Hawes, Charles H.; Hawes, Harriet B.: Crete, the forerunner of Greece (London, 1909)

VI
THE SITES: PHAESTOS AND AGHIA TRIADHA

PHAESTOS

PHAESTOS, the Minoan site excavated by
the Italian Mission, lies a long day's journey
south of Candia. The road issuing by the western
gate follows up a river-bed to the village of
Daphnes, and leaving there the valleys rich with
olive, plane and carob, climbs to the more open
hillsides, with their patches of corn and moorland
scrub. Beyond Aghia Varvara (St. Barbara) is the
divide. It boasts no great height, for there is a
distinct break in the chain of mountains that
runs east and west the length of Crete, which
makes Candia one of the coolest towns in the
island, on account of the continual current of
air north through this gap in the mountains. At
a bend in the road, suddenly there bursts upon the
traveller's view a wonderful vista of the largest
and richest plain in Crete, the Messara. The hills
break away from his feet and slope steeply to the
plain, which appears as a vast patchwork of green
and gold. To the south is a wall of scored and
barren limestone mountains shutting off the sea,
and east and west are the snow-capped ranges of
Dicte and Ida, both claimants to be the birthplace