws out a cloud of acrid dust. The scene had three doors and a large square apartment at either end, but the stone door-cases not having been spared any more than the seats of the cavea, the building is deprived of all its external decoration, and the inferiority of the Roman brick and mortar to the beauty and solidity of Greek masonry is shown in all its nakedness. The scene is 120 feet long, and 30 in depth. It was decorated with a range of statues of deities facing the cavea, as appears by some blocks below, on which are remains of the names of Venus and Minerva: ΑΦΡΩ, —ΘΗΝΑΙ. From the back of the theatre, the hill of Mikhalitzi rises steeply to the summit, which is about 500 feet above the theatre.
As Strabo describes the sacred grove, stadium and gymnasium, to have been in the προαστειον, or suburb, it is probable that the wall to the south-ward of Kalpetzaki was a part of the inclosure of the city on the northern side.

§ 1.193   Of the two τεμένη, or sanctuaries, the άλσος, or sacred grove, in which the Actia were celebrated, is sufficiently identified by the theatre and stadium, the former for the use of the music, the latter for that of the gymnastic contests. The second temenus, which was above the former, on the mountain of Apollo, is shown by Dio to have been exactly on the summit of the hill, where Mikhalitzi now stands. The historian relates that Octavianus, on arriving, previously to the battle of Actium, at the place where Nicopolis afterwards stood, encamped upon a height, from whence he could see both the Ambracic Gulf and the outer sea towards Paxi, as well as the ports before Nicopolis; he not only fortified the camp, but built walls from it to the outer port, Comarus; and after the battle, having surrounded the place where his tent was pitched with squared stones, he adorned it with the beaks of the captured ships, and built within the inclosure a sanctuary of Apollo, open to the sky. Such a view as Dio here describes, Augustus could not have obtained from the isthmus of Nicopolis, or from any spot in the immediate vicinity, except Mikhalitzi, from whence all the objects stated may be seen.

§ 1.194   The tent of Augustus therefore was placed on the summit of the mountain, his camp occupying the slope and the foot of the hill, from whence the communication with the port Comarus was probably secured from interruption by μακρά τείχη, or parallel walls, which comprehended the harbour between their extremities.
Although the words of Strabo, combined with the extant stadium, show that it was at Nicopolis, and not at Actium, that the games called Actia were held during the long period of their celebration, there is reason to believe from Dio, that until the city was completed, and the buildings for the use of the games constructed, the meeting took place at Actium, where a στεψανίτης αγών, or contest for a crown, had long been instituted by the surrounding cities. This ancient celebration was converted by Augustus, immediately after the victory, and at the same time that he enlarged the Temple of Apollo Actius, into an exhibition of music and gymnastic rivalship, accompanied with horse-races, and was declared a sacred contest; by which it was made equal in dignity to the four great games of Greece, and was accompanied by a sacrifice and festival, at which the hieronicse were entertained at the public expence. Dio expressly adds, that it was not until some time afterward that Nicopolis was colonized and completed, and that the hypaethrium was constructed on the site of the tent of Augustus.

§ 1.195   Here, besides other dedications, were placed the brazen statues of an ass and his driver, in commemoration of a favourable omen, which had probably been prepared for the occasion on the morning of the battle. On the foundation of Constantinople these statues were removed to the hippodrome of that city, where in 1204 they fell into the hands of the barbarous Latins, who melted them with many other monuments of Grecian art still more valuable .
It is remarkable that the wide bay lying between Mytika and Kastroskia is now called Gomaro; Comarus, however, which Dio agrees with Strabo in showing to be the harbour of Nicopolis in the exterior sea, was certainly not such a gulf as that to which the modern name is attached, but a port such as the ancients used, whence it was probably that of Mytika.

§ 1.196   The port which Strabo describes as the greater, would seem by the order of his text, to have been between Comarus and the strait of Prevyza, and consequently on the outside of the gulf; but the nature of the western coast of the Peninsula shows that he cannot have expressed himself accurately. It is evident from Dio, who distinguishes Comarus as the outer port of Nicopolis, that the second harbour intended by Strabo was within the gulf. Here, in fact, his distance of 12 stades corresponds perfectly to Vathy, where some Roman ruins a little within and on the eastern shore of the creek, seem to indicate the exact situation of the λιμην. These ruins consist of two square masses from 20 to 30 feet the side, with a third ruin, 48 feet in length, having a curved extremity. The walls are formed of strata of Roman tiles between masses of rough stones and mortar, and in some places subsist to the height of 12 or 15 feet.
The breadth of 60 stades, which Strabo ascribes to the isthmus of Nicopolis, is obviously incorrect; the broadest part of the site from the tower of the Mazoma to Mytika not being more than three miles. An opinion prevails at Prevyza, founded I believe on a supposed measurement by the French, when they entrenched the isthmus, that the shortest line from the Mazoma to the Gulf of Gomaro is no more than 800 οργυιαις, or 4000 Greek feet. I cannot conceive, however, that it is less than 2000 yards in the narrowest part.

§ 1.197   After having measured the stadium, which is not exactly on the isthmus, it appeared to me, from a rising ground, that there is a distance equal to two stadia between the end of that monument and the Mazoma, four between the other end of the stadium and the aqueduct, and three more to the sea.
The great quantity of fish taken by the Prevyzans in the Mazoma, and neighbouring sea, illustrates the remark of an anonymous geographer of the fourth century, who says that fish was so plentiful at Nicopolis as to be almost disgusting. Most of the other towns near the gulf having been abandoned, the Nicopolites probably had all the fisheries in their hands.
Nicopolis was considered the capital of Southern Epirus and Acarnania during the three first centuries of the Roman Empire; but before the close of this period, it had so far declined as to cease to strike its own money, of which there exist great numbers in copper, either autonomous or of the emperors prior to Galerian. The coins of this prince and his wife Salonina are the latest. The ruin of paganism, by depriving the Actian games of their importance, was the first great blow inflicted upon the prosperity of Nicopolis. Julian restored both its edifices and its games; but the effect was momentary, and the decline of the imperial authority at sea having been followed by piracy, the inevitable consequence in the Grecian seas of the want of a controlling naval power, Nicopolis lost the maritime commerce which had been its main support.

§ 1.198   At the beginning of the fifth century, the Goths of Alaric retreating before Stilico in the Peloponnesus, spread desolation over Epirus, and soon afterwards the Huns of Totila ravaged this coast, on which occasion Nicopolis particularly suffered. It was chiefly perhaps on these occasions that its buildings sustained the injuries which called for the repairs bestowed upon the city by Justinian. It continued to be the capital of southern Epirus, either as the chief town of a ducal province, according to the arrangement of the earlier ages of the Byzantine Empire, or as that of a Theme in the tenth century. Cedrenus relates, that in the eleventh century all the Theme of Nicopolis, except Naupactus, joined a revolt of the Bulgarians against the Emperor Michael the Paphlagonian, which had been caused by the extortion of his lieutenant, John Cutzomytes (wrynose). The name of Nicopolis occurs also in the history of Venice, in reference to the transactions following the capture of Constantinople by the Franks in 1204: and from Nicetas we learn that the territory of Nicopolis was a part of the dominions which then became the Despotate of the West, under Michael Angelus Comnenus.

