XVII.
Rhodes, August 5, 1853.
I have just returned from a little excursion with Blunt across the centre of the island. Our first halting-place was Aphandu, on the road to Lindos, four hours distant from Rhodes. Here I purchased a small slab, with a figure on horseback in low relief. This appears to have been a sepulchral monument. The sculpure is coarse; the material, the stone of the country.
After riding three hours further, we got to Mállona, where we tm-ned inland to the S.W., in the direction of Aláerma. After about an hour we ascended from the plain into a pine forest, which extends for three days' journey into the centre of the island: we arrived at Aláerma in four hours. This is a small and somewhat barbarous village, where we could get nothuig to eat but venison di-ied in the sun in strips or jerked. The fallow deer, called by the Greeks λάφι, the corruption of ἐλάφιον, ranges wild through the pine forests of Rhodes, and many stags are killed in this district. The inhabitants maintain themselves by cultivating corn.
From Aláerma we went to Apollona, distant four and a half hours. The greater part of the road lay through a pine forest. At the distance of an hour from Aláerma is an old church called Agia Marina, in which I found a large cube of marble from an
