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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Incidents of Travel in Greece, Turkey,
+Russia, and Poland, Vol. I (of 2), by John Lloyd Stephens
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Incidents of Travel in Greece, Turkey, Russia, and Poland, Vol. I (of 2)
+
+Author: John Lloyd Stephens
+
+Release Date: October 30, 2011 [EBook #37889]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL, VOL 1 OF 2 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Julia Miller, Eleni Christofaki and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+book was produced from scanned images of public domain
+material from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's notes:
+
+Punctuation and hyphenation have been normalised. Variable, archaic or
+unusual spelling has been retained. A list of the few corrections made
+can found at the end of the book. Italics indicated by _underscores_.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: GREECE, TURKEY, _PART OF_ RUSSIA & POLAND.]
+
+
+
+
+  INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL IN GREECE, TURKEY, RUSSIA, AND POLAND.
+
+  BY THE AUTHOR OF
+
+  "INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL IN EGYPT, ARABIA PETRĆA, AND THE HOLY LAND."
+
+
+  WITH A MAP AND ENGRAVINGS.
+
+
+  IN TWO VOLUMES.
+
+  VOL. I.
+
+
+  SEVENTH EDITION.
+
+
+  NEW YORK:
+  HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS.
+  329 & 331 PEARL STREET,
+  FRANKLIN SQUARE.
+  1853.
+
+
+
+
+  Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1838, by HARPER &
+  BROTHERS, in the Clerk's Office of the Southern District of New York.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION.
+
+
+THE fourth edition of this work was published during the author's
+absence from the city. His publishers, in a preface in his behalf,
+returned his acknowledgments to the public, and he can but respond to
+the acknowledgments there made. He has made some alterations in the page
+relating to the American phil-Hellenists; and for the rest, he concludes
+as in the preface to his first edition.
+
+The author has been induced by his publishers to put forth his
+"Incidents of Travel in Greece, Turkey, Russia, and Poland." In point of
+time they precede his tour in Egypt, Arabia Petrća, and the Holy Land.
+The countries which form the subject of the following pages perhaps do
+not, in themselves, possess the same interest with those in his first
+work; but the author has reason to believe that part of his route,
+particularly from the Black Sea to the Baltic, through the interior of
+Russia, and from St. Petersburgh through the interior of Poland to
+Warsaw and Cracow, is comparatively new to most of his countrymen. As in
+his first work, his object has been to present a picture of the
+every-day scenes which occur to the traveller in the countries referred
+to, rather than any detailed description of the countries themselves.
+
+  _New York, November, 1838._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME
+
+
+    CHAPTER I.                                                      Page
+
+    A Hurricane.--An Adventure.--Missilonghi.--Siege of
+      Missilonghi.--Byron.--Marco Bozzaris.--Visit to the Widow,
+      Daughters, and Brother of Bozzaris.--Halleck's "Marco Bozzaris."
+                                                                      13
+
+    CHAPTER II.
+
+    Choice of a Servant.--A Turnout.--An Evening Chat.--Scenery of the
+      Road.--Lepanto.--A projected Visit.--Change of
+      Purpose.--Padras.--Vostitza.--Variety and Magnificence of Scenery.
+                                                                      28
+
+    CHAPTER III.
+
+    Quarrel with the Landlord.--Ćgina.--Sicyon.--Corinth.--A
+      distinguished Reception.--Desolation of Corinth.--The
+      Acropolis.--View from the Acropolis.--Lechćum and Cenchreć.--Kaka
+      Scala.--Arrival at Athens.                                      46
+
+    CHAPTER IV.
+
+    American Missionary School.--Visit to the School.--Mr. Hill and the
+      Male Department.--Mrs. Hill and the Female Department.--Maid of
+      Athens.--Letter from Mr. Hill.--Revival of Athena.--Citizens of
+      the World.                                                      61
+
+    CHAPTER V.
+
+    Ruins of Athens.--Hill of Mars.--Temple of the Winds.--Lantern of
+      Demosthenes.--Arch of Adrian.--Temple of Jupiter Olympus.--Temple
+      of Theseus.--The Acropolis.--The Parthenon.--Pentelican
+      Mountain.--Mount Hymettus.--The Pirćus.--Greek Fleas.--Napoli.  73
+
+    CHAPTER VI.
+
+    Argos.--Parting and Farewell.--Tomb of Agamemnon.--Mycenć.--Gate of
+      the Lions.--A Misfortune.--Meeting in the Mountains.--A Landlord's
+      Troubles.--A Midnight Quarrel.--One good Turn deserves
+      another.--Gratitude of a Greek Family.--Megara.--The Soldiers'
+      Revel.                                                          99
+
+    CHAPTER VII.
+
+    A Dreary Funeral.--Marathon.--Mount Pentelicus.--A Mystery.--Woes of
+      a Lover.--Reveries of Glory.--Scio's Rocky Isle.--A blood-stained
+      Page of History.--A Greek Prelate.--Desolation.--The Exile's
+      Return.                                                        118
+
+    CHAPTER VIII.
+
+    A Noble Grecian Lady.--Beauty of Scio.--An Original.--Foggi.--A
+      Turkish Coffee-house.--Mussulman at Prayers.--Easter Sunday.--A
+      Greek Priest.--A Tartar Guide.--Turkish Ladies.--Camel
+      Scenes.--Sight of a Harem.--Disappointed Hopes.--A rare
+      Concert.--Arrival at Smyrna.                                   149
+
+    CHAPTER IX.
+
+    First Sight of Smyrna.--Unveiled Women.--Ruins of Ephesus.--Ruin,
+      all Ruin.--Temple of Diana.--Encounter with a Wolf.--Love at first
+      Sight.--Gatherings on the Road.                                173
+
+    CHAPTER X.
+
+    Position of Smyrna.--Consular Privileges.--The Case of the
+      Lover.--End of the Love Affair.--The Missionary's Wife.--The
+      Casino.--Only a Greek Row.--Rambles in Smyrna.--The
+      Armenians.--Domestic Enjoyments.                               188
+
+    CHAPTER XI.
+
+    An American Original.--Moral Changes in Turkey.--Wonders of Steam
+      Navigation.--The March of Mind.--Classic Localities.--Sestos and
+      Abydos.--Seeds of Pestilence.                                  203
+
+    CHAPTER XII.
+
+    Mr. Churchill.--Commodore Porter.--Castle of the Seven Towers.--The
+      Sultan's Naval Architect.--Launch of the Great Ship.--Sultan
+      Mahmoud.--Jubilate.--A National Grievance.--Visit to a
+      Mosque.--The Burial-grounds.                                   218
+
+    CHAPTER XIII.
+
+    Visit to the Slave-market.--Horrors of Slavery.--Departure from
+      Stamboul.--The stormy Euxine.--Odessa.--The Lazaretto.--Russian
+      Civility.--Returning Good for Evil.                            236
+
+    CHAPTER XIV.
+
+    The Guardiano.--One too many.--An Excess of Kindness.--The last Day
+      of Quarantine.--Mr. Baguet.--Rise of Odessa.--City-making.--Count
+      Woronzow.--A Gentleman Farmer.--An American Russian.           258
+
+
+
+
+INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL IN GREECE, TURKEY, RUSSIA, AND POLAND.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+    A Hurricane.--An Adventure.--Missilonghi.--Siege of
+      Missilonghi.--Byron.--Marco Bozzaris.--Visit to the Widow,
+      Daughters, and Brother of Bozzaris.
+
+
+ON the evening of the ---- February, 1835, by a bright starlight, after a
+short ramble among the Ionian Islands, I sailed from Zante in a
+beautiful cutter of about forty tons for Padras. My companions were
+Doctor W., an old and valued friend from New-York, who was going to
+Greece merely to visit the Episcopal missionary school at Athens, and a
+young Scotchman, who had travelled with me through Italy, and was going
+farther, like myself, he knew not exactly why. There was hardly a breath
+of air when we left the harbour, but a breath was enough to fill our
+little sail. The wind, though of the gentlest, was fair; and as we
+crawled from under the lee of the island, in a short time it became a
+fine sailing breeze. We sat on the deck till a late hour, and turned in
+with every prospect of being at Padras in the morning. Before daylight,
+however, the wind chopped about, and set in dead ahead, and when I went
+on deck in the morning it was blowing a hurricane. We had passed the
+point of Padras; the wind was driving down the Gulf of Corinth as if old
+Ćolus had determined on thwarting our purpose; and our little cutter,
+dancing like a gull upon the angry waters, was driven into the harbour
+of Missilonghi.
+
+The town was full in sight, but at such a distance, and the waves were
+running so high, that we could not reach it with our small boat. A long
+flat extends several miles into the sea, making the harbour completely
+inaccessible except to small Greek caiques built expressly for such
+navigation. We remained on board all day; and the next morning, the gale
+still continuing, made signals to a fishing boat to come off and take us
+ashore. In a short time she came alongside; we bade farewell to our
+captain--an Italian and a noble fellow, cradled, and, as he said, born
+to die on the Adriatic--and in a few minutes struck the soil of fallen
+but immortal Greece.
+
+Our manner of striking it, however, was not such as to call forth any of
+the warm emotions struggling in the breast of the scholar, for we were
+literally stuck in the mud. We were yet four or five miles from the
+shore, and the water was so low that the fishing-boat, with the
+additional weight of four men and luggage, could not swim clear. Our
+boatmen were two long, sinewy Greeks, with the red tarbouch, embroidered
+jacket, sash, and large trousers, and with their long poles set us
+through the water with prodigious force; but, as soon as the boat
+struck, they jumped out, and, putting their brawny shoulders under her
+sides, heaved her through into better water, and then resumed their
+poles. In this way they propelled her two or three miles, working
+alternately with their poles and shoulders, until they got her into a
+channel, when they hoisted the sail, laid directly for the harbour, and
+drove upon the beach with canvass all flying.
+
+During the late Greek revolution, Missilonghi was the great
+debarking-place of European adventurers; and, probably, among all the
+desperadoes who ever landed there, none were more destitute and in
+better condition to "go ahead" than I; for I had all that I was worth on
+my back. At one of the Ionian Islands I had lost my carpet-bag,
+containing my notebook and every article of wearing apparel except the
+suit in which I stood. Every condition, however, has its advantages;
+mine put me above porters and custom-house officers; and while my
+companions were busy with these plagues of travellers, I paced with
+great satisfaction the shore of Greece, though I am obliged to confess
+that this satisfaction was for reasons utterly disconnected with any
+recollections of her ancient glories. Business before pleasure: one of
+our first inquiries was for a breakfast. Perhaps, if we had seen a
+monument, or solitary column, or ruin of any kind, it would have
+inspired us to better things; but there was nothing, absolutely nothing,
+that could recall an image of the past. Besides, we did not expect to
+land at Missilonghi, and were not bound to be inspired at a place into
+which we were thrown by accident; and, more than all, a drizzling rain
+was penetrating to our very bones; we were wet and cold, and what can
+men do in the way of sentiment when their teeth are chattering?
+
+The town stands upon a flat, marshy plain, which extends several miles
+along the shore. The whole was a mass of new-made ruins--of houses
+demolished and black with smoke--the tokens of savage and desolating
+war. In front, and running directly along the shore, was a long street
+of miserable one-story shantees, run up since the destruction of the old
+town, and so near the shore that sometimes it is washed by the sea, and
+at the time of our landing it was wet and muddy from the rain. It was a
+cheerless place, and reminded me of Communipaw in bad weather. It had no
+connexion with the ancient glory of Greece, no name or place on her
+historic page, and no hotel where we could get a breakfast; but one of
+the officers of the customs conducted us to a shantee filled with
+Bavarian soldiers drinking. There was a sort of second story, accessible
+only by a ladder; and one end of this was partitioned off with boards,
+but had neither bench, table, nor any other article of housekeeping. We
+had been on and almost _in_ the water since daylight, exposed to a keen
+wind and drizzling rain, and now, at eleven o'clock, could probably have
+eaten several chickens apiece; but nothing came amiss, and, as we could
+not get chickens, we took eggs, which, for lack of any vessel to boil
+them in, were roasted. We placed a huge loaf of bread on the middle of
+the floor, and seated ourselves around it, spreading out so as to keep
+the eggs from rolling away, and each hewing off bread for himself.
+Fortunately, the Greeks have learned from their quondam Turkish masters
+the art of making coffee, and a cup of this Eastern cordial kept our dry
+bread from choking us.
+
+When we came out again the aspect of matters was more cheerful; the long
+street was swarming with Greeks, many of them armed with pistols and
+yataghan, but miserably poor in appearance, and in such numbers that not
+half of them could find the shelter of a roof at night. We were accosted
+by one dressed in a hat and frockcoat, and who, in occasional visits to
+Corfu and Trieste, had picked up some Italian and French, and a suit of
+European clothes, and was rather looked up to by his untravelled
+countrymen. As a man of the world, who had received civilities abroad,
+he seemed to consider it incumbent upon him to reciprocate at home, and,
+with the tacit consent of all around, he undertook to do the honours of
+Missilonghi.
+
+If, as a Greek, he had any national pride about him, he was imposing
+upon himself a severe task; for all that he could do was to conduct us
+among ruins, and, as he went along, tell us the story of the bloody
+siege which had reduced the place to its present woful state. For more
+than a year, under unparalleled hardships, its brave garrison resisted
+the combined strength of the Turkish and Egyptian armies, and, when all
+hope was gone, resolved to cut their way through the enemy or die in the
+attempt. Many of the aged and sick, the wounded and the women, refused
+to join in the sortie, and preferred to shut themselves up in an old
+mill, with the desperate purpose of resisting until they should bring
+around them a large crowd of Turks, when they would blow all up
+together. An old invalid soldier seated himself in a mine under the
+Bastion Bozzaris (the ruins of which we saw), the mine being charged
+with thirty kegs of gunpowder; the last sacrament was administered by
+the bishop and priests to the whole population and, at a signal, the
+besieged made their desperate sortie. One body dashed through the
+Turkish ranks, and, with many women and children, gained the mountains;
+but the rest were driven back. Many of the women ran to the sea and
+plunged in with their children; husbands stabbed their wives with their
+own hands to save them from the Turks, and the old soldier under the
+bastion set fire to the train, and the remnant of the heroic garrison
+buried themselves under the ruins of Missilonghi.
+
+Among them were thirteen foreigners, of whom only one escaped. One of
+the most distinguished was Meyer, a young Swiss, who entered as a
+volunteer at the beginning of the revolution, became attached to a
+beautiful Missilonghiote girl, married her, and, when the final sortie
+was made, his wife being sick, he remained with her, and was blown up
+with the others. A letter written a few days before his death, and
+brought away by one who escaped in the sortie, records the condition of
+the garrison.
+
+"A wound which I have received in my shoulder, while I am in daily
+expectation of one which will be my passport to eternity, has prevented
+me till now from bidding you a last adieu. We are reduced to feed upon
+the most disgusting animals. We are suffering horribly with hunger and
+thirst. Sickness adds much to the calamities which overwhelm us.
+Seventeen hundred and forty of our brothers are dead; more than a
+hundred thousand bombs and balls thrown by the enemy have destroyed our
+bastions and our homes. We have been terribly distressed by the cold,
+for we have suffered great want of food. Notwithstanding so many
+privations, it is a great and noble spectacle to behold the ardour and
+devotedness of the garrison. A few days more, and these brave men will
+be angelic spirits, who will accuse before God the indifference of
+Christendom. In the name of all our brave men, among whom are Notho
+Bozzaris, *** I announce to you the resolution sworn to before Heaven,
+to defend, foot by foot, the land of Missilonghi, and to bury ourselves,
+without listening to any capitulation, under the ruins of this city. We
+are drawing near our final hour. History will render us justice. I am
+proud to think that the blood of a Swiss, of a child of William Tell, is
+about to mingle with that of the heroes of Greece."
+
+But Missilonghi is a subject of still greater interest than this, for
+the reader will remember it as the place where Byron died. Almost the
+first questions I asked were about the poet, and it added to the dreary
+interest which the place inspired, to listen to the manner in which the
+Greeks spoke of him. It might be thought that here, on the spot where he
+breathed his last, malignity would have held her accursed tongue; but it
+was not so. He had committed the fault, unpardonable in the eyes of
+political opponents, of attaching himself to one of the great parties
+that then divided Greece; and though he had given her all that man could
+give, in his own dying words, "his time, his means, his health, and,
+lastly, his life," the Greeks spoke of him with all the rancour and
+bitterness of party spirit. Even death had not won oblivion for his
+political offences; and I heard those who saw him die in her cause
+affirm that Byron was no friend to Greece.
+
+His body, the reader will remember, was transported to England and
+interred in the family sepulchre. The church where it lay in state is a
+heap of ruins, and there is no stone or monument recording his death,
+but, wishing to see some memorial connected with his residence here, we
+followed our guide to the house in which he died. It was a large square
+building of stone, one of the walls still standing, black with smoke,
+the rest a confused and shapeless mass of ruins. After his death it was
+converted into a hospital and magazine; and, when the Turks entered the
+city, they set fire to the powder; the sick and dying were blown into
+the air, and we saw the ruins lying as they fell after the explosion. It
+was a melancholy spectacle, but it seemed to have a sort of moral
+fitness with the life and fortunes of the poet. It was as if the same
+wild destiny, the same wreck of hopes and fortunes that attended him
+through life, were hovering over his grave. Living and dead, his actions
+and his character have been the subject of obloquy and reproach, perhaps
+justly; but it would have softened the heart of his bitterest enemy to
+see the place in which he died.
+
+It was in this house that, on his last birthday, he came from his
+bedroom and produced to his friends the last notes of his dying muse,
+breathing a spirit of sad foreboding and melancholy recollections; of
+devotion to the noble cause in which he had embarked, and a prophetic
+consciousness of his approaching end.
+
+    "My days are in the yellow leaf,
+      The flowers and fruits of love are gone;
+    The worm, the canker, and the grief
+          Are mine alone.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "If thou regret'st thy youth, _why live?_
+      The land of honourable death
+    Is here: up to the field, and give
+          Away thy breath!
+
+    "Seek out--less often sought than found--
+      A soldier's grave, for thee the best;
+    Then look around, and choose thy ground,
+          And take thy rest."
+
+Moving on beyond the range of ruined houses, though still within the
+line of crumbling walls, we came to a spot perhaps as interesting as any
+that Greece in her best days could show. It was the tomb of Marco
+Bozzaris! No monumental marble emblazoned his deeds and fame; a few
+round stones piled over his head, which, but for our guide, we should
+have passed without noticing, were all that marked his grave. I would
+not disturb a proper reverence for the past; time covers with its dim
+and twilight glories both distant scenes and the men who acted in them,
+but, to my mind, Miltiades was not more of a hero at Marathon or
+Leonidas at Thermopylć than Marco Bozzaris at Missilonghi. When they
+went out against the hosts of Persia, Athens and Sparta were great and
+free, and they had the prospect of _glory_ and the praise of men, to the
+Greeks always dearer than life. But when the Suliote chief drew his
+sword, his country lay bleeding at the feet of a giant, and all Europe
+condemned the Greek revolution as foolhardy and desperate. For two
+months, with but a few hundred men, protected only by a ditch and slight
+parapet of earth, he defended the town where his body now rests against
+the whole Egyptian army. In stormy weather, living upon bad and
+unwholesome bread, with no covering but his cloak, he passed his days
+and nights in constant vigil; in every assault his sword cut down the
+foremost assailant, and his voice, rising above the din of battle,
+struck terror into the hearts of the enemy. In the struggle which ended
+with his life, with two thousand men he proposed to attack the whole
+army of Mustapha Pacha, and called upon all who were willing to die for
+their country to stand forward. The whole band advanced to a man.
+Unwilling to sacrifice so many brave men in a death-struggle, he chose
+three hundred, the sacred number of the Spartan band, his tried and
+trusty Suliotes. At midnight he placed himself at their head, directing
+that not a shot should be fired till he sounded his bugle; and his last
+command was, "If you lose sight of me, seek me in the pacha's tent." In
+the moment of victory he ordered the pacha to be seized, and received a
+ball in the loins; his voice still rose above the din of battle,
+cheering his men until he was struck by another ball in the head, and
+borne dead from the field of his glory.
+
+Not far from the grave of Bozzaris was a pyramid of sculls, of men who
+had fallen in the last attack upon the city, piled up near the blackened
+and battered wall which they had died in defending. In my after
+wanderings I learned to look more carelessly upon these things; and,
+perhaps, noticing everywhere the light estimation put upon human life in
+the East, learned to think more lightly of it myself; but, then, it was
+melancholy to see bleaching in the sun, under the eyes of their
+countrymen, the unburied bones of men who, but a little while ago, stood
+with swords in their hands, and animated by the noble resolution to free
+their country or die in the attempt. Our guide told us that they had all
+been collected in that place with a view to sepulture; and that King
+Otho, as soon as he became of age and took the government in his own
+hands, intended to erect a monument over them. In the mean time, they
+are at the mercy of every passing traveller; and the only remark that
+our guide made was a comment upon the force and unerring precision of
+the blow of the Turkish sabre, almost every scull being laid open on the
+side nearly down to the ear.
+
+But the most interesting part of our day at Missilonghi was to come.
+Returning from a ramble round the walls, we noticed a large square
+house, which, our guide told us, was the residence of Constantine, the
+brother of Marco Bozzaris. We were all interested in this intelligence,
+and our interest was in no small degree increased when he added that the
+widow and two of the children of the Suliote chief were living with his
+brother. The house was surrounded by a high stone wall, a large gate
+stood most invitingly wide open, and we turned toward it in the hope of
+catching a glimpse of the inhabitants; but, before we reached the gate,
+our interest had increased to such a point that, after consulting with
+our guide, we requested him to say that, if it would not be considered
+an intrusion, three travellers, two of them Americans, would feel
+honoured in being permitted to pay their respects to the widow and
+children of Marco Bozzaris.
+
+We were invited in, and shown into a large room on the right, where
+three Greeks were sitting cross-legged on a divan, smoking the long
+Turkish chibouk. Soon after the brother entered, a man about fifty, of
+middling height, spare built, and wearing a Bavarian uniform, as holding
+a colonel's commission in the service of King Otho. In the dress of the
+dashing Suliote he would have better looked the brother of Marco
+Bozzaris, and I might then more easily have recognised the daring
+warrior who, on the field of battle, in a moment of extremity, was
+deemed, by universal acclamation, worthy of succeeding the fallen hero.
+Now the straight military frockcoat, buttoned tight across the breast,
+the stock, tight pantaloons, boots, and straps, seemed to repress the
+free energies of the mountain warrior; and I could not but think how
+awkward it must be for one who had spent all his life in a dress which
+hardly touched him, at fifty to put on a stock, and straps to his boots.
+Our guide introduced us, with an apology for our intrusion. The colonel
+received us with great kindness, thanked us for the honour done his
+brother's widow, and, requesting us to be seated, ordered coffee and
+pipes.
+
+And here, on the very first day of our arrival in Greece, and from a
+source which made us proud, we had the first evidence of what afterward
+met me at every step, the warm feeling existing in Greece toward
+America; for almost the first thing that the brother of Marco Bozzaris
+said was to express his gratitude as a Greek for the services rendered
+his country by our own; and, after referring to the provisions sent out
+for his famishing countrymen, his eyes sparkled and his cheek flushed as
+he told us that, when the Greek revolutionary flag first sailed into the
+port of Napoli di Romania, among hundreds of vessels of all nations, an
+American captain was the first to recognise and salute it.
+
+In a few moments the widow of Marco Bozzaris entered. I have often been
+disappointed in my preconceived notions of personal appearance, but it
+was not so with the lady who now stood before me; she looked the widow
+of a hero; as one worthy of her Grecian mothers, who gave their hair for
+bowstrings, their girdle for a sword-belt, and, while their heartstrings
+were cracking, sent their young lovers from their arms to fight and
+perish for their country. Perhaps it was she that led Marco Bozzaris
+into the path of immortality; that roused him from the wild guerilla
+warfare in which he had passed his early life, and fired him with the
+high and holy ambition of freeing his country. Of one thing I am
+certain, no man could look in her face without finding his wavering
+purposes fixed, without treading more firmly in the path of high and
+honourable enterprise. She was under forty, tall and stately in person
+and habited in deep black, fit emblem of her widowed condition, with a
+white handkerchief laid flat over her head, giving the Madonna cast to
+her dark eyes and marble complexion. We all rose as she entered the
+room; and though living secluded, and seldom seeing the face of a
+stranger, she received our compliments and returned them with far less
+embarrassment than we both felt and exhibited.
+
+But our embarrassment, at least I speak for myself, was induced by an
+unexpected circumstance. Much as I was interested in her appearance, I
+was not insensible to the fact that she was accompanied by two young and
+beautiful girls, who were introduced to us as her daughters. This
+somewhat bewildered me. While waiting for their appearance, and talking
+with Constantine Bozzaris, I had in some way conceived the idea that the
+daughters were mere children, and had fully made up my mind to take them
+both on my knee and kiss them; but the appearance of the stately mother
+recalled me to the grave of Bozzaris; and the daughters would probably
+have thought that I was taking liberties upon so short an acquaintance
+if I had followed up my benevolent purpose in regard to them; so that,
+with the long pipe in my hand, which, at that time, I did not know how
+to manage well, I cannot flatter myself that I exhibited any of the
+benefit of Continental travel.
+
+The elder was about sixteen, and even in the opinion of my friend Doctor
+W., a cool judge in these matters, a beautiful girl, possessing in its
+fullest extent all the elements of Grecian beauty: a dark, clear
+complexion, dark hair, set off by a little red cap embroidered with gold
+thread, and a long blue tassel hanging down behind, and large black
+eyes, expressing a melancholy quiet, but which might be excited to shoot
+forth glances of fire more terrible than her father's sword. Happily,
+too, for us, she talked French, having learned it from a French marquis
+who had served in Greece and been domesticated with them; but young and
+modest, and unused to the company of strangers, she felt the
+embarrassment common to young ladies when attempting to speak a foreign
+language. And we could not talk to her on common themes. Our lips were
+sealed, of course, upon the subject which had brought us to her house.
+We could not sound for her the praises of her gallant father. At
+parting, however, I told them that the name of Marco Bozzaris was as
+familiar in America as that of a hero of our own revolution, and that it
+had been hallowed by the inspiration of an American poet; and I added
+that, if it would not be unacceptable, on my return to my native country
+I would send the tribute referred to, as an evidence of the feeling
+existing in America toward the memory of Marco Bozzaris. My offer was
+gratefully accepted; and afterward, while in the act of mounting my
+horse to leave Missilonghi, our guide, who had remained behind, came to
+me with a message from the widow and daughters reminding me of my
+promise.
+
+I do not see that there is any objection to my mentioning that I wrote
+to a friend, requesting him to procure Halleck's "Marco Bozzaris," and
+send it to my banker at Paris. My friend, thinking to enhance its value,
+applied to Mr. Halleck for a copy in his own handwriting. Mr. Halleck,
+with his characteristic modesty, evaded the application; and on my
+return home I told him the story of my visit, and reiterated the same
+request. He evaded me as he had done my friend, but promised me a copy
+of the new edition of his poems, which he afterward gave me, and which,
+I hope, is now in the hands of the widow and daughters of the Grecian
+hero.
+
+I make no apology for introducing in a book the widow and daughters of
+Marco Bozzaris. True, I was received by them in private, without any
+expectation, either on their part or mine, that all the particulars of
+the interview would be noted and laid before the eyes of all who choose
+to read. I hope it will not be considered invading the sanctity of
+private life; but, at all events, I make no apology; the widow and
+children of Marco Bozzaris are the property of the world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+    Choice of a Servant.--A Turnout.--An Evening Chat.--Scenery of the
+      Road.--Lepanto.--A projected Visit.--Change of
+      Purpose.--Padras.--Vostitza.--Variety and Magnificence of Scenery.
+
+
+BARREN as our prospect was on landing, our first day in Greece had
+already been full of interest. Supposing that we should not find
+anything to engage us long, before setting out on our ramble we had
+directed our servant to procure horses, and when we returned we found
+all ready for our departure.
+
+One word with regard to this same servant. We had taken him at Corfu,
+much against my inclination. We had a choice between two, one a
+full-blooded Greek in fustinellas, who in five minutes established
+himself in my good graces, so that nothing but the democratic principle
+of submitting to the will of the majority could make me give him up. He
+held at that time a very good office in the police at Corfu, but the
+eagerness which he showed to get out of regular business and go roving
+warmed me to him irresistibly. He seemed to be distracted between two
+opposing feelings; one the strong bent of his natural vagabond
+disposition to be rambling, and the other a sort of tugging at his
+heartstrings by wife and children, to keep him in a place where he had a
+regular assured living, instead of trusting to the precarious business
+of guiding travellers. He had a boldness and confidence that won me; and
+when he drew on the sand with his yataghan a map of Greece, and told us
+the route he would take us, zigzag across the Gulf of Corinth to Delphi
+and the top of Parnassus, I wondered that my companions could resist
+him.
+
+Our alternative was an Italian from somewhere on the coast of the
+Adriatic, whom I looked upon with an unfavourable eye, because he came
+between me and my Greek; and on the morning of our departure I was
+earnestly hoping that he had overslept himself, or got into some scrape
+and been picked up by the guard; but, most provokingly, he came in time,
+and with more baggage than all of us had together. Indeed, he had so
+much of his own, that, in obedience to Nature's first law, he could not
+attend to ours, and in putting ashore some British soldiers at
+Cephalonia he contrived to let my carpet-bag go with their luggage. This
+did not increase my amiable feeling toward him, and, perhaps, assisted
+in making me look upon him throughout with a jaundiced eye; in fact,
+before we had done with him, I regarded him as a slouch, a knave, and a
+fool, and had the questionable satisfaction of finding that my
+companions, though they sustained him as long as they could, had formed
+very much the same opinion.
+
+It was to him, then, that, on our return from our visit to the widow and
+daughters of Marco Bozzaris, we were indebted for a turnout that seemed
+to astonish even the people of Missilonghi. The horses were miserable
+little animals, hidden under enormous saddles made of great clumps of
+wood over an old carpet or towcloth, and covering the whole back from
+the shoulders to the tail; the luggage was perched on the tops of these
+saddles, and with desperate exertions and the help of the citizens of
+Missilonghi we were perched on the top of the luggage. The little
+animals had a knowing look as they peered from under the superincumbent
+mass, and, supported on either side by the by-standers till we got a
+little steady in our seats, we put forth from Missilonghi. The only
+gentleman of our party was our servant, who followed on a European
+saddle which he had brought for his own use, smoking his pipe with great
+complacency, perfectly satisfied with our appearance and with himself.
+
+It was four o'clock when we crossed the broken walls of Missilonghi. For
+three hours our road lay over a plain extending to the sea. I have no
+doubt, if my Greek had been there, he would have given an interest to
+the road by referring to scenes and incidents connected with the siege
+of Missilonghi; but Demetrius--as he now chose to call himself--knew
+nothing of Greece, ancient or modern; he had no sympathy of feeling with
+the Greeks; had never travelled on this side of the Gulf of Corinth
+before; and so he lagged behind and smoked his pipe.
+
+It was nearly dark when we reached the miserable little village of
+Bokara. We had barely light enough to look around for the best khan in
+which to pass the night. Any of the wretched tenants would have been
+glad to receive us for the little remuneration we might leave with them
+in the morning. The khans were all alike, one room, mud floor and walls,
+and we selected one where the chickens had already gone to roost, and
+prepared to measure off the dirt floor according to our dimensions.
+Before we were arranged a Greek of a better class, followed by half a
+dozen villagers, came over, and, with many regrets for the wretched
+state of the country, invited us to his house. Though dressed in the
+Greek costume, it was evident that he had acquired his manners in a
+school beyond the bounds of his miserable little village, in which his
+house now rose like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, higher than everything
+else, but rather rickety. In a few minutes we heard the death notes of
+some chickens, and at about nine o'clock sat down to a not unwelcome
+meal. Several Greeks dropped in during the evening, and one, a
+particular friend of our host's, supped with us. Both talked French, and
+had that perfect ease of manner and savoir faire which I always remarked
+with admiration in all Greeks who had travelled. They talked much of
+their travels; of time spent in Italy and Germany, and particularly of a
+long residence at Bucharest. They talked, too, of Greece; of her long
+and bitter servitude, her revolution, and her independence; and from
+their enthusiasm I could not but think that they had fought and bled in
+her cause. I certainly was not lying in wait to entrap them, but I
+afterward gathered from their conversation that they had taken occasion
+to be on their travels at the time when the bravest of their countrymen
+were pouring out their blood like water to emancipate their native land.
+A few years before I might have felt indignation and contempt for men
+who had left their country in her hour of utmost need, and returned to
+enjoy the privileges purchased with other men's blood; but I had already
+learned to take the world as I found it, and listened quietly while our
+host told us that, confiding in the permanency of the government secured
+by the three great powers, England, France, and Russia, he had returned
+to Greece, and taken a lease of a large tract of land for fifty years,
+paying a thousand drachms, a drachm being one sixth of a dollar, and one
+tenth of the annual fruits, at the end of which time one half of the
+land under cultivation was to belong to his heirs in fee.
+
+As our host could not conveniently accommodate us all, M. and Demetrius
+returned to the khan at which we had first stopped and where, to judge
+from the early hour at which they came over to us the next morning, they
+had not spent the night as well as we did. At daylight we took our
+coffee, and again perched our luggage on the backs of the horses, and
+ourselves on top of the luggage. Our host wished us to remain with him,
+and promised the next day to accompany us to Padras; but this was not a
+sufficient inducement; and taking leave of him, probably for ever, we
+started for Lepanto.
+
+We rode about an hour on the plain; the mountains towered on our left,
+and the rich soil was broken into rough sandy gullies running down to
+the sea. Our guides had some apprehensions that we should not be able to
+cross the torrents that were running down from the mountain; and when we
+came to the first, and had to walk up along the bank, looking out for a
+place to ford, we fully participated in their apprehensions. Bridges
+were a species of architecture entirely unknown in that part of modern
+Greece; indeed, no bridges could have stood against the mountain
+torrents. There would have been some excitement in encountering these
+rapid streams if we had been well mounted; but, from the manner in which
+we were hitched on our horses, we did not feel any great confidence in
+our seats. Still nothing could be wilder or more picturesque than our
+process in crossing them, except that it might have added somewhat to
+the effect to see one of us floating down stream, clinging to the tail
+of his horse. But we got over or through them all. A range of mountains
+then formed on our right, cutting us off from the sea, and we entered a
+valley lying between the two parallel ranges. At first the road, which
+was exceedingly difficult for a man or a sure-footed horse, lay along a
+beautiful stream, and the whole of the valley extending to the Gulf of
+Lepanto is one of the loveliest regions of country I ever saw. The
+ground was rich and verdant, and, even at that early season of the year,
+blooming with wild flowers of every hue, but wholly uncultivated, the
+olive-trees having all been cut down by the Turks, and without a single
+habitation on the whole route. My Scotch companion, who had a good eye
+for the picturesque and beautiful in natural scenery, was in raptures
+with this valley. I have since travelled in Switzerland, not, however,
+in all the districts frequented by tourists; but in what I saw,
+beautiful as it is, I do not know a place where the wildness of mountain
+scenery is so delightfully contrasted with the softness of a rich
+valley.
+
+At the end of the valley, directly opposite Padras, and on the borders
+of the gulf, is a wild road called Scala Cativa, running along the sides
+of a rocky, mountainous precipice overlooking the sea. It is a wild and
+almost fearful road; in some places I thought it like the perpendicular
+sides of the Palisades; and when the wind blows in a particular
+direction it is impossible to make headway against it. Our host told us
+that we should find difficulty that day; and there was just rudeness
+enough to make us look well to our movements. Directly at our feet was
+the Gulf of Corinth; opposite a range of mountains; and in the distance
+the island of Zante. On the other side of the valley is an extraordinary
+mountain, very high, and wanting a large piece in the middle, as if cut
+out with a chisel, leaving two straight parallel sides, and called by
+the unpoetical name of the armchair. In the wildest pan of the Scala,
+where a very slight struggle would have precipitated us several hundred
+feet into the sea, an enormous shepherd's dog came bounding and barking
+toward us; and we were much relieved when his master, who was hanging
+with his flock of goats on an almost inaccessible height, called him
+away. At the foot of the mountain we entered a rich plain, where the
+shepherds were pasturing their flocks down to the shore of the sea, and
+in about two hours arrived at Lepanto.