§ 1.199   But the town had long been reduced to misery, if we may trust to ecclesiastical history, which, during the Byzantine empire, furnishes the best indication of the relative importance of places. Although Nicopolis was still a bishop’s see at the end of the ninth century, and had then been recently transferred from the patriarchy of Rome to that of Constantinople, the ravages of the Bulgarians, fifty years afterwards, put an end to the bishopric, the last prelate having then been removed to Ancyra in Asia. Ioannina, which was already a bishopric under the metropolitan of Naupactus then succeeded to Nicopolis as the seat of ecclesiastical, authority in the south of Epirus, and was raised to the dignity of a metropolis in the thirteenth century; about a century before which Arta became a bishopric of Naupactus. When the imperial name was no longer a protection to the distant subjects of the empire, it was natural that Ambracia and other ancient sites near the Gulf, which Nicopolis had depopulated under the first emperors of Rome, should again become preferable from the same motives of security which had caused them to be occupied by the early Greeks. The new town of Prevyza, built nearer to the Nicopolitan harbours than the ancient city, in a more defensible position, in a more fertile part of the plain, and where water was equally plentiful, then absorbed probably all the remaining inhabitants of the old city.

§ 1.200   June 25.—A north-westerly breeze carries me this afternoon, in an hour and a half, to Salaghora, the port of Arta. Just beyond the strait which separates the Gulf of Prevyza from that of Arta, are two small islands: that to the left named Gaidharonisi, that to the right Kefalo. These, and the other islands in the Gulf, like all the desert grounds in Greece, are clothed with a luxuriant vegetation in the spring, when they furnish pasture for cattle. Between Gaidharonisi and the neighbouring cape of the peninsula of Skafidhaki, we found one of Aly Pasha’s gun-boats lying, a small vessel with two little guns in the bow. He has two or three of these in the Gulf, and at Salaghora a new brig corvette. When he lately visited Salaghora he ordered the shrubs to be cleared away, and a town to be laid out; but only five or six magazines have been built, with a chamber for the collector of the customs at the foot of a rocky height which here projects from the northern shore of the Gulf. The hill seems formerly to have been an island, being almost surrounded by the sea to the south, where the depth of water is more than sufficient for any ship capable of crossing the bar of Prevyza,

§ 1.201   and by shallow lagoons to the north, the connexion with the main land being by means of three narrow low banks branching from it to the east, the west, and the north: the two former of these are mere threads of land, such as generally separate lagoons from the sea; the last is wider, but so low as often to be inundated; a causeway, which even in this season is washed by the water of the lagoon, forms the only road into the plain of Arta. The summit of the hill of Salaghora commands an excellent view of the Gulf. In the rammata, which separate the lagoons from the sea, are seen the openings where the fish are caught, as at the Mazoma of Prevyza, and where are houses for the use of the fishery. The thread to the east joins at the end of three miles a woody peninsula projecting into the Gulf, on which is a metokhi of the Panaghia, and off it three or four small islands connected together by mud-banks, and called the Korakonisia: midway to the Acarnanian shore, is Vuvala, the largest island in the Gulf. Beyond the peninsula of Panaghia the ramma is continued two or three miles farther eastward, to Palea-Bukka: so called from the belief that here was anciently the mouth of the river of Arta, now three miles to the eastward, which is not devoid of probability, as in almost every instance of an increase of land at the mouth of rivers, their lower course has assumed a new direction. Near the eastern side of the muddy and shallow bay of Palea-Bukka, is an island in the lagoon, covered with the ruins of a castle called Fidhokastro (Serpent-castle), built of small stones and mortar, mixed with Hellenic work towards the foundations. The lagoon on the western side of Salaghora, which extends to the river of Luro, is named Tzukalia, that to the eastward Logani.

§ 1.202   June 26. — Quitting Salaghora for Arta this morning at 5.45, we pass round the western end of the hill, and follow the causeway for half a mile across the lagoon; then enter upon the plain which, though now dry, is so marshy during the greater part of the year, as to be left uncultivated. But we soon arrive upon a somewhat higher level, where are a few fields of corn among desert tracts covered with camomile; pass through Anazi and Postikius, both villages belonging to Mukhtar Pasha, the latter at 7.35, and from thence pass through a continuance of tillage as far as Arta. At 8.15 we cross the river of Arta, which is here about 200 yards wide—deep, winding, and rapid— by a handsome bridge, said to have been built by one of the Palaeologi. From thence, having traversed gardens and scattered houses, we pass close to the left of the ruined church of Parioritza, properly Parigoritissa, at 8.20, leave the castle of Arta on the right at 8.28, and at 8.30 arrive at the Metropolis. The baggage was three hours and three quarters on the road.

§ 1.203   The bishop Ignatius receives me with great politeness; he is a prelate of a most prepossessing person and address, well informed and sensible in his conversation, but spoiled by his situation, which, instead of allowing him to cultivate his mind, or to enjoy that civilized society of which he is naturally formed to be an ornament, places him in a perpetual state of fear for his own safety, and reduces him, against his inclination and conscience, to execute the cruel orders of a selfish unprincipled tyrant. While another Greek is the Pasha’s agent for the management of the police and finances of the town and district of Arta, the bishop superintends the more important political concerns of all the surrounding country; and when the Pasha has occasion to send a mission to the Septinsular republic or elsewhere, Ignatius is the person generally employed. At Salaghora his signature was affixed to the tariff of imports in the custom-house. At home he assumes a considerable degree of oriental grandeur, more perhaps than any Musulman can venture upon in the Vezir's dominions. Were it not for the absence of all arms, of which the Turks delight in making a display, and the plain monastic habit which is in contrast to the showy dresses of the Ottomans, the Metropolitan palace might be mistaken for the house of a rich Aga.
The Vezir encourages these appearances of authority in the Greek prelates, as it assists them in the exactions and political objects of which they are the instruments, without saving them from the occasional demands which none of his subjects, but especially the more opulent, ever escape.

§ 1.204   Thus circumstanced, it is not very surprising that bishop Ignatius should be better acquainted with modern politics than with the ancient history and geography of Greece; upon which subjects he is satisfied with the opinions, often erroneous, received among his countrymen, who seldom give themselves the trouble of referring to the original sources of information. Meletius, one of the predecessors of Ignatius in the see of Arta, whose judgment was not equal to his diligence and learning, has been a great cause of the prevalence and permanence of these errors, as the Greeks seldom or ever venture to dispute his authority.
In the evening the άγιος Αρτενός, or Artinian Holy (such is the most polite mode of naming a bishop), accompanies me in a ride round the town. We proceed first to the church of Parigoritissa, a lofty building constructed chiefly of brick, nearly cubical on the outside, but within surrounded with vestibules and galleries, so as to leave in the middle a katholiko, which is more than twice as high as it is square at bottom, and is surmounted by a dome around which are six smaller domes over the aisles. The following is an inscription in two lines round the semi-circular arch of the great door of the church in the inside:—Κομνηνο Δουκας Δεσποτης ...

§ 1.205   The bishop states, that the church was built by the Comnenus Ducas here recorded, that his name was Michael, and that in two MSS., one of which is preserved in Lefkadha, the other in the convent of Myrtari at Vonitza, he is entituled Despot of Arta, Count of Leucas, and Duke of Cephalonia and Zacynthus. He was probably the same Michael Angelus Comnenus who, under the title of Despot of Aetolia, or of Epirus, governed all Western Greece at the time of the Frank conquest of Constantinople in 1204, and who appears to have been the most powerful of the despots of the West. This would make the date of the building not long posterior to the time when Arta became a bishopric of the province of Naupactus. In the sixteenth century it was made a metropolis, and the see of Naupactus having been transferred hither, the prelate received the title of Bishop of Naupactus and Arta, which he still retains.
From Parigoritissa we ascended the height which commands Arta to the eastward, and returned to the Metropolis by the modern castle, visiting several remains of Hellenic antiquity in the way. Though not considerable, they are sufficient to show that Arta was the site of a very large Greek city. Towards the north and west it was half encompassed by the river which issues from an opening at no great distance to the north-eastward between Mount Gelberini, a high rocky summit, which rises in face of the town to the northward, and the hill of Peta, a village standing on the last falls of a range of mountains, which follows the left bank of the river of Arta almost to its sources.

