The following is an excerpt from the book, Lands of the Bible by J. W. McGarvey, taken from one of the letters he wrote while traveling to the Holy Land. The quote below describes his visit to Mars Hill in Athens.
As soon as I had eaten my breakfast I started out alone, determined to see how well I could make my way in Athens without a guide, and I directed my course at once toward Mars Hill, the most interesting object to me in all Greece. The Acropolis, which rises in the southwestern part of the city high above all the houses, being 300 feet high, was my guide, for I knew that Mars Hill was near its western extremity. I found it without difficulty, and approached it from its northern side. Climbing the saddle of rock which connects it with the Acropolis, and passing around to its southern side, I looked for the steps by which it has ever been ascended, and there they were. The hill is a rough mass of naked rock, a coarse, reddish marble, which rises abruptly from the sloping surface on its southern side 30 feet high, and on its northern side about 40 feet. On the east it drops down with a perpendicular face about 35 feet high, but toward the west it descends by a gradual slope about 200 yards long into a narrow valley. On the southern side, and about 40 feet from the eastern end, is the flight of steps just mentioned, cut along the steep slope of the rock, and leading directly to its summit. The stairway is 61⁄2 feet wide, and 16 of the original steps are still traceable, some of them almost perfect. From the ground to the first of these about 5 steps have been broken away, so that the entire number of steps was originally not less than 21. The preceding cut is a very fair representation of this dark and rough mass of rock, viewed from its southern side.
It had been my intention to climb this hill, stand in the very spot, as near as I could determine it, where Paul stood, seat before me by imagination the philosophers who constituted his audience, and repeat to them from the seventeenth of Acts that wonderful speech on the unknown God which I memorized many years ago. But when I found myself actually climbing the very steps by which Paul ascended this hill 1800 years ago, and when I stood on the summit within a few feet of the spot on which he must have stood, my heart was too deeply stirred for utterance. I stood awhile trembling with emotion, and then sat down and wept. I had visited no spot in all my journey which impressed me more deeply. I sat there for hours studying the surrounding scenery and meditating upon the events whose remembrance crowded upon me.