JANUARY 33 



rule. It is a magnificent barrier, though it may not 

 serve to bar the eternal aspirations of the Hellenes; 

 for many impatient eyes turn continually towards the 

 land of promise, where the dozing Porte still holds its 

 sway. 



As we stand, Pelion is far to the right ; in front of us 

 is Ossa ; and to the left the domes and cusps of mightier 

 Olympus tower over all, sagaciously assigned of old as the 

 abode of shadowy deities, whose priests found these in- 

 accessible heights as convenient to their cult as modern 

 ecclesiastics have sometimes proved the labyrinths of con- 

 troversial theology to be to theirs. Farther again to the 

 west stretches in long perspective a range of snowy peaks, 

 till the faint outlines of Epirus and Albania close the view. 

 There is something in the breadth of this horizon, the 

 rich plain and royal sweep of mountain-crests, that recalls 

 the panorama of Alps and level Lombardy, viewed from 

 the towers of Turin. 



After all this brilliancy and breadth, how strangely 

 narrow and dim the interior of the mosque seems when 

 we descend ! We stand a while on the threshold of the 

 inner court, corresponding to the choir or chancel of a 

 Christian church. Worshippers enter one by one, kick 

 off their slippers, pay their devotions, and so depart ; and 

 all the time a muezzin, kneeling on a carpet and leaning 

 his back against a wall, chants monotonously and dis- 

 cordantly from the Koran. 



There is not much winter shooting in the immediate 



environs of Larissa. The great fenceless, almost treeless, 



plain, with its monotonous tracts alternately of ploughed 



land, dead stubble, or withered weeds, seems to harbour 



c 



