On the 13th of January they mounted earlier than usual, and set out on that road which has the site of the Academy and the Colonos, the retreat of OEdipus during his banishment, a little to the right; they then entered the Olive Groves, crossed the Cephessus, and came to an open, well-cultivated plain, extending on the left to the Piraeus and the sea.  Having ascended by a gentle acclivity through a pass, at the distance of eight or ten miles from Athens, the ancient Corydallus, now called Daphnerouni, they came, at the bottom of a piney mountain, to the little monastery of Daphne, the appearance and situation of which are in agreeable unison.  The monastery was then fast verging into that state of the uninhabitable picturesque so much admired by young damsels and artists of a romantic vein.  The pines on the adjacent mountains hiss as they ever wave their boughs, and somehow, such is the lonely aspect of the place, that their hissing may be imagined to breathe satire against the pretensions of human vanity.

After passing through the hollow valley in which this monastic habitation is situated, the road sharply turns round an elbow of the mountain, and the Eleusinian plain opens immediately in front.  It is, however, for a plain, but of small dimensions.  On the left is the Island of Salamis, and the straits where the battle was fought; but neither of it nor of the mysteries for which the Temple of Ceres was for so many ages celebrated, has the poet given us description or suggestion; and yet few topics among all his wild and wonderful subjects were so likely to have furnished such “ample room, and verge enough” to his fancy.

The next excursion in any degree interesting, it a qualification of that kind can be applied to excursions, in Attica, was to Cape Colonna.  Crossing the bed of the Ilissus and keeping nearer to Mount Hymettus, the travellers arrived at Vary, a farm belonging to the monastery of Agios Asomatos, and under the charge of a caloyer.  Here they stopped for the night, and being furnished with lights, and attended by the caloyer’s servant as a guide, they proceeded to inspect the Paneum, or sculptured cavern in that neighbourhood, into which they descended.  Having satisfied their curiosity there, they proceeded, in the morning, to Keratea, a small town containing about two hundred and fifty houses, chiefly inhabited by rural Albanians.

The wetness of the weather obliged them to remain several days at Keratea, during which they took the opportunity of a few hours of sunshine to ascend the mountain of Parne in quest of a cave of which many wonderful things were reported in the country.  Having found the entrance, kindled their pine torches, and taken a supply of strips of the same wood, they let themselves down through a narrow aperture; creeping still farther down, they came into what seemed a large subterranean hall, arched as it were with high cupolas of crystal, and divided into long aisles by columns of glittering spar, in some parts spread into wide horizontal chambers, in others terminated by the dark mouths of deep and steep abysses receding into the interior of the mountain.