[Illustration: BAY OF NAVARINO, WITH OLD PYLOS TO THE RIGHT AND SPHAKTERIA TO THE LEFT]
The Pylos, where we passed the night, is a comparatively new town, having grown up around a fort built by the Franks in the thirteenth century on the south side of a great bay. Venetians occupied it later. It received, also, the name of Navarino from some merchants of Navarre, who settled there in the fifteenth century. This new Pylos, beautifully situated, looks out upon a scene so lovely that words fail to describe it; and in this spot history has been made.
[Illustration: <Map of the Bay of Navarino.>]
The Bay of Navarino, about three miles long from north to south, and about two miles broad, is a large natural harbor, shut off from the sea by what was in prehistoric ages a long, continuous cliff, but which in historic times had already been broken open in three places. The opening farthest north had ages ago already been silted up with sand; and the next one is in a fair way to become so before long. The northern end of the bay has also been a good deal silted up by streams flowing into it; and a long sand-bar has at last entirely shut it off from the rest, making of it a lake.
The particular feature which imparts picturesqueness to the bay is the already mentioned cliff, which rises almost perpendicularly in the greater part of its extent to a height varying from one hundred to three hundred feet, or even more. The face of these cliffs is in places very red, and when struck by the morning sun they are gorgeously colored.
In the fifth century before Christ the southern section of the hill was called Sphacteria, and was, of course, an island; the section next it on the north, which would have been an island had not the opening to the north of it been silted up, was called Pylos; after that follows a low promontory well joined to the mainland. There can be little doubt that the name Pylos is a survival of Homeric times, and that here we must look for the home of Nestor. It has become a fashion in the past few years to look for the Homeric Pylos farther north, partly to furnish a better road for Telemachos's chariot ride from Pylos to Sparta, and partly because no Mycenæan remains have been found here. But it is about as easy to take Telemachos straight over Taygetos as it is to find any more convenient road farther north. Pheræ, where the two days' journey was divided by a night's rest, has been reasonably well identified with some ancient walls on the slope of Taygetos above Kalamata; and if the journey was undertaken from our Pylos it would be about evenly divided there.