+
+After diligent search by Demetrius (the name by which we had taken him,
+whose true name, however, we found to be Jerolamon), and by all the
+idlers whom the arrival of strangers attracted, we procured a room near
+the farthest wall; it was reached by ascending a flight of steps
+outside, and boasted a floor, walls, and an apology for a roof. We piled
+up our baggage in one corner, or, rather, my companions did theirs, and
+went prowling about in search of something to eat. Our servant had not
+fully apprized us of the extreme poverty of the country, the entire
+absence of all accommodations for travellers, and the absolute necessity
+of carrying with us everything requisite for comfort. He was a man of
+few words, and probably thought that, as between servant and master,
+example was better than precept, and that the abundant provision he had
+made for himself might serve as a lesson for us; but, in our case, the
+objection to this mode of teaching was, that it came too late to be
+profitable. At the foot of the hill fronting the sea was an open place,
+in one side of which was a little cafteria, where all the good-for-nothing
+loungers of Lepanto were assembled. We bought a loaf of bread and some
+eggs, and, with a cup of Turkish coffee, made our evening meal.
+
+We had an hour before dark, and strolled along the shore. Though in a
+ruinous condition, Lepanto is in itself interesting, as giving an exact
+idea of an ancient Greek city, being situated in a commanding position
+on the side of a mountain running down to the sea, with its citadel on
+the top, and enclosed by walls and turrets. The port is shut within the
+walls, which run into the sea, and are erected on the foundations of the
+ancient Naupactus. At a distance was the promontory of Actium, where
+Cleopatra, with her fifty ships, abandoned Antony, and left to Augustus
+the empire of the world; and directly before us, its surface dotted with
+a few straggling Greek caiques, was the scene of a battle which has rung
+throughout the world, the great battle of the Cross against the
+Crescent, where the allied forces of Spain, Venice, and the pope,
+amounting to nearly three hundred sail, under the command of Don John of
+Austria, humbled for ever the naval pride of the Turks. One hundred and
+thirty Turkish galleys were taken and fifty-five sunk; thirty thousand
+Turks were killed, ten thousand taken prisoners, fifteen thousand
+Christian slaves delivered; and Pope Pius VI., with holy fervour,
+exclaimed, "There was a man sent from God, and his name was John."
+Cervantes lost his left hand in this battle; and it is to wounds he
+received here that he makes a touching allusion when reproached by a
+rival: "What I cannot help feeling deeply is, that I am stigmatized with
+being old and maimed, as though it belonged to me to stay the course of
+time; or as though my wounds had been received in some tavern broil,
+instead of the most lofty occasion which past ages have yet seen, or
+which shall ever be seen by those to come. The scars which the soldier
+wears on his person, instead of badges of infamy, are stars to guide the
+daring in the path of glory. As for mine, though they may not shine in
+the eyes of the envious, they are at least esteemed by those who know
+where they were received; and, even was it not yet too late to choose, I
+would rather remain as I am, maimed and mutilated, than be now whole of
+my wounds, without having taken part in so glorious an achievement."
+
+I shall, perhaps, be reproached for mingling with the immortal names of
+Don John of Austria and Cervantes those of George Wilson, of Providence,
+Rhode Island, and James Williams, a black of Baltimore, cook on board
+Lord Cochrane's flagship in the great battle between the Greek and
+Turkish fleets. George Wilson was a gunner on board one of the Greek
+ships, and conducted himself with so much gallantry, that Lord Cochrane,
+at a dinner in commemoration of the event, publicly drank his health. In
+the same battle James Williams, who had lost a finger in the United
+States service under Decatur at Algiers, and had conducted himself with
+great coolness and intrepidity in several engagements, when no Greek
+could be found to take the helm, volunteered his services, and was
+struck down by a splinter, which broke his legs and arms. The historian
+will probably never mention these gallant fellows in his quarto volumes;
+but I hope the American traveller, as he stands at sunset by the shore
+of the Gulf of Lepanto, and recalls to mind the great achievements of
+Don John and Cervantes, will not forget _George Wilson_ and _James
+Williams_.
+
+At evening we returned to our room, built a fire in the middle, and,
+with as much dignity as we could muster, sitting on the floor, received
+a number of Greek visiters. When they left us we wrapped ourselves in
+our cloaks and lay down to sleep. Sleep, however, is not always won when
+wooed. Sometimes it takes the perverse humour of the wild Irish boy:
+"The more you call me, the more I won't come." Our room had no chimney;
+and though, as I lay all night looking up at the roof, there appeared to
+be apertures enough to let out the smoke, it seemed to have a loving
+feeling toward us in our lowly position, and clung to us so closely that
+we were obliged to let the fire go out, and lie shivering till morning.
+
+Every schoolboy knows how hard it is to write poetry, but few know the
+physical difficulties of climbing the poetical mountain itself. We had
+made arrangements to sleep the next night at Castri, by the side of the
+sacred oracle of Delphi, a mile up Parnassus. Our servant wanted to
+cross over and go up on the other side of the gulf, and entertained us
+with several stories of robberies committed on this road, to which we
+paid no attention. The Greeks who visited us in the evening related,
+with much detail, a story of a celebrated captain of brigands having
+lately returned to his haunt on Parnassus, and attacked nine Greek
+merchants, of whom he killed three; the recital of which interesting
+incident we ascribed to Demetrius, and disregarded.
+
+Early in the morning we mounted our horses and started for Parnassus. At
+the gate of the town we were informed that it was necessary, before
+leaving, to have a passport from the eparchos, and I returned to procure
+it. The eparchos was a man about forty-five, tall and stout, with a
+clear olive complexion and a sharp black eye, dressed in a rich Greek
+costume, and, fortunately, able to speak French. He was sitting
+cross-legged on a divan, smoking a pipe, and looking out upon the sea;
+and when I told him my business, he laid down his pipe, repeated the
+story of the robbery and murder that we had heard the night before, and
+added that we must abandon the idea of travelling that road. He said,
+farther, that the country was in a distracted state; that poverty was
+driving men to desperation; and that, though they had driven out the
+Turks, the Greeks were not masters of their own country. Hearing that I
+was an American, and as if in want of a bosom in which to unburden
+himself, and as one assured of sympathy, he told me the whole story of
+their long and bloody struggle for independence, and the causes that now
+made the friends of Greece tremble for her future destiny. I knew that
+the seat of the muses bore a rather suspicious character, and, in fact,
+that the rocks and caves about Parnassus were celebrated as the abodes
+of robbers, but I was unwilling to be driven from our purpose of
+ascending it. I went to the military commandant, a Bavarian officer, and
+told him what I had just heard from the eparchos. He said frankly that
+he did not know much of the state of the country, as he had but lately
+arrived in it; but, with the true Bavarian spirit, advised me, as a
+general rule, not to believe anything a Greek should tell me. I returned
+to the gate, and made my double report to my companions. Dr. W. returned
+with me to the eparchos, where the latter repeated, with great
+earnestness, all he had told me; and when I persisted in combating his
+objections, shrugged his shoulders in a manner that seemed to say, "your
+blood be on your own heads;" that he had done his duty, and washed his
+hands of the consequences. As we were going out he called me back, and,
+recurring to our previous conversation, said that he had spoken to me as
+an American more freely than he would have done to a stranger, and
+begged that, as I was going to Athens, I would not repeat his words
+where they could do him injury. I would not mention the circumstance
+now, but that the political clouds which then hung over the horizon of
+Greece have passed away; King Otho has taken his seat on the throne, and
+my friend has probably long since been driven or retired from public
+life. I was at that time a stranger to the internal politics of Greece,
+but I afterward found that the eparchos was one of a then powerful body
+of Greeks opposed to the Bavarian influence, and interested in
+representing the state of the country as more unsettled than it really
+was. I took leave of him, however, as one who had intended me a
+kindness, and, returning to the gate, found our companion sitting on his
+horse, waiting the result of our farther inquiries. Both he and my
+fellow envoy were comparatively indifferent upon the subject, while I
+was rather bent on drinking from the Castalian fount, and sleeping on
+the top of Parnassus. Besides, I was in a beautiful condition to be
+robbed. I had nothing but what I had on my back, and I felt sure that a
+Greek mountain robber would scorn my stiff coat and pantaloons and black
+hat. My companions, however were not so well situated, particularly M.,
+who had drawn money at Corfu, and had no idea of trusting it to the
+tender mercies of a Greek bandit. In the teeth of the advice we had
+received, it would, perhaps, have been foolhardy to proceed; and, to my
+great subsequent regret, for the first and the last time in my
+ramblings, I was turned aside from my path by fear of perils on the
+road. Perhaps, after all, I had a lucky escape; for, if the Greek
+tradition be true, whoever sleeps on the mountain becomes an inspired
+poet or a madman, either of which, for a professional man, is a
+catastrophe to be avoided.
+
+Our change of plan suited Demetrius exactly; he had never travelled on
+this side of the Gulf of Corinth; and, besides that, he considered it a
+great triumph that his stories of robbers were confirmed by others,
+showing his superior knowledge of the state of the country; he was glad
+to get on a road which he had travelled before, and on which he had a
+chance of meeting some of his old travelling acquaintance. In half an
+hour he had us on board a caique. We put out from the harbour of Lepanto
+with a strong and favourable wind; our little boat danced lightly over
+the waters of the Gulf of Corinth; and in three hours, passing between
+the frowning castles of Romelia and Morea, under the shadow of the walls
+of which were buried the bodies of the Christians who fell in the great
+naval battle, we arrived at Padras.
+
+The first thing we recognised was the beautiful little cutter which we
+had left at Missilonghi, riding gracefully at anchor in the harbour, and
+the first man we spoke to on landing was our old friend the captain. We
+exchanged a cordial greeting, and he conducted us to Mr. Robertson, the
+British vice-consul, who, at the moment of our entering, was in the act
+of directing a letter to me at Athens. The subject was my interesting
+carpet-bag. There being no American consul at Padras, I had taken the
+liberty of writing to Mr. Robertson, requesting him, if my estate should
+find its way into his hands, to forward it to me at Athens, and the
+letter was to assure me of his attention to my wishes. It may be
+considered treason against classical taste, but it consoled me somewhat
+for the loss of Parnassus to find a stranger taking so warm an interest
+in my fugitive habiliments.
+
+There was something, too, in the appearance of Padras, that addressed
+itself to other feelings than those connected with the indulgence of a
+classical humour. Our bones were still aching with the last night's
+rest, or, rather, the want of it, at Lepanto; and when we found
+ourselves in a neat little locanda, and a complaisant Greek asked us
+what we would have for dinner, and showed us our beds for the night, we
+almost agreed that climbing Parnassus and such things were fit only for
+boys just out of college.
+
+Padras is beautifully situated at the mouth of the Gulf of Corinth, and
+the windows of our locanda commanded a fine view of the bold mountains
+on the opposite side of the gulf, and the parallel range forming the
+valley which leads to Missilonghi. It stands on the site of the ancient
+Patrć, enumerated by Herodotus among the twelve cities of Achaia. During
+the intervals of peace in the Peloponnesian war, Alcibiades, about four
+hundred and fifty years before Christ, persuaded its inhabitants to
+build long walls down to the sea. Philip of Macedon frequently landed
+there in his expeditions to Peloponnesus. Augustus Cćsar, after the
+battle of Actium, made it a Roman colony, and sent thither a large body
+of his veteran soldiers; and, in the time of Cicero, Roman merchants
+were settled there just as French and Italians are now. The modern town
+has grown up since the revolution, or rather since the accession of
+Otho, and bears no marks of the desolation at Missilonghi and Lepanto.
+It contains a long street of shops well supplied with European goods;
+the English steamers from Corfu to Malta touch here; and, besides the
+little Greek caiques trading in the Gulf of Corinth, vessels from all
+parts of the Adriatic are constantly in the harbour.
+
+Among others, there was an Austrian man-of-war from Trieste, on her way
+to Alexandria. By a singular fortune, the commandant had been in one of
+the Austrian vessels that carried to New-York the unfortunate Poles; the
+only Austrian man-of-war which had ever been to the United States. A day
+or two after their arrival at New-York I had taken a boat at the Battery
+and gone on board this vessel, and had met the officers at some parties
+given to them at which he had been present; and though we had no actual
+acquaintance with each other, these circumstances were enough to form an
+immediate link between us, particularly as he was enthusiastic in his
+praises of the hospitality of our citizens and the beauty of our women.
+Lest, however, any of the latter should be vainglorious at hearing that
+their praises were sounded so far from home, I consider it my duty to
+say that the commandant was almost blind, very slovenly, always smoking
+a pipe, and generally a little tipsy.
+
+Early in the morning we started for Athens. Our turnout was rather
+better than at Missilonghi, but not much. The day, however, was fine;
+the cold wind which, for several days, had been blowing down the Gulf
+of Corinth, had ceased, and the air was warm, and balmy, and
+invigorating. We had already found that Greece had something to attract
+the stranger besides the recollections of her ancient glories, and often
+forgot that the ground we were travelling was consecrated by historians
+and poets, in admiration of its own wild and picturesque beauty. Our
+road for about three hours lay across a plain, and then close along the
+gulf, sometimes winding by the foot of a wild precipitous mountain, and
+then again over a plain, with the mountains rising at some distance on
+our right. Sometimes we rose and crossed their rugged summits, and again
+descended to the seashore. On our left we had constantly the gulf,
+bordered on the opposite side by a range of mountains sometimes receding
+and then rising almost out of the water, while high above the rest rose
+the towering summits of Parnassus covered with snow.
+
+It was after dark when we arrived at Vostitza, beautifully situated on
+the banks of the Gulf of Corinth. This is the representative of the
+ancient Ćgium, one of the most celebrated cities in Greece, mentioned by
+Homer as having supplied vessels for the Trojan war, and in the second
+century containing sixteen sacred edifices, a theatre, a portico, and an
+agora. For many ages it was the seat of the Achaian Congress. Probably
+the worthy delegates who met here to deliberate upon the affairs of
+Greece had better accommodations than we obtained, or they would be
+likely, I should imagine, to hold but short sessions.
+
+We stopped at a vile locanda, the only one in the place, where we found
+a crowd of men in a small room, gathered around a dirty table, eating,
+one of whom sprang up and claimed me as an old acquaintance. He had on
+a Greek capote and a large foraging cap slouched over his eyes, so that
+I had some difficulty in recognising him as an Italian who, at Padras,
+had tried to persuade me to go by water up to the head of the gulf. He
+had started that morning, about the same time we did, with a crowd of
+passengers, half of whom were already by the ears. Fortunately, they
+were obliged to return to their boats, and left all the house to us;
+which, however, contained little besides a strapping Greek, who called
+himself its proprietor.
+
+Before daylight we were again in the saddle. During the whole day's ride
+the scenery was magnificent. Sometimes we were hemmed in as if for ever
+enclosed in an amphitheatre of wild and gigantic rocks; then from some
+lofty summit we looked out upon lesser mountains, broken, and torn, and
+thrown into every wild and picturesque form, as if by an earthquake; and
+after riding among deep dells and craggy steeps, yawning ravines and
+cloud-capped precipices, we descended to a quiet valley and the
+seashore.
+
+At about four o'clock we came down, for the last time, to the shore, and
+before us, at some distance, espied a single khan, standing almost on
+the edge of the water. It was a beautiful resting-place for a traveller;
+the afternoon was mild, and we walked on the shore till the sun set. The
+khan was sixty or seventy feet long, and contained an upper room running
+the whole length of the building. This room was our bedchamber. We built
+a fire at one end, made tea, and roasted some eggs, the smoke ascending
+and curling around the rafters, and finally passing out of the openings
+in the roof; we stretched ourselves in our cloaks and, with the murmur
+of the waves in our ears, looked through the apertures in the roof upon
+the stars, and fell asleep.
+
+About the middle of the night the door opened with a rude noise, and a
+tall Greek, almost filling the doorway, stood on the threshold. After
+pausing a moment he walked in, followed by half a dozen gigantic
+companions, their tall figures, full dresses, and the shining of their
+pistols and yataghans wearing a very ugly look to a man just roused from
+slumber. But they were merely Greek pedlers or travelling merchants,
+and, without any more noise, kindled the fire anew, drew their capotes
+around them, stretched themselves upon the floor, and were soon asleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+    Quarrel with the Landlord.--Ćgina.--Sicyon.--Corinth.--A
+      distinguished Reception.--Desolation of Corinth.--The
+      Acropolis.--View from the Acropolis.--Lechćum and Cenchreć.--Kaka
+      Scala.--Arrival at Athens.
+
+
+IN the morning Demetrius had a roaring quarrel with the keeper of the
+locanda, in which he tried to keep back part of the money we gave him to
+pay for us. He did this, however, on principle, for we had given twice
+as much as our lodging was worth, and no man ought to have more. His
+character was at stake in preventing any one from cheating us too much;
+and, in order to do this, he stopped our funds in transitu.
+
+We started early, and for some time our road lay along the shore. It was
+not necessary, surrounded by such magnificent scenery, to draw upon
+historical recollections for the sake of giving interest to the road;
+still it did not diminish that interest to know that, many centuries
+ago, great cities stood here, whose sites are now desolate or occupied
+as the miserable gathering-places of a starving population. Directly
+opposite Parnassus, and at the foot of a hill crowned with the ruins of
+an acropolis, in perfect desolation now, stood the ancient Ćgira; once
+numbering a population of ten thousand inhabitants, and in the second
+century containing three hiera, a temple, and another sacred edifice.
+Farther on, and toward the head of the Gulf of Corinth, the miserable
+village of Basilico stands on the site of the ancient Sicyon, boasting
+as high an antiquity as any city in Greece, and long celebrated as the
+first of her schools of painting. In five hours we came in sight of the
+Acropolis of Corinth, and, shortly after, of Corinth itself.
+
+The reader need not fear my plunging him deeply into antiquities. Greece
+has been explored, and examined, and written upon, till the subject is
+almost threadbare; and I do not flatter myself that I discovered in it
+anything new. Still no man from such a distant country as mine can find
+himself crossing the plain of Corinth, and ascending to the ancient
+city, without a strange and indescribable feeling. We have no old
+monuments, no classical associations; and our history hardly goes beyond
+the memory of that venerable personage, "the oldest inhabitant." Corinth
+is so old that its early records are blended with the history of the
+heathen gods. The Corinthians say that it was called after the son of
+Jupiter, and its early sovereigns were heroes of the Grecian mythology.
+It was the friend of Sparta and the rival of Athens; the first city to
+build war-galleys and send forth colonies, which became great empires.
+It was the assembling-place of their delegates, who elected Philip, and
+afterward Alexander the Great, to conduct the war against the Persians.
+In painting, sculpture, and architecture surpassing all the achievements
+of Greece, or which the genius of man has ever since accomplished.
+Conquered by the then barbarous Romans, her walls were razed to the
+ground, her men put to the sword, her women and children sold into
+captivity, and the historian who records her fall writes that he saw the
+finest pictures thrown wantonly on the ground, and Roman soldiers
+playing on them at draughts and dice. For many years deserted, Corinth
+was again peopled; rose rapidly from its ruins; and, when St. Paul
+abode there "a year and six months"--to the Christian the most
+interesting period in her history--she was again a populous city, and
+the Corinthians a luxurious people.
+
+Its situation in the early ages of the world could not fail to make it a
+great commercial emporium. In the inexperienced navigation of early
+times it was considered difficult and dangerous to go around the point
+of the Peloponnesus, and there was a proverb, "Before the mariner
+doubles Cape Malea, he should forget all he holds dearest in the world."
+Standing on the isthmus commanding the Adriatic and Ćgean Seas;
+receiving in one hand the riches of Asia and in the other those of
+Europe; distributing them to every quarter of the then known world,
+wealth followed commerce, and then came luxury and extravagance to such
+an extent that it became a proverb, "It is not for every man to go to
+Corinth."
+
+As travellers having regard to supper and lodging, we should have been
+glad to see some vestige of its ancient luxury; but times are changed;
+the ruined city stands where stood Corinth of old, but it has fallen
+once more; the sailor no longer hugs the well-known coasts, but launches
+fearlessly into the trackless ocean, and Corinth can never again be what
+she has been.
+
+Our servant had talked so much of the hotel at Corinth, that perhaps the
+idea of bed and lodging was rather too prominent in our reveries as we
+approached the fallen city. He rode on before to announce our coming,
+and, working our way up the hill through narrow streets, stared at by
+all the men, followed by a large representation from the juvenile
+portion of the modern Corinthians, and barked at by the dogs, we turned
+into a large enclosure, something like a barnyard, on which opened a
+ruined balcony forming the entrance to the hotel. Demetrius was standing
+before it with our host, as unpromising a looking scoundrel as ever took
+a traveller in. He had been a notorious captain of brigands, and when
+his lawless band was broken up and half of its number hanged, he could
+not overcome his disposition to prey upon travellers, but got a couple
+of mattresses and bedsteads, and set up a hotel at Corinth. Demetrius
+had made a bargain for us at a price that made him hang his head when he
+told it, and we were so indignant at the extortion that we at first
+refused to dismount. Our host stood aloof, being used to such scenes,
+and perfectly sure that, after storming a little, we should be glad to
+take the only beds between Padras and Athens. In the end, however, we
+got the better both of him and Demetrius; for, as he had fixed separate
+prices for dinner, beds, and breakfast, we went to a little Greek
+coffee-house, and raised half Corinth to get us something to eat, and
+paid him only for our lodging.
+
+We had a fine afternoon before us, and our first movement was to the
+ruins of a temple, the only monument of antiquity in Corinth. The city
+has been so often sacked and plundered, that not a column of the
+Corinthian order exists in the place from which it derives its name.
+Seven columns of the old temple are still standing, fluted and of the
+Doric order, though wanting in height the usual proportion to the
+diameter; built probably before that order had attained its perfection,
+and long before the Corinthian order was invented; though when it was
+built, by whom, or to what god it was consecrated, antiquaries cannot
+agree in deciding. Contrasted with these solitary columns of an unknown
+antiquity are ruins of yesterday. Houses fallen, burned, and black with
+smoke, as if the wretched inmates had fled before the blaze of their
+dwellings; and high above the ruined city, now as in the days when the
+Persian and Roman invaded it, still towers the Acropolis, a sharp and
+naked rock, rising abruptly a thousand feet from the earth, inaccessible
+and impregnable under the science of ancient war; and in all times of
+invasion and public distress, from her earliest history down to the
+bloody days of the late revolution, the refuge of the inhabitants.
+
+[Illustration: Corinth.]
+
+It was late in the afternoon when we set out for the Acropolis. About a
+mile from the city we came to the foot of the hill, and ascended by a
+steep and difficult path, with many turnings and windings, to the first
+gate. Having been in the saddle since early in the morning, we stopped
+several times to rest, and each time lingered and looked out with
+admiration upon the wild and beautiful scenery around us; and we thought
+of the frequently recurring times when hostile armies had drawn up
+before the city at our feet, and the inhabitants, in terror and
+confusion, had hurried up this path and taken refuge within the gate
+before us.
+
+Inside the gate were the ruins of a city, and here, too, we saw the
+tokens of ruthless war; the fire-brand was hardly yet extinguished, and
+the houses were in ruins. Within a few years it has been the stronghold
+and refuge of infidels and Christians, taken and retaken, destroyed,
+rebuilt, and destroyed again, and the ruins of Turkish mosques and
+Christian churches are mingled together in undistinguishable confusion.
+This enclosure is abundantly supplied with water, issuing from the rock,
+and is capable of containing several thousand people. The fountain of
+Pyrene, which supplies the Acropolis, called the most salubrious in
+Greece, is celebrated as that at which Pegasus was drinking when taken
+by Bellerophon. Ascending among ruined and deserted habitations, we came
+to a second gate flanked by towers. A wall about two miles in
+circumference encloses the whole summit of the rock, including two
+principal points which still rise above the rest. One is crowned with a
+tower and the other with a mosque, now in ruins; probably erected where
+once stood a heathen temple. Some have mistaken it for a Christian
+church, but all agree that it is a place built and consecrated to divine
+use, and that, for unknown ages men have gone up to this cloud-capped
+point to worship their Creator. It was a sublime idea to erect on this
+lofty pinnacle an altar to the Almighty. Above us were only the
+unclouded heavens; the sun was setting with that brilliancy which
+attends his departing glory nowhere but in the East; and the sky was
+glowing with a lurid red, as of some great conflagration. The scene
+around and below was wondrously beautiful. Mountains and rivers, seas
+and islands, rocks, forests, and plains, thrown together in perfect
+wantonness, and yet in the most perfect harmony, and every feature in
+the expanded landscape consecrated by the richest associations. On one
+side the Saronic Gulf, with its little islands, and Ćgina and Salamis,
+stretching off to "Sunium's marble height," with the ruins of its temple
+looking out mournfully upon the sea; on the other, the Gulf of Corinth
+or Lepanto, bounded by the dark and dreary mountains of Cytheron, where
+Acteon, gazing at the goddess, was changed into a stag, and hunted to
+death by his own hounds; and where Bacchus, with his train of satyrs and
+frantic bacchantes, celebrated his orgies. Beyond were Helicon, sacred
+to Apollo and the Muses, and Parnassus, covered with snow. Behind us
+towered a range of mountains stretching away to Argos and the ancient
+Sparta, and in front was the dim outline of the temple of the Acropolis
+at Athens. The shades of evening gathered thick around us while we
+remained on the top of the Acropolis, and it was dark long before we
+reached our locanda.
+
+The next morning we breakfasted at the coffee-house, and left Corinth
+wonderfully pleased at having outwitted Demetrius and our brigand host,
+who gazed after us with a surly scowl as we rode away, and probably
+longed for the good old days when, at the head of his hanged companions,
+he could have stopped us at the first mountain-pass and levied
+contributions at his own rate. I probably condemn myself when I say that
+we left this ancient city with such a trifle uppermost in our thoughts,
+but so it was; we bought a loaf of bread as we passed through the
+market-place, and descended to the plain of Corinth. We had still the
+same horses which we rode from Padras; they were miserable animals, and
+I did not mount mine the whole day. Indeed, this is the true way to
+travel in Greece; the country is mountainous, and the road or narrow
+horse-path so rough and precipitous that the traveller is often obliged
+to dismount and walk. The exercise of clambering up the mountains and
+the purity of the air brace every nerve in the body, and not a single
+feature of the scenery escapes the eye.
+
+But, as yet, there are other things beside scenery; on each side of the
+road and within site of each other are the ruins of the ancient cities
+of Lechćum and Cenchreć, the ports of Corinth on the Corinthian and
+Saronic Gulfs; the former once connected with it by two long walls, and
+the road to the latter once lined with temples and sepulchres, the ruins
+of which may still be seen. The isthmus connecting the Peloponnesus with
+the continent is about six miles wide, and Corinth owed her commercial
+greatness to the profits of her merchants in transporting merchandise
+across it. Entire vessels were sometimes carried from one sea and
+launched into the other. The project of a canal across suggested itself
+both to the Greeks and Romans, and there yet exist traces of a ditch
+commenced for that purpose.
+
+On the death of Leonidas, and in apprehension of a Persian invasion, the
+Peloponnesians built a wall across the isthmus from Lechćum to Cenchreć.
+This wall was at one time fortified with a hundred and fifty towers; it
+was often destroyed and as often rebuilt; and in one place, about three
+miles from Corinth, vestiges of it may still be seen. Here were
+celebrated those Isthmian games so familiar to every tyro in Grecian
+literature and history; toward Mount Oneus stands on an eminence an
+ancient mound, supposed to be the tomb of Melicertes, their founder, and
+near it is at this day a grove of the sacred pine, with garlands of the
+leaves of which the victors were crowned.
+
+In about three hours from Corinth we crossed the isthmus, and came to
+the village of Kalamaki on the shore of the Saronic Gulf, containing a
+few miserable buildings, fit only for the miserable people who occupied
+them. Directly on the shore was a large coffee-house enclosed by mud
+walls, and having branches of trees for a roof; and in front was a
+little flotilla of Greek caiques.
+
+Next to the Greek's love for his native mountains is his passion for the
+waters that roll at their feet; and many of the proprietors of the
+rakish little boats in the harbour talked to us of the superior
+advantage of the sea over a mountainous road, and tried to make us
+abandon our horses and go by water to Athens; but we clung to the land,
+and have reason to congratulate ourselves upon having done so, for our
+road was one of the most beautiful it was ever my fortune to travel
+over. For some distance I walked along the shore, on the edge of a plain
+running from the foot of Mount Geranion. The plain was intersected by
+mountain torrents, the channel-beds of which were at that time dry. We
+passed the little village of Caridi, supposed to be the Sidus of
+antiquity, while a ruined church and a few old blocks of marble mark the
+site of ancient Crommyon, celebrated as the haunt of a wild boar
+destroyed by Theseus.
+
+At the other end of the plain we came to the foot of Mount Geranion,
+stretching out boldly to the edge of the gulf, and followed the road
+along its southern side close to and sometimes overhanging the sea. From
+time immemorial this has been called the Kaka Scala, or bad way. It is
+narrow, steep, and rugged, and wild to sublimity. Sometimes we were
+completely hemmed in by impending mountains, and then rose upon a lofty
+eminence commanding an almost boundless view. On the summit of the range
+the road runs directly along the mountain's brink, overhanging the sea,
+and so narrow that two horsemen can scarcely pass abreast; where a
+stumble would plunge the traveller several hundred yards into the waters
+beneath. Indeed, the horse of one of my companions stumbled and fell,
+and put him in such peril that both dismounted and accompanied me on
+foot. In the olden time this wild and rugged road was famous as the
+haunt of the robber Sciron, who plundered the luckless travellers, and
+then threw them from this precipice. The fabulous account is, that
+Theseus, three thousand years before, on his first visit to Athens,
+encountered the famous robber, and tossed him from the same precipice
+whence he had thrown so many better men. According to Ovid, the earth
+and the sea refused to receive the bones of Sciron, which continued for
+some time suspended in the open air, until they were changed into large
+rocks, whose points still appear at the foot of the precipice; and to
+this day, say the sailors, knock the bottoms out of the Greek vessels.
+In later days this road was so infested by corsairs and pirates, that
+even the Turks feared to travel on it; at one place, that looks as
+though it might be intended as a jumping-off point into another world,
+Ino, with her son Melicertes in her arms (so say the Greek poets), threw
+herself into the sea to escape the fury of her husband; and we know
+that in later days St. Paul travelled on this road to preach the gospel
+to the Corinthians.
+
+But, independently of all associations, and in spite of its difficulties
+and dangers, if a man were by accident placed on the lofty height
+without knowing where he was, he would be struck with the view which it
+commands, as one of the most beautiful that mortal eyes ever beheld. It
+was my fortune to pass over it a second time on foot, and I often seated
+myself on some wild point, and waited the coming up of my muleteers,
+looking out upon the sea, calm and glistening as if plated with silver,
+and studded with islands in continuous clusters stretching away into the
+Ćgean.
+
+During the greater part of the passage of the Kaka Scala my companions
+walked with me; and, as we always kept in advance, when we seated
+ourselves on some rude rock overhanging the sea to wait for our beasts
+and attendants, few things could be more picturesque than their
+approach.
+
+On the summit of the pass we fell into the ancient paved way that leads
+from Attica into the Peloponnesus, and walked over the same pavement
+which the Greeks travelled, perhaps, three thousand years ago. A ruined
+wall and gate mark the ancient boundary; and near this an early
+traveller observed a large block of white marble projecting over the
+precipice, and almost ready to fall into the sea, which bore an
+inscription, now illegible. Here it is supposed stood the Stčle erected
+by Theseus, bearing on one side the inscription, "Here is Peloponnesus,
+not Ionia;" and on the other the equally pithy notification, "Here is
+not Peloponnesus, but Ionia." It would be a pretty place of residence
+for a man in misfortune; for, besides the extraordinary beauty of the
+scenery, by a single step he might avoid the service of civil process,
+and set the sheriff of Attica or the Peloponnesus at defiance.
+Descending, we saw before us a beautiful plain, extending from the foot
+of the mountain to the sea, and afar off, on an eminence commanding the
+plain, was the little town of Megara.
+
+It is unfortunate for the reader that every ruined village on the road
+stands on the site of an ancient city. The ruined town before us was the
+birthplace of Euclid, and the representative of that Megara which is
+distinguished in history more than two thousand years ago; which sent
+forth its armies in the Persian and Peloponnesian wars; alternately the
+ally and enemy of Corinth and Athens; containing numerous temples, and
+the largest public houses in Greece; and though exposed, with her other
+cities, to the violence of a fierce democracy, as is recorded by the
+historian, "the Megareans retained their independence and lived in
+peace." As a high compliment, the people offered to Alexander the Great
+the freedom of their city. When we approached it its appearance was a
+speaking comment upon human pride.
+
+It had been demolished and burned by Greeks and Turks, and now presented
+little more than a mass of blackened ruins. A few apartments had been
+cleared out and patched up, and occasionally I saw a solitary figure
+stalking amid the desolation.
+
+I had not mounted my horse all day; had kicked out a pair of Greek shoes
+on my walk, and was almost barefoot when I entered the city. A little
+below the town was a large building enclosed by a high wall, with a
+Bavarian soldier lounging at the gate. We entered, and found a good
+coffee-room below, and a comfortable bed chamber above, where we found
+good quilts and mattresses, and slept like princes.
+
+Early in the morning we set out for Athens, our road for some time lying
+along the sea. About half way to the Pirćus, a ruined village, with a
+starving population, stands on the site of the ancient Eleusis, famed
+throughout all Greece for the celebration of the mysterious rites of
+Ceres. The magnificent temple of the goddess has disappeared, and the
+colossal statue made by the immortal Phidias now adorns the vestibule of
+the University at Cambridge. We lingered a little while in the village,
+and soon after entered the Via Sacra, by which, centuries ago, the
+priests and people moved in solemn religious processions from Athens to
+the great temple of Ceres. At first we passed underneath the cliff along
+the shore, then rose by a steep ascent among the mountains, barren and
+stony, and wearing an aspect of desolation equal to that of the Roman
+Campagna; then we passed through a long defile, upon the side of which,
+deeply cut in the rock, are seen the marks of chariot-wheels; perhaps of
+those used in the sacred processions. We passed the ruined monastery of
+Daphne, in a beautifully picturesque situation, and in a few minutes saw
+the rich plain of Attica; and our muleteers and Demetrius, with a burst
+of enthusiasm, perhaps because the journey was ended, clapped their
+hands and cried out, "Atinć! Atinć!"
+
+The reader, perhaps, trembles at the name of Athens, but let him take
+courage. I promise to let him off easily. A single remark, however,
+before reaching it. The plain of Attica lies between two parallel ranges
+of mountains, and extends from the sea many miles back into the
+interior. On the border of the sea stands the Pirćus, now, as in former
+times, the harbour of the city, and toward the east, on a little
+eminence, Athens itself, like the other cities in Greece, presenting a
+miserable appearance, the effects of protracted and relentless wars. But
+high above the ruins of the modern city towers the Acropolis, holding up
+to the skies the ruined temples of other days, and proclaiming what
+Athens was. We wound around the temple of Theseus, the most beautiful
+and perfect specimen of architecture that time has spared; and in
+striking contrast with this monument of the magnificence of past days,
+here, in the entrance to the city, our horses were struggling and
+sinking up to their saddle-girths in the mud.
