orage.

It was Saturday night. We were not unwilling to pass the Lord's day at Patmos, and never did a Sabbath morning rise more gloriously than that. I was on shore early, alone; for none of my companions cared to be stirring before breakfast.

The little town is built on the rocks near the shore, and the climb is difficult even to it. But I found a Greek who led me by the best way, and then gave me some bread and oil, which I needed much. These, with a glass of sour wine, constituted my breakfast, and I was certainly in a good condition, if fasting could aid me, to receive spiritual instruction from the brothers of San Giovanni de Patimo, whose convent I proposed to visit. For Patmos, like all other sacred localities in the East, is in the hands of the monks, and the supposed residence of John, where he wrote the Apocalyptic vision, is inclosed in the huge and massive buildings of a religious house which dates its foundation from the early Greek emperors.

The convent is on an eminence commanding the little town and harbor-a vast pile of stone, containing church, chapel, grotto, and cells. I had a dozen guides to choose from, but adhered to my host who had first discovered me on the shore in the morning, and as we mounted the hill he chatted in broken language, half Greek and half Lingua Franca, while I breathed hard and was silent.

At the entrance of the convent a monk received me-Greek, as I recognized at a glance;

direct to the grotto of John. "Here," said the caloyer, with all the volubility of a practiced cicerone, "here he lived; there he wrote; through those cracks (fissures in the rock-roof of the grotto) he heard the thunder of the Lord's voice; yonder his head rested against the wall. He was not rich; John was a great saint; his followers are poor also; a small present for the convent will be acceptable if you choose to give it ;" and so my seeing was ended, and I paid my fee and went out, and sat down in the morning sunshine that blessed the rock of Patmos as of old.

Mount Elijah, the highest peak, stood up in calm splendor in that morning light, and looked off over the sea in all directions. Far below me the little Lotus lay at her anchor in the bay, and I could see the quarter-boat pushing off to the shore with my friends-a stillness which befitted the place and the memories which hallowed it rested on land and sea. No murmur came up to my seat from the busy modern town on the sea-side. I could in that serene day, "so cool, so calm, so bright," realize that I was in the Patmos of the beloved disciple, and, looking out on the rolling sea, I seemed in some measure to appreciate the sublimity and the pathos of that last prayer of the old, weary, and persecuted disciple who remembered the days when he had rested on the breast of his Saviour and Master, and now looked across the sea and likened it to the vast ocean on which he was going forth to seek the same old and beloved repose, and exclaimed as he would to a friend

ran down the Gulf of Zeitun with a whole-sail breeze, and at sunset we let go an anchor in a still and glassy sea whose blue waters once floated the Persian and the Grecian fleets. Calm as they now were, we of course remembered that they could be roused to fury even as when they dashed the Persian galleys on the rocky barriers of the Pagasaan Gulf.

The shores near which we now lay were famous in history and song. Imagine us on the deck of the Lotus, as the evening gloom came on, looking shoreward, if perchance Leonidas and his three hundred "walked o' nights." For here was Thermopyla.

THERMOPYLE

All night the wind moaned and muttered over the deck, as if indignant at our invasion of the waters which are sacred to them and to old memories.

In the morning we were early on shore, and for three days we wandered around the country. In these sketches I can not give you either the details of personal adventure or the full descriptions of scenery which a book might permit.

You know, of course, that the Pass of Thermopyla ("the Gates of the Warm Springs") was a narrow road, along the foot of the mountains, between them and a morass which reached to the sea. An army could only pass by the road:

on their right were the precipitous and impassable hills, on their left the deep swamp and the sea.

Here, therefore, Leonidas, with his band, sat down; and here they were equal to the Persian hosts. Perhaps a brief sketch of the ground, as it now lies, may make the story of that battle more interesting to those who read this.

The pass is narrower at the northern or western, and the southern or eastern end, than in the middle. At the narrowest part the old Phocian wall was rebuilt by Leonidas. Its remains are still visi

to be part of an ancient column or building which crowned the tumulus. Its very simplicity is its grandeur now. Where on earth will you show me hill or monumental structure that shall so impress the traveler as this old mound of the brave who fell at Thermopyla?

A little farther on are the remains of the Phocian wall, and then we enter the morass. The springs flow from the foot of the hill. The road is built on a causeway, till we emerge at the northern end where Xerxes stood baffled.

The only incident worthy a pause to relate occurred on the second day of our stay. Pierre Laroche was a skeptic on most historical points. He has some doubts whether he ever had a mother, never having seen that parent. He denies absolutely the story of the Pass of Thermopyla -considers it all nonsense of the poets. Pierre rode a horse down from Zeitun, and to prove that the morass was not such a barrier to the Persians as story hath it, he plunged in, vowing he would ride through it, and "show Xerxes how." He came near going to have a personal interview with that distinguished monarch; for at the first leap his horse went in, and Pierre went over his head into the depths. We rescued him with difficulty-muddy, slimy, and, like a Frenchman, more skeptical than

ever.

How delicious were those days of idle drifting down the Eubean shore! We had little or no wind at all until we reached the southeastern point of the island; and then only

ΔΕΞΑΌ

ΚΛΕΟΝΙΚΟΥ

RELICS FROM MARATHON.

PLAIN OF MARATHON.

enough to take us, with all sail set, into the bay of Marathon.

The night was serene and calm and quiet when we ran along the battle-shore, and, letting go the sails, waited for the boat to lose her headway entirely before we let the anchor go.

"Hold on there, forward! Peter, how still it is! Did you ever hear such silence? There's not a ripple on the sea, not a voice on the shore. I could not have been better satisfied than I am with this approach to Marathon."

The mighty dead were calm, and rested in their tumuli along the plain. No ghost walked out to disturb the starlight. It was so calm and beautiful that no sooner had the anchor touched bottom than we sprang into the small boat and pushed shoreward.

The plain of Marathon and its story ought to be, if they are not, impressed on the mind of every intelligent reader:

"The mountains look on Marathon,

And Marathon looks on the sea."

No simpler or better description can be given. The hills retire from the coast, leaving the plain where Miltiades fought, and where the dust of his valiant men remains.

Over this plain, in a moony night, we strolled, like ghosts of the ancient dead, silent mostly, and very thoughtful. Once in a while we plunged into bog-holes-for such is the penalty of moonlight excursions at Marathon as well as in America; but we cared little for the bogs, and at last we reached the mound which, doubtless, covers the valiant who fell at the great battle.

Seated on its top, we looked over the plain and the sparkling sea We recalled the scene on the memorable night which preceded the engagement. The Persian host formed along the shore; their fleet in the rear, where now the Lotus lay solitary on the glassy sea. The Athenian host, on the declivity of the mountains, with trembling but brave hearts, vowed before their Gods to break on the morrow the hitherto resistless advance of the Medes.

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