ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the travels experience of a poet Fynes Moryson. The sixteenth-century traveller and the literary outcome of his journey, the travelogue, was the first connection between England and modern Greece. The initial encounters between British travellers and the Greek people, who lived under Ottoman or Venetian subjugation in the same area known since antiquity, resulted from a new economic and political balance between East and West. The voyage to the East was such a dangerous, difficult and 'painful travel' for the English that the traveller could hardly focus on the antiquities. Like Ralegh's Eldorado, the famous sites are not seen, their description deferred until the end of the following century. Throughout his journey to Greece, Moryson stresses his misfortunes rather than the monuments he encounters. Compared to the sixteenth-century French travellers to Greece, Belon, Gilles and Nicolay, Englishmen appear almost indifferent toward the relics of antiquity.