+
+We did in Athens what we should have done in Boston or Philadelphia;
+rode up to the best hotel, and, not being able to obtain accommodations
+there, rode to another; where, being again refused admittance, we were
+obliged to distribute ourselves into three parcels. Dr. Willet went to
+Mr. Hill's (of whom more anon). M. found entrance at a new hotel in the
+suburbs, and I betook myself to the Hotel de France. The garçon was
+rather bothered when I threw him a pair of old boots which I had hanging
+at my saddle-bow, and told him to take care of my baggage; he asked me
+when the rest would come up; and hardly knew what to make of me when I
+told him that was all I travelled with.
+
+I was still standing in the court of the hotel, almost barefoot, and
+thinking of the prosperous condition of the owner of a dozen shirts, and
+other things conforming, when Mr. Hill came over and introduced himself;
+and telling me that his house was the house of every American, asked me
+to waive ceremony and bring my luggage over at once. This was again
+hitting my sore point; everybody seemed to take a special interest in
+my luggage, and I was obliged to tell my story more than once. I
+declined Mr. Hill's kind invitation, but called upon him early the next
+day, dined with him, and, during the whole of my stay in Athens, was in
+the habit, to a great extent, of making his house my home; and this, I
+believe, is the case with all the Americans who go there; besides which,
+some borrow his money, and others his clothes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+    American Missionary School.--Visit to the School.--Mr. Hill and the
+      Male Department.--Mrs. Hill and the Female Department.--Maid of
+      Athens.--Letter from Mr. Hill.--Revival of Athens.--Citizens of
+      the World.
+
+
+THE first thing we did in Athens was to visit the American missionary
+school. Among the extraordinary changes of an ever-changing world, it is
+not the least that the young America is at this moment paying back the
+debt which the world owes to the mother of science, and the citizen of a
+country which the wisest of the Greeks never dreamed of, is teaching the
+descendants of Plato and Aristotle the elements of their own tongue. I
+did not expect among the ruins of Athens to find anything that would
+particularly touch my national feelings, but it was a subject of deep
+and interesting reflection that, in the city which surpassed all the
+world in learning, where Socrates, and Plato, and Aristotle taught, and
+Cicero went to study, the only door of instruction was that opened by
+the hands of American citizens, and an American missionary was the only
+schoolmaster; and I am ashamed to say that I was not aware of the
+existence of such an institution until advised of it by my friend Dr. W.
+
+In eighteen hundred and thirty the Rev. Messrs. Hill and Robinson, with
+their families, sailed from this city (New-York) as the agents of the
+Episcopal missionary society, to found schools in Greece. They first
+established themselves in the Island of Tenos; but, finding that it was
+not the right field for their labours, employed themselves in acquiring
+a knowledge of the language, and of the character and habits of the
+modern Greeks. Their attention was directed to Athens, and in the spring
+of eighteen hundred and thirty-one they made a visit to that city, and
+were so confirmed in their impressions, that they purchased a lot of
+ground on which to erect edifices for a permanent establishment, and, in
+the mean time, rented a house for the immediate commencement of a
+school. They returned to Tenos for their families and effects, and again
+arrived at Athens about the end of June following. From the deep
+interest taken in their struggle for liberty, and the timely help
+furnished them in their hour of need, the Greeks were warmly
+prepossessed in favour of our countrymen; and the conduct of the
+missionaries themselves was so judicious, that they were received with
+the greatest respect and the warmest welcome by the public authorities
+and the whole population of Athens. Their furniture, printing-presses,
+and other effects were admitted free of duties; and it is but justice to
+them to say that, since that time, they have moved with such discretion
+among an excitable and suspicious people, that, while they have advanced
+in the great objects of their mission, they have grown in the esteem and
+good-will of the best and most influential inhabitants of Greece; and so
+great was Mr. Hill's confidence in their affections, that, though there
+was at that time a great political agitation, and it was apprehended
+that Athens might again become the scene of violence and bloodshed, he
+told me he had no fears, and felt perfectly sure that, in any
+outbreaking of popular fury, himself and family, and the property of the
+mission, would be respected.[1]
+
+In the middle of the summer of their arrival at Athens, Mrs. Hill
+opened a school for girls in the magazine or cellar of the house in
+which they resided; the first day she had twenty pupils, and in two
+months one hundred and sixty-seven. Of the first ninety-six, not more
+than six could read at all, and that very imperfectly; and not more than
+ten or twelve knew a letter. At the time of our visit the school
+numbered nearly five hundred; and when we entered the large room, and
+the scholars all rose in a body to greet us as Americans, I felt a deep
+sense of regret that, personally, I had no hand in such a work, and
+almost envied the feelings of my companion, one of its patrons and
+founders. Besides teaching them gratitude to those from whose country
+they derived the privileges they enjoyed, Mr. Hill had wisely
+endeavoured to impress upon their minds a respect for the constituted
+authorities, particularly important in that agitated and unsettled
+community; and on one end of the wall, directly fronting the seats of
+the scholars, was printed, in large Greek characters, the text of
+Scripture, "Fear God, honour the king."
+
+It was all important for the missionaries not to offend the strong
+prejudices of the Greeks by any attempt to withdraw the children from
+the religion of their fathers; and the school purports to be, and is
+intended for, the diffusion of elementary education only; but it is
+opened in the morning with prayer, concluding with the Lord's Prayer as
+read in our churches, which is repeated by the whole school aloud; and
+on Sundays, besides the prayers, the creed, and sometimes the Ten
+Commandments, are recited, and a chapter from the Gospels is read aloud
+by one of the scholars, the missionaries deeming this more expedient
+than to conduct the exercises themselves. The lesson for the day is
+always the portion appointed for the gospel of the day in their own
+church; and they close by singing a hymn. The room is thrown open to the
+public, and is frequently resorted to by the parents of the children and
+strangers; some coming, perhaps, says Mr. Hill, to "hear what these
+babblers will say," and "other some" from a suspicion that "we are
+setters forth of strange gods."
+
+The boys' school is divided into three departments, the lowest under
+charge of a Greek qualified on the Lancasterian system. They were of all
+ages, from three to eighteen; and, as Mr. Hill told me, most of them had
+been half-clad, dirty, ragged little urchins, who, before they were put
+to their A, B, C, or, rather, their Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, had to be
+thoroughly washed, rubbed, scrubbed, doctored, and dressed, and, but for
+the school, would now, perhaps, be prowling vagabonds in the streets of
+Athens, or training for robbery in the mountains. They were a body of
+fine-looking boys, possessing, as Mr. Hill told me, in an extraordinary
+degree, all that liveliness of imagination, that curiosity and eagerness
+after knowledge, which distinguished the Greeks of old, retaining, under
+centuries of dreadful oppression, the recollection of the greatness of
+their fathers, and, what was particularly interesting, many of them
+bearing the great names so familiar in Grecian history; I shook hands
+with a little Miltiades, Leonidas, Aristides, &c., in features and
+apparent intelligence worthy descendants of the immortal men whose names
+they bear. And there was one who startled me, he was the son of the
+Maid of Athens! To me the Maid of Athens was almost an imaginary being,
+something fanciful, a creation of the brain, and not a corporeal
+substance, to have a little urchin of a boy. But so it was. The Maid of
+Athens is married. She had a right to marry, no doubt; and it is said
+that there is poetry in married life, and, doubtless, she is a much more
+interesting person now than the Maid of Athens at thirty-six could be;
+but the Maid of Athens is married to a Scotchman! the Maid of Athens is
+now Mrs. Black! wife of George Black. Comment is unnecessary.
+
+But the principal and most interesting part of this missionary school
+was the female department, under the direction of Mrs. Hill, the first,
+and, except at Syra, the only school for females in all Greece, and
+particularly interesting to me from the fact that it owed its existence
+to the active benevolence of my own country-women. At the close of the
+Greek revolution, female education was a thing entirely unknown in
+Greece, and the women of all classes were in a most deplorable state of
+ignorance. When the strong feeling that ran through our country in
+favour of this struggling people had subsided, and Greece was freed from
+the yoke of the Mussulman, an association of ladies in the little town
+of Troy, perhaps instigated somewhat by an inherent love of power and
+extended rule, and knowing the influence of their sex in a cultivated
+state of society, formed the project of establishing at Athens a school
+exclusively for the education of females; and, humble and unpretending
+as was its commencement, it is becoming a more powerful instrument in
+the civilization and moral and religious improvement of Greece, than all
+that European diplomacy has ever done for her. The girls were
+distributed in different classes, according to their age and
+advancement; they had clean faces and hands, a rare thing with Greek
+children, and were neatly dressed, many of them wearing frocks made by
+ladies at home (probably at some of our sewing societies); and some of
+them had attained such an age, and had such fine, dark, rolling eyes as
+to make even a northern temperament feel the powerful influence they
+would soon exercise over the rising, excitable generation of Greeks and
+almost make him bless the hands that were directing that influence
+aright.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Hill accompanied us through the whole establishment, and,
+being Americans, we were everywhere looked upon and received by the
+girls as patrons and fathers of the school, both which characters I
+waived in favour of my friend; the one because he was really entitled to
+it, and the other because some of the girls were so well grown that I
+did not care to be regarded as standing in that venerable relationship.
+The didaskalissas, or teachers, were of this description, and they spoke
+English. Occasionally Mr. Hill called a little girl up to us, and told
+us her history, generally a melancholy one, as, being reduced to the
+extremity of want by the revolution; or an orphan, whose parents had
+been murdered by the Turks; and I had a conversation with a little
+Penelope, who, however, did not look as if she would play the faithful
+wife of Ulysses, and, if I am a judge of physiognomy, would never endure
+widowhood twenty years for any man.
+
+Before we went away the whole school rose at once, and gave us a
+glorious finale with a Greek hymn. In a short time these girls will grow
+up into women and return to their several families; others will succeed
+them, and again go out, and every year hundreds will distribute
+themselves in the cities and among the fastnesses of the mountains, to
+exercise over their fathers, and brothers, and lovers, the influence of
+the education acquired here; instructed in all the arts of woman in
+civilized domestic life, firmly grounded in the principles of morality,
+and of religion purified from the follies, absurdities, and abominations
+of the Greek faith. I have seen much of the missionary labours in the
+East, but I do not know an institution which promises so surely the
+happiest results. If the women are educated, the men cannot remain
+ignorant; if the women are enlightened in religion, the men cannot
+remain debased and degraded Christians.
+
+The ex-secretary Rigos was greatly affected at the appearance of this
+female school; and, after surveying it attentively for some moments,
+pointed to the Parthenon on the summit of the Acropolis, and said to
+Mrs. Hill, with deep emotion, "Lady, you are erecting in Athens a
+monument more enduring and more noble than yonder temple;" and the king
+was so deeply impressed with its value, that, a short time before my
+arrival, he proposed to Mr. Hill to take into his house girls from
+different districts and educate them as teachers, with the view of
+sending them back to their districts, there to organize new schools, and
+carry out the great work of female education. Mr. Hill acceded to the
+proposal, and the American missionary school now stands as the nucleus
+of a large and growing system of education in Greece; and, very
+opportunely for my purpose, within a few days I have received a letter
+from Mr. Hill, in which, in relation to the school, he says, "Our
+missionary establishment is much increased since you saw it; our labours
+are greatly increased, and I think I may say we have now reached the
+summit of what we had proposed to ourselves. We do not think it possible
+that it can be extended farther without much larger means and more
+personal aid. We do not wish or intend to ask for either. We have now
+nearly forty persons residing with us, of whom thirty-five are Greeks,
+all of whom are brought within the influence of the gospel; the greater
+part of them are young girls from different parts of Greece, and even
+from Egypt and Turkey (Greeks, however), whom we are preparing to become
+instructresses of youth hereafter in their various districts. We have
+five hundred, besides, under daily instruction in the different schools
+under our care, and we employ under us in the schools twelve native
+teachers, who have themselves been instructed by us. We have provided
+for three of our dear pupils (all of whom were living with us when you
+were here), who are honourably and usefully settled in life. One is
+married to a person every way suited to her, and both husband and wife
+are in our missionary service. One has charge of the government female
+school at the Pirćus, and supports her father and mother and a large
+family by her salary; and the third has gone with our missionaries to
+Crete, to take charge of the female schools there. We have removed into
+our new house" (of which the foundation was just laid at the time of my
+visit), "and, large as it is, it is not half large enough. We are trying
+to raise ways and means to enlarge it considerably, that we may take
+more boarders under our own roof, which we look up to as the most
+important means of making sure of our labour; for every one who comes to
+reside with us is taken away from the corrupt example exhibited at home,
+and brought within a wholesome influence. Lady Byron has just sent us
+one hundred pounds toward enlarging our house with this view, and we
+have commenced the erection of three additional dormitories with the
+money."
+
+Athens is again the capital of a kingdom. Enthusiasts see in her present
+condition the promise of a restoration to her ancient greatness; but
+reason and observation assure us that the world is too much changed for
+her ever to be what she has been. In one respect, her condition
+resembles that of her best days; for, as her fame then attracted
+strangers from every quarter of the world to study in her schools, so
+now the capital of King Otho has become a great gathering-place of
+wandering spirits from many near and distant regions. For ages difficult
+and dangerous of access, the ancient capital of the arts lay shrouded in
+darkness, and almost cut off from the civilized world. At long
+intervals, a few solitary travellers only found their way to it; but,
+since the revolution, it has again become a place of frequent resort and
+intercourse. It is true that the ancient halls of learning are still
+solitary and deserted, but strangers from every nation now turn hither;
+the scholar to roam over her classic soil, the artist to study her
+ancient monuments, and the adventurer to carve his way to fortune.
+
+The first day I dined at the hotel I had an opportunity of seeing the
+variety of material congregated in the reviving city. We had a long
+table, capable of accommodating about twenty persons. The manner of
+living was ŕ la carte, each guest dining when he pleased; but, by tacit
+consent, at about six o'clock all assembled at the table. We presented a
+curious medley. No two were from the same country. Our discourse was in
+English, French, Italian, German, Greek, Russian, Polish, and I know not
+what else, as if we were the very people stricken with confusion of
+tongues at the Tower of Babel. Dinner over, all fell into French, and
+the conversation became general. Every man present was, in the fullest
+sense of the term, a citizen of the world. It had been the fortune of
+each, whether good or bad, to break the little circle in which so many
+are born, revolve, and die; and the habitual mingling with people of
+various nations had broken down all narrow prejudices, and given to
+every one freedom of mind and force of character. All had seen much, had
+much to communicate, and felt that they had much yet to learn. By some
+accident, moreover, all seemed to have become particularly interested in
+the East. They travelled over the whole range of Eastern politics, and,
+to a certain extent, considered themselves identified with Eastern
+interests. Most of the company were or had been soldiers, and several
+wore uniforms and stars, or decorations of some description. They spoke
+of the different campaigns in Greece in which some of them had served;
+of the science of war; of Marlborough, Eugene, and more modern captains;
+and I remember that they startled my feelings of classical reverence by
+talking of Leonidas at Thermopylć and Miltiades at Marathon in the same
+tone as of Napoleon at Leipsic and Wellington at Waterloo. One of them
+constructed on the table, with the knives and forks and spoons, a map of
+Marathon, and with a sheathed yataghan pointed out the position of the
+Greeks and Persians, and showed where Miltiades, as a general, was
+wrong. They were not blinded by the dust of antiquity. They had been
+knocked about till all enthusiasm and all reverence for the past were
+shaken out of them, and they had learned to give things their right
+names. A French engineer showed us the skeleton of a map of Greece,
+which was then preparing under the direction of the French Geographical
+Society, exhibiting an excess of mountains and deficiency of plain which
+surprised even those who had travelled over every part of the kingdom.
+One had just come from Constantinople, where he had seen the sultan
+going to mosque; another had escaped from an attack of the plague in
+Egypt; a third gave the dimensions of the Temple of the Sun at Baalbeck;
+and a fourth had been at Babylon, and seen the ruins of the Tower of
+Babel. In short, every man had seen something which the others had not
+seen, and all their knowledge was thrown into a common stock. I found
+myself at once among a new class of men; and I turned from him who
+sneered at Miltiades to him who had seen the sultan, or to him who had
+been at Bagdad, and listened with interest, somewhat qualified by
+consciousness of my own inferiority. I was lying in wait, however, and
+took advantage of an opportunity to throw in something about America;
+and, at the sound, all turned to me with an eagerness of curiosity that
+I had not anticipated.
+
+In Europe, and even in England, I had often found extreme ignorance of
+my own country; but here I was astonished to find, among men so familiar
+with all parts of the Old World, such total lack of information about
+the New. A gentleman opposite me, wearing the uniform of the King of
+Bavaria, asked me if I had ever been in America. I told him that I was
+born, and, as they say in Kentucky, raised there. He begged my pardon,
+but doubtfully _suggested_, "You are not black?" and I was obliged to
+explain to him that in our section of America the Indian had almost
+entirely disappeared, and that his place was occupied by the descendants
+of the Gaul and the Briton. I was forthwith received into the
+fraternity, for my home was farther away than any of them had ever been;
+my friend opposite considered me a bijou, asked me innumerable
+questions, and seemed to be constantly watching for the breaking out of
+the cannibal spirit, as if expecting to see me bite my neighbour. At
+first I had felt myself rather a small affair but, before separating,
+_l'Americain_, or _le sauvage_, or finally, _le cannibal_ found himself
+something of a lion.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[1] Since my return home I have seen in a newspaper an account of a
+popular commotion at Syra, in which the printing-presses and books at
+the missionaries were destroyed, and Mr. Robinson was threatened with
+personal violence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+    Ruins of Athens.--Hill of Mars.--Temple of the Winds.--Lantern of
+      Demosthenes.--Arch of Adrian.--Temple of Jupiter Olympus.--Temple
+      of Theseus.--The Acropolis.--The Parthenon.--Pentelican
+      Mountain.--Mount Hymettus.--The Pirćus.--Greek Fleas.--Napoli.
+
+
+THE next morning I began my survey of the ruins of Athens. It was my
+intention to avoid any description of these localities and monuments,
+because so many have preceded me, stored with all necessary knowledge,
+ripe in taste and sound in judgment, who have devoted to them all the
+time and research they so richly merit; but as, in our community,
+through the hurry and multiplicity of business occupations, few are able
+to bestow upon these things much time or attention, and, farthermore, as
+the books which treat of them are not accessible to all, I should be
+doing injustice to my readers if I were to omit them altogether.
+Besides, I should be doing violence to my own feelings, and cannot get
+fairly started in Athens, without recurring to scenes which I regarded
+at the time with extraordinary interest. I have since visited most of
+the principal cities in Europe, existing as well as ruined and I hardly
+know any to which I recur with more satisfaction than Athens. If the
+reader tire in the brief reference I shall make, he must not impute it
+to any want of interest in the subject; and as I am not in the habit of
+going into heroics, he will believe me when I say that, if he have any
+reverence for the men or things consecrated by the respect and
+admiration of ages, he will find it called out at Athens. In the hope
+that I may be the means of inducing some of my countrymen to visit that
+famous city, I will add another inducement by saying that he may have,
+as I had, Mr. Hill for a cicerone. This gentleman is familiar with every
+locality and monument around or in the city, and, which I afterward
+found to be an unusual thing with those living in places consecrated in
+the minds of strangers, he retains for them all that freshness of
+feeling which we possess who only know them from books and pictures.
+
+By an arrangement made the evening before, early in the morning of my
+second day in Athens Mr. Hill was at the door of my hotel to attend us.
+As we descended the steps a Greek stopped him, and, bowing with his hand
+on his heart, addressed him in a tone of earnestness which we could not
+understand; but we were struck with the sonorous tones of his voice and
+the musical cadence of his sentences; and when he had finished, Mr. Hill
+told us that he had spoken in a strain which, in the original, was
+poetry itself, beginning, "Americanos, I am a Stagyrite. I come from the
+land of Aristotle, the disciple of Plato," &c., &c.; telling him the
+whole story of his journey from the ancient Stagyra and his arrival in
+Athens; and that, having understood that Mr. Hill was distributing books
+among his countrymen, he begged for one to take home with him. Mr. Hill
+said that this was an instance of every-day occurrence, showing the
+spirit of inquiry and thirst for knowledge among the modern Greeks. This
+little scene with a countryman of Aristotle was a fit prelude to our
+morning ramble.
+
+The house occupied by the American missionary as a school stands on the
+site of the ancient Agora or market-place, where St. Paul "disputed
+daily with the Athenians." A few columns still remain; and near them is
+an inscription mentioning the price of oil. The schoolhouse is built
+partly from the ruins of the Agora; and to us it was an interesting
+circumstance, that a missionary from a newly-discovered world was
+teaching to the modern Greeks the same saving religion which, eighteen
+hundred years ago, St. Paul, on the same spot, preached to their
+ancestors.
+
+Winding around the foot of the Acropolis, within the ancient and outside
+the modern wall, we came to the Areopagus or Hill of Mars, where, in the
+early days of Athens, her judges sat in the open air; and, for many
+ages, decided with such wisdom and impartiality, that to this day the
+decisions of the court of Areopagites are regarded as models of judicial
+purity. We ascended this celebrated hill, and stood on the precise spot
+where St. Paul, pointing to the temples which rose from every section of
+the city and towered proudly on the Acropolis, made his celebrated
+address: "Ye men of Athens, I see that in all things ye are too
+superstitious." The ruins of the very temples to which he pointed were
+before our eyes.
+
+Descending, and rising toward the summit of another hill, we came to the
+Pnyx, where Demosthenes, in the most stirring words that ever fell from
+human lips, roused his countrymen against the Macedonian invader. Above,
+on the very summit of the hill, is the old Pnyx, commanding a view of
+the sea of Salamis, and of the hill where Xerxes sat to behold the great
+naval battle. During the reign of the thirty tyrants the Pnyx was
+removed beneath the brow of the hill, excluding the view of the sea,
+that the orator might not inflame the passions of the people by
+directing their eyes to Salamis, the scene of their naval glory. But,
+without this, the orator had material enough; for, when he stood on the
+platform facing the audience, he had before him the city which the
+Athenians loved and the temples in which they worshipped, and I could
+well imagine the irresistible force of an appeal to these objects of
+their enthusiastic devotion, their firesides and altars. The place is
+admirably adapted for public speaking. The side of the hill has been
+worked into a gently inclined plane, semicircular in form, and supported
+in some places by a wall of immense stones. This plain is bounded above
+by the brow of the hill, cut down perpendicularly. In the centre the
+rock projects into a platform about eight or ten feet square, which
+forms the Pnyx or pulpit for the orator. The ascent is by three steps
+cut out of the rock, and in front is a place for the scribe or clerk. We
+stood on this Pnyx, beyond doubt on the same spot where Demosthenes
+thundered his philippics in the ears of the Athenians. On the road
+leading to the Museum hill we entered a chamber excavated in the rock,
+which tradition hallows as the prison of Socrates; and though the
+authority for this is doubtful, it is not uninteresting to enter the
+damp and gloomy cavern wherein, according to the belief of the modern
+Athenians, the wisest of the Greeks drew his last breath. Farther to the
+south is the hill of Philopappus, so called after a Roman governor of
+that name. On the very summit, near the extreme angle of the old wall,
+and one of the most conspicuous objects around Athens, is a monument
+erected by the Roman governor in honour of the Emperor Trajan. The
+marble is covered with the names of travellers, most of whom, like
+Philopappus himself, would never have been heard of but for that
+monument.
+
+Descending toward the Acropolis, and entering the city among streets
+encumbered with ruined houses, we came to the Temple of the Winds, a
+marble octagonal tower, built by Andronicus. On each side is a
+sculptured figure, clothed in drapery adapted to the wind he represents;
+and on the top was formerly a Triton with a rod in his hand, pointing to
+the figure marking the wind. The Triton is gone, and great part of the
+temple buried under ruins. Part of the interior, however, has been
+excavated, and probably, before long, the whole will be restored.
+
+East of the foot of the Acropolis, and on the way to Adrian's Gate, we
+came to the Lantern of Demosthenes (I eschew its new name of the
+Choragic Monument of Lysichus), where, according to an absurd tradition,
+the orator shut himself up to study the rhetorical art. It is considered
+one of the most beautiful monuments of antiquity, and the capitals are
+most elegant specimens of the Corinthian order refined by Attic taste.
+It is now in a mutilated condition, and its many repairs make its
+dilapidation more perceptible. Whether Demosthenes ever lived here or
+not, it derives an interest from the fact that Lord Byron made it his
+residence during his visit to Athens. Farther on, and forming part of
+the modern wall, is the Arch of Adrian, bearing on one side an
+inscription in Greek, "This is the city of Theseus;" and on the other,
+"But this is the city of Adrian." On the arrival of Otho a placard was
+erected, on which was inscribed, "These were the cities of Theseus and
+Adrian, but now of Otho." Many of the most ancient buildings in Athens
+have totally disappeared. The Turks destroyed many of them to construct
+the wall around the city, and even the modern Greeks have not scrupled
+to build their miserable houses with the plunder of the temples in which
+their ancestors worshipped.
+
+Passing under the Arch of Adrian, outside the gate, on the plain toward
+the Ilissus, we came to the ruined Temple of Jupiter Olympus, perhaps
+once the most magnificent in the world. It was built of the purest white
+marble, having a front of nearly two hundred feet, and more than three
+hundred and fifty in length, and contained one hundred and twenty
+columns, sixteen of which are all that now remain; and these, fluted and
+having rich Corinthian capitals, tower more than sixty feet above the
+plain, perfect as when they were reared. I visited these ruins often,
+particularly in the afternoon; they are at all times mournfully
+beautiful, but I have seldom known anything more touching than, when the
+sun was setting, to walk over the marble floor, and look up at the
+lonely columns of this ruined temple. I cannot imagine anything more
+imposing than it must have been when, with its lofty roof supported by
+all its columns, it stood at the gate of the city, its doors wide open,
+inviting the Greeks to worship. That such an edifice should be erected
+for the worship of a heathen god! On the architrave connecting three of
+the columns a hermit built his lonely cell, and passed his life in that
+elevated solitude, accessible only to the crane and the eagle. The
+hermit is long since dead, but his little habitation still resists the
+whistling of the wind, and awakens the curiosity of the wondering
+traveller.
+
+The Temple of Theseus is the last of the principal monuments, but the
+first which the traveller sees on entering Athens. It was built after
+the battle of Marathon, and in commemoration of the victory which drove
+the Persians from the shores of Greece. It is a small but beautiful
+specimen of the pure Doric, built of Pentelican marble, centuries of
+exposure to the open air giving it a yellowish tint, which softens the
+brilliancy of the white. Three Englishmen have been buried within this
+temple. The first time I visited it a company of Greek recruits, with
+some negroes among them, was drawn up in front, going through the manual
+under the direction of a German corporal; and, at the same time, workmen
+were engaged in fitting it up for the coronation of King Otho!
+
+[Illustration: Temple of Jupiter Olympus and Acropolis at Athena.]
+
+These are the principal monuments around the city, and, except the
+temples at Pćstum, they are more worthy of admiration than all the ruins
+in Italy; but towering above them in position, and far exceeding them in
+interest, are the ruins of the Acropolis. I have since wandered among
+the ruined monuments of Egypt and the desolate city of Petra, but I
+look back with unabated reverence to the Athenian Acropolis. Every day I
+had gazed at it from the balcony of my hotel, and from every part of the
+city and suburbs. Early on my arrival I had obtained the necessary
+permit, paid a hurried visit, and resolved not to go again until I had
+examined all the other interesting objects. On the fourth day, with my
+friend M., I went again. We ascended by a broad road paved with stone.
+The summit is enclosed by a wall, of which some of the foundation
+stones, very large, and bearing an appearance of great antiquity, are
+pointed out as part of the wall built by Themistocles after the battle
+of Salamis, four hundred and eighty years before Christ. The rest is
+Venetian and Turkish, falling to decay, and marring the picturesque
+effect of the ruins from below. The guard examined our permit, and we
+passed under the gate. A magnificent propylon of the finest white
+marble, the blocks of the largest size ever laid by human hands, and
+having a wing of the same material on each side, stands at the entrance.
+Though broken and ruined, the world contains nothing like it even now.
+If my first impressions do not deceive me, the proudest portals of
+Egyptian temples suffer in comparison. Passing this magnificent
+propylon, and ascending several steps, we reached the Parthenon or
+ruined Temple of Minerva; an immense white marble skeleton, the noblest
+monument of architectural genius which the world ever saw. Standing on
+the steps of this temple, we had around us all that is interesting in
+association and all that is beautiful in art. We might well forget the
+capital of King Otho, and go back in imagination to the golden age of
+Athens. Pericles, with the illustrious throng of Grecian heroes,
+orators, and sages, had ascended there to worship, and Cicero and the
+noblest of the Romans had gone there to admire; and probably, if the
+fashion of modern tourists had existed in their days, we should see
+their names inscribed with their own hands on its walls. The great
+temple stands on the very summit of the Acropolis, elevated far above
+the Propylća and the surrounding edifices. Its length is two hundred and
+eight feet, and breadth one hundred and two. At each end were two rows
+of eight Doric columns, thirty-four feet high and six feet in diameter,
+and on each side were thirteen more. The whole temple within and without
+was adorned with the most splendid works of art, by the first sculptors
+in Greece, and Phidias himself wrought the statue of the goddess, of
+ivory and gold, twenty-six cubits high, having on the top of her helmet
+a sphinx, with griffins on each of the sides; on the breast a head of
+Medusa wrought in ivory, and a figure of Victory about four cubits high,
+holding a spear in her hand and a shield lying at her feet. Until the
+latter part of the seventeenth century, this magnificent temple, with
+all its ornaments, existed entire. During the siege of Athens by the
+Venetians, the central part was used by the Turks as a magazine; and a
+bomb, aimed with fatal precision or by a not less fatal chance, reached
+the magazine, and, with a tremendous explosion, destroyed a great part
+of the buildings. Subsequently the Turks used it as a quarry, and
+antiquaries and travellers, foremost among whom is Lord Elgin, have
+contributed to destroy "what Goth, and Turk, and Time had spared."
+
+Around the Parthenon, and covering the whole summit of the Acropolis,
+are strewed columns and blocks of polished white marble, the ruins of
+ancient temples. The remains of the Temples of Erectheus and Minerva
+Polias are pre-eminent in beauty; the pillars of the latter are the most
+perfect specimens of the Ionic in existence, and its light and graceful
+proportions are in elegant contrast with the severe and simple majesty
+of the Parthenon. The capitals of the columns are wrought and ornamented
+with a delicacy surpassing anything of which I could have believed
+marble susceptible. Once I was tempted to knock off a corner and bring
+it home, as a specimen of the exquisite skill of the Grecian artist,
+which it would have illustrated better than a volume of description; but
+I could not do it; it seemed nothing less than sacrilege.
+
+Afar off, and almost lost in the distance, rises the Pentelican
+Mountain, from the body of which were hewed the rough rude blocks which,
+wrought and perfected by the sculptor's art, now stand the lofty and
+stately columns of the ruined temple. What labour was expended upon each
+single column! how many were employed in hewing it from its rocky bed,
+in bearing it to the foot of the mountain, transporting it across the
+plain of Attica, and raising it to the summit of the Acropolis! and then
+what time, and skill, and labour, in reducing it from a rough block to a
+polished shaft, in adjusting its proportions, in carving its rich
+capitals, and rearing it where it now stands, a model of majestic grace
+and beauty! Once, under the direction of Mr. Hill, I clambered up to the
+very apex of the pediment, and, lying down at full length, leaned over
+and saw under the frieze the acanthus leaf delicately and beautifully
+painted on the marble, and, being protected from exposure, still
+retaining its freshness of colouring. It was entirely out of sight from
+below, and had been discovered, almost at the peril of his life, by the
+enthusiasm of an English artist. The wind was whistling around me as I
+leaned over to examine it, and, until that moment, I never appreciated
+fully the immense labour employed and the exquisite finish displayed in
+every portion of the temple.
+
+The sentimental traveller must already mourn that Athens has been
+selected as the capital of Greece. Already have speculators and the
+whole tribe of "improvers" invaded the glorious city; and while I was
+lingering on the steps of the Parthenon, a German, who was quietly
+smoking among the ruins, a sort of superintendent whom I had met before,
+came up, and offering me a segar, and leaning against one of the lofty
+columns of the temple, opened upon me with "his plans of city
+improvements;" with new streets, and projected railroads, and the rise
+of lots. At first I almost thought it personal, and that he was making a
+fling at me in allusion to one of the greatest hobbies of my native
+city; but I soon found that he was as deeply bitten as if he had been in
+Chicago or Dunkirk; and the way in which he talked of moneyed
+facilities, the wants of the community, and a great French bank then
+contemplated at the Pirćus, would have been no discredit to some of my
+friends at home. The removal of the court has created a new era in
+Athens; but, in my mind, it is deeply to be regretted that it has been
+snatched from the ruin to which it was tending. Even I, deeply imbued
+with the utilitarian spirit of my country, and myself a quondam
+speculator in "up-town lots," would fain save Athens from the ruthless
+hand of renovation; from the building mania of modern speculators. I
+would have her go on till there was not a habitation among her ruins;
+till she stood, like Pompeii, alone in the wilderness, a sacred desert,
+where the traveller might sit down and meditate alone and undisturbed
+among the relics of the past. But already Athens has become a
+heterogeneous anomaly; the Greeks in their wild costume are jostled in
+the streets by Englishmen, Frenchmen, Italians, Dutchmen, Spaniards, and
+Bavarians, Russians, Danes, and sometimes Americans. European shops
+invite purchasers by the side of Eastern bazars, coffee-houses, and
+billiard-rooms, and French and German restaurants are opened all over
+the city. Sir Pultney Malcolm has erected a house to hire near the site
+of Plato's Academy. Lady Franklin has bought land near the foot of Mount
+Hymettus for a country-seat. Several English gentlemen have done the
+same. Mr. Richmond, an American clergyman, has purchased a farm in the
+neighbourhood; and in a few years, if the "march of improvement"
+continues, the Temple of Theseus will be enclosed in the garden of the
+palace of King Otho; the Temple of the Winds will be concealed by a
+German opera-house, and the Lantern of Demosthenes by a row of
+"three-story houses."
+
+I was not a sentimental traveller, but I visited all the localities
+around Athens, and, therefore, briefly mention that several times I
+jumped over the poetic and perennial Ilissus, trotted my horse over the
+ground where Aristotle walked with his peripatetics, and got muddied up
+to my knees in the garden of Plato.
+
+One morning my Scotch friend and I set out early to ascend Mount
+Hymettus. The mountain is neither high nor picturesque, but a long flat
+ridge of bare rock, the sides cut up into ravines, fissures, and
+gullies. There is an easy path to the summit, but we had no guide, and
+about midday, after a wild scramble, were worn out, and descended
+without reaching the top, which is exceedingly fortunate for the reader,
+as otherwise he would be obliged to go through a description of the view
+therefrom.
+
+Returning, we met the king taking his daily walk, attended by two aids,
+one of whom was young Marco Bozzaris. Otho is tall and thin, and, when I
+saw him, was dressed in a German military frockcoat and cap, and
+altogether, for a king, seemed to be an amiable young man enough. All
+the world speaks well of him, and so do I. We touched our hats to him,
+and he returned the civility; and what could he do more without inviting
+us to dinner? In old times there was a divinity about a king; but now,
+if a king is a gentleman, it is as much as we can expect. He has spent
+his money like a gentleman, that is, he cannot tell what has become of
+it. Two of the three-millions loan are gone, and there is no
+colonization, no agricultural prosperity, no opening of roads, no
+security in the mountains; not a town in Greece but is in ruins, and no
+money to improve them. Athens, however, is to be embellished. With ten
+thousand pounds in the treasury, he is building a palace of white
+Pentelican marble, to cost three hundred thousand pounds.