§ 1.206   Beyond Peta, southward, the hills border the plain of Arta as far as Makrinoro, which is a continuation of them terminating abruptly in the gulf. [map of Arta]
The height on the eastern side of the town is the extremity of a long rocky hill, which is embraced by the river on its northern and western sides, and falls to the plain on the two others.

§ 1.207   Some foundations of an acropolis are traceable on the summit, from whence the town wall descended in a northerly direction, so as to exclude a monastery dedicated to ‘the Virgin brought to light,’ and from thence to a projection of the height which here overhangs the river. It then followed a direction parallel to the river towards the modern castle, where in one place the Hellenic wall forms part of some cottages, otherwise of the slightest and rudest construction, and which remind me of the Egyptian huts standing on the ruins of Luxor or Edfu. Beyond these the ancient wall is again seen in the lower part of the structure of the castle towards the river, and here it is most remarkable, consisting of courses nearly regular, and not less remarkable for the close and finished junction of the stones, than for their magnitude. These are in general quadrangular, but some are sloping at one end; the two or three lowest courses which are narrower than the others, and project beyond the rest of the wall, as often occurs in Hellenic masonry of the best times, are founded on the excavated rock. One of the stones, which rest on the uppermost narrow course, is 16 feet long and 4 high; another is 12 feet by 6. A little beyond the castle occurs the excavated foundation of another enormous wall parallel to the former, and indicating apparently, that the modern fortress occupies the site of a second ancient citadel. The town wall may again be seen supporting the terrace of the bishop’s garden overhanging the river, beyond which some smaller vestiges may be traced as far as the church of Parigoritissa,

§ 1.208   beyond which, at the foot of the hill behind the church of Odhighitria, the foundations are again visible ascending the hill directly to the acropolis. Squared blocks formerly belonging to the walls or public buildings of the city, are to be seen in every part of the modern town, where they are often used as benches, steps, or mounting blocks at the doors of the houses.
The traces of power and opulence evident in these remains, seem scarcely to leave a question that Arta stands on the site of Ambracia, though neither bishop Ignatius assents to this opinion, nor his physician, Dr. M., of Katuna, a learned and well informed man. But the presumption derived from the existing vestiges, from the fertile and extensive plain, and from the strong and central situation of Arta, which have made it the chief town of the surrounding parts of Western Greece, causing it to give name to the Gulf, like Ambracia of old, is fully confirmed by other coincidences derived from the ancient authors. From a comparison of their testimony, we learn that Ambracia was situated eighty stades from the sea, in the middle of the northern side of the Gulf, on the eastern bank of the Arethus, otherwise called Arachthus or Arethon, which rose in Athamania, and in the same mountains which give rise to the Peneius. There is no other river, nor any other position near the Ambracic Gulf, that will correspond to these requisites.

§ 1.209   Livy, in the narrative which he has borrowed from Polybius, of the siege of Ambracia by the Romans under the consul Fulvius, in the summer of the year B.C. 189, informs us that the city of Ambracia was more than three miles in circumference; that it stood on the western side of a rugged hill called Perrhanthe, one of the summits of which was occupied by the citadel; and that it was well protected by the river and heights, and by the wall which surrounded it. These particulars are exactly justified by the existing remains.
As the siege by Fulvius is the most remarkable event concerning Ambracia which occurs in history, and as it refers both to the topography of the place itself and to the geography of the surrounding country, I shall subjoin the principal circumstances of it.

§ 1.210   From the reign of Pyrrhus, Ambracia bad been the capital of Epirus and the royal residence; but at the time of the siege it was in the hands of the Italians, and had been a main cause of the extent of the Aetolian power at that period of Grecian history, by giving them either a direct authority or a strong influence over the neighbouring states of Amphilochia, Aperantia, Athamania, and Dolopia, which last confined on other acquisitions of the Aetolians in Phthiotis and the country of the Aenianes. As soon as they found themselves unable to save Ambracia, they submitted to the Roman power, and never recovered their former importance. Fulvius, who had landed at Apollonia, and had marched through Epirus, first established two fortified camps at a moderate distance from each other in the plain, and built a castle on a height near the citadel. His Epirote allies were encamped in the plain on the opposite side of the river. Before the consul could unite his three works together by means of an entrenchment, Eupolemus, with one thousand Aetolians, made his way into the city. As soon as the circumvallation was complete, and the machines prepared for assailing the walls, the Romans began to batter them in five places: three of these, at two equal intervals, were in the plain overagainst the Pyrrheium; a fourth was near the temple of Aesculapius, and the fifth was at the citadel. The walls were so strong as to resist even beyond the expectation of the besieged;

§ 1.211   giving them time to make sorties by night and day, and enabling them to counteract the effects of the battering machines of the enemy, either by means of engines or of fire.
While these operations were in progress, a second body of Aetolians, amounting to five hundred, partly by force and partly under cover of a tempestuous night, entered the place, and immediately joined Eupolemus in assaulting the Roman lines, in which attempt it had been concerted that they were to be assisted by a simultaneous attack from without by Nicander, the praetor of Aetolia. Nicander, however, found a cause or an apology for inaction in the arrival of Perseus in Amphilochia, who had been sent by his father Philip to recover that country and Dolopia from the Aetolians. The double consequence was, that the sortie from Ambracia failed, and that Perseus retired from his attack of Argos on the approach of Nicander, and returned into Macedonia, contenting himself with the spoliation of Amphilochia and Dolopia. No sooner had this obstacle been removed, than a new diversion occurred to prevent the praetor from attempting to raise the siege of Ambracia. Pleuratus, king of Illyria, having arrived with sixty ships in the Corinthiac Gulf, made from thence desultory incursions on the Aetolian coast, which required the attention of Nicander and his army. Meantime the siege proceeded vigorously on both sides. The wall was breached and retrenched; a mine was formed and countermined, and the parties fought in the subterraneous passages, until the besiegers were driven out by the missiles of their adversaries, or by the smoke of burnt feathers.

§ 1.212   Affairs were in this state when deputies arrived to solicit peace on the part of the Aetolian council, who were urged to this measure by the defeat of Antiochus in Asia, by their conscious inability of resisting three such enemies as Philip, Pleuratus, and the Romans, and probably by the conviction that the Ambraciotae and their friend Amynander, king of Athamania, were only waiting for an opportunity to withdraw from their forced alliance with Aetolia. The principal conditions were, that the Aetolians should pay five hundred Euboic talents to Rome, and should cease to claim any authority over the cities which had been taken by or allied with the Romans since the arrival of T. Quinctius in Greece. The people of Ambracia presented Fulvius with a golden crown of one hundred and fifty pounds weight; but this present did not save the city from being despoiled of all the statues of brass and marble, with which, as having been the royal residence of Epirus, it was adorned beyond all the cities of Western Greece. In the triumph of Fulvius two years afterwards, on his return from his proconsulship, two hundred and eighty-five statues of brass, and two hundred and thirty of marble, were exhibited in the procession, the greater part of which had been brought from Ambracia, Aetolia, and Cephallenia.
The triple assault of the walls seems evidently to have been from the side of the modern gardens, that being the only part of the circuit where the walls were contiguous to the plain.

§ 1.213   The Pyrrheium, consequently, which I take to have been a fortified palace built by Pyrrhus, was in the adjacent part of the modern town, and probably near the river, comprehending the beautiful terrace now occupied by the metropolis. The situation of the monastery of Fanaromeni seems to have been an advantageous point for one of the battering machines of the Consul, and may therefore be the site of the temple of Aesculapius. The castle which Fulvius built on a height over against the citadel we can hardly doubt to have been on the hill of St. Elias, which is separated only by a hollow from that of the acropolis; for the occupation of that height was obviously necessary to the safety of his line of circumvallation. The position of his work for battering the acropolis was of course immediately opposite to the hill of St. Elias, on the crest of that of the citadel, and close to the wall.
Dicaearchus informs us that Ambracia was noted for a temple dedicated to Minerva, which may have been converted into one of the ancient churches now existing, such having, often been the use made of the pagan temples.
The other situations in the Ambracian territory which history has noticed are: 1. Ambracus, which was captured by Philip, son of Demetrius, in the year B.C. 219, after a siege of forty days,undertaken at the instigation of the Epirotes, who hoped that it would lead to the recovery of Ambracia from the Aetolians. 2. The port of Ambracia, near which there was a fortressl.

