I have met so many great people here in Samos, Greeks and ex-pats,
or as my girlfriend in high school, who was 100% Greek, said:
"There are two kinds of people in this world...Greeks and those who wish they were."
Colin Penfold, who is remarkably not Greek...I'll bet you can guess his nationality,
took me in his 4 wheel drive Suzuki 'Jimmy Jeep'
on an excursion around this wonderful island...
searching out locations of antiquities that will serve us in the new novel...
Colin is a brilliant artist that begins with his own B & W photos (great themselves)
then does some dark room magic and Voila! Pure Art...
I wish I had some to share with you...
maybe soon...
Colin and I started out at 'the salt flats' on the southern part of the island...
We are not sure when the inhabitants began to use their ingenuity to flood
the already existing marsh and then let the water evaporate,
leaving the precious commodity to be collected and stored in a interestingly
buttressed stone building...
Here's a picture of what we saw as we arrived at the salt flats...
BTW...there are flamingos in the
marsh...they migrate in and out of Samos here each year!
(You might have to look carefully...but they are there!)
The building in which they stored the salt was waayy substantial... interesting stairway/ramp leading up to the second floor...
The Buttresses you see here apparently kept the building from breaking apart from the inside pressure created when the salt became damp and expanded...
It seemed that there must have been some transport that ventured up that ramp and somehow unloaded the salt through these openings...
 |
| At the top of that formidable ramp/stairway there were these... |
Colin surmised that there must have been some sort of small carts, perhaps on rails, that would unload the salt in each room...and he was right! We found, in the rubble of one of the storage rooms, these small cars that traveled on tracks and if you look carefully, you can see that they are triangular in shape, allowing them to dump the salt they carried into the appropriate room...
As we made our way to the south end of the building, there was a marked difference in the stairway from the entrance to the north...then...
Blogman in a picture...whooda thunkit?
 |
| Flamingos in the marsh from the east end |
Having solved the mystery of the salt flats we headed for the ancient wall surrounding the city...
On the way, we couldn't help but notice that olive trees are ubiquitous on Samos...they are everywhere we turn...and many of them naturally occurring...
This olive tree is laden with fruit...these were here during the time of my stories...
That would be 600BC
On our way to the ancient wall, we ran across another common sight here in Samos, a sight that also was common in the time of my stories...
A Small herd of goats...the goatherd just to the right of center in the picture...
Many sights leading up to the majesty of the wall...
The beauty of this island seems to be revealing itself daily...This wall as seen from this vantage point is somewhat obscured by the vastness of Mount Ampelos and the valley below, but as you can see in the following pictures, it was a formidable feat...
You can see from this view that looks into the wall itself, that the outside stones were finely hewn and placed in a pattern, while the middle of the wall was filled with rubble...
The building of this wall was concurrent with the construction of the Eupalinos Tunnel, the first aqueduct...
It was fed by a stream that stil supplies water...although the source looks quite different today...there was a large hidden tank that is now covered by a church...
The hidden conduit that fed the north end of the tunnel followed the contour of the valley...
Here you see an opening at the beginning of the conduit that is visible today...
The conduit went underground and followed the contour of the valley until it met the northern entrance to the tunnel
The northern end, the beginning of a 1036 meter tunnel that was dug through a mountain, started at the south and the north end at the same time and eventually, (after 10 years of digging with hand tools) meeting in the middle...so the Chunnel had a predecessor!
Some pictures of the interior of the tunnel...
This, the northern end, began with the water channel at 3 meters...at the southern end, it is a remarkable 9 meters!
All the while...the working level of the tunnel remained level...
The building of this tunnel, this first aqueduct, plays a major role in my new novel...
Thank you Colin for a day I shall never forget...we are good scouting partners...
we share keen interest in the story behind the treasures we saw...
And thank you for introducing me to the tavern on the village square in Mitilini...:)
Thomas
And now...
The Fable of the Week...
Many years ago, when the animals all spoke the same language, there was a lion,
the king of animals, sleeping soundly in the forest.
Some mice were running nearby and one little mouse, unaware that he was
running over the head of the king, brushed up against the lion’s whiskers, abruptly waking him.
The lion angrily slammed his paw down upon the poor unsuspecting mouse.
The mouse wiggled to peek out from under the lion’s massive paw and exclaimed,
‘You are the king of all animals. I am but a mouse. If you kill me, it will mean nothing
and I am a completely insufficient snack for you. However, if, in your kindness,
you let me go, I might be able to help you someday.’
The lion scoffed, ‘How could a smidge like you ever help me, the greatest king of all?’
‘You’ll never know unless you let me go,’ said the mouse.
‘You are right,’ declared the lion, in kingly fashion. ‘You are not even a morsel,
so be gone with you, before I change my mind and use you for a toothpick.’
The little mouse ran into the woods crying back to the lion,
‘You will never regret this.’
Soon after that, the mouse heard the roar of the lion, but it was not the roar of power.
It was the roar of fear. The little mouse ran to the source of the roar only to find the lion,
completely ensnared in a hunter’s net. Proudly, he walked up to the lion and asked,
‘Remember me?’
The lion responded with a smile, ‘Yes,’ and the little mouse gnawed at the net
until he set his friend, the lion, free. The lion was forever grateful.
No comments:
Post a Comment