+
+Otho was very popular, because, not being of age, all the errors of his
+administration were visited upon Count Armansbergh and the regency, who,
+from all accounts, richly deserved it; and it was hoped that, on
+receiving the crown, he would shake off the Bavarians who were preying
+upon the vitals of Greece, and gather around him his native-born
+subjects. In private life he bore a most exemplary character. He had no
+circle of young companions, and passed much of his time in study, being
+engaged, among other things, in acquiring the Greek and English
+languages. His position is interesting, though not enviable; and if, as
+the first king of emancipated Greece, he entertains recollections of her
+ancient greatness, and the ambition of restoring her to her position
+among the nations of the earth, he is doomed to disappointment. Otho is
+since crowned and married. The pride of the Greeks was considerably
+humbled by a report that their king's proposals to several daughters of
+German princes had been rejected; but the king had great reason to
+congratulate himself upon the spirit which induced the daughter of the
+Duke of Oldenburgh to accept his hand. From her childhood she had taken
+an enthusiastic interest in Greek history, and it had been her constant
+wish to visit Greece; and when she heard that Otho had been called to
+the throne, she naively expressed an ardent wish to share it with him.
+Several years afterward, by the merest accident, she met Otho at a
+German watering-place, travelling with his mother, the Queen of Bavaria,
+as the Count de Missilonghi; and in February last she accompanied him to
+Athens, to share the throne which had been the object of her youthful
+wish.
+
+M. dined at my hotel, and, returning to his own, he was picked up and
+carried to the guardhouse. He started for his hotel without a lantern,
+the requisition to carry one being imperative in all the Greek and
+Turkish cities; the guard could not understand a word he said until he
+showed them some money, which made his English perfectly intelligible;
+and they then carried him to a Bavarian corporal, who, after two hours'
+detention, escorted him to his hotel. After that we were rather careful
+about staying out late at night.
+
+"Thursday. I don't know the day of the month." I find this in my notes,
+the caption of a day of business, and at this distance of time will not
+undertake to correct the entry. Indeed, I am inclined to think that my
+notes in those days are rather uncertain and imperfect; certainly not
+taken with the precision of one who expected to publish them.
+Nevertheless, the residence of the court, the diplomatic corps, and
+strangers form an agreeable society at Athens. I had letters to some of
+the foreign ministers, but did not present them, as I was hardly
+presentable myself without my carpet-bag. On "Thursday," however, in
+company with Dr. W., I called upon Mr. Dawkins, the British minister.
+Mr. Dawkins went to Greece on a special mission, which he supposed would
+detain him six months from home, and had remained there ten years. He is
+a high tory, but retained under a whig administration, because his
+services could not well be dispensed with. He gave us much interesting
+information in regard to the present condition and future prospects of
+Greece; and, in answer to my suggestion that the United States were not
+represented at all in Greece, not even by a consul, he said, with
+emphasis, "You are better represented than any power in Europe. Mr. Hill
+has more influence here than any minister plenipotentiary among us." A
+few days after, when confined to my room by indisposition, Mr. Dawkins
+returned my visit, and again spoke in the same terms of high
+commendation of Mr. Hill. It was pleasing to me, and I have no doubt it
+will be so to Mr. Hill's numerous friends in this country, to know that
+a private American citizen, in a position that keeps him aloof from
+politics, was spoken of in such terms by the representative of one of
+the great powers of Europe. I had heard it intimated that there was a
+prospect of Mr. Dawkins being transferred to this country, and parted
+with him in the hope at some future day of seeing him the representative
+of his government here.
+
+I might have been presented to the king, but my carpet-bag--Dr. W.
+borrowed a hat, and was presented; the doctor had an old white hat,
+which he had worn all the way from New-York. The tide is rolling
+backward; Athens is borrowing her customs from the barbarous nations of
+the north; and it is part of the etiquette to enter a drawing-room with
+a hat (a black one) under the arm. The doctor, in his republican
+simplicity, thought that a hat, good enough to put on his own head, was
+good enough to go into the king's presence; but he was advised to the
+contrary, and took one of Mr. Hill's, not very much too large for him.
+He was presented by Dr. ----, a German, the king's physician, with whom
+he had discoursed much of the different medical systems in Germany and
+America. Dr. W. was much pleased with the king. Did ever a man talk with
+a king who was not pleased with him? But the doctor was particularly
+pleased with King Otho, as the latter entered largely into discourse on
+the doctor's favourite theme, Mr. Hill's school, and the cause of
+education in Greece. Indeed, it speaks volumes in favour of the young
+king, that education is one of the things in which he takes the deepest
+interest. The day the doctor was to be presented we dined at Mr. Hill's,
+having made arrangements for leaving Athens that night; the doctor and
+M. to return to Europe. In the afternoon, while the doctor remained to
+be presented, M. and I walked down to the Pirćus, now, as in the days of
+her glory, the harbour of Athens. The ancient harbour is about five
+miles from Athens, and was formerly joined to it by _long walls_ built
+of stone of enormous size, sixty feet high, and broad enough on the top
+for two wagons to pass abreast. These have long since disappeared, and
+the road is now over a plain shaded a great part of the way by groves of
+olives. As usual at this time of day, we met many parties on horseback,
+sometimes with ladies; and I remember particularly the beautiful and
+accomplished daughters of Count Armansbergh, both of whom are since
+married and dead.[2] It is a beautiful ride, in the afternoon
+particularly, as then the dark outline of the mountains beyond, and the
+reflections of light and shade, give a peculiarly interesting effect to
+the ruins of the Acropolis. Toward the other end we paced between the
+ruins of the old walls, and entered upon a scene which reminded me of
+home. Eight months before there was only one house at the Pirćus; but,
+as soon as the court removed to Athens, the old harbour revived; and
+already we saw long ranges of stores and warehouses, and all the hurry
+and bustle of one of our rising western towns. A railroad was in
+contemplation, and many other improvements, which have since failed; but
+an _omnibus!_ that most modern and commonplace of inventions, is now
+running regularly between the Pirćus and Athens. A friend who visited
+Greece six months after me brought home with him an advertisement
+printed in Greek, English, French, and German, the English being in the
+words and figures following, to wit:
+
+    "ADVERTISEMENT.
+
+    "The public are hereby informed, that on the nineteenth instant an
+    omnibus will commence running between Athena and the Pirćus, and
+    will continue to do so every day at the undermentioned hours until
+    farther notice.
+
+      _Hours of Departure._
+
+         From Athens.                              From Pirćus.
+
+    Half past seven o'clock A.M.            Half past eight o'clock A.M.
+    Ten o'clock A.M.                        Eleven o'clock A.M.
+    Two o'clock P.M.                        Three o'clock P.M.
+    Half past four P.M.                     Half past five P.M.
+
+    "The price of a seat in the omnibus is one drachme.
+
+    "Baggage, if not too bulky and heavy, can be taken on the roof.
+
+    "Smoking cannot be allowed in the omnibus, nor can dogs be admitted.
+
+    "Small parcels and packages may be sent by this conveyance at a
+    moderate charge, and given to the care of the conducteur.
+
+    "The omnibus starts from the corner of the Hermes and Ćolus streets
+    at Athens and from the bazar at the Pirćus, and will wait five
+    minutes at each place, during which period the conducteur will sound
+    his horn.
+
+    "Athens, 17th, 29th September, 1836."
+
+Old things are passing away, and all things are becoming new. For a
+little while yet we may cling to the illusions connected with the past,
+but the mystery is fast dissolving, the darkness is breaking away, and
+Greece, and Rome, and even Egypt herself, henceforward claim our
+attention with objects and events of the present hour. Already they have
+lost much of the deep and absorbing interest with which men turned to
+them a generation ago. All the hallowed associations of these ancient
+regions are fading away. We may regret it, we may mourn over it, but we
+cannot help it. The world is marching onward; I have met parties of my
+own townsmen while walking in the silent galleries of the Coliseum; I
+have seen Americans drinking Champagne in an excavated dwelling of the
+ancient Pompeii, and I have dined with Englishmen among the ruins of
+Thebes, but, blessed be my fortune, I never rode in an omnibus from the
+Pirćus to Athens.
+
+We put our baggage on board the caique, and lounged among the little
+shops till dark, when we betook ourselves to a dirty little coffee-house
+filled with Greeks dozing and smoking pipes. We met there a boat's crew
+of a French man-of-war, waiting for some of the officers, who were
+dining with the French ambassador at Athens. One of them had been born
+to a better condition than that of a common sailor. One juvenile
+indiscretion after another had brought him down, and, without a single
+vice, he was fairly on the road to ruin. Once he brushed a tear from his
+eyes as he told us of prospects blighted by his own follies; but,
+rousing himself, hurried away, and his reckless laugh soon rose above
+the noise and clamour of his wild companions.
+
+About ten o'clock the doctor came in, drenched with rain and up to his
+knees in mud. We wanted to embark immediately, but the appearance of the
+weather was so unfavourable that the captain preferred waiting till
+after midnight. The Greeks went away from the coffee-house, the
+proprietor fell asleep in his seat, and we extended ourselves on the
+tables and chairs; and now the fleas, which had been distributed about
+among all the loungers, made a combined onset upon us. Life has its
+cares and troubles, but few know that of being given up to the tender
+mercies of Greek fleas. We bore the infliction till human nature could
+endure no longer; and, at about three in the morning, in the midst of
+violent wind and rain, broke out of the coffee-house and went in search
+of our boat. It was very dark, but we found her and got on board. She
+was a caique, having an open deck with a small covering over the stern.
+Under this we crept, and with our cloaks and a sailcloth spread over us,
+our heated blood cooled, and we fell asleep. When we woke we were on the
+way to Epidaurus. The weather was raw and cold. We passed within a
+stone's throw of Salamis and Ćgina, and at about three o'clock, turning
+a point which completely hid it from view, entered a beautiful little
+bay, on which stands the town of Epidaurus. The old city, the birthplace
+of Esculapius, stands upon a hill projecting into the bay, and almost
+forming an island. In the middle of the village is a wooden building
+containing a large chamber, where the Greek delegates, a band of
+mountain warriors, with arms in their hands, "in the name of the Greek
+nation, proclaimed before gods and men its independence."
+
+At the locanda there was by chance one bed, which not being large enough
+for three, I slept on the floor. At seven o'clock, after a quarrel with
+our host and paying him about half his demand, we set out for Napoli di
+Romania. For about an hour we moved in the valley running off from the
+beautiful shore of Epidaurus; soon the valley deepened into a glen, and
+in an hour we turned off on a path that led into the mountains, and,
+riding through wild and rugged ravines, fell into the dry bed of a
+torrent; following which, we came to the Hieron Elios, or Sacred Grove
+of Esculapius. This was the great watering-place for the invalids of
+ancient Greece, the prototype of the Cheltenham and Saratoga of modern
+days. It is situated in a valley surrounded by high mountains, and was
+formerly enclosed by walls, within which, that the credit of the God
+might not be impeached, _no man was allowed to die, and no woman to be
+delivered_. Within this enclosure were temples, porticoes and fountains,
+now lying in ruins hardly distinguishable. The theatre is the most
+beautiful and best preserved. It is scooped out of the side of the
+mountain, rather more than semicircular in form, and containing
+fifty-four seats. These seats are of pink marble, about fifteen inches
+high and nearly three feet wide. In the middle of each seat is a groove,
+in which, probably, woodwork was constructed, to prevent the feet of
+those above from incommoding them who sat below, and also to support the
+backs of an invalid audience. The theatre faces the north, and is so
+arranged that, with the mountain towering behind it, the audience was
+shaded nearly all the day. It speaks volumes in favour of the
+intellectual character of the Greeks, that it was their favourite
+recreation to listen to the recitation of their poets and players. And
+their superiority in refinement over the Romans is in no way manifested
+more clearly than by the fact, that in the ruined cities of the former
+are found the remains of theatres, and in the latter of amphitheatres,
+showing the barbarous taste of the Romans for combats of gladiators and
+wild beasts. It was in beautiful keeping with this intellectual taste of
+the Greeks, that their places of assembling were in the open air, amid
+scenery calculated to elevate the mind; and, as I sat on the marble
+steps of the theatre, I could well imagine the high satisfaction with
+which the Greek, under the shade of the impending mountain, himself all
+enthusiasm and passion, rapt in the interest of some deep tragedy, would
+hang upon the strains of Euripides or Sophocles. What deep-drawn
+exclamations, what shouts of applause had rung through that solitude,
+what bursts of joy and grief had echoed from those silent benches! And
+then, too, what flirting and coqueting, the state of society at the
+springs in the Grove of Esculapius being probably much the same as at
+Saratoga in our own days. The whole grove is now a scene of desolation.
+The lentisculus is growing between the crevices of the broken marble;
+birds sing undisturbed among the bushes; the timid hare steals among the
+ruined fragments; and sometimes the snake is seen gliding over the
+marble steps.
+
+We had expected to increase the interest of our visit by taking our
+noonday refection on the steps of the theatre, but it was too cold for a
+picnic _al fresco_; and, mounting our horses, about two o'clock we came
+in sight of Argos, on the opposite side of the great plain; and in half
+an hour more, turning the mountain, saw Napoli di Romania beautifully
+situated on a gentle elevation on the shore of the gulf. The scenery in
+every direction around Napoli is exceedingly beautiful; and, when we
+approached it, bore no marks of the sanguinary scenes of the late
+revolution. The plain was better cultivated than any part of the
+adjacent country; and the city contained long ranges of houses and
+streets, with German names, such as Heidecker, Maurer-street, &c., and
+was seemingly better regulated than any other city in Greece. We drove
+up to the Hotel des Quatre Nations, the best we had found in Greece,
+dined at a restaurant with a crowd of Bavarian officers and adventurers,
+and passed the evening in the streets and coffee-houses.
+
+The appearance of Otho-street, which is the principal, is very
+respectable; it runs from what was the palace to the grand square or
+esplanade, on one side of which are the barracks of the Bavarian
+soldiers, with a park of artillery posted so as to sweep the square and
+principal streets; a speaking comment upon the liberty of the Greeks,
+and the confidence reposed in them by the government.
+
+Everything in Napoli recalls the memory of the brief and unfortunate
+career of Capo d'Istria. Its recovery from the horrors of barbarian war,
+and the thriving appearance of the country around, are ascribed to the
+impulse given by his administration. A Greek by birth, while his country
+lay groaning under the Ottoman yoke he entered the Russian service,
+distinguished himself in all the diplomatic correspondence during the
+French invasion, was invested with various high offices and honours, and
+subscribed the treaty of Paris in 1815 as imperial Russian
+plenipotentiary. He withdrew from her service because Russia disapproved
+the efforts of his countrymen to free themselves from the Turkish yoke;
+and, after passing five years in Germany and Switzerland, chiefly at
+Geneva, in 1827 he was called to the presidency of Greece. On his
+arrival at Napoli amid the miseries of war and anarchy, he was received
+by the whole people as the only man capable of saving their country.
+Civil war ceased on the very day of his arrival, and the traitor Grievas
+placed in his hands the key of the Palimethe. I shall not enter into any
+speculations upon the character of his administration. The rank he had
+attained in a foreign service is conclusive evidence of his talents, and
+his withdrawal from that service for the reason stated is as conclusive
+of his patriotism; but from the moment he took into his hands the reins
+of government, he was assailed by every so-called liberal press in
+Europe with the party cry of Russian influence. The Greeks were induced
+to believe that he intended to sell them to a stranger; and Capo
+d'Istria, strong in his own integrity, and confidently relying on the
+fidelity and gratitude of his countrymen, was assassinated in the
+streets on his way to mass. Young Mauromichalis, the son of the old Bey
+of Maina, struck the fatal blow, and fled for refuge to the house of
+the French ambassador. A gentleman attached to the French legation told
+me that he himself opened the door when the murderer rushed in with the
+bloody dagger in his hand, exclaiming, "I have killed the tyrant." He
+was not more than twenty-one, tall and noble in his appearance, and
+animated by the enthusiastic belief that he had delivered his country.
+My informant told me that he barred all the doors and windows, and went
+up stairs to inform the minister, who had not yet risen. The latter was
+embarrassed and in doubt what he should do. A large crowd gathered round
+the house; but, as yet, they were all Mauromichalis's friends. The young
+enthusiast spoke of what he had done with a high feeling of patriotism
+and pride; and while the clamour out of doors was becoming outrageous,
+he ate his breakfast and smoked his pipe with the utmost composure. He
+remained at the embassy more than two hours, and until the regular
+troops drew up before the house. The French ambassador, though he at
+first refused, was obliged to deliver him up; and my informant saw him
+shot under a tree outside the gate of Napoli, dying gallantly in the
+firm conviction that he had played the Brutus and freed his country from
+a Cćsar.
+
+The fate of Capo d'Istria again darkened the prospects of Greece, and
+the throne went begging for an occupant until it was accepted by the
+King of Bavaria for his second son Otho. The young monarch arrived at
+Napoli in February, eighteen hundred and thirty-three. The whole
+population came out to meet him, and the Grecian youth ran breast deep
+in the water to touch his barge as it approached the shore. In February,
+eighteen hundred and thirty-four, it was decided to establish Athens as
+the capital. The propriety of this removal has been seriously
+questioned, for Napoli possessed advantages in her location, harbour,
+fortress and a town already built; but the King of Bavaria, a scholar
+and an antiquary, was influenced more, perhaps, by classical feeling
+than by regard for the best interests of Greece. Napoli has received a
+severe blow from the removal of the seat of government; still it was by
+far the most European in its appearance of any city I had seen in
+Greece. It had several restaurants and coffee-houses, which were
+thronged all the evening with Bavarian officers and broken-down European
+adventurers, discussing the internal affairs of that unfortunate
+country, which men of every nation seemed to think they had a right to
+assist in governing. Napoli had always been the great gathering-place of
+the phil-Hellenists, and many appropriating to themselves that sacred
+name were hanging round it still. All over Europe thousands of men are
+trained up to be shot at for so much per day; the soldier's is as
+regular a business as that of the lawyer or merchant, and there is
+always a large class of turbulent spirits constantly on the look-out for
+opportunities, and ever ready with their swords to carve their way to
+fortune. I believe that there were men who embarked in the cause of
+Greece with as high and noble purposes as ever animated the warrior; but
+of many, there is no lack of charity in saying that, however good they
+might be as fighters, they were not much as men; and I am sorry to add
+that, from the accounts I heard in Greece, some of the American
+phil-Hellenists were rather shabby fellows. Mr. M., then resident in
+Napoli, was accosted one day in the streets by a young man, who asked
+him where he could find General Jarvis. "What do you want with him?"
+said Mr. M. "I hope to obtain a commission in his army." "Do you see
+that dirty fellow yonder?" said Mr. M., pointing to a ragged patriot
+passing at the moment; "well, twenty such fellows compose Jarvis's army,
+and Jarvis himself is no better off." "Well, then," said the young
+_American_, "I believe I'll join the Turks!" Allen, another American
+patriot, was hung at Constantinople. One bore the sacred name of
+Washington; a brave but unprincipled man. Mr. M. had heard him say, that
+if the devil himself should raise a regiment and would give him a good
+commission, he would willingly march under him. He was struck by a shot
+from the fortress of Napoli while directing a battery against it; was
+taken on board his Britannic majesty's ship Asia, and breathed his last
+uttering curses on his country.
+
+There were others, however, who redeemed the American character. The
+agents sent out by the Greek committee (among them our townsmen, Messrs.
+Post and Stuyvesant), under circumstances of extraordinary difficulty
+fulfilled the charitable purposes of their mission with such zeal and
+discretion as to relieve the wants of a famishing people, and secure the
+undying gratitude of the Greeks. Dr. Russ, another of the agents,
+established an American hospital at Poros, and, under the most severe
+privations, devoted himself gratuitously to attendance upon the sick and
+wounded. Dr. Howe, one of the earliest American phil-Hellenists, in the
+darkest hour of the revolution, and at a time when the Greeks were
+entirely destitute of all medical aid, with an honourable enthusiasm,
+and without any hope of pecuniary reward, entered the service as
+surgeon, was the fellow-labourer of Dr. Russ in establishing the
+American hospital, and, at the peril of his life, remained with them
+during almost the whole of their dreadful struggle. Colonel Miller, the
+principal agent, now resident in Vermont, besides faithfully performing
+the duties of his trust, entered the army, and conducted himself with
+such distinguished gallantry that he was called by the Greek braves the
+American Delhi, or Daredevil.[3]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[2] They married two brothers, the young princes Cantacuzenes. Some
+scruples being raised against this double alliance on the score of
+consanguinity, the difficulty was removed by each couple going to
+separate churches with separate priests to pronounce the mystic words at
+precisely the same moment; so that neither could be said to espouse his
+sister-in-law.
+
+[3] In the previous editions of his work, the author's remarks were so
+general as to reflect upon the character of individuals who stand in our
+community above reproach. The author regrets that the carelessness of
+his expressions should have wounded where he never intended, and hopes
+the gentlemen affected will do him the justice to believe that he would
+not wantonly injure any man's character or feelings.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+    Argos.--Tomb of Agamemnon.--Mycenć.--Gate of the Lions.--A
+      Misfortune.--A Midnight Quarrel.--Gratitude of a Greek
+      Family.--Megara.
+
+
+IN the morning, finding a difficulty in procuring horses, some of the
+loungers about the hotel told us there was a carriage in Napoli, and we
+ordered it to be brought out, and soon after saw moving majestically
+down the principal street a bella carozza, imported by its enterprising
+proprietor from the Strada Toledo at Naples. It was painted a bright
+flaring yellow, and had a big breeched Albanian for coachman. While
+preparing to embark, a Greek came up with two horses, and we discharged
+the bella carozza. My companion hired the horses for Padras, and I threw
+my cloak on one of them and followed on foot.
+
+The plain of Argos is one of the most beautiful I ever saw. On every
+side except toward the sea it is bounded by mountains, and the contrast
+between these mountains, the plain, and the sea is strikingly beautiful.
+The sun was beating upon it with intense heat; the labourers were almost
+naked, or in several places lying asleep on the ground, while the tops
+of the mountains were covered with snow. I walked across the whole
+plain, being only six miles, to Argos. This ancient city is long since
+in ruins; her thirty temples, her costly sepulchres, her gymnasium, and
+her numerous and magnificent monuments and statues have disappeared,
+and the only traces of her former greatness are some remains of her
+Cyclopean walls, and a ruined theatre cut in the rock and of magnificent
+proportions. Modern Argos is nothing more than a straggling village. Mr.
+Riggs, an American missionary, was stationed there, but was at that time
+at Athens with an invalid wife. I was still on foot, and wandered up and
+down the principal street looking for a horse. Every Greek in Argos soon
+knew my business, and all kinds of four-legged animals were brought to
+me at exorbitant prices. When I was poring over the Iliad I little
+thought that I should ever visit Argos; still less that I should create
+a sensation in the ancient city of the Danai; but man little knows for
+what he is reserved.
+
+Argos has been so often visited that Homer is out of date. Every middy
+from a Mediterranean cruiser has danced on the steps of her desolate
+theatre, and, instead of busying myself with her ancient glories, I
+roused half the population in hiring a horse. In fact, in this ancient
+city I soon became the centre of a regular horsemarket. Every rascally
+jockey swore that his horse was the best, and, according to the
+descendants of the respectable sons of Atreus, blindness, lameness,
+spavin, and staggers were a recommendation. A Bavarian officer, whom I
+had met in the bazars, came to my assistance, and stood by me while I
+made my bargain. I had more regard to the guide than the horse; and
+picking out one who had been particularly noisy, hired him to conduct me
+to Corinth and Athens. He was a lad of about twenty, with a bright
+sparkling eye, who, laughing roguishly at his unsuccessful competitors,
+wanted to pitch me at once on the horse and be off. I joined my
+companions, and in a few minutes we left Argos.
+
+The plain of Argos has been immortalized by poetic genius as the great
+gathering-place of the kings and armies that assembled for the siege of
+Troy. To the scholar and poet few plains in the world are more
+interesting. It carries him back to the heroic ages, to the history of
+times bordering on the fabulous, when fact and fiction are so
+beautifully blended that we would not separate them if we could. I had
+but a little while longer to remain with my friends, for we were
+approaching the point where our roads separated, and about eleven
+o'clock we halted and exchanged our farewell greetings. We parted in the
+middle of the plain, they to return to Padras and Europe, and I for the
+tomb of Agamemnon, and back to Athens, and I hardly know where besides.
+Dr. W. I did not meet again until my return home. About a year afterward
+I arrived in Antwerp in the evening from Rotterdam. The city was filled
+with strangers, and I was denied admission at a third hotel, when a
+young man brushed by me in the doorway, and I recognised Maxwell. I
+hailed him, but in cap and cloak, and with a large red shawl around my
+neck, he did not know me. I unrolled and discovered myself, and it is
+needless to say that I did not leave the hotel that night. It was his
+very last day of two years' travel on the Continent; he had taken his
+passage in the steamer for London, and one day later I should have
+missed him altogether. I can give but a faint idea of the pleasure of
+this meeting. He gave me the first information of the whereabout of Dr.
+W.; we talked nearly all night, and about noon the next day I again bade
+him farewell on board the steamer.
+
+I have for some time neglected our servant. When we separated, the
+question was who should _not_ keep him. We were all heartily tired of
+him, and I would not have had him with me on any account. Still, at the
+moment of parting in that wild and distant region, never expecting to
+see him again, I felt some slight leaning toward him. Touching the
+matter of shirts, it will not be surprising to a man of the world that,
+at the moment of parting, I had one of M.'s on my back; and, in justice
+to him, I must say it was a very good one, and lasted a long time. A
+friend once wrote to me on a like occasion not to wear his out of its
+turn, but M. laid no such restriction upon me. But this trifling gain
+did not indemnify me for the loss of my friends. I had broken the only
+link that connected me with home, and was setting out alone for I knew
+not where. I felt at once the great loss I had sustained, for my young
+muleteer could speak only his own language, and, as Queen Elizabeth said
+to Sir Walter Raleigh of her Hebrew, we had "forgotten our" Greek.
+
+But on that classical soil I ought not to have been lonely. I should
+have conjured up the ghosts of the departed Atridć, and held converse on
+their own ground with Homer's heroes. Nevertheless, I was not in the
+mood; and, entirely forgetting the glories of the past, I started my
+horse into a gallop. My companion followed on a full run, close at my
+heels, belabouring my horse with a stick, which when he broke, he pelted
+him with stones; indeed, this mode of scampering over the ground seemed
+to hit his humour, for he shouted, hurraed, and whipped, and sometimes
+laying hold of the tail of the beast, was dragged along several paces
+with little effort of his own. I soon tired of this, and made signs to
+him to stop; but it was his turn now, and I was obliged to lean back
+till I reached him with my cane before I could make him let go his hold,
+and then he commenced shouting and pelting again with stones.
+
+In this way we approached the village of Krabata, about a mile below
+the ruins of Mycenć, and the most miserable place I had seen in Greece.
+With the fertile plain of Argos uncultivated before them, the
+inhabitants exhibited a melancholy picture of the most abject poverty.
+As I rode through, crowds beset me with outstretched arms imploring
+charity; and a miserable old woman, darting out of a wretched hovel,
+laid her gaunt and bony hand upon my leg, and attempted to stop me. I
+shrunk from her grasp, and, under the effect of a sudden impulse, threw
+myself off on the other side, and left my horse in her hands.
+
+Hurrying through the village, a group of boys ran before me, crying out
+"Agamemnon," "Agamemnon." I followed, and they conducted me to the tomb
+of "the king of kings," a gigantic structure, still in good
+preservation, of a conical form, covered with turf; the stone over the
+door is twenty-seven feet long and seventeen wide, larger than any hewn
+stone in the world except Pompey's Pillar. I entered, my young guides
+going before with torches, and walked within and around this ancient
+sepulchre. A worthy Dutchman, Herman Van Creutzer, has broached a theory
+that the Trojan war is a mere allegory, and that no such person as
+Agamemnon ever existed. Shame upon the cold-blooded heretic. I have my
+own sins to answer for in that way, for I have laid my destroying hand
+upon many cherished illusions; but I would not, if I could, destroy the
+mystery that overhangs the heroic ages. The royal sepulchre was forsaken
+and empty; the shepherd drives within it his flock for shelter; the
+traveller sits under its shade to his noonday meal; and, at the moment,
+a goat was dozing quietly in one corner. He started as I entered, and
+seemed to regard me as an intruder; and when I flared before him the
+light of my torch, he rose up to butt me. I turned away and left him in
+quiet possession. The boys were waiting outside, and crying "Mycenć,"
+"Mycenć," led me away. All was solitude, and I saw no marks of a city
+until I reached the relics of her Cyclopean walls. I never felt a
+greater degree of reverence than when I approached the lonely ruins of
+Mycenć. At Argos I spent most of my time in the horsemarket, and I had
+galloped over the great plain as carelessly as if it had been the road
+to Harlem; but all the associations connected with this most interesting
+ground here pressed upon me at once. Its extraordinary antiquity, its
+gigantic remains, and its utter and long-continued desolation, came home
+to my heart. I moved on to the Gate of the Lions, and stood before it a
+long time without entering. A broad street led to it between two immense
+parallel walls; and this street may, perhaps, have been a market-place.
+Over the gate are two lions rampant, like the supporters of a modern
+coat-of-arms, rudely carved, and supposed to be the oldest sculptured
+stone in Greece. Under this very gate Agamemnon led out his forces for
+the siege of Troy; three thousand years ago he saw them filing before
+him, glittering in brass, in all the pomp and panoply of war; and I held
+in my hand a book which told me that this city was so old that, more
+than seventeen hundred years ago, travellers came as I did to visit its
+ruins; and that Pausanias had found the Gate of the Lions in the same
+state in which I beheld it now. A great part is buried by the rubbish of
+the fallen city. I crawled under, and found myself within the walls, and
+then mounted to the height on which the city stood. It was covered with
+a thick soil and a rich carpet of grass. My boys left me, and I was
+alone. I walked all over it, following the line of the walls. I paused
+at the great blocks of stone, the remnants of Cyclopic masonry, the work
+of wandering giants. The heavens were unclouded, and the sun was beaming
+upon it with genial warmth. Nothing could exceed the quiet beauty of the
+scene. I became entangled in the long grass, and picked up wild flowers
+growing over long-buried dwellings. Under it are immense caverns, their
+uses now unknown; and the earth sounded hollow under my feet, as if I
+were treading on the sepulchre of a buried city. I looked across the
+plain to Argos; all was as beautiful as when Homer sang its praises; the
+plain, and the mountains, and the sea were the same, but the once
+magnificent city, her numerous statues and gigantic temples, were gone
+for ever; and but a few remains were left to tell the passing traveller
+the story of her fallen greatness. I could have remained there for
+hours; I could have gone again and again, for I had not found a more
+interesting spot in Greece; but my reveries were disturbed by the
+appearance of my muleteer and my juvenile escort. They pointed to the
+sun as an intimation that the day was passing; and crying "Cavallo,"
+"Cavallo," hurried me away. To them the ruined city was a playground;
+they followed capering behind; and, in descending, three or four of them
+rolled down upon me; they hurried me through the Gate of the Lions, and
+I came out with my pantaloons, my only pantaloons, rent across the knee
+almost irreparably. In an instant I was another man; I railed at the
+ruins for their strain upon wearing apparel, and bemoaned my unhappy lot
+in not having with me a needle and thread. I looked up to the old gate
+with a sneer. This was the city that Homer had made such a noise about;
+a man could stand on the citadel and almost throw a stone beyond the
+boundary-line of Agamemnon's kingdom. In full sight, and just at the
+other side of the plain, was the kingdom of Argos. The little state of
+Rhode Island would make a bigger kingdom than both of them together.
+
+But I had no time for deep meditation, having a long journey to Corinth
+before me. Fortunately, my young Greek had no tire in him; he started me
+off on a gallop, whipping and pelting my horse with stones, and would
+have hurried me on, over rough and smooth, till either he, or I, or the
+horse broke down, if I had not jumped off and walked. As soon as I
+dismounted he mounted, and then he moved so leisurely that I had to
+hurry him on in turn. In this way we approached the range of mountains
+separating the plain of Argos from the Isthmus of Corinth. Entering the
+pass, we rode along a mountain torrent, of which the channel-bed was
+then dry, and ascended to the summit of the first range. Looking back,
+the scene was magnificent. On my right and left were the ruined heights
+of Argos and Mycenć; before me, the towering Acropolis of Napoli di
+Romania; at my feet, the rich plain of Argos, extending to the shore of
+the sea; and beyond, the island-studded Ćgean. I turned away with a
+feeling of regret that, in all probability, I should never see it more.
+
+I moved on, and in a narrow pass, not wide enough to turn my horse if I
+had been disposed to take to my heels, three men rose up from behind a
+rock, armed to the teeth with long guns, pistols, yataghans, and
+sheepskin cloaks--the dress of the klept or mountain robber--and
+altogether presenting a most diabolically cutthroat appearance. If they
+had asked me for my purse I should have considered it all regular, and
+given up the remnant of my stock of borrowed money without a murmur;
+but I was relieved from immediate apprehension by the cry of passe
+porta. King Otho has begun the benefits of civilized government in
+Greece by introducing passports, and mountain warriors were stationed in
+the different passes to examine strangers. They acted, however, as if
+they were more used to demanding purses than passports, for they sprang
+into the road and rattled the butts of their guns on the rock with a
+violence that was somewhat startling. Unluckily, my passport had been
+made out with those of my companions, and was in their possession, and
+when we parted neither thought of it; and this demand to me, who had
+nothing to lose, was worse than that of my purse. A few words of
+explanation might have relieved me from all difficulty, but my friends
+could not understand a word I said. I was vexed at the idea of being
+sent back, and thought I would try the effect of a little impudence; so,
+crying out "Americanos," I attempted to pass on; but they answered me
+"Nix," and turned my horse's head toward Argos. The scene, which a few
+moments before had seemed so beautiful, was now perfectly detestable.
+Finding that bravado had not the desired effect, I lowered my tone and
+tried a bribe; this was touching the right chord; half a dollar removed
+all suspicions from the minds of these trusty guardians of the pass;
+and, released from their attentions, I hurried on.
+
+The whole road across the mountain is one of the wildest in Greece. It
+is cut up by numerous ravines, sufficiently deep and dangerous, which at
+every step threaten destruction to the incautious traveller. During the
+late revolution the soil of Greece had been drenched with blood; and my
+whole journey had been through cities and over battle-fields memorable
+for scenes of slaughter unparalleled in the annals of modern war. In
+the narrowest pass of the mountains my guide made gestures indicating
+that it had been the scene of a desperate battle. When the Turks, having
+penetrated to the plain of Argos, were compelled to fall back again upon
+Corinth, a small band of Greeks, under Niketas and Demetrius Ypsilanti,
+waylaid them in this pass. Concealing themselves behind the rocks, and
+waiting till the pass was filled, all at once they opened a tremendous
+fire upon the solid column below, and the pass was instantly filled with
+slain. Six thousand were cut down in a few hours. The terrified
+survivers recoiled for a moment; but, as if impelled by an invisible
+power, rushed on to meet their fate. "The Mussulman rode into the passes
+with his sabre in his sheath and his hands before his eyes, the victim
+of destiny." The Greeks again poured upon them a shower of lead, and
+several thousand more were cut down before the Moslem army accomplished
+the passage of this terrible defile.
+
+It was nearly dark when we rose to the summit of the last range of
+mountains, and saw, under the rich lustre of the setting sun, the
+Acropolis of Corinth, with its walls and turrets, towering to the sky,
+the plain forming the Isthmus of Corinth; the dark, quiet waters of the
+Gulf of Lepanto; and the gloomy mountains of Cithćron, and Helicon, and
+Parnassus covered with snow. It was after dark when we passed the region
+of the Nemean Grove, celebrated as the haunt of the lion and the scene
+of the first of the twelve labours of Hercules. We were yet three hours
+from Corinth; and, if the old lion had still been prowling in the grove,
+we could not have made more haste to escape its gloomy solitude.