§ 1.214   3. Craneia, which a comparison of Pliny and Stephanus shows to have been a subordinate place of the Ambracia, on a mountain of the same name .
Ambracus is described by Polybius as a place, in the territory of Ambracia, well fortified with ramparts and outworks, and as surrounded by marshes, through which there was only one narrow causeway leading to it. This description accords so well with Fidhokastro, that little doubt can remain of the identity. If Ambracus was the same as the τεΐχος, or fortress near the port of Ambracia, mentioned by Scylax,of which the probability is very great, we may conclude that the harbour, which, according to the same author and Dicaearchus, was a κλειστός λιμήν, or port closed with moles, leaving a narrow entrance which might be shut with a chain, was an artificial basin, excavated near the fortress, and opening towards the mouth of the river, which appears anciently to have discharged itself very near to Fidhokastro.

§ 1.215   Craneia I conceive to have been the high mountain now called Kelberini, which rises from the right bank of the river of Arta, immediately opposite to the town, and which is exactly of the rugged nature described by the ancient name. Whether this was the same as the Sacred Mountain mentioned by Dicaearchus, or whether the ridge on which Ambracia stood, and which Livy calls Perrhanthe, bore that name, cannot be asserted; but these being the only heights near Ambracia, the words of Dicaearchus seem applicable only to the one or other of them.
The poetical topographer just named differs from Scylax in interposing the Oreitae between the Ambracian coast and that of the Amphilochi, and thus identifies the country of the Oreitae with Makrinoro;

§ 1.216   for as Polybius and Livy agree in placing Argos Amphilochicum at 22 miles from Ambracia, it is evident that the country at the head of the gulf, immediately beyond Makrinoro, was the Amphilochia. The Oreitae therefore seem to have been the inhabitants of that remarkable mountain, and probably of its northerly continuation also, as far as it bordered on the Ambracian territory.
As the foundation of Nicopolis was the term of the existence of Ambracia, it was to be expected that the site of Arta should be deficient, as we find it in those remains of the time of the Roman empire, which so constantly meet and sometimes disappoint the traveller when in search of earlier monuments in Asia, Africa, and many of the cities of Greece. Whatever may be found at Arta will probably be of the best times of Greece, as Ambracia, after having been plundered by Fulvius, shared the fate of the other cities of Epirus, 22 years afterwards, when the Senate of Rome, to gratify their army, which had been disappointed of the plunder of Macedonia, gave directions for that atrocious act of deliberate cruelty and perfidy, too well attested by the cotemporary historian, which consigned 70 cities of Epirus to plunder and destruction, and 150,000 Epirotes to be sold as slaves.

§ 1.217   Hence the wretched state into which Ambracia fell, in common with the other cities occupying the naturally favoured districts around this beautiful inland sea, and which reduced them all to so small a population, that they sufficed only, even with the aid of a Roman colony, to furnish inhabitants for the single town of Nicopolis. To the abandonment of the site of Ambracia we may attribute, as in the instance of Sparta and a few other leading cities, the loss of the ancient name; for it has rarely happened where the positions have been continually inhabited, that the name has not been preserved. When strength of situation became again an important requisite, Ambracia was re-occupied, as well as two other Hellenic sites at Vonitza and Rogus, while such as Sparta, Megalopolis, and other places little defended by nature, have remained desolate. The new name seems to have been taken from that of the river 'Άραιθος, or Άραχθος, which was the more easily contracted into two syllables as the accent was on the first. The monasteries and churches, Vlakherina, Fanaromeni, Parigoritissa, Saint Theodhora, and Pandokratora, show the importance of the renewed city under the Byzantine emperors.

§ 1.218   CHAPTER V EPIRUS.
JUNE 27.—This afternoon, at 6, having re-crossed the bridge of Arta, we follow the right bank of the river to Marati, a suburb standing just opposite to the metropolis of Arta, and consisting of a Turkish mosque with some houses and gardens. The Turk who built the mosque adorned it with several columns from the church of Parigoritissa, where the loss has been very clumsily repaired. The gardens of Marati abound in filbert trees, the fruit of which forms one of the exports of Arta. Among the gardens is a ruin with walls and towers, apparently of the early times of Arta, forming a square of 36 yards; it is now called Καστέλι. Beyond Marati we cross the plain, leaving a marsh on the left hand, and having arrived at the foot of Mount Kelbermi, bend to the left along its foot, following a paved road which overhangs the edge of the marsh.

§ 1.219   In the midst of this pass at 7.7 are some copious springs issuing from under the mountain, and forming a large stream; it is supposed to be the subterraneous discharge of the Lake of Ioannina, and flows to the lagoon of Logaru. The marsh now becomes more deep and impracticable, and the mountain steep and rocky, the exhalations are offensive, and numerous serpents are seen on the water’s edge. At 7.40 the pass ends, and the marsh retires to the left, leaving a cultivated plain which extends to Strivina in front, but narrows to the right, where it terminates in an ascending valley, the direct route and natural opening of communication from the Gulf of Arta to the plain of Ioannina. At a khan called Khanopulo we leave that road to the right, and proceed for the night to Strivina, where by order of the bishop a cottage had been prepared for me. This village contains 30 or 40 families, who are chiefly employed in the culture of tobacco on the banks of a stream, of which the sources are in the village. After flowing through a marshy plain, it forms one of the tributaries of the river of Luro.

§ 1.220   June 28.—Setting out this morning at 4.30, we rejoin the road to Ioannina at the entrance of the valley above-mentioned at 5, then ascend the dry bed of a torrent, and at 5.30 leave the village of Kometzades a quarter of a mile to the right, situated on uneven ground on the side of the torrent, which here issues from between two high summits of Mount Kelberini. To our left, at the same time, are the remains of a small triangular Hellenic fortress, standing on the summit of a hill, which commanded the entrance of this important pass. The walls are in some parts still standing to a considerable height.
From hence we continue to ascend, passing a little to the right of Koliadhes; and at 6.38, arriving at the summit of the pass, descend into a small valley included between steep rocky mountains. At 7.10 the village of Muliana is half a mile on the right, on the mountain’s side, situated at the entrance of a lateral pass which leads to the vale of the Arachthus, over Mount Kelberini, or rather which separates that summit from Xerovuni, a ridge following the same northerly direction as the former. The Vezir has lately built a serai at Muliana, and has constructed a good paved road by which we cross a counterfort of the mountain to Pende Pigadhia, where are a few cottages, and a little beyond them the five wells which give name to the place. It is situated just at the opening of the pass where it begins to descend into an elevated plain, similar to that below Muliana, but much more extensive, and equally bordered on either side by a steep rocky mountain.

§ 1.221   We arrive at the khan of the Five Wells at 8.38, and make a long halt, for at this season of the year it is necessary to divide the day’s journey, and to rest during the meridian hours, which, especially in the villages, are by far more quiet than the night, when asses, hogs, dogs, fowls, rats, bugs, fleas, gnats, are all in a state of activity. Of the three latter plagues, which by adding want of sleep to the effects of fatigue and climate often contribute powerfully to destroy a traveller’s health, the flea is the only one from which he may not be protected by a well constructed mosquito netting. This torment and the excessive heat are the chief impediments to the traveller’s repose in the day, for as to the incessant chirping of the woodcricket, he soon becomes accustomed to it, though he will hardly bring himself to consider its note musical, as the ancients seem to have thought.
At 3.15 p.m. we descend from the khan into, the valley, with the village of Varlam on the left, and beyond it the mountain Olytzika, as the highest point of the range to the left of our road, and the most remarkable peak in all the surrounding country is now called. I know not where we are to look for its ancient name. Below Varlam are some fields of tobacco, but the chief produce of this valley, as well as of that below Muliana, is kalambokki.
At 4.45, after having crossed the plain, there is a further descent, with the village of Pesta on the right, to a fine source of water on the road side.

