bright side. No race that I know is so greedy of education; the small
boys, instead of wending unwillingly to school, crowd the doors before
they are opened. Where this exceptional feeling is universal we may hope
for much.

The last evening at Patras showed us a beautiful view of what is here
called Parnassus (Parnasso), the tall bluff mountain up the Gulf, whose
snows at sunset glowed like a balass ruby. We left the Morea at 2
A.M. (December 2), and covered the fifty-two miles to Zante before
breakfast. There is, and ever has been, something peculiarly sympathetic
to me in the 'flower of the Levant.' 'Eh! 'tis a bonny, bonny place,'
repeatedly ejaculated our demoiselle. The city lies at the foot of the
grey cliffs, whose northern prolongation extends to the Akroteri, or
Lighthouse Point. A fine quay, the Strada Marina, has been opened during
the last six years along the northern sea-front, where the arcades
suggest those of Chester. It is being prolonged southwards to the old
quarantine-ground and the modern prison, which rests upon the skirts of
the remarkable Skopo, the Prospect Mountain, 1,489 feet high. This
feature, which first shows itself to mariners approaching Zakynthos from
north or from south, has a saddle-back sky-line, with a knob of
limestone shaped like a Turkish pommel and sheltering its monastery,
Panaghia of Skopo, alias Our Lady of the Look-out. Below it appears
another and a similar outcrop near a white patch which has suggested
marble-quarrying; and the northern flank is dotted with farmhouses and
villas. The dwarf breakwater, so easily prolonged over the shallows, has
not been improved; but at its base rises a brand-new opera-house, big
enough for a first-rate city. Similarly at Barletta they raised a loan
to build a mole and they built a theatre. Unlike Patras, Zante long had
the advantage of Italian and then of English rule; and the citizens care
for music more than for transformation-scenes. The Palikar element also