+Reaching the plain, we heard behind us the clattering of horses' hoofs,
+at first sounding in the stillness of evening as if a regiment of
+cavalry or a troop of banditti was at our heels, but it proved to be
+only a single traveller, belated like ourselves, and hurrying on to
+Corinth. I could see through the darkness the shining butts of his
+pistols and hilt of his yataghan, and took his dimensions with more
+anxiety, perhaps, than exactitude. He recognised my Frank dress; and
+accosted me in bad Italian, which he had picked up at Padras (being just
+the Italian in which I could meet him on equal ground), and told me that
+he had met a party of Franks on the road to Padras, whom, from his
+description, I recognised as my friends.
+
+It was nearly midnight when we rattled up to the gate of the old
+locanda. The yard was thronged with horses and baggage, and Greek and
+Bavarian soldiers. On the balcony stood my old brigand host, completely
+crestfallen, and literally turned out of doors in his own house; a
+detachment of Bavarian soldiers had arrived that afternoon from Padras,
+and taken entire possession, giving him and his wife the freedom of the
+outside. He did not recognise me, and, taking me for an Englishman,
+began, "Sono Inglesi Signor" (he had lived at Corfu under the British
+dominion); and, telling me the whole particulars of his unceremonious
+ouster, claimed, through me, the arm of the British government to resent
+the injury to a British subject; his wife was walking about in no very
+gentle mood, but, in truth, very much the contrary. I did not speak to
+her, and she did not trust herself to speak to me; but, addressing
+myself to the husband, introduced the subject of my own immediate wants,
+a supper and night's lodging. The landlord told me, however, that the
+Bavarians had eaten everything in the house, and he had not a room, bed,
+blanket, or coverlet to give me; that I might lie down in the hall or
+the piazza, but there was no other place.
+
+I was outrageous at the hard treatment he had received from the
+Bavarians. It was too bad to turn an honest innkeeper out of his house,
+and deny him the pleasure of accommodating a traveller who had toiled
+hard all day, with the perfect assurance of finding a bed at night. I
+saw, however, that there was no help for it; and noticing an opening at
+one end of the hall, went into a sort of storeroom filled with all kinds
+of rubbish, particularly old barrels. An unhinged door was leaning
+against the wall, and this I laid across two of the barrels, pulled off
+my coat and waistcoat, and on this extemporaneous couch went to sleep.
+
+I was roused from my first nap by a terrible fall against my door. I
+sprang up; the moon was shining through the broken casement, and,
+seizing a billet of wood, I waited another attack. In the mean time I
+heard the noise of a violent scuffling on the floor of the hall, and,
+high above all, the voices of husband and wife, his evidently coming
+from the floor in a deprecating tone, and hers in a high towering
+passion, and enforced with severe blows of a stick. As soon as I was
+fairly awake I saw through the thing at once. It was only a little
+matrimonial _tęte-ŕ-tęte_. The unamiable humour in which I had left them
+against the Bavarians had ripened into a private quarrel between
+themselves, and she had got him down, and was pummelling him with a
+broomstick or something of that kind. It seemed natural and right
+enough, and was, moreover, no business of mine; and remembering that
+whoever interferes between man and wife is sure to have both against
+him, I kept quiet. Others, however, were not so considerate, and the
+occupants of the different rooms tumbled into the hall in every variety
+of fancy night-gear, among whom was one whose only clothing was a
+military coat and cap, with a sword in his hand. When the hubbub was at
+its highest I looked out, and found, as I expected, the husband and wife
+standing side by side, she still brandishing the stick, and both
+apparently outrageous at everything and everybody around them. I
+congratulated myself upon my superior knowledge of human nature, and
+went back to my bed on the door.
+
+In the morning I was greatly surprised to find that, instead of whipping
+her husband, she had been taking his part. Two German soldiers, already
+half intoxicated, had come into the hall, and insisted upon having more
+wine; the host refused, and when they moved toward my sleeping place,
+where the wine was kept, he interposed, and all came down together with
+the noise which had woke me. His wife came to his aid, and the blows
+which, in my simplicity, I had supposed to be falling upon him, were
+bestowed on the two Bavarians. She told me the story herself; and when
+she complained to the officers, they had capped the climax of her
+passion by telling her that her husband deserved more than he got. She
+was still in a perfect fury; and as she looked at them in the yard
+arranging for their departure, she added, in broken English, with deep
+and, as I thought, ominous passion, "'Twas better to be under the
+Turks."
+
+I learned all this while I was making my toilet on the piazza, that is,
+while she was pouring water on my hands for me to wash; and, just as I
+had finished, my eye fell upon my muleteer assisting the soldiers in
+loading their horses. At first I did not notice the subdued expression
+of his usually bright face, nor that he was loading my horse with some
+of their camp equipage; but all at once it struck me that they were
+pressing him into their service. I was already roused by what the woman
+had told me, and, resolving that they should not serve me as they did
+the Greeks, I sprang off the piazza, cleared my way through the crowd,
+and going up to my horse, already staggering under a burden poised on
+his back, but not yet fastened, put my hand under one side and tumbled
+it over with a crash on the other. The soldiers cried out furiously;
+and, while they were sputtering German at me, I sprang into the saddle.
+I was in admirable pugilistic condition, with nothing on but pantaloons,
+boots, and shirt, and just in a humour to get a whipping, if nothing
+worse; but I detested the manner in which the Bavarians lorded it in
+Greece; and riding up to a group of officers who were staring at me,
+told them that I had just tumbled their luggage off my horse, and they
+must bear in mind that they could not deal with strangers quite so
+arbitrarily as they did with the Greeks. The commandant was disposed to
+be indignant and very magnificent; but some of the others making
+suggestions to him, he said he understood I had only hired my horse as
+far as Corinth; but, if I had taken him for Athens, he would not
+interfere; and, apologizing on the ground of the necessities of
+government, ordered him to be released. I apologized back again,
+returned the horse to my guide, whose eyes sparkled with pleasure, and
+went in for my hat and coat.
+
+I dressed myself, and, telling him to be ready when I had finished my
+breakfast, went out expecting to start forthwith; but, to my surprise,
+my host told me that the lad refused to go any farther without an
+increase of pay; and, sure enough, there he stood, making no preparation
+for moving. The cavalcade of soldiers had gone, and taken with them
+every horse in Corinth, and the young rascal intended to take advantage
+of my necessity. I told him that I had hired him to Athens for such a
+price, and that I had saved him from impressment, and consequent loss of
+wages, by the soldiers, which he admitted. I added that he was a young
+rascal, which he neither admitted nor denied, but answered with a
+roguish laugh. The extra price was no object compared with the vexation
+of a day's detention; but a traveller is apt to think that all the world
+is conspiring to impose upon him, and, at times, to be very resolute in
+resisting. I was peculiarly so then, and, after a few words, set off to
+complain to the head of the police. Without any ado he trotted along
+with me, and we proceeded together, followed by a troup of idlers, I in
+something of a passion, he perfectly cool, good-natured, and
+considerate, merely keeping out of the way of my stick. Hurrying along
+near the columns of the old temple, I stumbled, and he sprang forward to
+assist me, his face expressing great interest, and a fear that I had
+hurt myself; and when I walked toward a house which I had mistaken for
+the bureau of the police department, he ran after me to direct me right.
+All this mollified me considerably; and, before we reached the door, the
+affair began to strike me as rather ludicrous.
+
+I stated my case, however, to the eparchos, a Greek in Frank dress, who
+spoke French with great facility, and treated me with the greatest
+consideration. He was so full of professions that I felt quite sure of a
+decision in my favour; but, assuming my story to be true, and without
+asking the lad for his excuse, he shrugged his shoulders, and said it
+would take time to examine the matter, and, if I was in a hurry, I had
+better submit. To be sure, he said, the fellow was a great rogue, and he
+gave his countrymen in general a character that would not tell well in
+print; but added, in their justification, that they were imposed upon
+and oppressed by everybody, and therefore considered that they had a
+right to take their advantage whenever an opportunity offered. The young
+man sat down on the floor, and looked at me with the most frank, honest,
+and open expression, as if perfectly unconscious that he was doing
+anything wrong. I could not but acknowledge that some excuse for him was
+to be drawn from the nature of the school in which he had been brought
+up, and, after a little parley, agreed to pay him the additional price,
+if, at the end of the journey, I was satisfied with his conduct. This
+was enough; his face brightened, he sprang up and took my hand, and we
+left the house the best friends in the world. He seemed to be hurt as
+well as surprised at my finding fault with him, for to him all seemed
+perfectly natural; and, to seal the reconciliation, he hurried on ahead,
+and had the horse ready when I reached the locanda. I took leave of my
+host with a better feeling than before, and set out a second time on the
+road to Athens.
+
+At Kalamaki, while walking along the shore, a Greek who spoke the lingua
+Franca came from on board one of the little caiques, and, when he
+learned that I was an American, described to me the scene that had taken
+place on that beach upon the arrival of provisions from America; when
+thousands of miserable beings who had fled from the blaze of their
+dwellings, and lived for months upon plants and roots; grayheaded men,
+mothers with infants at their breasts, emaciated with hunger and almost
+frantic with despair, came down from their mountain retreats to receive
+the welcome relief. He might well remember the scene, for he had been
+one of that starving people; and he took me to his house, and showed me
+his wife and four children, now nearly all grown, telling me that they
+had all been rescued from death by the generosity of my countrymen. I do
+not know why, but in those countries it did not seem unmanly for a
+bearded and whiskered man to weep; I felt anything but contempt for him
+when, with his heart overflowing and his eyes filled with tears, he told
+me, when I returned home, to say to my countrymen that I had seen and
+talked with a recipient of their bounty; and though the Greeks might
+never repay us, they could never forget what we had done for them. I
+remembered the excitement in our country in their behalf, in colleges
+and schools, from the graybearded senator to the prattling schoolboy,
+and reflected that, perhaps, my mite, cast carelessly upon the waters,
+had saved from the extremity of misery this grateful family. I wish that
+the cold-blooded prudence which would have checked our honest enthusiasm
+in favour of a people, under calamities and horrors worse than ever fell
+to the lot of man struggling to be free, could have listened to the
+gratitude of this Greek family. With deep interest I bade them farewell,
+and, telling my guide to follow with my horse, walked over to the foot
+of the mountain.
+
+Ascending, I saw in one of the openings of the road a packhorse and a
+soldier in the Bavarian uniform, and, hoping to find some one to talk
+with, I hailed him. He was on the top of the mountain, so far off that
+he did not hear me; and when, with the help of my Greek, I had succeeded
+in gaining his attention, he looked for some time without being able to
+see me. When he did, however, he waited; but, to my no small
+disappointment, he answered my first question with the odious "Nix." We
+tried each other in two or three dialects; but, finding it of no use, I
+sat down to rest, and he, for courtesy, joined me; my young Greek, in
+the spirit of good-fellowship, doing the same. He was a tall,
+noble-looking fellow, and, like myself, a stranger in Greece; and,
+though we could not say so, it was understood that we were glad to meet
+and travel together as comrades. The tongue causes more evils than the
+sword; and, as we were debarred the use of this mischievous member, and
+walked all day side by side, seldom three paces apart, before night we
+were sworn friends.
+
+About five o'clock in the afternoon we arrived at Megara. A group of
+Bavarian soldiers was lounging round the door of the khan, who welcomed
+their expected comrade and me as his companion. My friend left me, and
+soon returned with the compliments of the commandant, and an invitation
+to visit him in the evening. I had, however, accepted a prior invitation
+from the soldiers for a rendezvous in the locanda. I wandered till dark
+among the ruined houses of the town, thought of Euclid and Alexander the
+Great, and returning, went up to the same room in which I had slept with
+my friends, pored over an old map of Greece hanging on the wall, made a
+few notes, and throwing myself back on a sort of divan, while thinking
+what I should do fell asleep.
+
+About ten o'clock I was roused by the loud roar of a chorus, not like a
+sudden burst, but a thing that seemed to have swelled up to that point
+by degrees; and rubbing my eyes, and stumbling down stairs, I entered
+the banqueting hall; a long, rough wooden table extended the whole
+length of the room, supplied with only two articles, wine-flagons and
+tobacco-pouches; forty or fifty soldiers were sitting round it, smoking
+pipes and singing with all their souls, and, at the moment I entered,
+waving their pipes to the dying cadence of a hunting chorus. Then
+followed a long thump on the table, and they all rose; my long
+travelling friend, with a young soldier who spoke a little French, came
+up, and, escorting me to the head of the table, gave me a seat by the
+side of the chairman. One of them attempted to administer a cup of wine,
+and the other thrust at me the end of a pipe, and I should have been
+obliged to kick and abscond but for the relief afforded me by the
+entrance of another new-comer. This was no other than the corporal's
+wife; and if I had been received warmly, she was greeted with
+enthusiasm. Half the table sprang forward to escort her, two of them
+collared the president and hauled him off his seat, and the whole
+company, by acclamation, installed her in his place. She accepted it
+without any hesitation, while two of them, with clumsy courtesy, took
+off her bonnet, which I, sitting at her right hand, took charge of. All
+then resumed their places, and the revel went on more gayly than ever.
+The lady president was about thirty, plainly but neatly dressed, and,
+though not handsome, had a frank, amiable, and good-tempered expression,
+indicating that greatest of woman's attributes, a good heart. In fact,
+she looked what the young man at my side told me she was, the peacemaker
+of the regiment; and he added, that they always tried to have her at
+their convivial meetings, for when she was among them the brawling
+spirits were kept down, and every man would be ashamed to quarrel in her
+presence. There was no chivalry, no heroic devotion about them, but
+their manner toward her was as speaking a tribute as was ever paid to
+the influence of woman; and I question whether beauty in her bower,
+surrounded by belted knights and barons bold, ever exercised in her
+more exalted sphere a more happy influence. I talked with her, and with
+the utmost simplicity she told me that the soldiers all loved her; that
+they were all kind to her, and she looked upon them all as brothers. We
+broke up at about twelve o'clock with a song, requiring each person to
+take the hand of his neighbour; one of her hands fell to me, and I took
+it with a respect seldom surpassed in touching the hand of woman; for I
+felt that she was cheering the rough path of a soldier's life, and,
+among scenes calculated to harden the heart, reminding them of mothers,
+and sisters, and sweethearts at home.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+    A Dreary Funeral.--Marathon.--Mount Pentelicus.--A Mystery.--Woes of
+      a Lover.--Reveries of Glory.--Scio's Rocky Isle.--A blood-stained
+      Page of History.--A Greek Prelate.--Desolation.--The Exile's
+      Return.
+
+
+EARLY in the morning I again started. In a little khan at Eleusis I saw
+three or four Bavarian soldiers drinking, and ridiculing the Greek
+proprietor, calling him patrioti and capitani. The Greek bore their
+gibes and sneers without a word; but there was a deadly expression in
+his look, which seemed to say, "I bide my time;" and I remember then
+thinking that the Bavarians were running up an account which would one
+day be settled with blood. In fact, the soldiers went too far; and, as I
+thought, to show off before me, one of them slapped the Greek on the
+back, and made him spill a measure of wine which he was carrying to a
+customer, when the latter turned upon him like lightning, threw him
+down, and would have strangled him if he had not been pulled off by the
+by-standers. Indeed, the Greeks had already learned both their
+intellectual and physical superiority over the Bavarians; and, a short
+time before, a party of soldiers sent to subdue a band of Maniote
+insurgents had been captured, and, after a farce of selling them at
+auction at a dollar a head, were kicked, and whipped, and sent off.
+
+About four o'clock I arrived once more at Athens, dined at my old hotel,
+and passed the evening at Mr. Hill's.
+
+The next day I lounged about the city. I had been more than a month
+without my carpet-bag, and the way in which I managed during that time
+is a thing between my travelling companions and myself. A prudent
+Scotchman used to boast of a careful nephew, who, in travelling, instead
+of leaving some of his clothes at every hotel on the road, always
+brought home _more_ than he took away with him. I was a model of this
+kind of carefulness while my opportunities lasted; but my companions had
+left me, and this morning I went to the bazars and bought a couple of
+shirts. Dressed up in one of them, I strolled outside the walls; and,
+while sitting in the shadow of a column of the Temple of Jupiter, I saw
+coming from the city, through Hadrian's Gate, four men, carrying a
+burden by the corners of a coverlet, followed by another having in his
+hands a bottle and spade. As they approached I saw they were bearing the
+dead body of a woman, whom, on joining them, I found to be the wife of
+the man who followed. He was an Englishman or an American (for he called
+himself either, as occasion required) whom I had seen at my hotel and at
+Mr. Hill's; had been a sailor, and probably deserted from his ship, and
+many years a resident of Athens, where he married a Greek woman. He was
+a thriftless fellow, and, as he told me, had lived principally by the
+labour of his wife, who washed for European travellers. He had been so
+long in Greece, and his connexions and associations were so thoroughly
+Greek, that he had lost that sacredness of feeling so powerful both in
+Englishmen and Americans of every class in regard to the decent burial
+of the dead, though he did say that he had expected to procure a coffin,
+but the police of the city had sent officers to take her away and bury
+her. There was something so forlorn in the appearance of this rude
+funeral, that my first impulse was to turn away; but I checked myself
+and followed. Several times the Greeks laid the corpse on the ground and
+stopped to rest, chattering indifferently on various subjects. We
+crossed the Ilissus, and at some distance came to a little Greek chapel
+excavated in the rock. The door was so low that we were obliged to stoop
+on entering, and when within we could hardly stand upright. The Greeks
+laid down the body in front of the altar; the husband went for the
+priest, the Greeks to select a place for a grave, and I remained alone
+with the dead. I sat in the doorway, looking inside upon the corpse, and
+out upon the Greeks digging the grave. In a short time the husband
+returned with a priest, one of the most miserable of that class of
+"blind teachers" who swarm in Greece. He immediately commenced the
+funeral service, which continued nearly an hour, by which time the
+Greeks returned and, taking up the body, carried it to the graveside and
+laid it within. I knew the hollow sound of the first clod of earth which
+falls upon the lid of a coffin, and shrunk from its leaden fall upon the
+uncovered body. I turned away, and, when at some distance, looked back
+and saw them packing the earth over the grave. I never saw so dreary a
+burial-scene.
+
+Returning, I passed by the ancient stadium of Herodes Atticus, once
+capable of containing twenty-five thousand spectators; the whole
+structure was covered with the purest white marble. All remains of its
+magnificence are now gone; but I could still trace on the excavated side
+of the hill its ancient form of a horseshoe, and walked through the
+subterraneous passage by which the vanquished in the games retreated
+from the presence of the spectators.
+
+Returning to the city, I learned that an affray had just taken place
+between some Greeks and Bavarians, and, hurrying to the place near the
+bazars, found a crowd gathered round a soldier who had been stabbed by a
+Greek. According to the Greeks, the affair had been caused by the
+habitual insults and provocation given by the Bavarians, the soldier
+having wantonly knocked a drinking-cup out of the Greek's hand while he
+was drinking. In the crowd I met a lounging Italian (the same who wanted
+me to come up from Padras by water), a good-natured and good-for-nothing
+fellow, and skilled in tongues; and going with him into a coffee-house
+thronged with Bavarians and Europeans of various nations in the service
+of government, heard another story, by which it appeared that the
+Greeks, as usual, were in the wrong, and that the poor Bavarian had been
+stabbed without the slightest provocation, purely from the Greeks' love
+of stabbing. Tired of this, I left the scene of contention, and a few
+streets off met an Athenian, a friend of two or three days' standing,
+and, stopping under a window illuminated by a pair of bright eyes from
+above, happened to express my admiration of the lady who owned them,
+when he tested the strength of my feelings on the subject by asking me
+if I would like to marry her. I was not prepared at the moment to give
+precisely that proof, and he followed up his blow by telling me that, if
+I wished it, he would engage to secure her for me before the next
+morning. The Greeks are almost universally poor. With them every
+traveller is rich, and they are so thoroughly civilized as to think that
+a rich man is, of course, a good match.
+
+Toward evening I paid my last visit to the Acropolis. Solitude, silence,
+and sunset are the nursery of sentiment. I sat down on a broken capital
+of the Parthenon; the owl was already flitting among the ruins. I looked
+up at the majestic temple and down at the ruined and newly-regenerated
+city, and said to myself, "Lots must rise in Athens!" I traced the line
+of the ancient walls, ran a railroad to the Pirćus, and calculated the
+increase on "up-town lots" from building the king's palace near the
+Garden of Plato. Shall I or shall I not "make an operation" in Athens?
+The court has removed here, the country is beautiful, climate fine,
+government fixed, steamboats are running, all the world is coming, and
+lots must rise. I bought (in imagination) a tract of good tillable land,
+laid it out in streets, had my Plato, and Homer, and Washington Places,
+and Jackson Avenue, built a row of houses to improve the neighbourhood
+where nobody lived, got maps lithographed, and sold off at auction. I
+was in the right condition to "go in," for I had nothing to lose; but,
+unfortunately, the Greeks were very far behind the spirit of the age,
+knew nothing of the beauties of the credit system, and could not be
+brought to dispose of their consecrated soil "on the usual terms," _ten
+per cent. down, balance on bond and mortgage_, so, giving up the idea,
+at dark I bade farewell to the ruins of the Acropolis, and went to my
+hotel to dinner.
+
+Early the next morning I started for the field of Marathon. I engaged a
+servant at the hotel to accompany me, but he disappointed me, and I set
+out alone with my muleteer. Our road lay along the base of Mount
+Hymettus, on the borders of the plain of Attica, shaded by thick groves
+of olives. At noon I was on the summit of a lofty mountain, at the base
+of which, still and quiet as if it had never resounded with the shock of
+war, the great battle-ground of the Greeks and Persians extended to the
+sea. The descent was one of the finest things I met with in Greece;
+wild, rugged, and, in fact, the most magnificent kind of mountain
+scenery. At the foot of the mountain we came to a ruined convent,
+occupied by an old white-bearded monk. I stopped there and lunched, the
+old man laying before me his simple store of bread and olives, and
+looking on with pleasure at my voracious appetite.
+
+[Illustration: Mound of Marathon.]
+
+This over, I hurried to the battle-field. Toward the centre is a large
+mound of earth, erected over the Athenians who fell in the battle. I
+made directly for this mound, ascended it, and threw the reins loose
+over my horse's neck; and, sitting on the top, read the account of the
+battle in Herodotus.
+
+After all, is not our reverence misplaced, or, rather does not our
+respect for deeds hallowed by time render us comparatively unjust? The
+Greek revolution teems with instances of as desperate courage, as great
+love of country, as patriotic devotion, as animated the men of Marathon,
+and yet the actors in these scenes are not known beyond the boundaries
+of their native land. Thousands whose names were never heard of, and
+whose bones, perhaps, never received burial, were as worthy of an
+eternal monument as they upon whose grave I sat. Still that mound is a
+hallowed sepulchre; and the shepherd who looks at it from his mountain
+home, the husbandman who drives his plough to its base, and the sailor
+who hails it as a landmark from the deck of his caique, are all reminded
+of the glory of their ancestors. But away with the mouldering relics of
+the past. Give me the green grave of Marco Bozzaris. I put Herodotus in
+my pocket, gathered a few blades of grass as a memorial, descended the
+mound, betook myself to my saddle, and swept the plain on a gallop, from
+the mountain to the sea.
+
+It is about two miles in width, and bounded by rocky heights enclosing
+it at either extremity. Toward the shore the ground is marshy, and at
+the place where the Persians escaped to their ships are some unknown
+ruins; in several places the field is cultivated, and toward evening, on
+my way to the village of Marathon, I saw a Greek ploughing; and when I
+told him that I was an American, he greeted me as the friend of Greece.
+It is the last time I shall recur to this feeling; but it was music to
+my heart to hear a ploughman on immortal Marathon sound in my ears the
+praises of my country.
+
+I intended to pass the night at the village of Marathon; but every khan
+was so cluttered up with goats, chickens, and children, that I rode
+back to the monastery at the foot of the mountain. It was nearly dark
+when I reached it. The old monk was on a little eminence at the door of
+his chapel, clapping two boards together to call his flock to vespers.
+With his long white beard, his black cap and long black gown, his
+picturesque position and primitive occupation, he seemed a guardian
+spirit hovering on the borders of Marathon in memory of its ancient
+glory. He came down to the monastery to receive me, and, giving me a
+paternal welcome, and spreading a mat on the floor, returned to his
+chapel. I followed, and saw his little flock assemble. The ploughman
+came up from the plain and the shepherd came down from the mountain; the
+old monk led the way to the altar, and all kneeled down and prostrated
+themselves on the rocky floor. I looked at them with deep interest. I
+had seen much of Greek devotion in cities and villages, but it was a
+spectacle of extraordinary interest to see these wild and lawless men
+assembled on this lonely mountain to worship in all sincerity, according
+to the best light they had, the god of their fathers. I could not follow
+them in their long and repeated kneelings and prostrations; but my young
+Greek, as if to make amends for me, and, at the same time, to show how
+they did things in Athens, led the van. The service over, several of
+them descended with us to the monastery; the old monk spread his mat,
+and again brought out his frugal store of bread and olives. I
+contributed what I had brought from Athens, and we made our evening
+meal. If I had judged from appearances, I should have felt rather uneasy
+at sleeping among such companions; but the simple fact of having seen
+them at their devotions gave me confidence. Though I had read and heard
+that the Italian bandit went to the altar to pray forgiveness for the
+crimes he intended to commit, and, before washing the stains from his
+hands, hung up the bloody poniard upon a pillar of the church, and asked
+pardon for murder, I always felt a certain degree of confidence in him
+who practised the duties of his religion, whatever that religion might
+be. I leaned on my elbow, and, by the blaze of the fire, read Herodotus,
+while my muleteer, as I judged from the frequent repetition of the word
+Americanos, entertained them with long stories about me. By degrees the
+blaze of the fire died away, the Greeks stretched themselves out for
+sleep, the old monk handed me a bench about four inches high for a
+pillow, and, wrapping myself in my cloak, in a few moments I was
+wandering in the land of dreams.
+
+Before daylight my companions were in motion. I intended to return by
+the marble quarries on the Pentelican Mountain; and crying "Cavallo" in
+the ear of my still sleeping muleteer, in a few minutes I bade farewell
+for ever to the good old monk of Marathon. Almost from the door of the
+monastery we commenced ascending the mountain. It was just peep of day,
+the weather raw and cold, the top of the mountain covered with clouds,
+and in an hour I found myself in the midst of them. The road was so
+steep and dangerous that I could not ride; a false step of my horse
+might have thrown me over a precipice several hundred feet deep; and the
+air was so keen and penetrating, that, notwithstanding the violent
+exercise of walking, I was perfectly chilled. The mist was so dense,
+too, that, when my guide was a few paces in advance, I could not see
+him, and I was literally groping my way through the clouds. I had no
+idea where I was nor of the scene around me, but I felt that I was in a
+measure lifted above the earth. The cold blasts drove furiously along
+the sides of the mountain, whistled against the precipices, and
+bellowed in the hollows of the rocks, sometimes driving so furiously
+that my horse staggered and fell back. I was almost bewildered in
+struggling blindly against them; but, just before reaching the top of
+the mountain, the thick clouds were lifted as if by an invisible hand,
+and I saw once more the glorious sun pouring his morning beams upon a
+rich valley extending a great distance to the foot of the Pentelican
+Mountain. About half way down we came to a beautiful stream, on the
+banks of which we took out our bread and olives. Our appetites were
+stimulated by the mountain air, and we divided till our last morsel was
+gone.
+
+At the foot of the mountain, lying between it and Mount Pentelicus, was
+a large monastery, occupied by a fraternity of monks. We entered and
+walked through it, but found no one to receive us. In a field near by we
+saw one of the monks, from whom we obtained a direction to the quarries.
+Moving on to the foot of the mountain, which rises with a peaked summit
+into the clouds, we commenced ascending, and soon came upon the strata
+of beautiful white marble for which Mount Pentelicus has been celebrated
+thousands of years. Excavations appear to have been made along the whole
+route, and on the roadside were blocks, and marks caused by the friction
+of the heavy masses transported to Athens. The great quarries are toward
+the summit. The surface has been cut perpendicularly smooth, perhaps
+eighty or a hundred feet high, and one hundred and fifty or two hundred
+feet in width, and excavations have been made within to an unknown
+extent. Whole cities might have been built with the materials taken
+away, and yet by comparison with what is left, there is nothing gone. In
+front are entrances to a large chamber, in one corner of which, on the
+right, is a chapel with the painted figure of the Virgin to receive the
+Greeks' prayers. Within are vast humid caverns, over which the wide roof
+awfully extends, adorned with hollow tubes like icicles, while a small
+transparent petrifying stream trickles down the rock. On one side are
+small chambers communicating with subterraneous avenues, used, no doubt,
+as places of refuge during the revolution, or as the haunts of robbers.
+Bones of animals and stones blackened with smoke showed that but lately
+some part had been occupied as a habitation. The great excavations
+around, blocks of marble lying as they fell, perhaps, two thousand years
+ago, and the appearances of having been once a scene of immense industry
+and labour, stand in striking contrast with the desolation and solitude
+now existing. Probably the hammer and chisel will never be heard there
+more, great temples will no more be raised, and modern genius will
+never, like the Greeks of old, make the rude blocks of marble speak.
+
+[Illustration: Quarries of Pentelicus.]
+
+At dark I was dining at the Hotel de France, when Mr. Hill came over
+with the welcome intelligence that my carpet-bag had arrived. On it was
+pinned a large paper, with the words "Huzzah!" "Huzzah!" "Huzzah!" by my
+friend Maxwell, who had met it on horse back on the shores of the Gulf
+of Lepanto, travelling under the charge of a Greek in search of me. I
+opened it with apprehension, and, to my great satisfaction, found
+undisturbed the object of my greatest anxiety, the precious notebook
+from which I now write, saved from the peril of an anonymous publication
+or of being used up for gun-waddings.
+
+The next morning, before I was up, I heard a gentle rap at my door,
+which was followed by the entrance of a German, a missionary, whom I had
+met several times at Mr. Hill's, and who had dined with me once at my
+hotel. I apologized for being caught in bed, and told him that he must
+possess a troubled spirit to send him so early from his pillow. He
+answered that I was right; that he did indeed possess a troubled spirit;
+and closing the door carefully, came to my bedside, and said he had
+conceived a great regard for me, and intended confiding in me an
+important trust. I had several times held long conversations with him at
+Mr. Hill's, and very little to my edification, as his English was hardly
+intelligible; but I felt pleased at having, without particularly
+striving for it, gained the favourable opinion of one who bore the
+character of a very learned and a very good man. I requested him to step
+into the dining-room while I rose and dressed myself; but he put his
+hand upon my breast to keep me down, and drawing a chair, began, "You
+are going to Smyrna." He then paused, but, after some moments of
+hesitation, proceeded to say that the first name I would hear on my
+arrival there would be his own; that, unfortunately, it was in
+everybody's mouth. My friend was a short and very ugly middle-aged man,
+with a very large mouth, speaking English with the most disagreeable
+German sputter, lame from a fall, and, altogether, of a most
+uninteresting and unsentimental aspect; and he surprised me much by
+laying before me a veritable _affaire du coeur_. It was so foreign to my
+expectations, that I should as soon have expected to be made a confidant
+in a love affair by the Archbishop of York. After a few preliminaries he
+went into particulars; lavished upon the lady the usual quota of charms
+"in such case made and provided," but was uncertain, rambling, and
+discursive in regard to the position he held in her regard. At first I
+understood that it was merely the old story, a flirtation and a victim;
+then that they were very near being married, which I afterward
+understood to be only so near as this, that he was willing and she not;
+and, finally, it settled down into the every-day occurrence, the lady
+smiled, while the parents and a stout two-fisted brother frowned. I
+could but think, if such a homely expression may be introduced in
+describing these tender passages, that he had the boot on the wrong leg,
+and that the parents were much more likely than the daughter to favour
+such a suitor. However, on this point I held my peace. The precise
+business he wished to impose on me was, immediately on my arrival in
+Smyrna to form the acquaintance of the lady and her family, and use all
+my exertions in his favour. I told him I was an entire stranger in
+Smyrna, and could not possibly have any influence with the parties; but,
+being urged, promised him that, if I could interfere without intruding
+myself improperly, he should have the benefit of my mediation. At first
+he intended giving me a letter to the lady, but afterward determined to
+give me one to the Rev. Mr. Brewer, an American missionary, who, he
+said, was a particular friend of his, and intimate with the beloved and
+her family, and acquainted with the whole affair. Placing himself at my
+table, on which were pens, ink, and paper, he proceeded to write his
+letter, while I lay quietly till he turned over the first side, when,
+tired of waiting, I rose, dressed myself, packed up, and, before he had
+finished, stood by the table with my carpet-bag, waiting until he should
+have done to throw in my writing materials. He bade me good-by after I
+had mounted my horse to leave, and, when I turned back to look at him, I
+could not but feel for the crippled, limping victim of the tender
+passion, though, in honesty, and with the best wishes for his success, I
+did not think it would help his suit for the lady to see him.
+
+An account of my journey from Athens to Smyrna, given in a letter to
+friends at home, was published during my absence and without my
+knowledge, in successive numbers of the American Monthly Magazine, and
+perhaps the favourable notice taken of it had some influence in inducing
+me to write a book. I give the papers as they were then published.
+
+
+                                                  _Smyrna, April_, 1835.
+
+  MY DEAR ****,
+
+    I have just arrived at this place, and I live to tell it. I have
+    been three weeks performing a voyage usually made in three days. It
+    has been tedious beyond all things; but, as honest Dogberry would
+    say, if it had been ten times as tedious, I could find it in my
+    heart to bestow it all upon you. To begin at the beginning: on the
+    morning of the second instant, I and my long-lost carpet-bag left
+    the eternal city of Athens, without knowing exactly whither we were
+    going, and sincerely regretted by Miltiades Panajotti, the garçon of
+    the hotel. We wound round the foot of the Acropolis, and, giving a
+    last look to its ruined temples, fell into the road to the Pirćus,
+    and in an hour found ourselves at that ancient harbour, almost as
+    celebrated in the history of Greece as Athens itself. Here we took
+    counsel as to farther movements, and concluded to take passage in a
+    caique to sail that evening for Syra, being advised that that island
+    was a great place of rendezvous for vessels, and that from it we
+    could procure a passage to any place we chose. Having disposed of my
+    better half (I may truly call it so, for what is man without
+    pantaloons, vests, and shirts), I took a little sailboat to float
+    around the ancient harbour and muse upon its departed glories.
+
+    The day that I lingered there before bidding farewell, perhaps for
+    ever, to the shores of Greece, is deeply impressed upon my mind. I
+    had hardly begun to feel the magic influence of the land of poets,
+    patriots, and heroes, until the very moment of my departure. I had
+    travelled in the most interesting sections of the country, and found
+    all enthusiasm dead within me when I had expected to be carried away
+    by the remembrance of the past; but here, I know not how it was,
+    without any effort, and in the mere act of whiling away my time, all
+    that was great, and noble, and beautiful in her history rushed upon
+    me at once; the sun and the breeze, the land and the sea,
+    contributed to throw a witchery around me; and in a rich and
+    delightful frame of mind, I found myself among the monuments of her
+    better days, gliding by the remains of the immense wall erected to
+    enclose the harbour during the Peloponnesian war, and was soon
+    floating upon the classic waters of Salamis.
