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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



as they did, I imagine, in the days of 

 Homer. 



The shepherd boys of today manage 

 their flocks — and I may remark in pass- 

 ing that there are said to be more goats 

 than Greeks in Greece — with a crook 

 fashioned upon the same lines as that 

 which Corydon carried. And in Thes- 

 saly one still finds in daily use the solid 

 wheeled cart that has come down without 

 substantial change from the days of 

 Jason. 



The distaff remains the chief instru- 

 ment in preparing wool for the hand 

 looms on which are woven the coarse and 

 shaggy stuffs worn by the peasants, and 

 one rarely finds it absent from the busy 

 fingers of the older dames who sit and 

 work in the sun. Nausicaa and her maids 

 gathered at the fountain on that day 

 when Ulysses came to port have their 

 modern counterpart in almost every pub- 

 lic square of Hellas. 



A LAND OF SUNSHINE 



Greece is a land of much sunshine and 

 life is followed much in the open. The 

 family oven is invariably to be found in 

 the courtyard, and it is heated with dried 

 twigs brought from the country districts 

 in huge loads upon the patient little don- 

 keys, who vie with the goats in being the 

 most useful members of the household. 



Market day, of course, brings all the 

 community together and is generally an 

 occasion of much gaiety, while the feast 

 days, which are numerous, are literally 

 observed. Fasting, too, is frequent and 

 severe. 



On feast days there is always dancing, 

 the most famous to be seen at Megara 

 during Easter week — a survival, and the 

 only one, of the olden pan-Athenaic pa- 

 geants of classic times. 



Megara prides itself on being a pure 

 I lellenic community in the midst of the 

 Albanian flood which once overran the 

 Attic Plain. It was once famous as a 

 marriage mart during the Easter dancing 

 season. This is no longer true, because, 

 as the maidens sigh, so many of the men 

 have gone off to America. 



At Megara the native costume is seen 

 at its best. It is rarely worn anywhere 

 nowadays and has almost wholly disap- 

 peared from the cities. But for the Ev- 



zones, or household troops, at the ugly 

 barracks which the Greeks call the "big" 

 palace, the fustanella would be almost as 

 rare a sight in Athens as the classic garb, 

 which is worn there only by American 

 dancers. 



RAILROAD COMMUNICATION IS 



inadequate; 



It is not yet easy to go about in Greece. 

 The railroad lines are meager, the roads 

 are not good, and the hotels leave much 

 to be desired. But the famous battle- 

 field where "mountains look on Marathon 

 and Marathon looks on the sea" is easily 

 accessible to Athens. So, too, Olympia, 

 where archaeologists have unearthed rem- 

 nants of the great temple, with its in- 

 comparable Hermes, the masterpiece of 

 Praxiteles and clearly the finest sculpture 

 which has yet come from human hands, 

 is a favorite shrine for lovers of the 

 beautiful. 



But the most accessible of all the great 

 centers of classic life is Delphi, a fitting 

 shrine for an oracle, with its massive and 

 somber cliffs and its majestic hills look- 

 ing out to the gulf. Here the French 

 savants have done a wonderful piece of 

 excavation and have brought to light the 

 ancient city with its treasures, its famed 

 Castalian Spring, its theater, its treas- 

 uries, and its Sacred Way. 



The seat of the Sybil has been identi- 

 fied, and that it still retains its oracular 

 powers I can testify ; for when I was last 

 there my Dutch colleague stood upon the 

 spot where the tripod had stood and I 

 asked, "Who will be the next President 

 of the United States?" And the answer 

 came, Delphically enough, "The best man 

 will win." 



The most commanding figure in the 

 Hellenic world today, clearly the first 

 statesman of the Balkans, and a man 

 worthy to rank with the best of the 

 world's ruling geniuses, is the recently 

 deposed Greek Prime Minister, Eleu- 

 therios Venizelos — Athenian in blood, 

 Cretan by training, but thoroughly cos- 

 mopolitan in his breadth of view and 

 grasp of affairs. To him is ascribed — 

 and rightly — the credit for the Balkan 

 Alliance, which astounded Europe by its 

 successes, and most of the gains in terri- 



