Milanese, named Joseph, a tinman of Smyrna. This man spoke a little modern Greek, and he agreed for a stipulated sum to act as my interpreter. I took leave of the captain, and went with Joseph into the boat. The wind was violent and contrary. It took five hours to reach the harbour, from which we were not more than half a league distant, and were twice near upsetting. An old Turk, with a grey beard, animated eyes, deeply sunk beneath bushy brows, and long and extremely white teeth, guided the helm, sometimes in silence, at others shouting wildly. He was no bad representation of Time carrying a traveller in his bark to the desert shores of Greece. The vice-consul was waiting for me on the beach. We went to our lodgings in the Greek town. By the I admired some Turkish tombs, overarched with spreading cypresses, and the waves breaking at their base. Among these tombs I perceived female figures covered with white veils, and looking like ghosts: this was the only circumstance that reminded me at all of the country of the Muses. The cemetery of the Christians adjoins that of the Mussulmans; it is in a ruinous state, without sepulchral stones, and without trees: water-melons growing here and there among these forsaken tombs, resemble, both in their form and the paleness of their colour, human skulls, which the survivors have not taken the trouble to bury. Nothing can be more dreary than these two cemeteries, where you observe the distinctions of tyrant

way,

and slave, even in the equality and independence of death.

The Abbé Barthelemy considered Methone as so uninteresting in antiquity, that he has taken notice of nothing but its spring of bituminous water. Inglorious, amid so many cities founded by the gods or celebrated by the poets, Methone occurs not in the songs of Pindar, which, with the works of Homer, constitute the brilliant archives of Greece. Demosthenes, recapitulating the history of Messenia, in his oration in behalf of the Megalipolitans, makes no mention of Methone. Polybius, a native of Megalopolis, who gives excellent advice to the Messenians, maintains the same silence. Plutarch and Diogenes Laertius, name not one hero, not one philosopher of that place. Athenæus, Aulus Gellius, and Macrobius, record nothing of Methone. Finally, Pliny, Ptolemy, Pomponius Mela, and the anonymous writer of Ravenna, merely mention its name in enumerating the towns of Messenia: but Strabo and Pausanias will have it that Methone is the Pedasus of Homer. According to Pausanias, it derives the name of Methone or Mothone from a daughter of Eneus, a companion of Diomed, or from a rock which obstructs the entrance of the port. Methone frequently occurs in ancient history, but never as the scene of any important event. Thucydides speaks of some bodies of Hoplites from Methone, in the Peloponnesian war.

From a fragment by Diodorus Siculus, we find that Brasidas defended this place against the Athenians. The same writer terms it a town of Laconia, because Mess enia was a conquest of Lacedæmon, which sent to Methone a colony of Nauplians, who were not expelled from their new settlement when Epaminondas recalled the Messenians. Methone shared the fate of Greece when the latter passed under the Roman yoke. Trajan granted privileges to Methone. The Peloponnese having become an appendage of the Eastern Empire, Methone underwent the same revolutions as the rest of the Morea. Laid waste by Alaric, and perhaps still more cruelly ravaged by Stilico, it was dismembered from the Greek empire in 1124, by the Venetians. Restored to its former masters in the following years, it again fell under the dominion of Venice in 1204. A Genoese corsair dispossessed the Venetians in 1208. The doge Dandolo recovered it from the Genoese. In 1498 it was taken from Venice by Mahomet II. who made himself master of all Greece. Morosini reconquered it in 1686, from the Turks, who again obtained possession of the country in 1715. Three years afterwards Pellegrin visited this town, of which he has given a description, intermingled with the scandalous chronicle of all the French consuls. Such is the obscure history of Methone from Homer to the present day. As to what befel Modon at the time of the expedition of the Russians in the Morea, the

reader is referred to the first volume of the Travels of M. de Choiseul, and the History of Poland by Rhullières.

The German vice-consul, who lives in a wretched plastered hut, cordially invited me to a supper, consisting of water-melons, grapes, and black bread: a person must not be nice in regard to victuals when he is so near to Sparta. I then retired to the chamber prepared for me, but was unable to close my eyes. I heard the barking of a Laconian dog, and the whistling of the wind of Elis: how then was it possible for me to go to sleep? At three in the morning of the 11th, the Aga's janissary came to apprize me that it was time to set out for Coron.

We immediately mounted our horses. I shall describe the order of the cavalcade, as it continued the same throughout the whole journey.

At our head appeared the guide, or Greek postilion on horseback, leading a spare horse provided for remounting any of the party in case an accident should happen to his steed. Next came the janissary, with his turban on his head, two pistols and a dagger at his girdle, a sabre by his side, and a whip to flog the horses of the guide. I followed, armed nearly in the same manner as the janissary, with the addition of a fowling-piece. Joseph brought up the rear. This Milanese was a short fair man, with a large belly, a florid complexion, and an affable look; he was dressed in a complete suit of blue velvet: two large horse-pistols stuck under a tight belt raised up his waistcoat in such a grotesque manner, that

the janissary could never look at him without laughing. My baggage consisted of a carpet to sit down upon, a pipe, a coffee-pot, and some shawls to wrap round my head at night. We started at the signal given by our guide, ascending the hills at full trot, and descending over precipices in a gallop. You must make up your mind to it: the military Turks know no other paces, and the least sign of timidity, or even of prudence, would expose you to their contempt. You are, moreover, seated on Mameluke saddles, with wide short stirrups, which keep your legs constantly bent, which break your toes, and lacerate the flanks of your horse. At the slightest trip the elevated pommel comes in most painful contact with your belly, and if you are thrown the contrary, way, the high ridge of the saddle breaks your back. In time, however, you find the utility of these saddles, in the sureness of foot which they give to the horse, especially in such hazardous excursions.

You proceed from eight to ten leagues with the same horses. About half way they are suffered to take breath, without eating; you then mount again and continue your journey. At night you sometimes arrive at a kan, the ruins of a forsaken house, where you sleep among all sorts of insects and reptiles, on a worm-eaten floor. At this kan you can demand nothing unless you have a post firman; so that you must procure provisions as you can. My janissary went a foraging in the villages, and sometimes brought back fowls, which I insisted on