+
+    If I had got there by accident it would not have occurred to me to
+    dream of battles and all the fierce panoply of war upon that calm
+    and silvery surface. But I knew where I was, and my blood was up. I
+    was among the enduring witnesses of the Athenian glory. Behind me
+    was the ancient city, the Acropolis, with its ruined temples, the
+    telltale monuments of by-gone days, towering above the plain; here
+    was the harbour from which the galleys carried to the extreme parts
+    of the then known world the glories of the Athenian name; before me
+    was unconquered Salamis; here the invading fleet of Xerxes; there
+    the little navy, the last hope of the Athenians; here the island of
+    Ćgina, from which Aristides, forgetting his quarrel with
+    Themistocles, embarked in a rude boat, during the hottest of the
+    battle, for the ship of the latter; and there the throne of Xerxes,
+    where the proud invader stationed himself as spectator of the battle
+    that was to lay the rich plain of Attica at his feet. There could be
+    no mistake about localities; the details have been handed down from
+    generation to generation, and are as well known to the Greeks of the
+    present day as they were to their fathers. So I went to work
+    systematically, and fought the whole battle through. I gave the
+    Persians ten to one, but I made the Greeks fight like tigers; I
+    pointed them to their city; to their wives and children; I brought
+    on long strings of little innocents, urging them as in the farce,
+    "sing out, young uns;" I carried old Themistocles among the Persians
+    like a modern Greek fireship among the Turks; I sunk ship after
+    ship, and went on demolishing them at a most furious rate, until I
+    saw old Xerxes scudding from his throne, and the remnant of the
+    Persian fleet scampering away to the tune of "devil take the
+    hindmost." By this time I had got into the spirit of the thing; and
+    moving rapidly over that water, once red with blood of thousands
+    from the fields of Asia, I steered for the shore and mounted the
+    vacant throne of Xerxes. This throne is on a hill near the shore,
+    not very high, and as pretty a place as a man could have selected
+    to see his friends whipped and keep out of harm's way himself; for
+    you will recollect that in those days there was no gunpowder nor
+    cannon balls, and, consequently, no danger from long chance shots. I
+    selected a particular stone, which I thought it probable Xerxes, as
+    a reasonable man, and with an eye to perspective, might have chosen
+    as his seat on the eventful day of the battle; and on that same
+    stone sat down to meditate upon the vanity of all earthly greatness.
+    But, most provokingly, whenever I think of Xerxes, the first thing
+    that presents itself to my mind is the couplet in the Primer,
+
+      "Xerxes the Great did die,
+      And so must you and I."
+
+    This is a very sensible stanza, no doubt, and worthy of always being
+    borne in mind; but it was not exactly what I wanted. I tried to
+    drive it away; but the more I tried, the more it stuck to me. It was
+    all in vain. I railed at early education, and resolved that acquired
+    knowledge hurts a man's natural faculties; for if I had not received
+    the first rudiments of education, I should not have been bothered
+    with the vile couplet, and should have been able to do something on
+    my own account. As it was, I lost one of the best opportunities ever
+    a man had for moralizing; and you, my dear ----, have lost at least
+    three pages. I give you, however, all the materials; put yourself on
+    the throne of Xerxes, and do what you can, and may your early
+    studies be no stumbling-block in your way. As for me, vexed and
+    disgusted with myself, I descended the hill as fast as the great
+    king did of yore, and jumping into my boat, steered for the farthest
+    point of the Pirćus; from the throne of _Xerxes_ to the tomb of
+    Themistocles.
+
+    I was prepared to do something here. This was not merely a place
+    where he had been; I was to tread upon the earth that covered his
+    bones; here were his ashes; here was all that remained of the best
+    and bravest of the Greeks, save his immortal name. As I approached I
+    saw the large square stones that enclosed his grave, and mused upon
+    his history; the deliverer of his country, banished, dying an exile,
+    his bones begged by his repenting countrymen, and buried with
+    peculiar propriety near the shore of the sea commanding a full view
+    of the scene of his naval glory. For more than two thousand years
+    the waves have almost washed over his grave, the sun has shone and
+    the winds have howled over him; while, perhaps, his spirit has
+    mingled with the sighing of the winds and the murmur of the waters,
+    in moaning over the long captivity of his countrymen; perhaps, too,
+    his spirit has been with them in their late struggle for liberty;
+    has hovered over them in the battle and the breeze, and is now
+    standing sentinel over his beloved and liberated country. I
+    approached as to the grave of one who will never die. His great
+    name, his great deeds, hallowed by the lapse of so many ages; the
+    scene--I looked over the wall with a feeling amounting to reverence,
+    when, directly before me, the first thing I saw, the only thing I
+    could see, so glaring and conspicuous that nothing else could fix my
+    eye, was a tall, stiff, wooden headboard, painted white, with black
+    letters, to the memory of an Englishman with as unclassical a name
+    as that of _John Johnson_. My eyes were blasted with the sight; I
+    was ferocious; I railed at him as if he had buried himself there
+    with his own hands. What had he to do there? I railed at his
+    friends. Did they expect to give him a name by mingling him with the
+    ashes of the immortal dead? Did they expect to steal immortality
+    like fire from the flint? I dashed back to my boat, steered directly
+    for the harbour, gave sentiment to the dogs, and in half an hour was
+    eating a most voracious and spiteful dinner.
+
+    In the evening I embarked on board my little caique. She was one of
+    the most rakish of that rakish description of vessels. I drew my
+    cloak around me and stretched myself on the deck as we glided
+    quietly out of the harbour; saw the throne of Xerxes, the island of
+    Salamis, and the shores of Greece gradually fade from view; looked
+    at the dusky forms of the Greeks in their capotes lying asleep
+    around me; at the helmsman sitting cross-legged at his post,
+    apparently without life or motion; gave one thought to home, and
+    fell asleep.
+
+    In the morning I began to examine my companions. They were, in all,
+    a captain and six sailors, probably all part owners, and two
+    passengers from one of the islands, not one of whom could speak any
+    other language than Greek. My knowledge of that language was
+    confined to a few rolling hexameters, which had stuck by me in some
+    unaccountable way as a sort of memento of college days. These,
+    however, were of no particular use, and, consequently, I was pretty
+    much tongue-tied during the whole voyage. I amused myself by making
+    my observations quietly upon my companions, as they did more openly
+    upon me, for I frequently heard the word "Americanos" pass among
+    them. I had before had occasion to see something of Greek sailors,
+    and to admire their skill and general good conduct, and I was
+    fortified in my previous opinion by what I saw of my present
+    companions. Their temperance in eating and drinking is very
+    remarkable, and all my comparisons between them and European sailors
+    were very much in their favour. Indeed, I could not help thinking,
+    as they sat collectively, Turkish fashion, around their frugal meal
+    of bread, caviari, and black olives, that I had never seen finer
+    men. Their features were regular, in that style which we to this day
+    recognise as Grecian; their figures good, and their faces wore an
+    air of marked character and intelligence; and these advantages of
+    person were set off by the island costume, the fez or red cloth cap,
+    with a long black tassel at the top, a tight vest and jacket,
+    embroidered and without collars, large Turkish trousers coming down
+    a little below the knee, legs bare, sharp-pointed slippers, and a
+    sash around the waist, tied under the left side, with long ends
+    hanging down, and a knife sticking out about six inches. There was
+    something bold and daring in their appearance; indeed, I may say,
+    rakish and piratical; and I could easily imagine that, if the
+    Mediterranean should again become infested with pirates, my friends
+    would cut no contemptible figure among them. But I must not detain
+    you as long on the voyage as I was myself. The sea was calm; we had
+    hardly any wind; our men were at the oars nearly all the time, and,
+    passing slowly by Ćgina, Cape Sunium, with its magnificent ruins
+    mournfully overlooking the sea, better known in modern times as
+    Colonna's Height and the scene of Falconer's shipwreck, passing also
+    the island of Zea, the ancient Chios, Thermia, and other islands of
+    lesser note, in the afternoon of the third day we arrived at Syra.
+
+    With regard to Syra I shall say but little; I am as loath to linger
+    about it now as I was to stay there then. The fact is, I cannot
+    think of the place with any degree of satisfaction. The evening of
+    my arrival I heard, through a Greek merchant to whom I had a letter
+    from a friend in Athens, of a brig to sail the next day for Smyrna;
+    and I lay down on a miserable bed in a miserable locanda, in the
+    confident expectation of resuming my journey in the morning. Before
+    morning, however, I was roused by "blustering Boreas" rushing
+    through the broken casement of my window; and for more than a week
+    all the winds ever celebrated in the poetical history of Greece were
+    let loose upon the island. We were completely cut off from all
+    communication with the rest of the world. Not a vessel could leave
+    the port, while vessel after vessel put in there for shelter. I do
+    not mean to go into any details; indeed, for my own credit's sake I
+    dare not; for if I were to draw a true picture of things as I found
+    them; if I were to write home the truth, I should be considered as
+    utterly destitute of taste and sentiment; I should be looked upon as
+    a most unpoetical dog, who ought to have been at home poring over
+    the revised statutes instead of breathing the pure air of poetry and
+    song. And now, if I were writing what might by chance come under the
+    eyes of a sentimental young lady or a young gentleman in his teens,
+    the truth would be the last thing I would think of telling. No,
+    though my teeth chatter, though a cold sweat comes over me when I
+    think of it, I would go through the usual rhapsody, and huzzah for
+    "the land of the East and the clime of the sun." Indeed, I have a
+    scrap in my portfolio, written with my cloak and greatcoat on, and
+    my feet over a brazier, beginning in that way. But to you, my
+    dear ----, who know my touching sensibilities, and who, moreover,
+    have a tender regard for my character and will not publish me, I
+    would as soon tell the truth as not. And I therefore do not hesitate
+    to say, but do not whisper it elsewhere, that in one of the
+    beautiful islands of the Ćgean; in the heart of the Cyclades, in the
+    sight of Delos, and Paros, and Antiparos, any one of which is enough
+    to throw one who has never seen them into raptures with their
+    fancied beauties, here, in this paradise of a young man's dreams, in
+    the middle of April, I would have hailed "chill November's surly
+    blast" as a zephyr; I would have exchanged all the beauties of this
+    balmy clime for the sunny side of Kamschatka; I would have given my
+    room and the whole Island of Syra for a third-rate lodging in
+    Communipaw. It was utterly impossible to walk out, and equally
+    impossible to stay in my room; the house, to suit that delightful
+    climate, being built without windows or window-shutters. If I could
+    forget the island, I could remember with pleasure the society I met
+    there. I passed my mornings in the library of Mr. R., one of our
+    worthy American missionaries; and my evenings at the house of Mr.
+    W., the British consul. This gentleman married a Greek lady of
+    Smyrna, and had three beautiful daughters, more than half Greeks in
+    their habits and feelings; one of them is married to an English
+    baronet, another to a Greek merchant of Syra, and the third--.
+
+    On the ninth day the wind fell, the sun once more shone brightly,
+    and in the evening I embarked on board a rickety brig for Smyrna. At
+    about six o'clock P.M. thirty or forty vessels were quietly crawling
+    out of the harbour like rats after a storm. It was almost a calm
+    when we started: in about two hours we had a favourable breeze; we
+    turned in, going at the rate of eight miles an hour, and rose with a
+    strong wind dead ahead. We beat about all that day; the wind
+    increased to a gale, and toward evening we took shelter in the
+    harbour of Scio.
+
+    The history of this beautiful little island forms one of the
+    bloodiest pages in the history of the world, and one glance told
+    that dreadful history. Once the most beautiful island of the
+    Archipelago, it is now a mass of ruins. Its fields, which once
+    "budded and blossomed as the rose," have become waste places; its
+    villages are deserted, its towns are in ruins, its inhabitants
+    murdered, in captivity, and in exile. Before the Greek revolution
+    the Greeks of Scio were engaged in extensive commerce, and ranked
+    among the largest merchants in the Levant. Though living under hard
+    taskmasters, subject to the exactions of a rapacious pacha, their
+    industry and enterprise, and the extraordinary fertility of their
+    island, enabled them to pay a heavy tribute to the Turks and to
+    become rich themselves. For many years they had enjoyed the
+    advantages of a college, with professors of high literary and
+    scientific attainments, and their library was celebrated throughout
+    all that country; it was, perhaps, the only spot in Greece where
+    taste and learning still held a seat. But the island was far more
+    famed for its extraordinary natural beauty and fertility. Its bold
+    mountains and its soft valleys, the mildness of its climate and the
+    richness of its productions, bound the Greeks to its soil by a tie
+    even stronger than the chain of their Turkish masters. In the early
+    part of the revolution the Sciotes took no part with their
+    countrymen in their glorious struggle for liberty. Forty of their
+    principal citizens were given up as hostages, and they were suffered
+    to remain in peace. Wrapped in the rich beauties of their island,
+    they forgot the freedom of their fathers and their own chains; and,
+    under the precarious tenure of a tyrant's will, gave themselves up
+    to the full enjoyment of all that wealth and taste could purchase.
+    We must not be too hard upon human nature; the cause seemed
+    desperate; they had a little paradise at stake; and if there is a
+    spot on earth, the risk of losing which could excuse men in
+    forgetting that they were slaves in a land where their fathers were
+    free, it is the Island of Scio. But the sword hung suspended over
+    them by a single hair. In an unexpected hour, without the least note
+    of preparation, they were startled by the thunder of the Turkish
+    cannon; fifty thousand Turks were let loose like bloodhounds upon
+    the devoted island. The affrighted Greeks lay unarmed and helpless
+    at their feet, but they lay at the feet of men who did not know
+    mercy even by name; at the feet of men who hungered and thirsted
+    after blood; of men, in comparison with whom wild beasts are as
+    lambs. The wildest beast of the forest may become gorged with blood;
+    not so with the Turks at Scio. Their appetite "grew with what it fed
+    on," and still longed for blood when there was not a victim left to
+    bleed. Women were ripped open, children dashed against the walls,
+    the heads of whole families stuck on pikes out of the windows of
+    their houses, while their murderers gave themselves up to riot and
+    plunder within. The forty hostages were hung in a row from the walls
+    of the castle; an indiscriminate and universal burning and massacre
+    took place; in a few days the ground was cumbered with the dead, and
+    one of the loveliest spots on earth was a pile of smoking ruins. Out
+    of a population of one hundred and ten thousand, sixty thousand are
+    supposed to have been murdered, twenty thousand to have escaped, and
+    thirty thousand to have been sold into slavery. Boys and young girls
+    were sold publicly in the streets of Smyrna and Constantinople at a
+    dollar a head. And all this did not arise from any irritated state
+    of feeling toward them. It originated in the cold-blooded,
+    calculating policy of the sultan, conceived in the same spirit which
+    drenched the streets of Constantinople with the blood of the
+    Janisaries; it was intended to strike terror into the hearts of the
+    Greeks, but the murderer failed in his aim. The groans of the
+    hapless Sciotes reached the ears of their countrymen, and gave a
+    headlong and irresistible impulse to the spirit then struggling to
+    be free. And this bloody tragedy was performed in our own days, and
+    in the face of the civilized world. Surely if ever Heaven visits in
+    judgment a nation for a nation's crimes, the burning and massacre at
+    Scio will be deeply visited upon the accursed Turks.
+
+    It was late in the afternoon when I landed, and my landing was under
+    peculiarly interesting circumstances. One of my fellow-passengers
+    was a native of the island, who had escaped during the massacre, and
+    now revisited it for the first time. He asked me to accompany him
+    ashore, promising to find some friends at whose house we might
+    sleep; but he soon found himself a stranger in his native island:
+    where he had once known everybody, he now knew nobody. The town was
+    a complete mass of ruins; the walls of many fine buildings were
+    still standing, crumbling to pieces, and still black with the fire
+    of the incendiary Turks. The town that had grown up upon the ruins
+    consisted of a row of miserable shantees, occupied as shops for the
+    sale of the mere necessaries of life, where the shopman slept on his
+    window-shutter in front. All my companion's efforts to find an
+    acquaintance who would give us a night's lodging were fruitless. We
+    were determined not to go on board the vessel, if possible to avoid
+    it; her last cargo had been oil, the odour of which still remained
+    about her. The weather would not permit us to sleep on deck, and the
+    cabin was intolerably disagreeable. To add to our unpleasant
+    position, and, at the same time, to heighten the cheerlessness of
+    the scene around us, the rain began to fall violently. Under the
+    guidance of a Greek we searched among the ruins for an apartment
+    where we might build a fire and shelter ourselves for the night, but
+    we searched in vain; the work of destruction was too complete.
+
+    Cold, and thoroughly drenched with rain, we were retracing our way
+    to our boat, when our guide told my companion that a Greek
+    archbishop had lately taken up his abode among the ruins. We
+    immediately went there, and found him occupying apartments,
+    partially repaired, in what had once been one of the finest houses
+    in Scio. The entrance through a large stone gateway was imposing;
+    the house was cracked from top to bottom by fire, nearly one half
+    had fallen down, and the stones lay scattered as they fell; but
+    enough remained to show that in its better days it had been almost a
+    palace. We ascended a flight of stone steps to a terrace, from which
+    we entered into a large hall perhaps thirty feet wide and fifty feet
+    long. On one side of this hall the wall had fallen down the whole
+    length, and we looked out upon the mass of ruins beneath. On the
+    other side, in a small room in one corner, we found the archbishop.
+    He was sick, and in bed with all his clothes on, according to the
+    universal custom here, but received us kindly. The furniture
+    consisted of an iron bedstead with a mattress, on which he lay with
+    a quilt spread over him, a wooden sofa, three wooden chairs, about
+    twenty books, and two large leather cases containing clothes,
+    napkins, and, probably, all his worldly goods. The rain came through
+    the ceiling in several places; the bed of the poor archbishop had
+    evidently been moved from time to time to avoid it, and I was
+    obliged to change my position twice. An air of cheerless poverty
+    reigned through the apartment. I could not help comparing his lot
+    with that of more favoured and, perhaps, not more worthy servants of
+    the church. It was a style so different from that of the priests at
+    Rome, the pope and his cardinals, with their gaudy equipages and
+    multitudes of footmen rattling to the Vatican; or from the pomp and
+    state of the haughty English prelates, or even from the comforts of
+    our own missionaries in different parts of this country, that I
+    could not help feeling deeply for the poor priest before me. But he
+    seemed contented and cheerful, and even thankful that, for the
+    moment, there were others worse off than himself, and that he had it
+    in his power to befriend them.
+
+    Sweetmeats, coffee, and pipes were served; and in about an hour we
+    were conducted to supper in a large room, also opening from the
+    hall. Our supper would not have tempted an epicure, but suited very
+    well an appetite whetted by exercise and travel. It consisted of a
+    huge lump of bread and a large glass of water for each of us,
+    caviari, black olives, and two kinds of Turkish sweetmeats. We were
+    waited upon by two priests: one of them, a handsome young man, not
+    more than twenty, with long black hair hanging over his shoulders
+    like a girl's, stood by with a napkin on his arm and a pewter
+    vessel, with which he poured water on our hands, receiving it again
+    in a basin. This was done both before and after eating; then came
+    coffee and pipes. During the evening the young priest brought out an
+    edition of Homer, and I surprised _him_, and astounded _myself_, by
+    being able to translate a passage in the Iliad. I translated it in
+    French, and my companion explained it in modern Greek to the young
+    priest. Our beds were cushions laid on a raised platform or divan
+    extending around the walls, with a quilt for each of us. In the
+    morning, after sweetmeats, coffee, and pipes, we paid our respects
+    to the good old archbishop, and took our leave. When we got out of
+    doors, finding that the wind was the same, and that there was no
+    possibility of sailing, my friend proposed a ride into the country.
+    We procured a couple of mules, took a small basket of provisions for
+    a collation, and started.
+
+    Our road lay directly along the shore; on one side the sea, and on
+    the other the ruins of houses and gardens, almost washed by the
+    waves. At about three miles' distance we crossed a little stream, by
+    the side of which we saw a sarcophagus, lately disinterred,
+    containing the usual vases of a Grecian tomb, including the piece of
+    money to pay Charon his ferriage over the river Styx, and six pounds
+    of dust; being all that remained of a _man_--perhaps one who had
+    filled a large space in the world; perhaps a hero--buried probably
+    more than two thousand years ago. After a ride of about five miles
+    we came to the ruins of a large village, the style of which would
+    anywhere have fixed the attention, as having been once a favoured
+    abode of wealth and taste. The houses were of brown stone, built
+    together, strictly in the Venetian style, after the models left
+    during the occupation of the island by the Venetians, large and
+    elegant, with gardens of three or four acres, enclosed by high walls
+    of the same kind of stone, and altogether in a style far superior to
+    anything I had seen in Greece. These were the country-houses and
+    gardens of the rich merchants of Scio. The manner of living among
+    the proprietors here was somewhat peculiar, and the ties that bound
+    them to this little village were peculiarly strong. This was the
+    family home; the community was essentially mercantile, and most of
+    their business transactions were carried on elsewhere. When there
+    were three or four brothers in a family, one would be in
+    Constantinople a couple of years, another at Trieste, and so on,
+    while another remained at home; so that those who were away, while
+    toiling amid the perplexities of business, were always looking to
+    the occasional family reunion; and all trusted to spend the evening
+    of their days among the beautiful gardens of Scio. What a scene for
+    the heart to turn to now! The houses and gardens were still there,
+    some standing almost entire, others black with smoke and crumbling
+    to ruins. But where were they who once occupied them? Where were
+    they who should now be coming out to rejoice in the return of a
+    friend and to welcome a stranger? An awful solitude, a stillness
+    that struck a cold upon the heart, reigned around us. We saw nobody;
+    and our own voices, and the tramping of our horses upon the deserted
+    pavements, sounded hollow and sepulchral in our ears. It was like
+    walking among the ruins of Pompeii; it was another city of the dead;
+    but there was a freshness about the desolation that seemed of
+    to-day; it seemed as though the inhabitants should be sleeping and
+    not dead. Indeed, the high walls of the gardens, and the outside of
+    the houses too, were generally so fresh and in so perfect a state,
+    that it seemed like riding through a handsome village at an early
+    hour before the inhabitants had risen; and I sometimes could not
+    help thinking that in an hour or two the streets would be thronged
+    with a busy population. My friend continued to conduct me through
+    the solitary streets; telling me, as we went along, that this was
+    the house of such a family, this of such a family, with some of
+    whose members I had become acquainted in Greece, until, stopping
+    before a large stone gateway, he dismounted at the gate of his
+    father's house. In that house he was born; there he had spent his
+    youth; he had escaped from it during the dreadful massacre, and
+    this was the first time of his revisiting it. What a tide of
+    recollections must have rushed upon him!
+
+    We entered through the large stone gateway into a courtyard
+    beautifully paved in mosaic in the form of a star, with small black
+    and white round stones. On our left was a large stone reservoir,
+    perhaps twenty-five feet square, still so perfect as to hold water,
+    with an arbour over it supported by marble columns; a venerable
+    grapevine completely covered the arbour. The garden covered an
+    extent of about four acres, filled with orange, lemon, almond, and
+    fig trees; overrun with weeds, roses, and flowers, growing together
+    in wild confusion. On the right was the house, and a melancholy
+    spectacle it was; the wall had fallen down on one side, and the
+    whole was black with smoke. We ascended a flight of stone steps,
+    with marble balustrades, to the terrace, a platform about twenty
+    feet square, overlooking the garden. From the terrace we entered the
+    saloon, a large room with high ceilings and fresco paintings on the
+    walls; the marks of the fire kindled on the stone floor still
+    visible, all the woodwork burned to a cinder, and the whole black
+    with smoke. It was a perfect picture of wanton destruction. The day,
+    too, was in conformity with the scene; the sun was obscured, the
+    wind blew through the ruined building, it rained, was cold and
+    cheerless. What were the feelings of my friend I cannot imagine; the
+    houses of three of his uncles were immediately adjoining; one of
+    these uncles was one of the forty hostages, and was hanged; the
+    other two were murdered; his father, a venerable-looking old man,
+    who came down to the vessel when we started to see him off, had
+    escaped to the mountains, from thence in a caique to Ipsara, and
+    from thence into Italy. I repeat it, I cannot imagine what were his
+    feelings; he spoke but little; they must have been too deep for
+    utterance. I looked at everything with intense interest; I wanted to
+    ask question after question, but could not, in mercy, probe his
+    bleeding wounds. We left the house and walked out into the garden.
+    It showed that there was no master's eye to watch over it; I plucked
+    an orange which had lost its flavour; the tree was withering from
+    want of care; our feet became entangled among weeds, and roses, and
+    rare hothouse plants growing wildly together. I said that he did not
+    talk much; but the little he did say amounted to volumes. Passing a
+    large vase in which a beautiful plant was running wildly over the
+    sides, he murmured indistinctly "the same vase" (le męme vase), and
+    once he stopped opposite a tree, and, turning to me, said, "This is
+    the only tree I do not remember." These and other little incidental
+    remarks showed how deeply all the particulars were engraved upon his
+    mind, and told me, plainer than words, that the wreck and ruin he
+    saw around him harrowed his very soul. Indeed, how could it be
+    otherwise? This was his father's house, the home of his youth, the
+    scene of his earliest, dearest, and fondest recollections. Busy
+    memory, that source of all our greatest pains as well as greatest
+    pleasures, must have pressed sorely upon him, must have painted the
+    ruined and desolate scene around him in colours even brighter, far
+    brighter, than they ever existed in; it must have called up the
+    faces of well-known and well-loved friends; indeed, he must have
+    asked himself, in bitterness and in anguish of spirit, "The friends
+    of my youth where are they?" while the fatal answer fell upon his
+    heart, "Gone murdered, in captivity and in exile."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+    A Noble Grecian Lady.--Beauty of Scio.--An Original.--Foggi.--A
+      Turkish Coffee-house.--Mussulman at Prayers.--Easter Sunday.--A
+      Greek Priest.--A Tartar Guide.--Turkish Ladies.--Camel
+      Scenes.--Sight of a Harem.--Disappointed Hopes.--A rare
+      Concert.--Arrival at Smyrna.
+
+
+(_Continuation of the Letter._)
+
+    WE returned to the house, and seeking out a room less ruined than
+    the rest, partook of a slight collation, and set out on a visit to a
+    relative of my Sciote friend.
+
+    On our way my companion pointed out a convent on the side of a hill,
+    where six thousand Greeks, who had been prevailed upon to come down
+    from the mountains to ransom themselves, were treacherously murdered
+    to a man; their unburied bones still whiten the ground within the
+    walls of the convent. Arriving at the house of his relative, we
+    entered through a large gateway into a handsome courtyard, with
+    reservoir, garden, &c., ruinous, though in better condition than
+    those we had seen before. This relative was a widow, of the noble
+    house of Mavrocordato, one of the first families in Greece, and
+    perhaps the most distinguished name in the Greek revolution. She had
+    availed herself of the sultan's amnesty to return; had repaired two
+    or three rooms, and sat down to end her days among the scenes of her
+    childhood, among the ruins of her father's house. She was now not
+    more than thirty; her countenance was remarkably pensive, and she
+    had seen enough to drive a smile for ever from her face. The meeting
+    between her and my friend was exceedingly affecting, particularly on
+    her part. She wept bitterly, though, with the elasticity peculiar to
+    the Greek character, the smile soon chased away the tear. She
+    invited us to spend the night there, pointing to the divan, and
+    promising us cushions and coverlets. We accepted her invitation, and
+    again set forth to ramble among the ruins.
+
+    I had heard that an American missionary had lately come into the
+    island, and was living somewhere in the neighbourhood. I found out
+    his abode, and went to see him. He was a young man from Virginia, by
+    the name of ****; had married a lady from Connecticut, who was
+    unfortunately sick in bed. He was living in one room in the corner
+    of a ruined building, but was then engaged in repairing a house into
+    which he expected to remove soon. As an American, the first whom
+    they had seen in that distant island, they invited me into the
+    sickroom. In a strange land, and among a people whose language they
+    did not understand, they seemed to be all in all to each other; and
+    I left them, probably for ever, in the earnest hope that the wife
+    might soon be restored to health, that hand in hand they might
+    sustain each other in the rough path before them.
+
+    Toward evening we returned to the house of my friend's relative. We
+    found there a nephew, a young man about twenty-two, and a cousin, a
+    man about thirty-five, both accidentally on a visit to the island.
+    As I looked at the little party before me, sitting around a brazier
+    of charcoal, and talking earnestly in Greek, I could hardly persuade
+    myself that what I had seen and heard that day was real. All that I
+    had ever read in history of the ferocity of the Turkish character;
+    all the wild stories of corsairs, of murdering, capturing, and
+    carrying into captivity, that I had ever read in romances, crowded
+    upon me, and I saw living witnesses that the bloodiest records of
+    history and the wildest creations of romance were not overcharged.
+    They could all testify in their own persons that these things were
+    true. They had all been stripped of their property, and had their
+    houses burned over their heads; had all narrowly escaped being
+    murdered; and had all suffered in their nearest and dearest
+    connexions. The nephew, then a boy nine years old, had been saved by
+    a maidservant, his father had been murdered; a brother, a sister,
+    and many of his cousins, were at that moment, and had been for
+    years, in slavery among the Turks; my friend, with his sister, had
+    found refuge in the house of the Austrian consul, and from thence
+    had escaped into Italy; the cousin was the son of one of the forty
+    hostages who were hung, and was the only member of his father's
+    family that escaped death; while our pensive and amiable hostess, a
+    bride of seventeen, had seen her young husband murdered before her
+    eyes; had herself been sold into slavery, and, after two years'
+    servitude, redeemed by her friends.
+
+    In the morning I rose early and walked out upon the terrace. Nature
+    had put on a different garb. The wind had fallen, and the sun was
+    shining warmly upon a scene of softness and luxuriance surpassing
+    all that I had ever heard or dreamed of the beauty of the islands of
+    Greece. Away with all that I said about Syra; skip the page. The
+    terrace overlooked the garden filled with orange, lemon, almond, and
+    fig trees; with plants, roses, and flowers of every description,
+    growing in luxuriant wildness. But the view was not confined to the
+    garden. Looking back to the harbour of Scio, was a bold range of
+    rugged mountains bounding the view on that side; on the right was
+    the sea, then calm as a lake; on both the other sides were ranges of
+    mountains, irregular and picturesque in their appearance, verdant
+    and blooming to their very summits; and within these limits, for an
+    extent of perhaps five miles, were continued gardens like that at
+    my feet, filled with the choicest fruit-trees, with roses and the
+    greatest variety of rare plants and flowers that ever unfolded their
+    beauties before the eyes of man; above all, the orange-trees, the
+    peculiar favourite of the island, then almost in full bloom, covered
+    with blossoms, from my elevated position on the terrace made the
+    whole valley appear an immense bed of flowers. All, too, felt the
+    freshening influence of the rain; and a gentle breeze brought to me
+    from this wilderness of sweets the most delicious perfume that ever
+    greeted the senses. Do not think me extravagant when I say that, in
+    your wildest dreams, you could never fancy so rich and beautiful a
+    scene. Even among ruins, that almost made the heart break, I could
+    hardly tear my eyes from it. It is one of the loveliest spots on
+    earth. It is emphatically a Paradise lost, for the hand of the Turks
+    is upon it; a hand that withers all that it touches. In vain does
+    the sultan invite the survivers, and the children made orphans by
+    his bloody massacre, to return; in vain do the fruits and the
+    flowers, the sun and the soil, invite them to return; their wounds
+    are still bleeding; they cannot forget that the wild beast's paw
+    might again be upon them, and that their own blood might one day
+    moisten the flowers which grow over the graves of their fathers. But
+    I must leave this place. I could hardly tear myself away then, and I
+    love to linger about it now. While I was enjoying the luxury of the
+    terrace a messenger came from the captain to call us on board. With
+    a feeling of the deepest interest I bade farewell, probably for
+    ever, to my sorrowing hostess and to the beautiful gardens of Scio.
+
+    We mounted our mules, and in an hour were at the port. My feelings
+    were so wrought upon that I felt my blood boil at the first Turk I
+    met in the streets. I felt that I should like to sacrifice him to
+    the shades of the murdered Greeks. I wondered that the Greeks did
+    not kill every one on the island. I wondered that they could endure
+    the sight of the turban. We found that the captain had hurried us
+    away unnecessarily. We could not get out of the harbour, and were
+    obliged to lounge about the town all day. We again made a circuit
+    among the ruins; examined particularly those of the library, where
+    we found an old woman who had once been an attendant there, living
+    in a little room in the cellar, completely buried under the stones
+    of the fallen building; and returning, sat down with a chibouk
+    before the door of an old Turkish coffee-house fronting the harbour.
+    Here I met an original in the person of the Dutch consul. He was an
+    old Italian, and had been in America during the revolutionary war as
+    _dragoman_, as he called it, to the Count de Grasse, though, from
+    his afterward incidentally speaking of the count as "my master," I
+    am inclined to think that the word dragoman, which here means a
+    person of great character and trust, may be interpreted as "valet de
+    chambre." The old consul was in Scio during the whole of the
+    massacre, and gave me many interesting particulars respecting it. He
+    hates the Greeks, and spoke with great indignation about the manner
+    in which their dead bodies lay strewed about the streets for months
+    after the massacre. "D--n them," he said, "he could not go anywhere
+    without stumbling over them." As I began to have some apprehensions
+    about being obliged to stay here another night, I thought I could
+    not employ my time better than in trying to work out of the consul
+    an invitation to spend it with him. But the old fellow was too much
+    for me. When I began to talk about the unpleasantness of being
+    obliged to spend the night on board, and the impossibility of
+    spending it on shore, _having no acquaintance_ there, he began to
+    talk poverty in the most up and down terms. I was a little
+    discouraged, but I looked at his military coat, his cocked hat and
+    cane, and considering his talk merely a sort of apology for the
+    inferior style of housekeeping I would find, was ingeniously working
+    things to a point, when he sent me to the right about by enumerating
+    the little instances of kindness he had received from strangers who
+    happened to visit the island; among others, from one--he had his
+    name in his pocketbook; he should never forget him; perhaps I had
+    heard of him--who, at parting, shook him affectionately by the hand,
+    and gave him a doubloon and a Spanish dollar. I hauled off from the
+    representative of the majesty of Holland, and perhaps, before this,
+    have been served up to some new visitor as the "mean, stingy
+    American."
+
+    In the evening we again got under weigh; before morning the wind was
+    again blowing dead ahead; and about midday we put into the harbour
+    of Foggi, a port in Asia Minor, and came to anchor under the walls
+    of the castle, under the blood-red Mussulman flag. We immediately
+    got into the boat to go ashore. This was my first port in Turkey. A
+    huge ugly African, marked with the smallpox, with two pistols and a
+    yataghan in his belt, stood on a little dock, waited till we were in
+    the act of landing, and then rushed forward, ferocious as a tiger
+    from his native sands, throwing up both his hands, and roaring out
+    "Quarantino." This was a new thing in Turkey. Heretofore the Turks,
+    with their fatalist notions, had never taken any precautions against
+    the plague; but they had become frightened by the terrible ravages
+    the disease was then making in Egypt, and imposed a quarantine upon
+    vessels coming from thence. We were, however, suffered to land, and
+    our first movement was to the coffee-house directly in front of the
+    dock. The coffee-house was a low wooden building, covering
+    considerable ground, with a large piazza, or, rather, projecting
+    roof all around it. Inside and out there was a raised platform
+    against the wall. This platform was one step from the floor, and on
+    this step every one left his shoes before taking his seat on the
+    matting. There were, perhaps, fifty Turks inside and out; sitting
+    cross-legged, smoking the chibouk, and drinking coffee out of cups
+    not larger than the shell of a Madeira-nut.
+
+    We kicked our shoes off on the steps, seated ourselves on a mat
+    outside, and took our chibouk and coffee with an air of savoir faire
+    that would not have disgraced the worthiest Moslem of them all.
+    Verily, said I, as I looked at the dozing, smoking, coffee-sipping
+    congregation around me, there are some good points about the Turks,
+    after all. They never think--that hurts digestion; and they love
+    chibouks and coffee--that shows taste and feeling. I fell into their
+    humour, and for a while exchanged nods with my neighbours all
+    around. Suddenly the bitterness of thought came upon me; I found
+    that my pipe was exhausted. I replenished it, and took a sip of
+    coffee. Verily, said I, there are few better things in this world
+    than chibouks and coffee; they even make men forget there is blood
+    upon their hands. The thought started me; I shrank from contact with
+    my neighbours, cut my way through the volumes of smoke, and got out
+    into the open air.
