That this part of the island was nearly or quite unpopulated is made more than probable by the facts that no mention is made of any city or people here; that the only features mentioned are the wildness, and forests abandoned to feeding of pigs; and that Ulysses selects this part for his concealment. The path Ulysses probably followed from the port of Phorcys to the Raven’s Cliff is by far too hard for dilettante following; it is not only impassable to beasts of burden, but, I should say, difficult for a pedestrian. There is a road carriageable for a few miles from Vathy along the ridge southward, and then a fair bridle-path to the cliff, which, had we known it, would have led us somewhere near the location of Eumæus’s sties; but the guide my friends had recommended me, on his personal assurance, did not know the road, and we went wandering across fields and over hills, abandoning our quadrupeds at the moment when they would have been our best guides; and, finally, the fellow had to go to a ploughman scratching the earth with a crooked stick behind a yoke of year-old heifers, and inquire his way. I exhausted my modern Greek in exasperated vituperation of his pretentious ignorance, and took the lead, as I generally have had to do on similar occasions.
There was a pretty little valley on our way, the only arable or fruitful land in this part of the island; all else was bare and bleak. A few tough-lived shrubs, broom and gorse, arbutus, and some others I did not know, wring a scanty subsistence from the clefts between the rocks, and in a mass of almost unmitigated limestone was cloven a ravine. The roughness of Ithaca was proverbial even in Homeric days, since Athena, while disguised as a shepherd, replies to Ulysses, “If it [Ithaca] is rocky, if it breeds not horses in its moderate space, it is not quite barren,” etc. One might well select this scene as one of tranquil beauty, with the faint glimpses of the dreamy inner sea above its valley distance, and the golden grain-fields as I saw them, interspersed with vineyards and olive-orchards.
[Illustration: RAVEN’S CLIFF AND THE FOUNTAIN OF ARETHUSA.]
The glen of the Raven’s Cliff becomes a wild gorge below the fountain of Arethusa, and descends abruptly to the sea. Above, a stripe of bare, pale-gray rock down the cliff shows that in winter it is the location of a cataract, though, when I visited the locality, dry as summer dust. The fountain of Arethusa is situated about half-way from the cliff to the sea, and bears the evidences of an immense antiquity. Remains of an architectural surrounding are still to be seen, which, with some foundations of walls of the Roman period, evidently of a temple to the nymph or local goddess, and “Ulysses’ Castle,” are the only traces of ruin discoverable in this lobe of the island. The recess of the fountain has once been much larger, but the slow process of depositing the calcareous incrustation which forms its walls has gone on so long that only a small deep basin remains, from which the people draw the water with a cord and bucket. Its niche is cushioned with moss and maidenhair ferns, and the soft porous rock is always moist with the filtering through of the water. A wooden trough is placed for the watering of the sheep and goats which take the place of the hogs of Eumæus, for this is the only perennial source of water in the region.