Leaving Naples, I went to Brindisi, where I took ship for Patras in Greece.  A day was spent in crossing Italy, two nights and a day were taken up with the voyage to Patras, and a good part of a day was occupied with the railroad trip from there to Athens, where the hotel men made more ado over me than I was accustomed to, but I got through all right and secured comfortable quarters at the New York Hotel, just across the street from the Parliament Building.  From the little balcony at my window I could look out at the Acropolis.  The principal places visited the first day were the Stadium, Mars’ Hill, and the Acropolis.

Leaving the hotel and going through Constitution Square, up Philhellene Street, past the Russian and English churches, I came to the Zappeion, a modern building put up for Olympic exhibitions.  The Arch of Hadrian, a peculiar old structure, twenty-three feet wide and about fifty-six feet high, stands near the Zappeion, and formerly marked the boundary between ancient Athens and the more modern part of the city.  Passing through this arch, I soon came to what remains of the temple of the Olympian Jupiter, which was commenced long before the birth of Christ and finished by Hadrian about A.D. 140.  Originally this temple, after that of Ephesus said to be the largest in the world, had three rows of eight columns each, on the eastern and western fronts, and a double row of one hundred columns on the northern and southern sides, and contained a statue of Jupiter, overlaid with gold and ivory.  Its glory has long since departed, and only fifteen of the columns are now standing.  A little farther on is the Stadium, with an arena over five hundred and eighty feet long, and one hundred and nine feet wide.  It was originally constructed by the orator Lycurgus, about three hundred and fifty years before Christ, but was being rebuilt when I was there.  The seats are on both sides and around the circular end of the arena, being made on the slope of the hill and covered with clean, white, Pentelic marble, making a beautiful sight.

On the way to Mars’ Hill and the Acropolis I passed the monument of Lysicrates, the theater of Bacchus, and the Odeon.  This first-mentioned theater is said to have been “the cradle of dramatic art,” the masterpieces of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and others having been rendered there.  The Odeon of Herod Atticus differed from other ancient theaters in that it was covered.

Mars’ Hill is a great, oval-shaped mass of rock which probably would not be called a hill in America.  The small end, which is the highest part of it, lies next to the Acropolis, and its summit is reached by going up a short flight of steps cut in the limestone, and well preserved, considering their age.  The bluff on the opposite side from these steps is perhaps thirty or forty feet high and very rugged.  The rock slopes toward the wide end, which is only a few feet above the ground.  I estimate the greatest length of it to be about two hundred yards, and the