Started early this morning on horseback for Eleusis - which is some 12 miles distant from Athens and lies on the Saronic Gulf - oposite the southern end of the island of Salamis - and was anciently of great celebrity for the temple of Ceres - said to be the largest of ancient Greece - the modern road passes the vale of Athens and enters the defile of Mount Corylladus between the mountain is romantically situated Daphne - a ruined convent which was the scene of some hot work between the turks and greeks some years back - there are marble capitals - and other pieces used in the building (which is of the time of the Greek emperors) the remains of a temple once existing nearby -

Leaving this came to a defile where are architectural ruins and nicheses cut in the rock - for votive offerings, in the old pagan worship - the end of the vale opens on the sea and afords an interesting view of the Salamis the plain of Treisian - and the mountains of the isthmus - along the sea shore where the road runs are the tracks of the old causeway cut in the rock - along which the procession parssed from the temple of Athens to celebrate the Eleusian mysteries - particulars of which ceremony have not been explained by historians -

After passing a number of ruins and among them the monument or tomb of Stratone which must have been a beautifull edifice - stopped at the a poor looking house where wine, coffee, and tobacco are sold - Eleusis is now an ill built village - composed of low stone huts with flat mud roofs - the harbour the mole of which was once covered with marble is now a ruin, contained two small fishing boats at anchor - the foundations of the old acropolis remain - and a venetian castle 18 hundred years younger is also in ruins - the arches of an acqueduct are here and these standing on the plain - this is the spot where Ceres first introduced the cultivation of wheat among mankind - it is now harvest time and the plain smiles under the golden crop - nature decays not for production endure, but means do not -

The temple of the Goddess - the largest in Greece and capable of containing 30,000 people is now a little mountain of broken columns frieses and capitals - all of the whitest pentilican marble - the little huts of the peasants all contain more or less pieces of it - the statues that have been found are all in mutilated condition - that of the goddess was taken to England some 40 years ago - but without a head - what a picture of fallen grandeur does Eleusis present - religion, language and the arts lost or changed - the woman ugly and the man lasy the place at times subject to fevers -

Magnara some 15 miles further much the same as Eleusis - returned to Athens in the afternoon under a scorching sun - at our hotel have arrived three English gentlemen and one American Mr. Eaton of Baltimore - have made a tour of 2 months all round Greece in vessel charted at Malta -

view pages: 1, 2, 3