THE CARNIVAL.

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A few weeks before our arrival a man had been hanged for murder, and one who was an eye-witness described it as a peculiarly disgusting sight; the executioner was dressed in a party-coloured suit of red and blue, with a mask of the same colours, with one huge Cyclopean eye in the centre, resembling nothing so much as the clown in a Christmas pantomime: thus, to our English ideas at least, mixing up horror with mummery ;—but perhaps, after all, the party-coloured executioner may look as awful in the eyes of the Corcyrans, as if he were dressed in sables, and that his mask had two eyes.

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CHAPTER V.

PATRAS.-PARNASSUS.-DELPHI.-CORINTH.-COASTING VOYAGE ROUND SALAMIS,

[30TH JANUARY to 3rd FebruarY.]

EIGHT days was the limit allotted by the departure of the packet for our stay at Corfu; and at the end of that time, we were again paddling down through the Ithaca Channel. On the 30th Januarytwenty-seven days from leaving England— we landed in Greece itself, at the town of Patras, in the Morea; and found ourselves amongst a people, whose spoken language, though we were not unacquainted with classical Greek, we could not-owing to the difference of our pronunciation-at all understand. On this subject, I shall make a few observations by-and-by. We

Hav

had, however, hired at Corfu a semiGreek servant, a Zantiote, Demetri by name, with volubility enough for all. He bustled about, and, after some search, led us to the " Hotel of Great Britain," for Patras does boast an hotel. ing gone through the form (which was very slight) of passing the custom-houseobtained our passports, and hired a boat for the morrow,-which for the sum of twelve dollars was to convey us to Corinth, staying one day at Scala de Salona, in order that we might visit Delphi,—we set forth to see Patras and its neighbourhood.

Half way up the mountain, at the foot of which stands the town, is the castle, a post of considerable importance during the late wars. When Germanos, the patriot Archbishop of Patras, first raised the standard of Independence in 1821, the Turks destroyed the lower town and retired to this castle, which after a long siege was taken; it was more recently held by one of the independent Greek chief

tains, in spite of several corps having been sent against it, from the time of Capo d'Istrias's death, till the present king's arrival, when the Moreote chief quietly surrendered it to the royal authorities. It is now fast falling into decay, and there does not appear to be any intention of keeping a force in it.

Patras anciently Patræ-is reported by Pausanias to be of high antiquity; but it seems to have fallen into decay and insignificance, till Augustus restored and enlarged it. Pausanias tells us of the magnificence of its edifices. Temples of Ceres Bacchus Calydonius - Jupiter Olympius-Diana Laphria, and above all, an Odeion, the most ornamented, he says, of all Greece, except that of Herodes Atticus, at Athens. Nothing of all this now appears but the ruin of one temple near the shore, said commonly to be that of Diana; and this is probable enough, for Diana was the "great Goddess" of the Patræans as well as of the Ephesians; but

some circumstances mentioned by Pausanias relative to the contiguity of the Temple of Ceres to a certain fountain--the which fountain, or one at least that answers the description, still exists-make it more probable that these ruins are those of the Temple of Ceres. Pausanias gives an account of an oracle, distinguished by him as "a true one," which was delivered from the bottom of this fountain. We, too, heard on the spot a similar tradition; and as a secret passage has been discovered between the ruins of this temple and this fountain, the mystery of the "true oracle" is cleared up; and a remarkable corroboration is afforded of the truth, both of Pausanias's statement, and of the rational suspicion which has been confirmed by so many late discoveries, that these ancient oracles were worked by means of secret communications-subterranean or intermural. Be all this as it may, this temple is now a Greek church.