§ 1.222   Here, to the left, on the opposite side of the valley, rises a sloping cultivated hill, on the summit of which are the ruins of a triangular Hellenic fortress, naturally fortified at the back by a precipice, which overhangs the ravine lying between it and Mount Olytzika. Twenty minutes farther there is another paleo-kastro, at about an equal distance to the left of our road, of the same kind as the former, and similarly situated, but the hill is steeper, higher, and more uneven, and die in closed space is larger. We now begin to descend towards the great plain of Ioannina, and at 5.52 arrive at the khan and small village of St. Demetrius, situated in a little bay of the plain, half an hour beyond which, Bartzi is on the side of the hills on the left; hereabouts are several round ponds in the plain, some of which are covered with water lilies. We hasten forward, and at eight arrive at Ioannina. The distance from Arta is about forty-two miles by the road. In time, it is thus generally reckoned: from Arta to Khanopulo 1.30; to Kometzadhes, 1.30; to a ruined khan under Muliana, 1.30; to Pendepigadhia, 1.30; to Ai Dhimitri, 3; to Ioannina, 3. Total, 12 hours, or 14 with baggage.
June 29.—Since my visit to the Vezir at Tepeleni, he has built a foundery at Bunila, in the plain of Ioannina, where he had before established a colony of Bulgarians, whom he brought here in 1802, on his return from the Danube, and lodged in cottages built in a quadrangle, like their own native palankas. When I asked His Highness how he procured copper to make his gun-metal, “I collect it,” he says, “from my subjects; one furnishes an old pot, and another a kettle.”

§ 1.223   A magnificent room, which he has just finished in his new serai in the Kastro, is probably not surpassed by those of the Sultan himself. It is covered with a Gobelin carpet, which has the cypher of the King of France on it, and was purchased by the Pasha's agent at Corfu. His Highness has lately taken Dr. Frank, formerly one of the physicians of the French army of Egypt, into his service, at 10,000 piastres a year. In the evening he has some mortar practice at Bunila, with an old five or six inch mortar, which has been considerably damaged by its employment in the siege of Suli. They fire loaded shells, one of which explodes close to a party of Greeks standing upon a height, but fortunately without hurting any of them. The Pasha laughs very heartily at the joke. We then visit the foundery, the roof of which seems likely to fall.
July 1.—This afternoon I set out on a tour to Suli, accompanied by the Italian renegade Mehmet Effendi, together with one of the Vezir’s trusty Albanian bolu-baahis, and his chief architect named Peter of Korytza. who constructed the bridge and serai at Tepeleni, and has built many others of the Pasha's palaces and castles. His Highness furnishes me with an excellent mule, for the mountain paths, from his own stable. We proceed no farther this evening than Rapeista, a village distant 1.30 hour from the city, in the middle of the plain on the right hand side of the road to Ai Dhimitri.. On the hills above Rapsista are two or three convents prettily situated among woods of pirnaria.

§ 1.224   July 2.—At 4.10 this morning we quit Rapsista, leaving the baggage to follow; at 5.40 leave the khan of Ai Dhimitri half a mile on the left, then ascending the lowest part of the mountain which borders the western side of the plain of Ioannina, we arrive at six in a small level on the summit where the village Ferekisi is at a short distance on the left, from thence descend into the valley of the Varia, and at 6.23 arrive at that stream near the beginning of its course. On our left, as we proceed, is the ridge which separates this valley from that of Pesta and Varlam, and on two points of which are the two Hellenic castles mentioned on the 28th of June. We now cross another ridge, in the middle ascent of which are some ancient sepulchres and remains of Hellenic walls in and beside the road, and then descend to Variadhes, where we arrive at 8. This is a small village, with a kula or pyrgo belonging to the Vezir, situated at the eastern foot of the southern summit of Mount Olytzika, where the heights overlook the narrow vale of the Varia.
From Variadhes, at 3.30 p.m., we proceed to cross the lowest part of the southern summit of Mount Olytzika, and arrive at 5.3 at a church of St. Elias, standing on the crest of the ridge which separates the valley of the Varia from that of a branch of the river of Suli, and commands a view of both. We descend the slope obliquely to the left, and at 6.45 arrive at Dervidjana, properly Tervitziana, situated amidst fountains, large walnut trees, vineyards and gardens,—on the middle descent of the ridge, and enjoying a prospect of the valley below it, which is beautifully diversified with broken ground, streams, woods, and cultivated fields. At seven we arrive at the farther end of the village, at the kula of the Bolu-bashi, an Albanian of unusually polished manners.

§ 1.225   July 3.—At four this morning we descend into the valley, and after passing a tributary of the river of Suli, cross at 5.30 the principal branch, which, taking its rise near the village of Lakia, is called the Lakiotiko. The hills at the foot of Mount Nasheri, which is a peaked summit, separated only by a hollow from Olytzika, are covered with oaks, some of which are large. All the villages in this beautiful valley formed a part of the Suliote league in the time of its greatest power, when Variadhes, the vale of Varia, and all as far as the summit, overlooking the plain of Ioannina, were included in it. The village of Paleokastro, which is a mile and a half on the left after crossing the river, belonged to the Botzari family. Three minutes farther we begin to ascend the great mountain of Suli at the kula and tjiftlik of Romanates, where are some ruins of another tower, which was surprised and blown up by the Suliotes during the war. Aly’s Albanians having, as they thought, secured the place, went to forage, leaving a few of their youngest soldiers in it, and on their return remained at night on the outside.

§ 1.226   During the night the Suliotes, approaching silently, set fire to a mine which they had left at the foot of the tower, and, as soon as it exploded, attacked and slew, or dispersed, the Albanians. After the war, the Vezir destroyed the church of Romanates, and converted the village into a tjiftlik. From hence the ascent of the mountain is in a steep zigzag; the road has been well made, but in some places the borders are giving way. At 6.40 we pass a copious βρύσις or source of water, in a hollow grown with pirnaria; and continuing from thence to ascend, arrive at 7.28 on the crest of the ridge, about a mile to the southward of the highest summit of the mountain. Lefkadha is in sight to the southward; Paxu and Andipaxo to the west, with the hills behind Parga and the coast near Port Fanari: but Suli and its vicinity are hidden by a lower summit of the mountain, immediately overhanging them.
After a halt of six minutes we begin to descend; pass many remains of the konaks, or temporary huts of loose stone constructed by the contending parties during the siege; and having descended the steep mountain on foot, arrive at 8.45 at the village of Suli. On the side of the mountain grows a great quantity of a small fragrant species of abrotonum, not very common in Greece, and here named απιστία.
Suli, called Kakosuli from its fame and strength, like the Κακοΐλιον of Homer, or Megalo-Suli, to distinguish it from another Suli on the Kalama below Zitza, contains 150 scattered houses, all of which are in ruins, except five or six, tenanted by Musulman Albanians, to whom the Vezir means to add a colony of Christians from the neighbourhood of Tepeleni.

