high over the slope of Delphi, which ere long appeared before us.
Our approach to the sacred spot was marked by tombs cut in the rock. A
sharp angle of the mountain was passed; and then, all at once, the
enormous walls, buttressing the upper region of Parnassus, stood
sublimely against the sky, cleft right through the middle by a terrible
split, dividing the twin peaks which gave a name to the place. At the
bottom of this chasm issue forth the waters of Castaly, and fill a stone
trough by the road-side. On a long, sloping mountain-terrace, facing the
east, stood once the town and temples of Delphi, and now the modern
village of Kastri.

As you may imagine, our first walk was to the shrine of the Delphic
oracle, at the bottom of the cleft between the two peaks. The hewn face
of the rock, with a niche, supposed to be that where the Pythia sat upon
her tripod, and a secret passage under the floor of the sanctuary, are
all that remain. The Castalian fountain still gushes out at the bottom,
into a large square enclosure, called the Pythia's Bath, and now choked
up with mud, weeds, and stones. Among those weeds, I discerned one of
familiar aspect, plucked and tasted it. Watercress, of remarkable size
and flavor! We thought no more of Apollo and his shrine, but delving
wrist-deep into Castalian mud, gathered huge handfuls of the profane
herb, which we washed in the sacred front, and sent to Francois for a
salad....

As the sun sank, I sat on the marble blocks and sketched the immortal
landscape. High above me, on the left, soared the enormous twin peaks of
pale-blue rock, lying half in the shadow of the mountain slope upheaved
beneath, half bathed in the deep yellow luster of sunset. Before me
rolled wave after wave of the Parnassian chain, divided by deep lateral
valleys, while Helicon, in the distance, gloomed like a thunder-storm
under the weight of gathered clouds. Across this wild, vast view, the
breaking clouds threw broad belts of cold blue shadow, alternating with
zones of angry orange light, in which the mountains seemed to be heated
to a transparent glow. The furious wind hissed and howled over the piles
of ruin, and a few returning shepherds were the only persons to be seen.
And this spot, for a thousand years, was the shrine where spake the
awful oracle of Greece.

CORINTH[52]

BY J. P. MAHAFFY

The gulf of Corinth is a very beautiful and narrow fiord, with chains of
mountains on either side, through