146 CONVENTS OF METEORA. 



spot where we first saw them, but in reality 

 another four hours' ride from us, we observed, 

 rising in a picturesque and remarkable manner to 

 a height of several hundred feet out of the dead 

 level of the plain, some huge, precipitous, and 

 curiously-shaped rocks, all apparently as inaccessi- 

 ble as Shakspeare's ChfF at Dover, but many of 

 them considerably more lofty, the highest, I should 

 say, towering six hundred feet above the level of 

 the plain. 



We continued to follow the course of the 

 Peneus, through a magnificently wooded country, 

 for about four hours more, when we found ourselves 

 in the midst of these huge conglomerate rocks, 

 which seem quite alive with convents. Some are 

 built on the summits of sugar-loaf-like rocks, 

 others about half-way up the faces, *but all most 

 carefully constructed in situations apparently inac- 

 cessible, and in which they seem to have been placed 

 by enchantment, for it is difficult to conceive how 

 the materials requisite for their construction could 

 have been carried up the sides of almost perpen- 

 dicular rocks several hundred feet high, or how 

 a sufficient footing could have been gained at the 

 summits of the almost pointed ones, on which 