§ 1.227   The ruins of the principal church he is now converting into a mosque. The houses, which seem all to have been built on a similar plan, were small square buildings, with a pitched roof and two stories, of which the lower was a store or stable, and the upper contained two apartments. They were dispersed among terraces, artificially formed on the side of the hill, and now uncultivated, but which formerly bore potherbs, and corn, among fruit-trees. In the height of their prosperity, the Suliotes possessed all the adjacent part of the plain of Glyky, containing rice grounds and maize fields,in the culture of which they employed the Greek peasants of that district, thinking such employments beneath them, and delighting only in robbery, war, and idleness. The instances of their activity, of their swiftness in walking over the mountains and through roads and passages, to us impassable, of their expertness in the use of the musket, of their keenness of sight, in which they excelled all other Albanians, who themselves are exceeded only by the Arabs of the desert; their vigilance and sagacity, their ability in planning, and activity in executing, the most refined stratagems of their desultory warfare, would, in some instances, exceed belief, if they were not so universally attested by their enemies. Their power of vision in the night is particularly mentioned in terms of astonishment by the troops of Aly Pasha, who opposed them.

§ 1.228   From Suli we proceeded south-westward to the hill of Kughni, an Albanian word, which the Greeks interpret λόφος, a summit: the fort of Kukia occupies the southern point of the hill, and is distant from Suli 35 minutes. Kukia was the last point which resisted the arms of Aly. He is now erecting a new fortress on the spot, after having levelled all the walls, huts, and meteris of the Suliotes, as well as their church: 4 or 500 yards to the northward of Kukia, and not much lower than that point, is a peak called Ai Dhonato (St. Donatus), from a church which formerly stood there, and which the Pasha converted into a kula, and made the headquarters of the siege.
Having descended by the same road to the foot of the hill of Kughni, we fall into that from Suli to Kiafa, near the ruined village of Samoniva, and in half an hour arrive at the ruins of Kiafa, or Gkiafa, situated amidst a few terraces and fruit-trees, and from thence, ascending the hill of Trypa, in Albanian Bira, arrive at a new fortress, not yet completed, situated on the summit of this narrow ridge, and midway between its two extremities. The south-eastern end of the height is the Bira, properly so called, which gives name to the whole ridge; the north-western is specifically named Breke Vetetimis, in Greek η Ράχη της Αστραπής, or the Hill of Lightning, because in stormy weather the lightning often strikes the summit, so often indeed that the Suliotes were obliged to give up building upon it. A kula which the Pasha erected there last year has already had one of its angles beaten down by a thunderbolt.

§ 1.229   This point, in fact, being lofty and precipitous, and surrounded by an amphitheatre of much higher mountains, cannot fail often to attract the electric fluid. Northward it looks down upon Kughni, at the distance of 1000 or 1200 yards, and is separated from that hill by a narrow vale, in which the Lakiotiko, or main branch of the river of Suli is joined by the Tzingariotiko, so called as rising near the village of Tzingari, on the mountain which rises to the northward of the hill of Kughni. The fortress in the middle of Mount Trypa, which the Vezir began to build as soon as he obtained possession of Suli, is now nearly finished: my companion Kyr Petros, of Korytza, is the architect. The crest of the ridge is so narrow, that there is just room for a path, and Kyr Petros was obliged to level the hill before he began the castle. Towards the mountain of Tzikurates, which is separated from the hill of Trypa by the river, and commands it on the southern side, as the mountain of Suli does on the eastern, he has built bomb-proof magazines, casemates, and cisterns. He has also completed a house for the officer in command, and is now building a large serai for the Vezir in the middle of the fort. The only guns at present here are two short pieces of brass, carrying a 12 1b. ball. These and two five or six inch mortars were all the artillery used in the siege. The hill of Trypa towards the river is a rapid descent, covered with loose stones, and interrupted in many places with precipices and pointed rocks;

§ 1.230   although the slope forms an angle of about 30° with the horizon, the women of Trypa were in the habit of mounting it, with large jars of water from the river, upon their heads. The southeastern end of the ridge of Trypa terminates in three pointed summits, the two northern of which are surmounted by kulas, lately erected by the Pasha to contain a guard of Albanians; one of these buildings has already been damaged by the lightning, but not so much as the tower at the opposite extremity of the mountain. The hollow between the two northern summits of the southeastern end is properly the Trypa or cavity from which the whole mountain takes its name, but the posts of the Suliotes extended over all this extremity of the hill, and their meteris may still be traced as far as the place where the southern gate of the fortress now stands; 100 yards to the south of which, is a small Suliote church still subsisting. As it was necessary for the Pasha, when he had expelled the Suliotes, to build a fortress for his Albanian garrison, he could not have chosen a better site. Suli, however, although it would be troublesome to him in the hands of an enemy, is of no importance as a pass or point of communication between the several parts of Aly’s dominions, nor can it be of much use to him as a place of refuge in case of disaster, for the mountains on both sides command it within a moderate range of cannon-shot; and although they are very difficult of access on all sides, an active enemy, if superior in the field, would soon find the means of transporting artillery over them.

§ 1.231   Upon all the summits around Suli are still seen the remains of the Meteris and Konaks which were erected by the Pasha’s troops during the siege. The former are upon all the most advanced and commanding points of the mountains, and are nothing more than little breastworks of stone, from behind which the besieger fired his long heavy musquet, resting it on the top of the wall. The konaks, or lodgings, were in the most unexposed situations, and were just large enough to afford shelter during their hours of repose, to the men who were stationed at that point of the investment. As the siege proceeded, the meteris were drawn nearer, serving the purpose of approaches in a regular siege, and blockading the posts of the Suliotes until they were reduced to starvation. In like manner the konaks of the Suliotes are to be seen on all the rocky points and precipices of the hills of Trypa and Kughni.
The river, after the junction of the two branches, flows through the Klisura, or narrow opening between the mountains of Tzikurates and Zavrukho, into the plain of Glyky, where it is generally known by the name of the Suliotiko, or river of Suli. Along the rocky sides and precipices of the Klisura, above the left bank of the river, the Vezir has lately made a good paved horse road from Suli to Glyky, so that now there is a road, though in some parts rather dangerous, through the entire pass, communicating from the plain of Luro, or of Ioannina, into that of Glyky.

§ 1.232   The view from the Hill of Lightning comprehends all the adjacent part of the plain of Glyky with its numerous villages, and I perceive at once that the river is the ancient Acheron; for after winding through the plain it traverses a lake, or marsh, or rather combination of both, which is evidently the ancient Palus Acherusia, and then falls into the harbour called Porto Fanari, or Splantza, which (it is equally manifest) is the Glycys Limen: so great is the quantity of water poured into it from the lake and river, that the water of the harbour is observed to be generally fresh, as the ancient name implies. The harbour and a great part of the Acherusia are hidden from Trypa by a part of the mountain of Tzikurates. At the foot of the hills of Margariti which rise from the western side of the plain of the Acheron, is a marsh called Vuvo, through which passes a river of the same name, flowing from the vicinity of Paramythia. Its subsequent course is traceable through the plain to a high stone bridge near Kastri, a name generally indicative of an ancient site, and in this instance derived fropi the conspicuous ruins of a large Hellenic city on a height above the village. The Vuvo, as I am informed, afterwards winds to the left in a direction nearly parallel to the Acheron, and joins that river near the sea. It is probably the ancient Cocytus.