+
+    My companion joined me. We entered the walls and made a circuit of
+    the town. It was a dirty little place, having one principal street
+    lined with shops or bazars; every third shop, almost, being a
+    cafteria, where a parcel of huge turbaned fellows were at their
+    daily labours of smoking pipes and drinking coffee. The first thing
+    I remarked as being strikingly different from a European city was
+    the total absence of women. The streets were thronged with men, and
+    not a woman was to be seen, except occasionally I caught a glimpse
+    of a white veil or a pair of black eyes sparkling through the
+    latticed bars of a window. Afterward, however, in walking outside
+    the walls into the country, we met a large party of women. When we
+    first saw them they had their faces uncovered; but, as soon as they
+    saw us coming toward them, they stopped and arranged their long
+    white shawls, winding them around their faces so as to leave barely
+    space enough uncovered to allow them to see and breathe, but so that
+    it was utterly impossible for us to distinguish a single one of
+    their features.
+
+    Going on in the direction from which they came, and attracted by the
+    mourning cypress, we came to a large burying-ground. It is situated
+    on the side of a hill almost washed by the waves, and shaded by a
+    thick grove of the funereal tree. There is, indeed, something
+    peculiarly touching in the appearance of this tree; it seems to be
+    endowed with feelings, and to mourn over the dead it shades. The
+    monuments were generally a single upright slab of marble, with a
+    turban on the top. There were many, too, in form like one of our
+    oblong tombstones; and, instead of a slab of marble over the top,
+    the interior was filled with earth, and the surface overrun with
+    roses, evergreens, and flowers. The burying-grounds in the East are
+    always favourite places for walking in; and it is a favourite
+    occupation of the Turkish women to watch and water the flowers
+    growing over the graves of their friends.
+
+    Toward evening we returned to the harbour. I withdrew from my
+    companion, and, leaning against one of the gates of the city, fixed
+    my eyes upon the door of a minaret, watching till the muezzin should
+    appear, and, for the last time before the setting of the sun, call
+    all good Mussulmans to prayer. The door opens toward Mecca, and a
+    little before dark the muezzin came out, and, leaning over the
+    railing with his face toward the tomb of the Prophet, in a voice,
+    every tone of which fell distinctly upon my ear, made that solemn
+    call which, from the time of Mohammed, has been addressed five times
+    a day from the tops of the minarets to the sons of the faithful.
+    "Allah! Allah! God is God, and Mohammed is his prophet. To prayer!
+    to prayer!" Immediately an old Turk by my side fell upon his knees,
+    with his face to the tomb of the Prophet; ten times, in quick
+    succession, he bowed his forehead till it touched the earth; then
+    clasped his hands and prayed. I never saw more rapt devotion than in
+    this pious old Mussulman. I have often marked in Italy the severe
+    observance of religious ceremonies; I have seen, for instance, at
+    Rome, fifty penitents at a time mounting on their knees, and
+    kissing, as they mounted, the steps of the Scala Santa, or holy
+    staircase, by which, as the priests tell them, our Saviour ascended
+    into the presence of Pontius Pilate. I have seen the Greek prostrate
+    himself before a picture until he was physically exhausted; and I
+    have seen the humble and pious Christian at his prayers, beneath the
+    simple fanes and before the peaceful altars of my own land; but I
+    never saw that perfect abandonment with which a Turk gives himself
+    up to his God in prayer. He is perfectly abstracted from the things
+    of this world; he does not regard time or place; in his closet or in
+    the street, alone or in a crowd, he sees nothing, he hears nothing;
+    the world is a blank; his God is everything. He is lost in the
+    intensity of his devotion. It is a spectacle almost sublime, and for
+    the moment you forget the polluted fountain of his religion, and the
+    thousand crimes it sanctions, in your admiration of his sincerity
+    and faith.
+
+    Not being able to find any place where we could sleep ashore, except
+    on one of the mats of the coffee-house, head and heels with a dozen
+    Turks, we went on board, and toward morning again got under weigh.
+    We beat up to the mouth of the Gulf of Smyrna, but, with the sirocco
+    blowing directly in our teeth, it was impossible to go farther. We
+    made two or three attempts to enter, but in tacking the last time
+    our old brig, which had hardly ballast enough to keep her keel under
+    water, received such a rough shaking that we got her away before the
+    wind, and at three o'clock P.M. were again anchored in the harbour
+    of Foggi. I now began to think that there was a spell upon my
+    movements, and that Smyrna, which was becoming to me a sort of land
+    of promise, would never greet my longing eyes.
+
+    I was somewhat comforted, however, by remembering that I had never
+    yet reached any port in the Mediterranean for which I had sailed,
+    without touching at one or two intermediate ports; and that, so far,
+    I had always worked right at last. I was still farther comforted by
+    our having the good fortune to be able to procure lodging ashore, at
+    the house of a Greek, the son of a priest. It was the Saturday
+    before Easter Sunday, and the resurrection of our Saviour was to be
+    celebrated at midnight, or, rather, the beginning of the next day,
+    according to the rites and ceremonies of the Greek church. It was
+    also the last of the forty days' fasting, and the next day commenced
+    feasting. Supper was prepared for us, at which meat was put on the
+    table for me only; my Greek friend being supposed not to eat meat
+    during the days of fasting. He had been, however, two years out of
+    Greece; and though he did not like to offend the prejudices of his
+    countrymen, he did not like fasting. I felt for my fellow-traveller;
+    and, cutting up some meat in small parcels, kept my eye upon the
+    door while he whipped them into his mouth. After supper we lay down
+    upon the divan, with large quilts over us, my friend having promised
+    to rise at twelve o'clock and accompany me to the Greek church.
+
+    At midnight we were roused by the chant of the Greeks in the
+    streets, on their way to the church. We turned out, and fell into a
+    procession of five hundred people, making the streets as light as
+    day with their torches. At the door of the church we found our host,
+    sitting at a table with a parcel of wax tapers on one side and a box
+    to receive money on the other. We each bought a taper and went in.
+    After remaining there at least two hours, listening to a monotonous
+    and unintelligible routine of prayers and chants, the priests came
+    out of the holy doors, bearing aloft an image of our Saviour on the
+    cross, ornamented with gold leaf, tassels, and festoons of
+    artificial flowers; passed through the church, and out of the
+    opposite door. The Greeks lighted their tapers and formed into a
+    procession behind them, and we did the same. Immediately outside the
+    door, up the staircase, and on each side of the corridor, allowing
+    merely room enough for the procession to pass, were arranged the
+    women, dressed in white, with long white veils, thrown back from
+    their faces however, laid smooth over the tops of their heads, and
+    hanging down to their feet. Nearly every woman, old or young, had a
+    child in her arms. In fact, there seemed to be as great a mustering
+    of children as of men and women, and, for aught that I could see, as
+    much to the edification of the former as the latter. A continued
+    chant was kept up during the movements of the procession, and
+    perhaps for half an hour after the arrival of the priests at the
+    courtyard, when it rose to a tremendous burst. The torches were
+    waved in the air; a wild, unmeaning, and discordant scream or yell
+    rang through the hollow cloisters, and half a dozen pistols, two or
+    three muskets, and twenty or thirty crackers were fired. This was
+    intended as a feu-de-joie, and was supposed to mark the precise
+    moment of our Saviour's resurrection. In a few moments the phrensy
+    seemed to pass away; the noise fell from a wild clamour to a slow
+    chant, and the procession returned to the church. The scene was
+    striking, particularly the part outside the church; the dead of
+    night; the waving of torches; the women with their long white
+    dresses, and the children in their arms, &c.; but, from beginning to
+    end, there was nothing solemn in it.
+
+    Returned to the church, a priest came round with a picture of the
+    Saviour risen; and, as far as I could make it out, holding in his
+    hand the Greek flag, followed by another priest with a plate to
+    receive contributions. He held out the picture to be kissed, then
+    turned his hand to receive the same act of devotion, keeping his eye
+    all the time upon the plate which followed to receive the offerings
+    of the pious, as a sort of payment for the privilege of the kiss.
+    His manner reminded me of the Dutch parson, who, immediately after
+    pronouncing a couple man and wife, touching the bridegroom with his
+    elbow, said, "And now where ish mine dollar?" I kissed the picture,
+    dodged his knuckles, paid my money, and left the church. I had been
+    there four hours, during which time, perhaps, more than a thousand
+    persons had been completely absorbed in their religious ceremonies;
+    and though beginning in the middle of the night, I have seen more
+    yawning at the theatre or at an Italian opera than I saw there. They
+    now began to disperse, though I remember I left a crowd of regular
+    amateurs, at the head of whom were our sailors, still hanging round
+    the desk of an exhorting priest, with an earnestness that showed a
+    still craving appetite.
+
+    I do not wonder that the Turks look with contempt upon Christians,
+    for they have constantly under their eyes the disgusting mummeries
+    of the Greek church, and see nothing of the pure and sublime
+    principles our religion inculcates. Still, however, there was
+    something striking and interesting in the manner in which the Greeks
+    in this Turkish town had kept themselves, as it were, a peculiar
+    people, and, in spite of the brands of "dog" and "infidel," held
+    fast to the religion they received from their fathers. There was
+    nothing interesting about them as Greeks; they had taken no part
+    with their countrymen in their glorious struggle for liberty; they
+    were engaged in petty business, and bartered the precious chance of
+    freedom once before them for base profits and ignoble ease; and even
+    now were content to live in chains, and kiss the rod that smote
+    them.
+
+    We returned to the house where we had slept; and, after coffee, in
+    company with our host and his father, the priest, sat down to a
+    meal, in which, for the first time in forty days, they ate meat. I
+    had often remarked the religious observance of fast days among the
+    common people in Greece. In travelling there I had more than once
+    offered an egg to my guide on a fast day, but never could get one
+    to accept anything that came so near to animal food, though, by a
+    strange confusion of the principles of religious obligation, perhaps
+    the same man would not have hesitated to commit murder if he had any
+    inducement to do so. Mrs. Hill, at Athens, told me that, upon one
+    occasion, a little girl in her school refused to eat a piece of cake
+    because it was made with eggs.
+
+    At daylight I was lying on the floor looking through a crevice of
+    the window-shutter at the door of the minaret, waiting for the
+    muezzin's morning cry to prayer. At six o'clock I went out, and
+    finding the wind still in the same quarter, without any apparent
+    prospect of change, determined, at all hazards, to leave the vessel
+    and go on by land. My friend and fellow-passenger was also very
+    anxious to get to Smyrna, but would not accompany me, from an
+    indefinite apprehension of plague, robbers, &c. I had heard so many
+    of these rumours, all of which had proved to be unfounded, that I
+    put no faith in any of them. I found a Turk who engaged to take me
+    through in fourteen hours; and at seven o'clock I was in my saddle,
+    charged with a dozen letters from captains, supercargoes, and
+    passengers, whom I left behind waiting for a change of wind.
+
+    My Tartar was a big swarthy fellow, with an extent of beard and
+    mustaches unusual even among his bearded countrymen. He was armed
+    with a pair of enormous pistols and a yataghan, and was, altogether,
+    a formidable fellow to look upon. But there was a something about
+    him that I liked. There was a doggedness, a downright stubbornness
+    that seemed honest. I knew nothing about him. I picked him up in the
+    street, and took him in preference to others who offered, because he
+    would not be beaten down in his price. When he saw me seated on my
+    horse he stood by my side a little distance off, and looking at me
+    without opening his lips, drew his belt tight around him, and
+    adjusted his pistols and yataghan. His manner seemed to say that he
+    took charge of me as a bale of goods, to be paid for on safe
+    delivery, and that he would carry me through with fire and sword, if
+    necessary. And now, said I, "Let fate do her worst;" I have a good
+    horse under me, and in fourteen hours I shall be in Smyrna. "Blow
+    winds and crack your cheeks;" I defy you.
+
+    My Tartar led off at a brisk trot, never opening his lips nor
+    turning his head except occasionally to see how I followed him
+    across a stream. At about ten o'clock he turned off from the
+    horse-path into a piece of fine pasture, and, slipping the bridle
+    off his horse, turned him loose to feed. He then did the same with
+    mine, and, spreading my cloak on the ground for me to sit upon, sat
+    down by my side and opened his wallet. His manner seemed to intimate
+    a disposition to throw provisions into a common stock, no doubt
+    expecting the gain to be on his side; but as I could only contribute
+    a couple of rolls of bread which I bought as we rode through the
+    town, I am inclined to think that he considered me rather a sponge.
+
+    While we were sitting there a travelling party came up, consisting
+    of five Turks and three women. The women were on horseback, riding
+    crosswise, though there were so many quilts, cushions, &c., piled on
+    the backs of their horses that they sat rather on seats than on
+    saddles. After a few words of parley with my Tartar, the men lifted
+    the women from the horses, taking them in their arms, and, as it
+    were, hauling them off, not very gracefully, but very kindly; and,
+    spreading their quilts on the ground a short distance from us,
+    turned their horses loose to feed, and sat down to make their
+    morning meal. An unusual and happy thing for me the women had their
+    faces uncovered nearly all the time, though they could not well have
+    carried on the process of eating with them muffled up in the usual
+    style. One of the women was old, the other two were exceedingly
+    young; neither of them more than sixteen; each had a child in her
+    arms, and, without any allowance for time and place, both were
+    exceedingly beautiful. I do not say so under the influence of the
+    particular circumstances of our meeting, nor with the view of making
+    an incident of it, but I would have singled them out as such if I
+    had met them in a ballroom at home. I was particularly struck with
+    their delicacy of figure and complexion. Notwithstanding their
+    laughing faces, their mirth, and the kind treatment of the men, I
+    could not divest myself of the idea that they were caged birds
+    longing to be free. I could not believe that a woman belonging to a
+    Turk could be otherwise than unhappy. Unfortunately, I could not
+    understand a word of their language; and as they looked from their
+    turbaned lords to my stiff hat and frockcoat, they seemed to regard
+    me as something the Tartar had just caught and was taking up to
+    Constantinople as a present to the sultan. I endeavoured to show,
+    however, that I was not the wild thing they took me to be; that I
+    had an eye to admire their beauty, and a heart to feel for their
+    servitude. I tried to procure from them some signal of distress; I
+    did all that I could to get some sign to come to their rescue, and
+    to make myself generally agreeable. I looked sentimentally. This
+    they did not seem to understand at all. I smiled; this seemed to
+    please them better; and there is no knowing to what a point I might
+    have arrived, but my Tartar hurried me away; and I parted on the
+    wild plains of Turkey with two young and beautiful women, leading
+    almost a savage life, whose personal graces would have made them
+    ornaments in polished and refined society. Verily, said I, the Turks
+    are not so bad, after all; they have handsome wives, and a handsome
+    wife comes next after chibouks and coffee.
+
+    I was now reminded at every step of my being in an oriental country
+    by the caravans I was constantly meeting. Caravans and camels are
+    more or less associated with all the fairy scenes and glowing
+    pictures of the East. They have always presented themselves to my
+    mind with a sort of poetical imagery, and they certainly have a fine
+    effect in a description or in a picture; but, after all, they are
+    ugly-looking things to meet on the road. I would rather see the two
+    young Turk-_esses_ again than all the caravans in the East. The
+    caravan is conducted by a guide on a donkey, with a halter attached
+    to the first camel, and so on from camel to camel through the whole
+    caravan. The camel is an exceedingly ugly animal in his proportions,
+    and there is a dead uniformity in his movement; with a dead, vacant
+    expression in his face, that is really distressing. If a man were
+    dying of thirst in the desert, it would be enough to drive him to
+    distraction to look in the cool, unconcerned, and imperturbable face
+    of his camel. But their value is inestimable in a country like this,
+    where there are no carriage roads, and where deserts and drought
+    present themselves in every direction.
+
+    One of the camel scenes, the encampment, is very picturesque, the
+    camels arranged around on their knees in a circle, with their heads
+    to the centre, and the camel-drivers with their bales piled up
+    within; and I was struck with another scene; we came to the borders
+    of a stream, which it was necessary to cross in a boat. The boat
+    was then on the other side, and the boatman and camel driver were
+    trying to get on board some camels. When we came up they had got
+    three on board, down on their knees in the bottom of the boat, and
+    were then in the act of coercing the fourth. The poor brute was
+    frightened terribly; resisted with all his might, and put forth most
+    piteous cries; I do not know a more distressing noise than the cry
+    of a brute suffering from fear; it seems to partake of the feeling
+    that causes it, and carries with it something fearful; but the cries
+    of the poor brute were vain; they got him on board, and in the same
+    way urged on board three others. They then threw in the donkey, and
+    seven camels and the donkey were so stowed in the bottom of the
+    boat, that they did not take up much more room than calves on board
+    of our country boats.
+
+    In the afternoon I met another travelling party of an entirely
+    different description. If before I had occasionally any doubts or
+    misgivings as to the reality of my situation; if sometimes it seemed
+    to be merely a dream, that it could not be that I was so far from
+    home, wandering alone on the plains of Asia, with a guide whom I
+    never saw till that morning, whose language I could not understand,
+    and upon whose faith I could not rely; if the scenes of turbaned
+    Turks, of veiled women, of caravans and camels, of graveyards with
+    their mourning cypress and thousands of tombstones, where every
+    trace of the cities which supplied them with their dead had entirely
+    disappeared; if these and the other strange scenes around me would
+    seem to be the mere creations of a roving imagination, the party
+    which I met now was so marked in its character, so peculiar to an
+    oriental country, and to an oriental country only, that it roused
+    me from my waking dreams, fixed my wandering thoughts, and convinced
+    me, beyond all peradventure, that I was indeed far from home, among
+    a people "whose thoughts are not as our thoughts, and whose ways are
+    not as our ways;" in short, in a land where ladies are not the
+    omnipotent creatures that they are with us.
+
+    This party was no other than the ladies of a harem. They were all
+    dressed in white, with their white shawls wrapped around their
+    faces, so that they effectually concealed every feature, and could
+    bring to bear only the artillery of their eyes. I found this,
+    however, to be very potent, as it left so much room for the
+    imagination; and it was a very easy matter to make a Fatima of every
+    one of them. They were all on horseback, not riding sidewise, but
+    _otherwise_; though I observed, as before, that their saddles were
+    so prepared that their delicate limbs were not subject to that
+    extreme expansion required by the saddle of the rougher sex. They
+    were escorted by a party of armed Turks, and followed by a man in
+    Frank dress, who, as I after understood, was the physician of the
+    harem. They were thirteen in number, just a baker's dozen, and
+    belonged to a pacha who was making his annual tour of the different
+    posts under his government, and had sent them on before to have the
+    household matters all arranged upon his arrival. And no doubt, also,
+    they were to be in readiness to receive him with their smiles; and
+    if they continued in the same humour in which I saw them, he must
+    have been a happy man who could call them all his own. I had not
+    fairly recovered from the cries of the poor camel when I heard their
+    merry voices: verily, thought I, stopping to catch the last musical
+    notes, there are exceedingly good points about the Turks: chibouks,
+    coffee, and as many wives as they please. It made me whistle to
+    think of it. Oh, thought I, that some of our ladies could see these
+    things; that some haughty beauty, at whose feet dozens of worthy and
+    amiable young gentlemen are sighing themselves into premature
+    wrinkles and ugliness, might see these things.
+
+    I am no rash innovator. I would not sweep away the established
+    customs of our state of society. I would not lay my meddling fingers
+    upon the admitted prerogatives of our ladies; but I cannot help
+    asking myself if, in the rapid changes of this turning world,
+    changes which completely alter rocks and the hardest substances of
+    nature, it may not by possibility happen that the tenour of a lady's
+    humour will change. What a goodly spectacle to see those who are
+    never content without a dozen admirers in their train, following by
+    dozens in the train of one man! But I fear me much that this will
+    never be, at least in our day. Our system of education is radically
+    wrong. The human mind, says some philosopher, and the gentleman is
+    right, is like the sand upon the shore of the sea. You may write
+    upon it what character you please. _We_ begin by writing upon their
+    innocent unformed minds, that, "Born for their use, we live but to
+    oblige them." The consequence is, I will not say what; for I hope to
+    return among them and kiss the rod in some fair hand; but this I do
+    know, that here the "twig is so bent" that they become as gentle, as
+    docile, and as tractable as any domestic animal. I say again, there
+    are many exceeding good points about the Turks.
+
+    At about six o'clock we came in sight of Smyrna, on the opposite
+    side of the gulf, and still a long way off. At dusk we were directly
+    opposite the city; and although we had yet to make a long circuit
+    round the head of the gulf, I was revelling in the bright prospect
+    before me. Dreams of pulling off my pantaloons; delightful visions
+    of clean sheets and a Christian bed flitted before my eyes. Yes,
+    said I to my pantaloons and shirt, ye worthy and faithful servants,
+    this night ye shall have rest. While other garments have fallen from
+    me by the way, ye have stuck to me. And thou, my gray pantaloons,
+    little did the neat Parisian tailor who made thee think that the
+    strength of his stitching would ever be tested by three weeks'
+    uninterrupted wear; but to-morrow thou shalt go into the hands of a
+    master, who shall sew on thy buttons and sew up thy rents; and thou,
+    my--I was going on with words of the same affectionate import to my
+    shirt, stockings, and drawers, which, however, did not deserve so
+    well of me, for they had in a measure _dropped off_ on the way, when
+    my Tartar came to a dead stop before the door of a cabin,
+    dismounted, and made signs to me to do the same. But I began now to
+    have some notions of my own; heretofore I had been perfectly
+    passive; I had always done as I was told, but in sight of Smyrna I
+    became restiff. I talked and shouted to him, pointed to the city,
+    and turned my horse as though I was going on alone. My Tartar,
+    however, paid no attention to me; he very coolly took off my
+    carpet-bag and carried it into the cabin, lighted his pipe, and sat
+    down by the door, looking at me with the most imperturbable gravity.
+    I had hardly had time to admire his impudence, and to calculate the
+    chances of my being able, alone at night, to cross the many streams
+    which emptied into the gulf, when the wind, which had been rising
+    for some time, became very violent, and the rain began to fall in
+    torrents. With a sigh I bade farewell to the bright visions that
+    had deluded me, gave another sigh to the uncertainty of all human
+    calculations, the cup and the lip, &c., and took refuge in the
+    cabin.
+
+    What a substitute for the pretty little picture I had drawn! Three
+    Turks were sitting round a brazier of charcoal frying doughballs.
+    Three rugs were spread in three corners of the cabin, and over each
+    of them were the eternal pistols and yataghan. There was nothing
+    there to defend; their miserable lives were not worth taking; why
+    were these weapons there? The Turks at first took no notice of me,
+    and I had now to make amends for my backwardness in entering. I
+    resolved to go to work boldly, and at once elbowed among them for a
+    seat around the brazier. The one next me on my right seemed a little
+    struck by my easy ways; he put his hand on his ribs to feel how far
+    my elbow had penetrated, and then took his pipe from his mouth and
+    offered it to me. The ice broken, I smoked the pipe to the last
+    whiff, and handed it to him to be refilled; with all the horrors of
+    dyspepsy before my eyes, I scrambled with them for the last
+    doughball, and, when the attention of all of them was particularly
+    directed toward me, took out my watch, held it over the lamp, and
+    wound it up. I addressed myself particularly to the one who had
+    first taken notice of me, and made myself extremely agreeable by
+    always smoking his pipe. After coffee and half a dozen pipes, he
+    gave me to understand that I was to sleep with him upon his mat, at
+    which I slapped him on the back and cried out, "Bono," having heard
+    him use that word apparently with a knowledge of its meaning.
+
+    I was surprised in the course of the evening to see one of them
+    begin to undress, knowing that such was not the custom of the
+    country, but found that it was only a temporary disrobing for
+    sporting purposes, to hunt fleas and bedbugs; by which I had an
+    opportunity of comparing the Turkish with some I had brought with me
+    from Greece; and though the Turk had great reason to be proud of
+    his, I had no reason to be ashamed of mine. I now began to be
+    drowsy, and should soon have fallen asleep; but the youngest of the
+    party, a sickly and sentimental young man, melancholy and musical,
+    and, no doubt, in love, brought out the common Turkish instrument, a
+    sort of guitar, on which he worked with untiring vivacity, keeping
+    time with his head and heels. My friend accompanied him with his
+    voice, and this brought out my Tartar, who joined in with groans and
+    grunts which might have waked the dead. But my cup was not yet full.
+    During the musical festival my friend and intended bedfellow took
+    down from a shelf above me a large plaster, which he warmed over the
+    brazier. He then unrolled his turban, took off a plaster from the
+    back of his head, and disclosed a wound, raw, gory, and ghastly,
+    that made my heart sink within me: I knew that the plague was about
+    Smyrna; I had heard that it was on this road; I involuntarily
+    recurred to the Italian prayer, "Save me from the three miseries of
+    the Levant: plague, fire, and the dragoman." I shut my eyes; I had
+    slept but two hours the night before; had ridden twelve hours that
+    day on horseback; I drew my cloak around me; my head sank upon my
+    carpet-bag, and I fell asleep, leaving the four Turks playing cards
+    on the bottom of a pewter plate. Once during the night I was
+    awakened by my bedfellow's mustaches tickling my lips. I turned my
+    back and slept on.
+
+    In the morning my Tartar, with one jerk, stood me upright on the
+    floor, and holding me in that position until I got awake, kicked
+    open the door, and pointed to my horse standing before it ready
+    saddled and bridled. In three hours I was crossing the caravan
+    bridge, a bridge over the beautiful Melissus, on the banks of which
+    Homer was born; and picking my way among caravans, which for ages
+    have continued to cross this bridge laden with all the riches of the
+    East, I entered the long-looked-for city of Smyrna, a city that has
+    braved the reiterated efforts of conflagrations, plagues, and
+    earthquakes; ten times destroyed, and ten times risen from her
+    ruins; the queen of the cities of Anatolia; extolled by the ancients
+    as Smyrna the lovely, the crown of Ionia, the pride of Asia. But old
+    things have passed away, and the ancient city now figures only under
+    the head of arrivals in a newspaper, in the words and figures
+    following, that is to say, "Brig Betsy, Baker master, 57 days from
+    Smyrna, with figs and raisins to order. Mastic dull, opium rising."
+
+    In half an hour I was in the full enjoyment of a Turkish bath;
+    lolled half an hour on a divan, with chibouk and coffee, and came
+    out fresh as if I had spent the last three weeks training for the
+    ring. Oh, these Turks are luxurious dogs. Chibouks, coffee, hot
+    baths, and as many wives as they please. What a catalogue of human
+    enjoyments! But I intend Smyrna as a place of rest, and, in charity,
+    give you the benefit, of it.
+
+                                                             ****
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+    First Sight of Smyrna.--Unveiled Women.--Ruins of Ephesus.--Ruin,
+      all Ruin.--Temple of Diana.--Encounter with a Wolf.--Love at first
+      Sight.--Gatherings on the Road.
+
+
+(_Another letter._)
+
+  MY DEAR ****,
+
+    AFTER my bath I returned to my hotel, breakfasted, and sallied out
+    for a walk. It was now about twelve o'clock, Sunday--the first
+    Sunday after Easter--and all the Frank population was in the
+    streets. My hotel was in an out-of-the-way quarter, and when,
+    turning a corner, I suddenly found myself in the main street, I was
+    not prepared for the sight that met my eye. Paris on a fęte day does
+    not present so gay and animated a scene. It was gay, animated,
+    striking, and beautiful, and entirely different from anything I had
+    ever seen in any European city. Franks, Jews, Greeks, Turks, and
+    Armenians, in their various and striking costumes, were mingled
+    together in agreeable confusion; and making all due allowance for
+    the circumstance that I had for some time been debarred the sight of
+    an unveiled woman, I certainly never saw so much beauty, and I never
+    saw a costume so admirably calculated to set off beauty. At the same
+    time the costume is exceedingly trying to a lady's pretensions.
+    Being no better than one of the uninitiated, I shall not venture
+    upon such dangerous ground as a lady's toilet. I will merely refer
+    to that part which particularly struck me, and that is the
+    headdress; no odious broad-brimmed hat; no enormous veils enveloping
+    nose, mouth, and eyes; but simply a large gauze turban, sitting
+    lightly and gracefully on the head, rolled back over the forehead,
+    leaving the whole face completely exposed, and exhibiting clear dark
+    complexions, rosy lips closing over teeth of dazzling whiteness; and
+    then such eyes, large, dark, and rolling. It is matter of history,
+    and it is confirmed by poetry, that
+
+      "The angelic youths of old,
+      Burning for maids of mortal mould,
+      Bewildered, left the glorious skies,
+      And lost their heaven for woman's eyes."
+
+    My dear friend, this is the country where such things happened; the
+    throne of the Thunderer, high Olympus, is almost in sight, and these
+    are the daughters of the women who worked such miracles. If the age
+    of passion, like the age of chivalry, were not over and for ever
+    gone, if this were not emphatically a bank-note world, I would say
+    of the Smyrniotes, above all others, that they are that description
+    of women who could
+
+      "Raise a mortal to the skies,
+      Or bring an angel down."
+
+    And they walk, too, as if conscious of their high pretensions, as if
+    conscious that the reign of beauty is not yet ended; and, under that
+    enchanting turban, charge with the whole artillery of their charms.
+    It is a perfect unmasked battery; nothing can stand before it. I
+    wonder the sultan allows it. The Turks are as touchy as tinder; they
+    take fire as quick as any of the old demigods, and a pair of black
+    eyes is at any time enough to put mischief in them. But the Turks
+    are a considerate people. They consider that the Franks, or rather
+    the Greeks, to whom I particularly refer, have periodical fits of
+    insanity that they go mad twice a year during carnival and after
+    Lent; and if at such a time a follower of the Prophet, accidentally
+    straggling in the Frank quarter, should find the current of his
+    blood disturbed, he would sooner die, nay, he would sooner cut off
+    his beard, than hurt a hair of any one of the light heads that he
+    sees flitting before him. There is something remarkable, by-the-way,
+    in the tenacity with which the Grecian women have sustained the
+    rights and prerogatives of beauty in defiance of Turkish customs and
+    prejudices; while the men have fallen into the habits of their
+    quondam masters, have taken to pipes and coffee, and in many
+    instances to turbans and big trousers, the women have ever gone with
+    their faces uncovered, and to this day one and all eschew the veil
+    of the Turkish women.
+
+    Pleased and amused with myself and everything I saw, I moved along
+    unnoticed and unknown, staring, observing, and admiring; among other
+    things, I observed that one of the amiable customs of our own city
+    was in full force here, viz., that of the young gentlemen, with
+    light sticks in their hands, gathering around the door of the
+    fashionable church to stare at the ladies as they came out. I was
+    pleased to find such a mark of civilization in a land of barbarians,
+    and immediately fell into a thing which seemed so much like home;
+    but, in justice to the Smyrniote ladies, I must say I cannot flatter
+    myself that I stared a single one out of countenance.
+
+    But I need not attempt to interest you in Smyrna; it is too
+    every-day a place; every Cape Cod sailor knows it better than I do.
+    I have done all that I could; I have waived the musty reminiscences
+    of its history; I have waived ruins which are said to exist here,
+    and have endeavoured to give you a faint but true picture of its
+    living and existing beauties, of the bright and beautiful scene
+    that broke upon me the first morning of my arrival; and now, if I
+    have not touched you with the beauty of its women, I should despair
+    of doing so by any description of its beautiful climate, its
+    charming environs, and its hospitable society.
+
+    Leave, then, what is, after all, but the city of figs and raisins,
+    and go with me where, by comparison, the foot of civilized man
+    seldom treads; go with me into the desert and solitary places; go
+    with me among the cities of the seven churches of Asia; and, first,
+    to the ruins of Ephesus. I had been several days expecting a
+    companion to make this tour with me, but, being disappointed, was
+    obliged to set out alone. I was not exactly alone, for I had with me
+    a Turk as guide and a Greek as cicerone and interpreter, both well
+    mounted and armed to the teeth. We started at two o'clock in the
+    morning, under the light of thousands of stars; and the day broke
+    upon us in a country wild and desolate, as if it were removed
+    thousands of miles from the habitations of men. There was little
+    variety and little incident in our ride. During the whole day it lay
+    through a country decidedly handsome, the soil rich and fertile, but
+    showing with appalling force the fatal effects of misgovernment,
+    wholly uncultivated, and almost wholly uninhabited. Indeed, the only
+    habitations were the little Turkish coffee-houses and the black
+    tents of the Turcomans. These are a wandering tribe, who come out
+    from the desert, and approach comparatively near the abodes of
+    civilization. They are a pastoral people; their riches are their
+    flocks and herds; they lead a wandering life, free as the air they
+    breathe; they have no local attachments; to-day they pitch their
+    tents on the hillside, to-morrow on the plain; and wherever they sit
+    themselves down, all that they have on earth, wife, children, and
+    friends, are immediately around them. There is something primitive,
+    almost patriarchal, in their appearance; indeed, it carries one back
+    to a simple and perhaps a purer age, and you can almost realize that
+    state of society when the patriarch sat in the door of his tent and
+    called in and fed the passing traveller.
+
+    The general character of the road is such as to prepare one for the
+    scene that awaits him at Ephesus; enormous burying-grounds, with
+    thousands of headstones shaded by the mourning cypress, in the midst
+    of a desolate country, where not a vestige of a human habitation is
+    to be seen. They stand on the roadside as melancholy telltales that
+    large towns or cities once existed in their immediate neighbourhood,
+    and that the generations who occupied them have passed away,
+    furnishing fearful evidence of the decrease of the Turkish
+    population, and perhaps that the gigantic empire of the Ottoman is
+    tottering to its fall.
+
+    For about three hours before reaching Ephesus, the road, crossing a
+    rich and beautiful plain watered by the Cayster, lies between two
+    mountains; that on the right leads to the sea, and on the left are
+    the ruins of Ephesus. Near, and in the immediate vicinity, storks
+    were calmly marching over the plain and building among the ruins;
+    they moved as if seldom disturbed by human footsteps, and seemed to
+    look upon us as intruders upon a spot for a long time abandoned to
+    birds and beasts of prey. About a mile this side are the remains of
+    the Turkish city of Aysalook, or Temple of the Moon, a city of
+    comparatively modern date, reared into a brief magnificence out of
+    the ruins of its fallen neighbour. A sharp hill, almost a mountain,
+    rises abruptly from the plain, on the top of which is a ruined
+    fortress, with many ruins of Turkish magnificence at the base;
+    broken columns, baths overgrown with ivy, and the remains of a grand
+    mosque, the roof sustained by four granite columns from the Temple
+    of Diana; the minaret fallen, the mosque deserted; the Mussulman no
+    more goes there to pray; bats and owls were building in its lofty
+    roof, and snakes and lizards were crawling over its marble floor.
+
+    It was late in the afternoon when I arrived at the little
+    coffee-house at Aysalook; a caravan had already encamped under some
+    fine old sycamores before the door, preparatory to passing the
+    night. I was somewhat fatigued, and my Greek, who had me in charge,
+    was disposed to stop and wait for the morrow; but the fallen city
+    was on the opposite hill at but a short distance, and the shades of
+    evening seemed well calculated to heighten the effect of a ramble
+    among its ruins. In a right line it was not more than half a mile,
+    but we soon found that we could not go directly to it; a piece of
+    low swampy ground lay between, and we had not gone far before our
+    horses sank up to their saddle-girths. We were obliged to retrace
+    our steps, and work our way around by a circuitous route of more
+    than two miles. This, too, added to the effect of our approach. It
+    was a dreary reflection, that a city, whose ports and whose gates
+    had been open to the commerce of the then known world; whose wealth
+    had invited the traveller and sojourner within its walls should lie
+    a ruin upon a hillside, with swamps and morasses extending around
+    it, in sight but out of reach, near but unapproachable. A warning
+    voice seemed to issue from the ruins, "_Procul, procul, este
+    profani_," my day is past, my sun is set, I have gone to my grave;
+    pass on, stranger, and disturb not the ashes of the dead.
+
+    But my Turk did not understand Latin, and we continued to advance.
