without seeing any body but one man, who stared at us curiously, but said

nothing, and a dozen persons asleep on the ground before their doors,

whom we walked among and never woke--but we woke up dogs enough, in

all

conscience--we always had one or two barking at our heels, and several

times we had as many as ten and twelve at once. They made such a

preposterous din that persons aboard our ship said they could tell how we

were progressing for a long time, and where we were, by the barking of

the dogs. The clouded moon still favored us. When we had made the whole

circuit, and were passing among the houses on the further side of the

town, the moon came out splendidly, but we no longer feared the light.

As we approached a well, near a house, to get a drink, the owner merely

glanced at us and went within. He left the quiet, slumbering town at our

mercy. I record it here proudly, that we didn't do any thing to it.

Seeing no road, we took a tall hill to the left of the distant Acropolis

for a mark, and steered straight for it over all obstructions, and over a

little rougher piece of country than exists any where else outside of the

State of Nevada, perhaps. Part of the way it was covered with small,

loose stones--we trod on six at a time, and they all rolled. Another

part of it was dry, loose, newly-ploughed ground. Still another part of

it was a long stretch of low grape-vines, which were tanglesome and

troublesome, and which we took to be brambles. The Attic Plain, barring

the grape-vines, was a barren, desolate, unpoetical waste--I wonder what

it was in Greece's Age of Glory, five hundred years before Christ?

390

The Innocents Abroad