Our Hellenic Heritage - Vol. 1

"A shepherd's crook, a coat of fleece, A grazing flock; -- the sense of peace, The long, sweet silence, -- this is Greece!"

GREECE has not only played a very great part in the history of the world, but is now, as it has always been, a land of exquisite natural beauty. The charm for the traveller who wanders freely to-day in Attica, or the Peloponnese is touched off with wonderful felicity by Sir Rennell Rodd in the three lines¹ taken for a heading to this chapter. It is a land to be sought for its physical loveliness no less than for the poetry and history associated with it. Mountains, sea and sky are the elements on which the beauty of the scenery in Greece mainly depends, and these change little with the passing of the centuries.

"Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild; Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields, Thine olive ripe as when Minerva smiled, And st ill his honied wealth Hymettus yields.

Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair."

wrote Byron early in the nineteenth century, and what he says is just as true to-day. The peculiarities of the physical structure of this Greek land are also very marked. The most important of these are at once apparent if we look attentively at a map of Greece, and they are worth noticing because they afford valuable clues to the understanding of Greek history and Greek life. Further,

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