§ 1.233   In the lower part of the plain the Suliotiko or Acheron is more commonly called Fanaritiko, or the river of Fanari; this name (in Albanian, Frai) being generally applied to the plain around and below the Acherusia, as Glyky is to the portion above it towards Suli. Formerly there was a village and church of Glyky near the right bank of the river, a little below the spot where it emerges from the gorges of Suli into the plain. But this church was destroyed by the Vezir two months ago, and there now remain only two or three of the buttresses which sustained the walls, and which may be remarked from the Trypa. During the war this was an important military post of the Suliotes, and sometimes was equally useful to their besiegers. The name Glyky, by a process of change not uncommon in all countries, seems to have spread from the harbour to the plain, and afterwards to have been applied specifically to a place, where, though nothing but a ruined church is now to be seen, there was probably a town of the Lower Empire; for Glyky still gives title in conjunction with Buthrotum to one of the bishops of the province of Ioannina, whose residence is Paramythia, and the church at Glyky is acknowledged to have been the cathedral of that diocese.
At Glyky the plain is about five miles wide, and extends to the right in a northerly direction four hours to Paramythia. This large town, which is inaccessible to me at present on account of the hostility of its chief family to Aly Pasha, is situated at the extremity of the valley of the Vuvo, and has a castle behind it on a steep and lofty hill, near the foot of the range which terminates to the southward in the mountain of Zavrukho and the Klisura of Suli. The entire range, like most of the moun tains around Suli, is bare and rocky in the middle, but is covered at the summit with pine-trees.

§ 1.234   The official name of Paramythia, by which it is always designated in the firmahns of the Porte, is Aidonat Kalesi, or the Castle of Aidonat, which doubtless is a corruption of 'Άγιος Δονάτος, or St. Donatus, who was the patron of this part of the country: the church of Glyky was dedicated to him, as well as another on the ridge of Kughni, and a third in the village of Suli. It is curious that his name should so nearly resemble, especially in modern Greek pronunciation, that of Άϊδωνεύς, the ancient monarch of this country; for though the Greek mythology confounded Aidoneus with the lord of the infernal regions, he appears to have been in reality the mortal possessor of the valuable district watered by the Acheron, at the time when Theseus, prince of Athens, was on his travels.
The Suliotes, having no written memorials nor any clear traditions older than a century, it can only be offered as a conjecture, founded on strong probability, that Suli was occupied in the thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth century, by a colony of those Albanians, who, at the latter period, overran the Despotate of the West, avoiding Ioannina the capital, which was in the hands of Greek, Servian, or Frank princes; but settling at Arta and on the banks of the Achelous, and extending themselves, as their present settlements and the use of their language indicate, throughout maritime Epirus, from Illyria nearly to the Ambracic Gulf.

§ 1.235   The Turks, when they penetrated into Epirus, were satisfied with the conquest of Arta and Ioannina, and had little temptation to enter the poorer and more mountainous parts of the country, which neither the Greeks, Vlakhiotes, nor Albanians, who possessed them, were disposed to yield without a struggle. The Albanians soon discovered that the Ottoman empire was an excellent mart for their services as mercenary infantry; but that, in order to obtain all the advantages in view, it was necessary to profess the dominant religion. The consequence has been, that more than half the nation has become Musulman, that Mahometan Albanians are to be found in the service of every chieftain or governor of that faith, from the Straits of Gibraltar, to Arabia, Persia, and the Danube; and that at home they have either brought the Christians under their yoke, or have forced them to take refuge under a milder despotism in Southern Greece or Asia Minor. To the former country the stream of Albanian migration had been setting, even before the Turkish conquest; those countries having already been depopulated by wars, or by the bad. government of the Franks and the Byzantine Greeks. Such is now the military preponderancy of the Musulman faith in Albania, that with the exception of a tribe belonging to the Roman church, in the district of Skodra, the Khimariotes are the only Christian Albanians who preserve their independence. The Suliotes were the last who fell under the Mahometan yoke.

§ 1.236   During the past century, as well in the early part of it, when Ioannina was governed by a Musellim dependent on the Pasha of Arta, as after the year 1740, when it became the head of a Pashalik, the Suliotes were constantly engaged in war, with the neighbouring beys of Margariti, Paramythia, or Ioannina; for it was not until Aly succeeded to the government of Ioannina, in the year 1788, that a factious oligarchy, similar to that of the Albanian towns, and which had left very little authority to the Sultan’s officer, was rendered powerless, and has at length been stripped by Aly of the greater part of their property. The Suliotes soon found that they had an opponent in Aly far more formidable than they had yet known; and that to resist such a bold and crafty enemy would require all their energy. Nor was the Pasha less prompt in arriving at the conviction that he could have little hope of extending his power in the degree which his ambition contemplated, until he had reduced the Suliotes, who were a constant rallying point to the Christians, were capable of strengthening by their alliance every Mahometan chieftain disposed to resist him, and even threatened his capital whenever he might be engaged in any distant undertaking. By his usual artifices, he succeeded first in turning against them one or two of their Musulman neighbours, and then the Christian armatoli of Acarnania and Aetolia; which so provoked the Suliotes, that their predatory excursions, hitherto confined to hostile and neighbouring places, were extended to Makrinoro, or to the passes leading from Arta to Ioannina, and even into the plain of Ioannina, where they plundered travellers without distinction, and never spared the life of a Mahometan unless with the prospect of a heavy ransom.

§ 1.237   The war between Aly and the Suliotes was actively carried on during the years 1790 and 1791. In 1792 the Pasha made that formidable attack upon the mountain itself which has been related by Eton on the authority of a Greek interpreter in the service of the French consulate at Saloniki, who happened to be at Ioannina at the time. His army approached Suli from the plain of Glyky, forced the Klisura with difficulty, met with a still more resolute opposition in the pass of Paraskevi, which leads between the hills of Kughni and Bira to Megalo-Suli; but succeeded by the effect of superior numbers in obtaining a momentary possession of the town, when both women and men rushing forth against them, and an attack being made at the same instant on their rear, by a party which for this purpose waited only to receive a signal from Bira, the Mahometans were totally defeated with an immense slaughter, and with very little loss to the Suliotes. Mukhtar escaped with difficulty, and Aly fled with precipitation to Ioannina, fearing to be intercepted.
This victory saved the Suliotes from any serious danger for the next six years, during which they were aided by a tacit, but not less real alliance with the Venetian towns of Prevyza and Parga; and through them with the adjacent islands, the Septinsular government having always been sensible of the necessity of maintaining good terms with the tribes of the opposite continent,

§ 1.238   and of preventing any single chieftain from acquiring too large a portion of the Epirote coast, upon which the islands depend for the supply of several objects of prime necessity. Ultimately, however, this connection of Suli with the Venetian places was destined to contribute to its ruin; for when the designs of the French Republic against Turkey became apparent, Suli was involved in the denunciations of the Porte against all those who were suspected of being friendly to the French in this quarter; and when Aly had taken Prevyza, it gave him great influence over all the neighbouring Musulmans, and left them no plea for declining to join him against the Suliotes, as abettors of enemies who threatened the Turkish empire with destruction.
Before the Suliote war, which began in 1798, the increase of Aly’s power and his unceasing activity had curtailed the Suliotes of some of their dependencies, and had diminished the number of their combatants. The history of this last and longest of the Suliote wars, which continued to 1803 without any intermission except in the year 1802, when Aly Pasha, as Rumili Valesi, was employed against the adherents of Pasvent Oglu near Adrianople, has been written by a native of Parga, a part of whose narrative has been printed. As he seems to be a man of some education, who treated the subject with great minuteness and apparent accuracy, and was anxiously watching the progress of events in a neighbouring and: allied town, it would be in vain to attempt to collect a more correct account from the illiterate actors in the contest, now dispersed over every part of the Vezir’s dominions, or in the Seven Islands.

§ 1.239   The greatest misfortune, or rather the certain ruin of Suli, was the defection of its own citizens. The arch-traitor was George Botzari, who received a bribe from the Vezir to desert with his fara before the war began, and who, in the course of it, tempted others to follow his example. Bira was lost in this manner, by the desertion of the Zervates, about two months after the loss of the town of Suli, and Avariko in consequence of a similar treachery on the part of Polios Gusi. After the fall of Bira, the Vezir’s troops began to invest the hill of Kughni, where 300 families were collected. The four pieces of ordnance before-mentioned were placed at Ai Dhonato, and on the side of the Hill of Lightning, in situations which are on a lower level than the summit of Kughni. The Pasha was totally in want of artillery-men; and although his shells destroyed the houses of Kughni, not more than three of the garrison were killed by them. The Suliotes made bomb-proofs by digging holes in the ground, and covering them with a slanting roof of timber, spread with boughs and earth. The women took refuge in a cavern, or in little konaks of loose stones, constructed for the occasion on the western side of the hill, where they were covered from the enemy’s fire.

