The marble quarry of Mount Pentilicus, from which the materials for the temples and principal edifices of Athens are supposed to have been brought, was, in those days, one of the regular staple curiosities of Greece.  This quarry is a vast excavation in the side of the hill; a drapery of woodbine hangs like the festoons of a curtain over the entrance; the effect of which, seen from the outside, is really worth looking at, but not worth the trouble of riding three hours over a road of rude and rough fragments to see: the interior is like that of any other cavern.  To this place I one day was induced to accompany the two travellers.

We halted at a monastery close by the foot of the mountain, where we procured a guide, and ate a repast of olives and fried eggs.  Dr Chandler says that the monks, or caloyers, of this convent are summoned to prayers by a tune which is played on a piece of an iron hoop; and, on the outside of the church, we certainly saw a piece of crooked iron suspended.  When struck, it uttered a bell-like sound, by which the hour of prayer was announced.  What sort of tune could be played on such an instrument the doctor has judiciously left his readers to imagine.

When we reached the mouth of the grotto, by that “very bad track” which the learned personage above mentioned clambered up, we saw the ruins of the building which the doctor at first thought had been possibly a hermit’s cell; but which, upon more deliberate reflection, he became of opinion “was designed, perhaps, for a sentinel to look out, and regulate, by signals, the approach of the men and teams employed in carrying marble to the city.”  This, we agreed, was a very sagacious conjecture.  It was, indeed, highly probable that sentinels were appointed to regulate, by signals, the manoeuvres of carts coming to fetch away stones.