“A little after midnight, a man, panting and pale, and drenched with rain, rushed into the room, and, between crying and roaring, with a profusion of action, communicated something to the secretary, of which I understood only—­that they had all fallen down.  I learnt, however, that no accident had happened, except the falling of the luggage horses, and losing their way, and that they were now waiting for fresh horses and guides.  Ten were immediately sent to them, together with several men with pine-torches; but it was not till two o’clock in the morning that we heard they were approaching, and my friend, with the priest and the servants, did not enter our hut before three.

“I now learnt from him that they had lost their way from the commencement of the storm, when not above three miles from the village; and that, after wandering up and down in total ignorance of their position, they had, at last, stopped near some Turkish tombstones and a torrent, which they saw by the flashes of lightning.  They had been thus exposed for nine hours; and the guides, so far from assisting them, only augmented the confusion, by running away, after being threatened with death by George the dragoman, who, in an agony of rage and fear, and without giving any warning, fired off both his pistols, and drew from the English servant an involuntary scream of horror, for he fancied they were beset by robbers.

“I had not, as you have seen, witnessed the distressing part of this adventure myself; but from the lively picture drawn of it by my friend, and from the exaggerated descriptions of George, I fancied myself a good judge of the whole situation, and should consider this to have been one of the most considerable of the few adventures that befell either of us during our tour in Turkey.  It was long before we ceased to talk of the thunder-storm in the plain of Zitza.”]

[Footnote 131:  Mr. Hobhouse.  I think, makes the number of this guard but thirty-seven, and Lord Byron, in a subsequent letter, rates them at forty.]

[Footnote 132: 

    “Oh, thou Parnassus! whom I now survey,
     Not in the frenzy of a dreamer’s eye,
     Not in the fabled landscape of a lay,
     But soaring snow-clad through thy native sky,
     In the wild pomp of mountain majesty!”

CHILDE HAROLD, Canto I.
]

[Footnote 133:  The passage of Harris, indeed, contains the pith of the whole stanza:—­“Notwithstanding the various fortune of Athens, as a city, Attica is still famous for olives, and Mount Hymettus for honey.  Human institutions perish, but Nature is permanent.”—­Philolog.  Inquiries.—­I recollect having once pointed out this coincidence to Lord Byron, but he assured me that he had never even seen this work of Harris.]

[Footnote 134:  Travels in Italy, Greece, &c., by H. W. Williams, Esq.]

[Footnote 135:  The Miscellany, to which I have more than once referred.]