We set off in the greyness of early morning for the station. At last I should know exactly to what district we were going, for I had not understood a word of the explanations given me the day before in the dining-room. The station was situated in a part of the town which was still asleep, and it looked more like a tram station than a railway station. A sort of little toy train of five or six carriages was already waiting, its doors invitingly open. The engine was puffing about on its own in little sidings, as if gathering strength to begin the journey. Each compartment had one very narrow window in the door, and that was all. These old-fashioned wagons reminded me of the third-class carriages on the train to Perpignan in which I had travelled when I was a child.
A bell was rung to warn any belated travellers to hurry, and the station-master ran out to cast a last glance up the deserted street before playing a little tune on his trumpet. The guard blew his whistle, to which the engine replied by a low groan, and off went the train. It strolled familiarly about the streets of the Piraeus for a little while; friends exchanged greetings, women threw parcels to the engine-driver, who also acted as carrier, then it reached the outskirts of the town and rushed wildly off at fifteen miles an hour.
What an enchanting experience is this journey from the Piraeus to Athens at sunrise. The train ran through orchards of pomegranates, and lemon and orange groves. Everywhere there were roses, fields and forests of roses. In the distance the Acropolis stood on its mountain all gilded with the rising sun, and pensive ruins here and there added poesy to the scene. Then suddenly all this vanished, as the train burrowed into the station of Athens, which smelt of smoke, coal-tar and fish.
After half an hour’s pause to meditate on the advantages of civilization, off we went again. The line immediately curved westwards round the sides of the blue and rose mountains we had seen the day before from the sea, rising from the golden carpet of flowers. Here and there were pale yellow or pink houses with flat, tiled roofs, standing among olive groves and vineyards. Great, dark cypresses stood up very still in the clear air. Then we reached a belt of red-trunked pine trees, which filled the air with their resinous perfume, and ever as we climbed the sea spread wider behind us.
Suddenly, as we reached a ridge, the whole gulf of Athens stretched out before us, surrounded by chains of high mountains; the sea was so blue that it looked violet against the ochre of the hill-sides. At certain points the railway hung directly over the sea, and through the crystal-clear water we could see the rocks and rose-coloured seaweeds, fading into the blue depths as the eye travelled farther from the shore.
These solitary beaches are barely skimmed by the waves of this ever-tranquil sea, which seems to spread itself languidly on the sand to sleep. No breaker ever comes to disturb the peace of these shores, which are sheltered by the near-by islands from the deep-sea swell, and in some places the olive trees grow so near the water that their foliage is reflected in it.
Our little train had got up speed, and for two hours we had been running at eighteen miles an hour through this fairy-like landscape, without stopping even at the rare stations which linked up the little villages with their gold-roofed houses to civilization.
About ten o’clock we crossed the canal of Corinth, cut perpendicularly through three hundred feet of rock, sheer down as if it had been sawn. A shabby tramp steamer was trailing along in the bottom of this groove, filling it with black smoke. Once over the metal bridge, we were in the peninsula of Morea, and soon entered the station of Corinth. We could not see anything of the famous city; after a few rapid glimpses of the blue gulf between gloomy houses which turned their back on the railway line, we plunged anew into the mountains.
From the foot of a valley hemmed in with hills, the little train climbed through a winding ravine up over the rounded shoulders of the hills to a great, wild moor. Not a single village was to be seen, or indeed any trace of human habitation. A vegetation of stunted bushes and rock plants grew as best it could among the chalky boulders, and covered the spurs of the mountains with a mantle of heath. Here and there we saw small enclosures, surrounded by dry-stone dykes, in which had been planted scrubby vines. Old olive trees with black and twisted trunks stretched at their feet a carpet of blue shade on which their owner, tired of digging the ungrateful earth, could come and drowse under the silvery foliage in the hot hours of noon, lulled by the song of the crickets.
Then came herds of goats, stampeding wildly to escape from this panting train which had dared to disturb the quiet peace of the heights. The little shepherd boys in their pleated kilts and be-tasselled shoes ran up from all sides to intercept the passage of the train which was slowly zigzagging up the mountain. They had no difficulty in keeping pace with it, and ran alongside, asking for newspapers. The passengers, amused, threw out the papers bought that morning in Athens or the Piraeus, and in this way the most distant villages got news of the outside world every day. There were very few stations here, and even these few were far from the hamlets buried in the mountains. There were no roads, properly speaking, only mule-tracks, and very stony at that.
During the halts we drank dry white wine with a resinous tang. It was called crachi retzina and cost only a sou the glass. It was delicious once one got accustomed to the bitter flavour.
And now the train began to rush down towards Argos and Myli, at the end of the Gulf of Nauplia where Agamemnon once lived. It was now only a wide and smiling valley, with nothing to recall its heroic past, which, indeed, may be pure invention. Herds of cattle grazed indolently among the lush grass. The gulf opened out widely to the sea, from which the triremes had set out for the Trojan war.
The train had now descended to the sea-level, and begun to climb again, but this time into really high mountains. The afternoon sun beat down mercilessly, bringing out an intolerable heat from the welter of rocks. There were flowering brooms and lentisks; then as we got higher, forests of stunted pines twisted into strange shapes, and seas and seas of lavender.
One last zigzag up the face of a blue granite wall, and we were at the top, looking down over the picturesque masses of mountains, whose tops were gilded by the setting sun, while the valleys were filled with purple shadow, and the capes and inlets of the coast stood out sharply against an immense sea which merged into space.
An abrupt change of direction, and there before us stretched the high plateaux covered with green crops, within the distance a range of snowcapped mountains stained rose by the setting sun. We had reached our destination, which was Steno, about six miles on this side of Tripolis.
A man approached, kissed Papamanoli and then me, and led us to a pretty jaunting-car, drawn by a frisky pony covered with tassels and tiny bells. He was Petros Karamanos. He had a keen, frank face, tanned by the mountain air, and was powerfully built, though without any suggestion of heaviness. He looked like a country gentleman; his calm and assured manner, the authority of his gaze, his simple dress, all bespoke the rich man, owning the soil he trod. He spoke no language but Greek.
The sun was just disappearing behind the mountains in the west, and the air, which had already been very light and fresh, became cold, for we were more than three thousand feet above sea-level. Everywhere were fields of green wheat, apple and cherry orchards. I wondered where grew the magic plant from which hashish, bringer of dreams, was made.
I thought of an old fairy-tale of a little boy sent by a good fairy to look for a magic flower which grew on the inaccessible summit of a distant mountain. Off he had set like me, guided and upheld by faith alone. I wondered if I had really arrived in the place where my magic flower grew, and if I was now to reap the reward of my faith in Destiny.