The next four months were spent at Cephalonia, at first on board the "Hercules," in the harbour of Argostoli and afterwards at Metaxata. The object of this delay was to ascertain the real state of affairs in Greece. ...
Continuing still further south, you pass the Mycenaean necropolis of Masarakata, while 2 km beyond this is the settlement of Metaxata where Byron lived (1823-24): the house is gone but the place is marked by a plaque. ...
Among Byron?s friends at bMetaxata/b was the regimental Irish doctor, Dr James Kennedy, who taught him demotic Greek, and the Philhellenes who visited Byron there included the Belfast journalist James Emerson (1804?1869). b...../b He believed the great bestates/b belonging to the monasteries and convents on the island should be handed over to the poor, pointing out that 26 convents on the island owned about one-sixth of the island?s fertile land, which was worked by families who b.../b
