258 



DISCOVERY 



the high-road. Pierre Belon ^ iii the sixteenth and Paul 

 Lucas - in the seventeenth century did little more. 

 Cousinery = alone of the nineteenth-century travellers 

 explored extensively and thoroughly : this he could 

 do by virtue of his long residence and his position as 

 Consul of France at Salonika. But he says little or 

 nothing of Pangjeum. Leake, ^ whose researches in 

 northern Greece, as in southern Greece, are marked by 

 the ablest scholarship and accuracy and by the most 

 acute judgment, has left a most complete account of 

 western and part of eastern Macedonia ; but his travels, 

 which \\-ere to have been continued eastwards, were 

 brought to an abrupt conclusion by the outbreak of 

 war between England and Turke\- in 1S07, and lie never 



Fig. I.— the SUimiT OF MOUNT P\XG.9JUiI AS SEEX FROM 

 THE SOl"TH-E.\ST. 



reached farther east than the Struma valley. Later 

 in the same century the mission sent by the French 

 Government under Heuzey and Daumet = carried out 

 some detailed surveys and archaeological exploration as 

 far as the plain of Drama, but the east was still un- 

 touched and no attempt was made to investigate 

 Pangseum and its problems. Later still two Greeks 

 explored the Pangtean district — Chrj-sochoos ^ and 

 Mertzides,' the former a cartographer, the latter a 

 doctor who lived in Thasos. But Chrysochoos, whose 

 work is able and important, produced no map of the 

 Pangjean area, and Mertzides, who is the only writer 

 to leave an account of an ascent of Pangaeum, is brief 

 and unilluminatmg. Perdrizet,^ a French scholar, is 



' Les Observations de plusieurs singularilez el choses 

 metnorabhs troiivees en Grece. (Paris, 1554.) 



- Voyage au Levant (La Have, 1705), and I'oyage dans la 

 Grece (Amsterdam, 1714). 



' Voyage dans la Macedoine. (Paris. 1831.) 



* Travels in Northern Greece. (London, 1835.) 



"■ Mission Archeologique de Macedoine. (Paris, 1876.) 



* Various articles in the 'ETTtT-ijpij ToC na/3i'0!r(roC, 1898, 1900, etc. 

 ' Oi <J>iXi7nrot. (Constantinople. 1897.) 



* Les cultes du Pangee (Nancy, 1912), and an article, " Scap- 

 tcsyle," in Klio. x, pp. 1-27. 



the only writer of the present century who has made a 

 serious study of Pangreimi and the Panga;an area. 

 His work has done much to raise the many historical 

 and archaeological problems involved. 



Thus it has come about that Mount Pangieum. 

 although distant only a seven-days' journey from 

 London, remains one of the least-known parts of 

 Greece. That it is v\'orth exploration is sufficientlv 

 evident from the fact that in antiquity it was a refuge 

 for the most warlike and unsubduable tribes of Thrace ; 

 that it was the greatest and most sacred centre in 

 Greece for the worship of Dionysus, holding, as it did, 

 the famous Oracle of Dionysus ; and, finally, that it 

 was the centre of the gold and silver mining of Thrace, 

 which had pro\-ided the sinews of war successively to 

 Peisistratus and Aristagoras in the sixth century B.C.. 

 to Athens and the Athenian Confederacy in the fifth 

 and to Philip of Macedon and Alexander in the fourth. 

 In fact the very foundations of the Macedonian king- 

 dom that Philip founded were laid on the increased 

 revenue that he derived from the mines of Philippi at 

 the foot of Pangaeum. 



Before 1912. when the whole region was part of 

 Turke\' in Europe, both the difftculties put in the way 

 of travellers by the Turkish authorities and the dangers 

 of leaving the beaten track made the whole region 

 most difficult of access. From 1912 to 1914 the first 

 and second Balkan wars involved the whole district 

 in military upheaval. From 1915 to 1918 it fell into 

 the area occupied b\'- the forces of Bulgaria. Only 

 now is it accessible in safety to the traveller. I found 

 no difficulty in visiting the remoter villages of the plain 

 and the mountam itself during the course of the spring 

 of this year. 



Mount Pangjeum rises abruptly out of the flat and 

 prosperous plain of Drama, and reaches a height of 6. 142 

 ft. above the sea level. The eastern side of the plain is 

 covered by a vast malarial swamp, which cannot be 

 dramed into the sea because of the low barrier of hills 

 at the southern end that divide it from Ka valla and the 

 coast. A certain amount of the overflow reaches Lake 

 Tahinos in the Struma valley by way of the River 

 Angista, but a large part of the plain is rendered 

 useless for agriculture. It seems improbable that the 

 swamp was so extensive in Roman times, for the site 

 of Philippi is to-day almost under water. But if the 

 Romans had drained the water into the sea, no trace of 

 their workings has yet been found .^ Above the plain 

 the mountain rises in fine and shapely outlines, snow- 

 capped for all except the summer months. The north 

 side is bare, treeless, and unbroken by ravines. On the 

 south and east it falls away in a series of enormous 

 hollows that are filled with forests of beech and oak 



' A British company has now undertaken the drainage of 

 the plain. 



