TRAVELS 



IN 



TURKEY. 



ACCOUNT OF A JOURNEY 



THROUGH 



THE DISTRICT OF MAINA, IN THE MOREA. 



ThAT part of the ancient Laconia, now called Maina, though often 

 incidentally mentioned by earlier travellers, had been scarcely, if 

 ever, visited by any of them, when the course of my tour led me 

 thither in the spring of 1795. The independence which the Mainiots 

 had long maintained against the Pashas of the Morea, and the agents 

 of the Porte, the jealousy with which they guarded their frontier 

 from the intrusion of every stranger, who travelled under Turkish 

 protection, the nature of that frontier, and their predatory incursions 

 into the territory of their enemies the Turks, had not only opposed 

 real difficulties to the intercourse of a traveller with the country, but 

 had invested their character with so much terror, that it was almost 

 impossible to ascertain from the report of their neighbours* whether 

 they could be visited with safety under any circumstances of precau- 

 tion. Certainly they were described to us as robbers, whom no 



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