The Cruise of the Branwen

FOOTSTEPS OF ODYSSEUS, ETC. range and the ridge of Mount Taygetos, and so you pass southwards to Cape Tainaron off the coast of Maina, where dwell the pirates, lovers, murderers, of whom Byron sang, and whose traces we had seen on our last day in Athens. Even still, the whole district has the aspect of a country under siege, each house is walled in, with a high square tower in its centre, for " they are perpetually at variance with their neighbours." Considered to be the purest blood of all the Greeks and the first of the Peloponnesus in beauty and independence of spirit, these Mainotes have · undoubtedly a large proportion of the old stock in their race, and they have preserved a curious heritage of stubborn strife with Crete from their far-off forefathers among the hills that are "the rugged nurse of liberty." They used to hand" a trembling tax-collector," says M. About, "a little purse of gold pieces hung on the end of a naked sword." Beyond their fastnesses rises Cape Matapan, where Homer's wanderers might have beheld that famous pair, •.. one swan-white, The little Helen, and less fair than she Fair Clytemnestra, grave as pasturing fawns Who feed and fear some arrow; but at whiles, As one smitten with love or wrung with joy, She laughs and lightens with her qes, and then Weeps ; whereat Helen, having laughed, weeps too, And the other chides her, and she being chid speaks nought, But cheeks and lips and eyelids kisses her, Laughing; so fare they, as in their bloomless bud And full of unblown life, the blood of Gods. · 1 47