§ 1.240   On the summit there was nothing but a slight wall, comprehending a small church to the eastward, of which the foundations now remain. The rest of the fortress consisted only of the walls of the exterior houses, united and loopholed. The Vezir’s Mahometan Albanians showed as much perseverance in the attack as their Christian opponents in the defence: the former climbed up the sides of the hill, particularly on the west, and made some small meteris of stone at the distance of a few yards only from the enemy’s konaks. The Suliote women exposed themselves to the fire of the enemy, supplied the men with water, ammunition and provisions, and when not otherwise employed, discharged vollies of verbal abuse against the assailants. When resistance began to be hopeless, a part of the garrison made their escape by forcing their way over the enemy’s meteris, like the Plataeans in the Peloponnesian war. The defence was chiefly prolonged by the exhortations and example of a priest named Samuel, a native of one of the Aegaean islands, who had the care of the ammunition and provisions, and who, after the capitulation, was blown up in the magazine, which stood at the northern end of the hill, within the present fortress. One of the Pasha’s officers, who had been sent to receive the fortress and its stores, suffered with him and two or three other persons, which seems to prove that the explosion was either accidental, or premeditated by the priest, and not as some persons imagine, the result of a scheme of Aly Pasha, to get rid in this manner of his most formidable opponent; but who, in fact, was already in his power.

§ 1.241   The Vezir’s Albanians assert that it was an accident; but the Suliotes maintain that it was the deed of Samuel, which is very probable, as he could not expect any mercy if taken, and as it accords with his determined character, and with that of the Greeks in general, who often exhibit similar examples of desperation. The remaining families had permission to retire unmolested in whatever direction they thought fit; but the Vezir, in violation of his promises, intercepted many of them in their retreat, and brought them to Ioannina. Of those who escaped, the greater part are now in the Greek corps, formed by the Russians in the islands, and many of the women and children are in the domestic service of the Christians of Epirus. There are now about seventy men prisoners at Ioannina, and as many women and children. These the Vezir gradually disperses among his tjiftliks as labourers, and generally sends them to the most disagreeable and unhealthy situations.
July 4.—This afternoon, having descended on foot from the castle to the ruins of the village of Kiafa, we proceed at 3.45 eastward, along the hollow between the mountain of Suli and the hill of Trypa. At the end of this pass, just under the Trypa, stands the ruined village of Avariko, from whence there is a descent into a deep ravine, formed by the meeting of the two great mountains of Suli and Tzikurates; one of the darkest and deepest of the glens of Greece:

§ 1.242   on either side rise perpendicular rocks, in the midst of which are little intervals of scanty soil, bearing holly-oaks, ilices, and other shrubs, and which admit occasionally a view of the higher summits of the two mountains covered with oaks, and at the summit of all with pines. Here the road is passable only on foot, by a perilous ledge along the side of the mountain of Suli; terminating at a narrow opening, where the Acheron enters the defile from the vale of Tervitziana. The river in the pass is deep and rapid, and is seen at the bottom falling in many places in cascades over the rocks, though at too great a distance to be heard, and in most places inaccessible to any but the foot of a goat or a Suliote. On the side of the road, at intervals, planks are collected, which have been sawn out of the oaks on the spot, and left in readiness to be removed.
At 5.45 we arrive at the end of the defile, and descend into a valley, where the river, coming from the north in a direction almost at right angles to its course through the Suliote glens, previously makes many turns and meanders, as if unwilling to enter such a gloomy passage. At 6, leaving Seritziana close to the right, where only five or six houses now remain, and to the left Gorina, standing on the side of the range of Tzikurates, we cross the river at 6.15, and immediately ascend into a vale, or opening between the ridge of Tzikurates and Mount Nasseri, which latter here changes its direction, and turns eastward towards Luro and the Gulf of Arta. From hence riding over a beautiful undulated valley, naturally fertile, but little cultivated, we arrive at 7 at Zerml, where the Vezir has lately built a tjiftlik of five or six cottages, inclosed by a square wall. My konak is an open gallery on the outside of one of the huts. In the evening the whole atmosphere glitters with fire flies.

§ 1.243   July 5.—At 4.20, a.m. we begin to follow the same valley, descending towards the south-east: the sides of the hills and the valley become more woody as we advance. At 5 the monastery of Arasso is a little on the right at the foot of the mountain, and Zerlia a small village is on the heights to the left. Near the monastery there are said to be many ancient sepulchres, few of which have ever been opened; they show that the monastery occupies a Hellenic site. As the name appears to be ancient, Arassus may very possibly have been one of those numerous cities of Epirus unnoticed by history, but of which the former existence is well attested by their remains. At 5.30 a tumulus occurs on the road side, and at 5.45 the village Kutzanopulo on the hill to the left. We soon afterwards arrive on the bank of a dry torrent, shaded with fine planes, where the valley opens towards the Gulf of Arta, and a rich level is covered with plantations of maize. Leaving the castle and village of Luro a quarter of an hour on the left, we proceed to skirt the foot of the mountain of Zalongo which is united by a lower ridge with the hills on the right side of the vale which we have passed. After having made the semi-tour of the mountain, through a wood of small oaks, Libokhovo remains three quarters of a mile to the left, at 8;

§ 1.244   soon after which we begin to ascend the southern face of the mountain, and at 8.20 arrive at Kamarina, a village of 30 or 40 Greek families, situated among fruit gardens at the copious sources of a little stream which flows to the plain of Lamari, and there unites with a river which falls into the sea a little to the southward of a small harbour called Agriapidhia.
My lodging is a chamber and open gallery in the serai, as it is called, of a Christian captain of Armatoli, named Ianaki, who is entrusted by the Vezir with the government of the surrounding district. The village commands a beautiful view of the gulf and plain of Arta, with the mountains around them, including the Makrinoro, the hills of Valto and Xeromero, and to the southward, the town, channel, and whole island of Lefkadha, ending in Cape Ducato, to the right of which is seen the Point of Viscardo, in Kefalonia. Within this magnificent amphitheatre appear the town of Prevyza, the peninsulas of Actium and Nicopolis, and immediately below us an undulated country and plain, consisting of pasture, corn-fields, and olives, forming the district of Lamari. A line of tall detached masses is seen stretching across the plain, formed of a mixture of stone and Roman tile. These are the piers of the ruined aqueduct of Nicopolis.

§ 1.245   The summit of the mountain of Zalongo, which is a mile to the north-eastward of Kamarina, is famed for having twice been the scene of a gallant resistance of the Suliotes. [map of Zalongo and Cassope]

§ 1.246   On the first occasion, 100 families, who had retired hither by capitulation from Suli and Kiafa, and who had lived on the hill unmolested until the reduction of Kughni, were suddenly attacked by order of the Vezir, on the pretence that the natural strength of the position had tempted them to commit acts of hostility against him. When affairs became desperate, Kitzo Botzari and a party with him escaped. Of the rest, 150 persons were made slaves, 25 heads were brought to the Albanian Bolu-bashi at Kamarina, who commanded the attack, and 6 men and 22 women threw themselves from the rocks, at the place where the precipice is highest, in preference to falling alive into the hands of their enemies. Several of the women who had infants, were seen to throw them over before they took the fatal leap. Last year again, in the month of July, a party of 400 Suliotes, under Botzari, sent over by the Russians to assist the Beys of Tz