260 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 



This foun- 

 tain is about 

 six miles in 

 the interior 

 of the island, 

 the road as- 

 cending all 

 the way. It 

 is a small 

 basin at the 

 top of a ra- 

 vine, and is 

 supplied by 

 unceasing 

 percolations 

 through the 

 superincum- 

 bent rock. 

 Seated on a 

 broken arch 

 before it, the 

 sides of the 

 glen appear 

 clothed with 



leafy plants and odoriferous shrubs ; and onwards 

 through it a glimpse of the blue sea is caught, while the 

 summit of the cliff above the fountain commands a view 

 of the islands and mountains of Greece. Hither, it may 

 be soberly believed, the author of the Odyssey, if not 

 the hero, was a pilgrim, near three thousand ^ears ago, 

 and drank of the limpid spring at which now the goat- 

 herds of Ithaca quench their thirst. Dodwell, who visited 

 this spot, describes its water as "clear 'and good, trickling gently 

 from a small cave in the rock, which is covered with a smooth 

 and downy moss. It has formed a pool four feet deep, against 

 which a modern wall is built to check its overflowing. After 

 oozing through an orifice in the wall, it falls into a wooden 

 trough placed there for cattle. In the winter it overflows, and 

 finds its way, in a thin stream, through the glen to the sea. 

 The French had possession of Ithaca in 1798, and the rocks of 

 the Arethusan fountain are covered with republican inscrip- 

 tions!, 'Vive la Republique!' ' Liberte, egalite, et fraternite,' 

 are seen scattered on all sides, but are becoming effaced." Who also has not heard 

 of the fountain of Castalia, in which the Delphian Pythoness laved her limbs, and 

 from which she, and the poets who versified her answers, were believed in part to 

 derive their inspiration? The poetical expression, the "dew of Castalie," refers to the 

 spray of a cascade which descends through a cleft of Parnassus, fed by the snows upon its 

 summit ; but the fount of inspiration, the bath used by the Pythia, is supposed to be a 

 small shallow basin on the margin of the rill of the cascade, supplied with its own peren- 

 nial stream, which unites its superabundant water with that of the adjacent stream. Here 



Castalian Spring on Mount Parnassus. 



