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| The Monastery of Megaspelion, 1876, by Edward Lear, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford |
The following excerpt comes from the travelogue of Henry Martyn Baird (1832-1906), an American historian and educator, who was a professor of Greek language and literature at New York University from 1859 until his death, and who lived in Greece for a year and recorded his travesl and experiences. The travelogue is titled Modern Greece: A Narrative of a Residence and Travels in that Country with Observations of Its Antiques, Literature, Language, Politics, and Religion and it was published in 1856. The excerpt below records his experience at the Monastery of Mega Spelaion (Great Cave) in Kalavryta, Greece.
From Calavryta we had before us a two hours' ride to Megaspelion, along the pleasant banks of the small river Buraicus, winding through a narrow valley toward the Corinthian Gulf. The monastery is by far the greatest, richest, and most famous in Greece proper. Imagine a vast cavern upward of a hundred feet in height, and much wider, as the niche in which this curious establishment is situated, and this on the steep side of a mountain at a considerable distance above the ravine. The approach is along the hill-side by a path winding gradually toward it, and which might easily be defended against a host of invaders. The steep land-slopes are cultivated in front of it in a succession of terraces, each presenting the appearance of a garden. As we drew near the building, there could be nothing more singular than its appearance. A single wall, one hundred and eighty feet long, and seventy or eighty high, closes up the lower part of the cave's aperture. It is no less than twelve feet thick, and offers little hope to the assailant of his being able to force his way within. Above, it is pierced with windows, and surmounted by seven or eight wooden houses of curious and diverse aspect, built more or less lofty, according to the irregularities of the cave's mouth, and leaning against the almost perpendicular rock that towers three or four hundred feet aloft. The light materials of which they are constructed contrast singularly with the massive proportions of the wall that supports them, and from which they project considerably in different places with staircases and covered galleries sustained by props.
