“It is astonishing how far money goes in this country.  While I was in the capital I had nothing to pay by the vizier’s order; but since, though I have generally had sixteen horses, and generally six or seven men, the expense has not been half as much as staying only three weeks in Malta, though Sir A. Ball, the governor, gave me a house for nothing, and I had only one servant.  By the by, I expect H——­ to remit regularly; for I am not about to stay in this province for ever.  Let him write to me at Mr. Strane’s, English consul, Patras.  The fact is, the fertility of the plains is wonderful, and specie is scarce, which makes this remarkable cheapness.  I am going to Athens to study modern Greek, which differs much from the ancient, though radically similar.  I have no desire to return to England, nor shall I, unless compelled by absolute want, and H——­’s neglect; but I shall not enter into Asia for a year or two, as I have much to see in Greece, and I may perhaps cross into Africa, at least the Egyptian part.  Fletcher, like all Englishmen, is very much dissatisfied, though a little reconciled to the Turks by a present of eighty piastres from the vizier, which, if you consider every thing, and the value of specie here, is nearly worth ten guineas English.  He has suffered nothing but from cold, heat, and vermin, which those who lie in cottages and cross mountains in a cold country must undergo, and of which I have equally partaken with himself; but he is not valiant, and is afraid of robbers and tempests.  I have no one to be remembered to in England, and wish to hear nothing from it, but that you are well, and a letter or two on business from H——­, whom you may tell to write.  I will write when I can, and beg you to believe me,

Your affectionate son,

“BYRON.”

About the middle of November, the young traveller took his departure from Prevesa (the place where the foregoing letter was written), and proceeded, attended by his guard of fifty Albanians,[131] through Acarnania and AEtolia, towards the Morea.

      “And therefore did he take a trusty band
      To traverse Acarnania’s forest wide,
      In war well season’d, and with labours tann’d,
      Till he did greet white Achelous’ tide,
    And from his further bank AEtolia’s wolds espied.”

    CHILDE HAROLD, Canto II.

His description of the night-scene at Utraikey (a small place situated in one of the bays of the Gulf of Arta) is, no doubt, vividly in the recollection of every reader of these pages; nor will it diminish their enjoyment of the wild beauties of that picture to be made acquainted with the real circumstances on which it was founded, in the following animated details of the same scene by his fellow-traveller:—­