DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4593#0347
THESSALY 319-
we passed it that the atmosphere was a little warmer
because the Spartan heroes had there breathed out
their lives.
It was dark when we entered the Bay of Volo, and
nine o'clock when we arrived at the port of that
name at the head of this noble bay. Mount Pelion,
5,300 feet high, towers above the city, its slopes
whitened by a score of villages long famous in
Greece for their wealth and independence. I re-
gretted that I had not time to visit these villages in
detail and study the sources of their thrift. But an
iron horse more powerful than the horses of Achilles
was ready to rush over the fertile plains where the
warrior's steeds were reared. We had no time to
climb Pelion to follow the trail of one-sandalled
Jason or to find the ash-tree from which Chiron cut
Peleus his famous spear. Eleven miles from Volo
we reached Velestino. The smoke of the locomotive
was mingled with a cloud of tradition which huns:
over the ancient Pherce. Apollo, who here served
out his sentence as neatherd, King Admetus, Jason,
Alcestis, and Hercules, were all floating in the
invisible air, but could not be found on the solid
earth. A black, snorting locomotive and a train of
cars easily chase such apparitions to their graves.
At Velestina the road to Larissa runs north over the
broad fertile Thessalian plain. We were in no
pent-up valley; we found something of the freedom
of our prairies, which one gets nowhere else in
Greece. Yet lest life here should become too flat
and too profitable, Pelion and Mavro Vouni, the
mountain wall to the east, and Ossa and Olympus
to the north, sav "Thus far and no farther."
we passed it that the atmosphere was a little warmer
because the Spartan heroes had there breathed out
their lives.
It was dark when we entered the Bay of Volo, and
nine o'clock when we arrived at the port of that
name at the head of this noble bay. Mount Pelion,
5,300 feet high, towers above the city, its slopes
whitened by a score of villages long famous in
Greece for their wealth and independence. I re-
gretted that I had not time to visit these villages in
detail and study the sources of their thrift. But an
iron horse more powerful than the horses of Achilles
was ready to rush over the fertile plains where the
warrior's steeds were reared. We had no time to
climb Pelion to follow the trail of one-sandalled
Jason or to find the ash-tree from which Chiron cut
Peleus his famous spear. Eleven miles from Volo
we reached Velestino. The smoke of the locomotive
was mingled with a cloud of tradition which huns:
over the ancient Pherce. Apollo, who here served
out his sentence as neatherd, King Admetus, Jason,
Alcestis, and Hercules, were all floating in the
invisible air, but could not be found on the solid
earth. A black, snorting locomotive and a train of
cars easily chase such apparitions to their graves.
At Velestina the road to Larissa runs north over the
broad fertile Thessalian plain. We were in no
pent-up valley; we found something of the freedom
of our prairies, which one gets nowhere else in
Greece. Yet lest life here should become too flat
and too profitable, Pelion and Mavro Vouni, the
mountain wall to the east, and Ossa and Olympus
to the north, sav "Thus far and no farther."