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Sir A. Henry Layard, G.C.B., D.C.L. (1903)
Sir A Henry Layard GCB DCL - 1903 Author:Austen Henry Layard Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: tavern. This claim was founded upon an ancient custom which allowed the representatives of foreign nations to provide for the supply of the shipping of their res... more »pective countries. Upon these various subjects, and upon the opening for British commerce which Salonica appeared to me to present, I dwelt in my letters to Sir Stratford Canning, sending him such statistics as I was able to procure from the official sources accessible to me. On the 2$th August I left Salonica in a small sailing- boat bound for the village of S. Teodoro on the coast of Thessaly. We set sail in the evening, and crossing the gulf with a light wind arrived at our destination soon after sunrise. After some difficulty I was able to obtain a horse to take me to Platamona. I had fallen in with a Prussian doctor named Auerbach, in the Turkish service, who was going to Larissa to take charge of the quarantine establishment in that place. We rode together along the sea-coast at the foot of Mount Olympus, and through the Vale of Tempe, with the beautiful scenery of which, and the wonderful luxuriance of its vegetation, I was greatly charmed. It reminded me strongly of the pictures of Claude, who in his classic subjects has well divined the peculiar characteristics of the Thessalian landscape. But we found the country almost deserted. The mountain- range of Olympus and Ossa was the refuge of bands of brigands who, descending into the valleys and plains, infested the mule-tracks, robbed travellers and caravans, almost put a stop to trade, and compelled the inhabitants of the villages to abandon their homes and to seek for security in the towns. The soil consequently remained uncultivated, and one of the richest districts in European Turkey was reduced to the condition of a desert. Reports of the presence of the b...« less