+    We moved along in perfect silence, for besides that my Turk never
+    spoke, and my Greek, who was generally loquacious enough, was out of
+    humour at being obliged to go on, we had enough to do in picking our
+    lonely way. But silence best suited the scene; the sound of the
+    human voice seemed almost a mockery of fallen greatness. We entered
+    by a large and ruined gateway into a place distinctly marked as
+    having been a street, and, from the broken columns strewed on each
+    side, probably having been lined with a colonnade. I let my reins
+    fall upon my horse's neck; he moved about in the slow and desultory
+    way that suited my humour; now sinking to his knees in heaps of
+    rubbish, now stumbling over a Corinthian capital, and now sliding
+    over a marble pavement. The whole hillside is covered with ruins to
+    an extent far greater than I expected to find, and they are all of a
+    kind that tends to give a high idea of the ancient magnificence of
+    the city. To me, these ruins appeared to be a confused and shapeless
+    mass; but they have been examined by antiquaries with great care,
+    and the character of many of them identified with great certainty. I
+    had, however, no time for details; and, indeed, the interest of
+    these ruins in my eyes was not in the details. It mattered little to
+    me that this was the stadium and that a fountain; that this was a
+    gymnasium and that a market-place; it was enough to know that the
+    broken columns, the mouldering walls, the grass-grown streets, and
+    the wide-extended scene of desolation and ruin around me were all
+    that remained of one of the greatest cities of Asia, one of the
+    earliest Christian cities in the world. But what do I say? Who does
+    not remember the tumults and confusion raised by Demetrius the
+    silversmith, "lest the temple of the great goddess Diana should be
+    despised, and her magnificence be destroyed;" and how the people,
+    having caught "Caius and Aristarchus, Paul's companions in travel,"
+    rushed with one accord into the theatre, crying out, "great is Diana
+    of the Ephesians." My dear friend, I sat among the ruins of that
+    theatre; the stillness of death was around me; far as the eye could
+    reach, not a living soul was to be seen save my two companions and a
+    group of lazy Turks smoking at the coffee-house in Aysalook. A man
+    of strong imagination might almost go wild with the intensity of his
+    own reflections; and do not let it surprise you, that even one like
+    me, brought up among the technicalities of declarations and
+    replications, rebutters and surrebutters, and in nowise given to the
+    illusions of the senses, should find himself roused, and
+    irresistibly hurried back to the time when the shapeless and
+    confused mass around him formed one of the most magnificent cities
+    in the world; when a large and busy population was hurrying through
+    its streets, intent upon the same pleasures and the same business
+    that engage men now; that he should, in imagination, see before him
+    St. Paul preaching to the Ephesians, shaking their faith in the gods
+    of their fathers, gods made with their own hands; and the noise and
+    confusion, and the people rushing tumultuously up the very steps
+    where he sat; that he should almost hear their cry ringing in his
+    ears, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians;" and then that he should
+    turn from this scene of former glory and eternal ruin to his own
+    far-distant land; a land that the wisest of the Ephesians never
+    dreamed of; where the wild man was striving with the wild beast when
+    the whole world rang with the greatness of the Ephesian name; and
+    which bids fair to be growing greater and greater when the last
+    vestige of Ephesus shall be gone and its very site unknown.
+
+    But where is the temple of the great Diana, the temple two hundred
+    and twenty years in building; the temple of one hundred and
+    twenty-seven columns, each column the gift of a king? Can it be that
+    the temple of the "Great goddess Diana," that the ornament of Asia,
+    the pride of Ephesus, and one of the seven wonders of the world, has
+    gone, disappeared, and left not a trace behind? As a traveller, I
+    would fain be able to say that I have seen the ruins of this temple;
+    but, unfortunately, I am obliged to limit myself by facts. Its site
+    has of course engaged the attention of antiquaries. I am no skeptic
+    in these matters, and am disposed to believe all that my cicerone
+    tells me. You remember the countryman who complained to his minister
+    that he never gave him any Latin in his sermons; and when the
+    minister answered that he would not understand it, the countryman
+    replied that he paid for the best, and ought to have it. I am like
+    that honest countryman; but my cicerone understood himself better
+    than the minister; he knew that I paid him for the best; he knew
+    what was expected from him, and that his reputation was gone for
+    ever if, in such a place as Ephesus, he could not point out the
+    ruins of the great temple of Diana. He accordingly had _his_ temple,
+    which he stuck to with as much pertinacity as if he had built it
+    himself; but I am sorry to be obliged to say, in spite of his
+    authority and my own wish to believe him, that the better opinion
+    is, that now not a single stone is to be seen.
+
+    Topographers have fixed the site on the plain, near the gate of the
+    city which opened to the sea. The sea, which once almost washed the
+    walls, has receded or been driven back for several miles. For many
+    years a new soil has been accumulating, and all that stood on the
+    plain, including so much of the remains of the temple as had not
+    been plundered and carried away by different conquerors, is probably
+    now buried many feet under its surface.
+
+    It was dark when I returned to Aysalook. I had remarked, in passing,
+    that several caravans had encamped there, and on my return found the
+    camel-drivers assembled in the little coffee-house in which I was to
+    pass the night. I soon saw that there were so many of us that we
+    should make a tight fit in the sleeping part of the khan, and
+    immediately measured off space enough to fit my body, allowing
+    turning and kicking room. I looked with great complacency upon the
+    light slippers of the Turks, which they always throw off, too, when
+    they go to sleep, and made an ostentatious display of a pair of
+    heavy iron-nailed boots, and, in lying down, gave one or two
+    preliminary thumps to show them that I was restless in my movements,
+    and, if they came too near me these iron-nailed boots would be
+    uncomfortable neighbours.
+
+    And here I ought to have spent half the night in musing upon the
+    strange concatenation of circumstances which had broken up a quiet
+    practising attorney, and sent him a straggler from a busy,
+    money-getting land, to meditate among the ruins of ancient cities,
+    and sleep pellmell with turbaned Turks. But I had no time for
+    musing; I was amazingly tired; I looked at the group of Turks in one
+    corner, and regretted that I could not talk with them; thought of
+    the Tower of Babel and the wickedness of man, which brought about a
+    confusion of tongues; of camel-drivers, and Arabian Nights'
+    Entertainments; of home, and my own comfortable room in the third
+    story; brought my boot down with a thump that made them all start,
+    and in five minutes was asleep.
+
+    In the morning I again went over to the ruins. Daylight, if
+    possible, added to their effect; and a little thing occurred, not
+    much in itself, but which, under the circumstances, fastened itself
+    upon my mind in such a way that I shall never forget it. I had read
+    that here, in the stillness of the night, the jackal's cry was
+    heard; that, if a stone was rolled, a scorpion or lizard slipped
+    from under it; and, while picking our way slowly along the lower
+    part of the city, a wolf of the largest size came out above, as if
+    indignant at being disturbed in his possessions. He moved a few
+    paces toward us with such a resolute air that my companions both
+    drew their pistols; then stopped, and gazed at us deliberately as we
+    were receding from him, until, as if satisfied that we intended to
+    leave his dominions, he turned and disappeared among the ruins. It
+    would have made a fine picture; the Turk first, then the Greek, each
+    with a pistol in his hand, then myself, all on horseback, the wolf
+    above us, the valley, and the ruined city. I feel my inability to
+    give you a true picture of these ruins. Indeed, if I could lay
+    before you every particular, block for block, fragment for fragment,
+    here a column and there a column, I could not convey a full idea of
+    the desolation that marks the scene.
+
+    To the Christian, the ruins of Ephesus carry with them a peculiar
+    interest; for here, upon the wreck of heathen temples, was
+    established one of the earliest Christian churches; but the
+    Christian church has followed the heathen temple, and the
+    worshippers of the true God have followed the worshippers of the
+    great goddess Diana; and in the city where Paul preached, and where,
+    in the words of the apostle, "much people were gathered unto the
+    Lord," now not a solitary Christian dwells. Verily, in the prophetic
+    language of inspiration, the "candlestick is removed from its
+    place;" a curse seems to have fallen upon it, men shun it, not a
+    human being is to be seen among its ruins; and Ephesus, in faded
+    glory and fallen grandeur, is given up to birds and beasts of prey,
+    a monument and a warning to nations.
+
+    From Ephesus I went to Scala Nova, handsomely situated on the shore
+    of the sea, and commanding a fine view of the beautiful Island of
+    Samos, distant not more than four miles. I had a letter to a Greek
+    merchant there, who received me kindly, and introduced me to the
+    Turkish governor. The governor, as usual, was seated upon a divan,
+    and asked us to take seats beside him. We were served with coffee
+    and pipes by two handsome Greek slaves, boys about fourteen, with
+    long hair hanging down their necks, and handsomely dressed; who,
+    after serving us, descended from the platform, and waited with
+    folded arms until we had finished. Soon after a third guest came,
+    and a third lad, equally handsome and equally well dressed, served
+    him in the same manner. This is the style of the Turkish grandees, a
+    slave to every guest. I do not know to what extent it is carried,
+    but am inclined to think that, in the present instance, if one or
+    two more guests had happened to come in, my friend's retinue of
+    slaves would have fallen short. The governor asked me from what
+    country I came, and who was my king; and when I told him that we had
+    no king, but a president, he said, very graciously, that our
+    president and the grand seignior were very good friends; a
+    compliment which I acknowledged with all becoming humility. Wanting
+    to show off a little, I told him that we were going to fight the
+    French, and he said we should certainly whip them if we could get
+    the grand seignior to help us.
+
+    I afterward called on my own account upon the English consul. The
+    consuls in these little places are originals. They have nothing to
+    do, but they have the government arms blazoned over their doors, and
+    strut about in cocked hats and regimentals, and shake their heads,
+    and look knowing, and talk about their government; they do not know
+    what the government will think, &c., when half the time their
+    government hardly knows of the existence of its worthy
+    representatives. This was an old Maltese, who spoke French and
+    Italian. He received me very kindly, and pressed me to stay all
+    night. I told him that I was not an Englishman, and had no claim
+    upon his hospitality; but he said that made no difference; that he
+    was consul for all civilized nations, among which he did me the
+    honour to include mine.
+
+    At three o'clock I took leave of the consul. My Greek friend
+    accompanied me outside the gate, where my horses were waiting for
+    me; and, at parting, begged me to remember that I had a friend, who
+    hardly knew what pleasure was except in serving me. I told him that
+    the happiness of my life was not complete before I met him; we threw
+    ourselves into each other's arms, and, after a two hours'
+    acquaintance, could hardly tear away from each other's embraces.
+    Such is the force of sympathy between congenial spirits. My friend
+    was a man about fifty, square built, broad shouldered, and big
+    mustached; and the beauty of it was, that neither could understand a
+    word the other said; and all this touching interchange of sentiment
+    had to pass through my mustached, big-whiskered, double-fisted,
+    six-feet interpreter.
+
+    At four o'clock we set out on our return; at seven we stopped in a
+    beautiful valley surrounded by mountains, and on the sides of the
+    mountains were a number of Turcomans tents. The khan was worse than
+    any I had yet seen. It had no floor and no mat. The proprietor of
+    the khan, if such a thing, consisting merely of four mud walls with
+    a roof of branches, which seemed to have been laid there by the
+    winds, could be said to have a proprietor, was uncommonly sociable;
+    he set before me my supper, consisting of bread and yort--a
+    preparation of milk--and appeared to be much amused at seeing me
+    eat. He asked my guide many questions about me; examined my pistols,
+    took off his turban, and put my hat upon his shaved head, which
+    transformed him from a decidedly bold, slashing-looking fellow, into
+    a decidedly sneaking-looking one. I had certainly got over all
+    fastidiousness in regard to eating, drinking, and sleeping; but I
+    could not stand the vermin at this khan. In the middle of the night
+    I rose and went out of doors; it was a brilliant starlight night,
+    and, as the bare earth was in any case to be my bed, I exchanged the
+    mud floor of my khan for the greensward and the broad canopy of
+    heaven. My Turk was sleeping on the ground, about a hundred yards
+    from the house, with his horse grazing around him. I nestled close
+    to him, and slept perhaps two hours. Toward morning I was awakened
+    by the cold, and, with the selfishness of misery, I began punching
+    my Turk under the ribs to wake him. This was no easy matter; but,
+    after a while, I succeeded, got him to saddle the horses, and in a
+    few minutes we were off, my Greek not at all pleased with having his
+    slumbers so prematurely disturbed.
+
+    At about two o'clock we passed some of the sultan's _volunteers_.
+    These were about fifty men chained together by the wrists and
+    ankles, who had been chased, run down, and caught in some of the
+    villages, and were now on their way to Constantinople, under a
+    guard, to be trained as soldiers. I could but smile as I saw them,
+    not at them, for, in truth, there was nothing in their condition to
+    excite a smile, but at the recollection of an article I had seen a
+    few days before in a European paper, which referred to the new
+    levies making by the sultan, and the spirit with which his subjects
+    entered into the service. They were a speaking comment upon European
+    insight into Turkish politics. But, without more ado, suffice it to
+    say, that at about four o'clock I found myself at the door of my
+    hotel, my outer garments so covered with creeping things that my
+    landlord, a prudent Swiss, with many apologies, begged me to shake
+    myself before going into the house; and my nether garments so
+    stained with blood, that I looked as if a corps of the sultan's
+    regulars had pricked me with their bayonets. My enthusiasm on the
+    subject of the seven churches was in no small degree abated, and
+    just at that moment I was willing to take upon trust the condition
+    of the others, that all that was foretold of them in the Scriptures
+    had come to pass. I again betook me to the bath, and, in thinking of
+    the luxury of my repose, I feel for you, and come to a full stop.
+
+                                                             ****
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+    Position of Smyrna.--Consular Privileges.--The Case of the
+      Lover.--End of the Love Affair.--The Missionary's Wife.--The
+      Casino.--Only a Greek Row.--Rambles in Smyrna.--The
+      Armenians.--Domestic Enjoyments.
+
+
+BUT I must go back a little, and make the amende honourable, for, in
+truth, Ghiaour Ismir, or Infidel Smyrna, with its wild admixture of
+European and Asiatic population, deserves better than the rather
+cavalier notice contained in my letter.
+
+Before reaching it I had remarked its exceeding beauty of position,
+chosen as it is with that happy taste which distinguished the Greeks in
+selecting the sites of their ancient cities, on the declivity of a
+mountain running down to the shore of the bay, with houses rising in
+terraces on its sides; its domes and minarets, interspersed with
+cypresses, rising above the tiers of houses, and the summit of the hill
+crowned with a large solitary castle. It was the first large Turkish
+city I had seen, and it differed, too, from all other Turkish cities in
+the strong foothold obtained there by Europeans. Indeed, remembering it
+as a place where often, and within a very few years, upon a sudden
+outbreaking of popular fury, the streets were deluged with Christian
+blood, I was particularly struck, not only with the air of confidence
+and security, but, in fact, with the bearing of superiority assumed by
+the "Christian dog!" among the followers of the Prophet.
+
+Directly on the bay is a row of large houses running along the whole
+front of the city, among which are seen emblazoned over the doors the
+arms of most of the foreign consuls, including the American. By the
+treaties of the Porte with Christian powers, the Turkish tribunals have
+no jurisdiction of matters touching the rights of foreign residents; and
+all disputes between these, and even criminal offences, fall under the
+cognizance of their respective consuls. This gives the consuls in all
+the maritime ports of Turkey great power and position; and all over the
+Levant they are great people; but at Smyrna they are far more important
+than ambassadors and ministers at the European capitals; and, with their
+janisaries and their appearance on all public occasions in uniform, are
+looked up to by the Levantines somewhat like the consuls sent abroad
+under the Roman empire, and by the Turks as almost sultans.
+
+The morning after my arrival I delivered letters of introduction to Mr.
+Offley, the American consul, a native of Philadelphia, thirty years
+resident in Smyrna, and married to an Armenian lady, Mr. Langdon, a
+merchant of Boston, and Mr. Styth, of Baltimore, of the firm of
+Issaverdens, Styth, and Company; one to Mr. Jetter, a German missionary,
+whose lady told me, while her husband was reading it, that she had met
+me in the street the day before, and on her return home told him that an
+American had just arrived. I was curious to know the mark by which she
+recognised me as an American, being rather dubious whether it was by
+reason of anything praiseworthy or the reverse; but she could not tell.
+
+I trust the reader has not forgotten the victim of the tender passion
+who, in the moment of my leaving Athens, had reposed in my sympathizing
+bosom the burden of his hopes and fears. At the very first house in
+which I was introduced to the female members of the family, I found
+making a morning call the lady who had made such inroads upon his
+affections. I had already heard her spoken of as being the largest
+fortune, and, par consequence, the greatest belle in Smyrna, and I
+hailed it as a favourable omen that I accidentally made her acquaintance
+so soon after my arrival. I made my observations, and could not help
+remarking that she was by no means pining away on account of the absence
+of my friend. I was almost indignant at her heartless happiness, and,
+taking advantage of an opportunity, introduced his name, hoping to see a
+shade come over her, and, perhaps, to strike her pensive for two or
+three minutes; but her comment was a deathblow to my friend's prospects
+and my mediation: "Poor M.!" and all present repeated "Poor M.!" with a
+portentous smile, and the next moment had forgotten his existence. I
+went away in the full conviction that it was all over with "Poor M.!"
+and murmuring to myself, Put not your trust in woman, I dined, and in
+the afternoon called with my letter of introduction upon his friend the
+Rev. Mr. Brewer, and Mr. Brewer's comment on reading it was about equal
+to the lady's "Poor M.!" He asked me in what condition I left our
+unfortunate friend. I told him his _leg_ was pretty bad, though he
+continued to hobble about; but Mr. Brewer interrupted me; he did not
+mean his leg, but, he hesitated and with reluctance, as if he wished to
+avoid speaking of it outright, added, _his mind_. I did not comprehend
+him, and, from his hesitation and delicacy, imagined that he was
+alluding to the lover's heart; but he cleared the matter up, and to my
+no small surprise, by telling me that, some time before he left Smyrna,
+"Poor M." had shown such strong marks of aberration of intellect, that
+his friends had deemed it advisable to put him under the charge of a
+brother missionary and send him home, and that they hoped great benefit
+from travel and change of scene. I was surprised, and by no means
+elevated in my own conceit, when I found that I had been made the
+confidant of a crazy man. Mr. Hill, not knowing of any particular
+intimacy between us, and probably not wishing to publish his misfortune
+unnecessarily, had not given me the slightest intimation of it, and I
+had not discovered it. I had considered his communication to me strange,
+and his general conduct not less so, but I had no idea that it was
+anything more than the ordinary derangement which every man is said to
+labour under when in love. I then told Mr. Brewer my story, and the
+commission with which I was intrusted, which he said was perfectly
+characteristic, his malady being a sort of monomania on the subject of
+the tender passion; and every particle of interest which I might
+nevertheless have taken in the affair, in connecting his derangement in
+some way with the lady in question, was destroyed by the volatile
+direction of his passion, sometimes to one object and sometimes with
+another; and in regard to the lady to whom I was accredited, he had
+never shown any penchant toward her in particular, and must have given
+me her name because it happened to be the first that suggested itself at
+the moment of his unburdening himself to me. Fortunately, I had not
+exposed myself by any demonstrations in behalf of my friend, so I
+quietly dropped him. On leaving Mr. Brewer I suggested a doubt whether I
+could be regarded as an acquaintance upon the introduction of a crazy
+man; but we had gone so far that it was decided, for that specific
+purpose, to admit his sanity. I should not mention these particulars if
+there was any possibility of their ever wounding the feelings of him to
+whom they refer; but he is now beyond the reach either of calumny or
+praise, for about a year after I heard, with great regret, that his
+malady had increased, accompanied with a general derangement of health;
+and, shortly after his return home, he died.
+
+My intercourse with the Franks was confined principally to my own
+countrymen, whose houses were open to me at all times; and I cannot help
+mentioning the name of Mr. Van Lennup, the Dutch consul, the great
+friend of the missionaries in the Levant, who had been two years
+resident in the United States, and was intimately acquainted with many
+of my friends at home. Society in Smyrna is purely mercantile; and
+having been so long out of the way of it, it was actually grateful to me
+once more to hear men talking with all their souls about cotton, stocks,
+exchanges, and other topics of _interest_, in the literal meaning of the
+word. Sometimes lounging in a merchant's counting-room, I took up an
+American paper, and heard Boston, and New-York, and Baltimore, and
+cotton, and opium, and freight, and quarter per cent. less bandied
+about, until I almost fancied myself at home; and when this became too
+severe I had a resource with the missionaries, gentlemanly and
+well-educated men, well acquainted with the countries and the places
+worth visiting, with just the books I wanted, and, I had almost said,
+the wives; I mean with wives always glad to see a countryman, and to
+talk about home. There is something exceedingly interesting in a
+missionary's wife. A soldier's is more so, for she follows him to danger
+and, perhaps, to death; but glory waits him if he falls, and while she
+weeps she is proud. Before I went abroad the only missionary I ever knew
+I despised, for I believed him to be a canting hypocrite; but I saw much
+of them abroad, and made many warm friends among them; and, I repeat
+it, there is something exceedingly interesting in a missionary's wife.
+She who had been cherished as a plant that the winds must not breathe on
+too rudely, recovers from the shock of a separation from her friends to
+find herself in a land of barbarians, where her loud cry of distress can
+never reach their ears. New ties twine round her heart, and the tender
+and helpless girl changes her very nature, and becomes the staff and
+support of the man. In his hours of despondency she raises his drooping
+spirits; she bathes his aching head; she smooths his pillow of sickness;
+and, after months of wearisome silence, I have entered her dwelling, and
+her heart instinctively told her that I was from the same land. I have
+been welcomed as a brother; answered her hurried, and anxious, and eager
+questions; and sometimes, when I have known any of her friends at home,
+I have been for a moment more than recompensed for all the toils and
+privations of a traveller in the East. I have left her dwelling burdened
+with remembrances to friends whom she will perhaps never see again. I
+bore a letter to a father, which was opened by a widowed mother. Where I
+could, I have discharged every promise to a missionary's wife; but I
+have some yet undischarged which I rank among the sacred obligations of
+my life. It is true, the path of the missionary is not strewed with
+roses; but often, in leaving his house at night, and following my guide
+with a lantern through the narrow streets of a Turkish city, I have run
+over the troubles incident to every condition of life, not forgetting
+those of a traveller, and have taken to whistling, and, as I stumbled
+into the gate of an old convent, have murmured involuntarily, "After
+all, these missionaries are happy fellows."
+
+Every stranger, upon his arrival in Smyrna, is introduced at the casino.
+I went there the first time to a concert. It is a large building,
+erected by a club of merchants, with a suite of rooms on the lower
+floor, billiards, cards, reading and sitting room, and a ball room above
+covering the whole. The concert was given in the ballroom, and, from
+what I had seen in the streets, I expected an extraordinary display of
+beauty; but I was much disappointed. The company consisted only of the
+aristocracy or higher mercantile classes, the families of the gentlemen
+composing the club, and excluded the Greek and Smyrniote women, among
+whom is found a great portion of the beauty of the place. A patent of
+nobility in Smyrna, as in our own city, is founded upon the time since
+the possessor gave up selling goods, or the number of consignments he
+receives in the course of a year. The casino, by-the-way, is a very
+aristocratic institution, and sometimes knotty questions occur in its
+management. Captains of merchant vessels are not admitted. A man came
+out as owner of a vessel and cargo, and also master: _quere_, could he
+be admitted? His consignee said yes; but the majority, not being
+interested in the sales of his cargo, went for a strict construction,
+and excluded him.
+
+The population of Smyrna, professing three distinct religions, observe
+three different Sabbaths; the Mohammedans Friday, the Jews Saturday, and
+the Christians Sunday, so that there are only four days in the week in
+which all the shops and bazars are open together, and there are so many
+fęte days that these are much broken in upon. The most perfect
+toleration prevails, and the religious festivals of the Greeks often
+terminate in midnight orgies which debase and degrade the Christian in
+the eyes of the pious Mussulman.
+
+On Saturday morning I was roused from my bed by a loud cry and the tramp
+of a crowd through the street. I ran to my window, and saw a Greek
+tearing down the street at full speed, and another after him with a
+drawn yataghan in his hand; the latter gained ground at every step, and,
+just as he turned the corner, stabbed the first in the back. He returned
+with the bloody poniard in his hand, followed by the crowd, and rushed
+into a little Greek drinking-shop next door to my hotel. There was a
+loud noise and scuffling inside, and presently I saw him pitched out
+headlong into the street, and the door closed upon him. In a phrensy of
+passion he rushed back, and drove his yataghan with all his force into
+the door, stamped against it with his feet, and battered it with stones;
+unable to force it open, he sat down on the opposite side of the street,
+occasionally renewing his attack upon the door, talking violently with
+those inside, and sometimes the whole crowd laughing loud at the answers
+from within. Nobody attempted to interfere. Giusseppi, my host, said it
+was only a row among the Greeks. The Greek kept the street in an uproar
+for more than an hour, when he was secured and taken into custody.
+
+After dinner, under the escort of a merchant, a Jew from Trieste
+residing at the same hotel, I visited the Jews' quarter. The Jews of
+Smyrna are the descendants of that unhappy people who were driven out
+from Spain by the bloody persecutions of Ferdinand and Isabel; they
+still talk Spanish in their families; and though comparatively secure,
+now, as ever, they live the victims of tyranny and oppression, ever
+toiling and accumulating, and ever fearing to exhibit the fruits of
+their industry, lest they should excite the cupidity of a rapacious
+master. Their quarter is by far the most miserable in Smyrna, and within
+its narrow limits are congregated more than ten thousand of "the
+accursed people." It was with great difficulty that I avoided wounding
+the feelings of my companion by remarking its filthy and disgusting
+appearance; and wishing to remove my unfavourable impression by
+introducing me to some of the best families first, he was obliged to
+drag me through the whole range of its narrow and dirty streets. From
+the external appearance of the tottering houses, I did not expect
+anything better within; and, out of regard to his feelings, was really
+sorry that I had accepted his offer to visit his people; but with the
+first house I entered I was most agreeably disappointed. Ascending
+outside by a tottering staircase to the second story, within was not
+only neatness and comfort, but positive luxury. At one end of a spacious
+room was a raised platform opening upon a large latticed window, covered
+with rich rugs and divans along the wall. The master of the house was
+taking his afternoon siesta, and while we were waiting for him I
+expressed to my gratified companion my surprise and pleasure at the
+unexpected appearance of the interior. In a few minutes the master
+entered, and received us with the greatest hospitality and kindness. He
+was about thirty, with the high square cap of black felt, without any
+rim or border, long silk gown tied with a sash around the waist, a
+strongly-marked Jewish face, and amiable expression. In the house of the
+Israelite the welcome is the same as in that of the Turk; and seating
+himself, our host clapped his hands together, and a boy entered with
+coffee and pipes. After a little conversation he clapped his hands
+again; and hearing a clatter of wooden shoes, I turned my head and saw
+a little girl coming across the room, mounted on high wooden sabots
+almost like stilts, who stepped up the platform, and with quite a
+womanly air took her seat on the divan. I looked at her, and thought her
+a pert, forward little miss, and was about asking her how old she was,
+when my companion told me she was our host's wife. I checked myself, but
+in a moment felt more than ever tempted to ask the same question; and,
+upon inquiring, learned that she had attained the respectable age of
+thirteen, and had been then two years a wife. Our host told us that she
+had cost him a great deal of money, and the expense consisted in the
+outlay necessary for procuring a divorce from another wife. He did not
+like the other one at all; his father had married him to her, and he had
+great difficulty in prevailing on his father to go to the expense of
+getting him freed. This wife was also provided by his father, and he did
+not like her much at first; he had never seen her till the day of
+marriage, but now he began to like her very well, though she cost him a
+great deal for ornaments. All this time we were looking at her, and she,
+with a perfectly composed expression, was listening to the conversation
+as my companion interpreted it, and following with her eyes the
+different speakers. I was particularly struck with the cool,
+imperturbable expression of her face, and could not help thinking that,
+on the subject of likings and dislikings, young as she was, she might
+have some curious notions of her own; and since we had fallen into this
+little disquisition on family matters, and thinking that he had gone so
+far himself that I might waive delicacy, I asked him whether she liked
+him; he answered in that easy tone of confidence of which no idea can be
+given in words, "oh yes;" and when I intimated a doubt, he told me I
+might ask herself. But I forbore, and did not ask her, and so lost the
+opportunity of learning from both sides the practical operation of
+matches made by parents. Our host sustained them; the plan saved a great
+deal of trouble, and wear and tear of spirit; prudent parents always
+selected such as were likely to suit each other; and being thrown
+together very young, they insensibly assimilated in tastes and habits;
+he admitted that he had missed it the first time, but he had hit it the
+second, and allowed that the system would work much better if the cost
+of procuring a divorce was not so great. With the highest respect, and a
+pressing invitation to come again, seconded by his wife, I took my leave
+of the self-satisfied Israelite.
+
+From this we went into several other houses, in all of which the
+interior belied, in the same manner, their external appearance. I do not
+say that they were gorgeous or magnificent, but they were clean,
+comfortable, and striking by their oriental style of architecture and
+furniture; and being their Sabbath, the women were in their best attire,
+with their heads, necks, and wrists adorned with a profusion of gold and
+silver ornaments. Several of the houses had libraries, with old Hebrew
+books, in which an old rabbi was reading or sometimes instructing
+children. In the last house a son was going through his days of mourning
+on the death of his father. He was lying in the middle of the floor,
+with his black cap on, and covered with a long black cloak. Twenty or
+thirty friends were sitting on the floor around him, who had come in to
+condole with him. When we entered, neither he nor any of his friends
+took any notice of us, except to make room on the floor. We sat down
+with them. It was growing dark, and the light broke dimly through the
+latticed windows upon the dusky figures of the mourning Israelites; and
+there they sat, with stern visages and long beards, the feeble remnant
+of a fallen people, under scorn and contumely, and persecution and
+oppression, holding on to the traditions received from their fathers,
+practising in the privacy of their houses the same rites as when the
+priests bore aloft the ark of the covenant, and out of the very dust in
+which they lie still looking for the restoration of their temporal
+kingdom. In a room adjoining sat the widow of the deceased, with a group
+of women around her, all perfectly silent; and they too took no notice
+of us either when we entered or when we went away.
+
+The next day the shops were shut, and the streets again thronged as on
+the day of my arrival. I went to church at the English chapel attached
+to the residence of the British consul, and heard a sermon from a German
+missionary. I dined at one o'clock, and, in company with mine host of
+the Pension Suisse, and a merchant of Smyrna resident there, worked my
+way up the hill through the heart of the Turks' quarter to the old
+castle standing alone and in ruins on its summit. We rested a little
+while at the foot of the castle, and looked over the city and the tops
+of the minarets upon the beautiful bay, and descending in the rear of
+the castle, we came to the river Meles winding through a deep valley at
+the foot of the hill. This stream was celebrated in Grecian poetry three
+thousand years ago. It was the pride of the ancient Smyrneans, once
+washed the walls of the ancient city, and tradition says that on its
+banks the nymph Critheis gave birth to Homer. We followed it in its
+winding course down the valley, murmuring among evergreens. Over it in
+two places were the ruins of aqueducts which carried water to the old
+city, and in one or two places it turns an overshot mill. On each side,
+at intervals along its banks, were oriental summer-houses, with
+verandahs, and balconies, and latticed windows. Approaching the caravan
+bridge we met straggling parties, and by degrees fell into a crowd of
+people, Franks, Europeans of every nation, Greeks, Turks, and Armenians,
+in all their striking costumes, sitting on benches under the shade of
+noble old sycamores, or on the grass, or on the river's brink, and
+moving among them were Turks cleanly dressed, with trays of
+refreshments, ices, and sherbet. There was an unusual collection of
+Greek and Smyrniote women, and an extraordinary display of beauty; none
+of them wore hats, but the Greek women a light gauze turban, and the
+Smyrniotes a small piece of red cloth, worked with gold, secured on the
+top of the head by the folds of the hair, with a long tassel hanging
+down from it. Opposite, and in striking contrast, the great Turkish
+burying-ground, with its thick grove of gloomy cypress, approached the
+bank of the river. I crossed over and entered the burying-ground, and
+penetrated the grove of funereal trees; all around were the graves of
+the dead; thousands and tens of thousands who but yesterday were like
+the gay crowd I saw flitting through the trees, were sleeping under my
+feet. Over some of the graves the earth was still fresh, and they who
+lay in them were already forgotten; but no, they were not forgotten;
+woman's love still remembered them, for Turkish women, with long white
+shawls wrapped around their faces, were planting over them myrtle and
+flowers, believing that they were paying an acceptable tribute to the
+souls of the dead. I left the burying-ground and plunged once more among
+the crowd. It may be that memory paints these scenes brighter than they
+were; but, if that does not deceive me, I never saw at Paris or Vienna
+so gay and beautiful a scene, so rich in landscape and scenery, in
+variety of costume, and in beauty of female form and feature.
+
+We left the caravan bridge early to visit the Armenian quarter, this
+being the best day for seeing them collectively at home; and I had not
+passed through the first street of their beautiful quarter before I was
+forcibly struck with the appearance of a people different from any I had
+yet seen in the East. The Armenians are one of the oldest nations of the
+civilized world, and, amid all the revolutions of barbarian war and
+despotism, have maintained themselves as a cultivated people. From the
+time when their first chieftain fled from Babylon, his native place, to
+escape from the tyranny of Belus, king of Assyria, this warlike people,
+occupying a mountainous country near the sources of the Tigris and
+Euphrates, battled the Assyrians, Medes, the Persians, Macedonians, and
+Arabians, until their country was depopulated by the shah of Persia.
+Less than two millions are all that now remain of that once powerful
+people. Commerce has scattered them, like the Israelites, among all the
+principal nations of Europe and Asia, and everywhere they have preserved
+their stern integrity and uprightness of character. The Armenian
+merchant is now known in every quarter of the globe, and everywhere
+distinguished by superior cultivation, honesty, and manners. As early as
+the fourth century the Armenians embraced Christianity; they never had
+any sympathy with, and always disliked and avoided, the Greek
+Christians, and constantly resisted the endeavours of the popes to bring
+them within the Catholic pale. Their doctrine differs from that of the
+orthodox chiefly in their admitting only one nature in Christ, and
+believing the Holy Spirit to issue from the Father alone. Their first
+abode, Mount Ararat, is even at the present day the centre of their
+religious and political union. They are distinguished by a patriarchal
+simplicity in their domestic manners; and it was the beautiful
+exhibition of this trait in their character that struck me on entering
+their quarter at Smyrna. In style and appearance their quarter is
+superior to any in Smyrna; their streets are broad and clean; their
+houses large, in good order, and well painted; oriental in their style
+of architecture, with large balconies and latticed windows, and spacious
+halls running through the centre, floored with small black and white
+stones laid in the form of stars and other fanciful devices, and leading
+to large gardens in the rear, ornamented with trees, vines, shrubs, and
+flowers, then in full bloom and beauty. All along the streets the doors
+of the houses were thrown wide open, and the old Armenian
+"Knickerbockers" were sitting outside or in the doorway, in their
+flowing robes, grave and sedate, with long pipes and large amber mouth
+pieces, talking with their neighbours, while the younger members were
+distributed along the hall or strolling through the garden, and children
+climbing the trees and arbours. It was a fęte day for the whole
+neighbourhood. All was social, and cheerful, and beautiful, without
+being gay or noisy, and all was open to the observation of every
+passer-by. My companion, an old resident of Smyrna, stopped with me at
+the house of a large banker, whose whole family, with several neighbours
+young and old, were assembled in the hall.
+
+In the street the Armenian ladies observe the Turkish custom of wearing
+the shawl tied around the face so that it is difficult to see their
+features, though I had often admired the dignity and grace of their
+walk, and their propriety of manners; but in the house there was a
+perfect absence of all concealment; and I have seldom seen more
+interesting persons than the whole group of Armenian ladies, and
+particularly the young Armenian girls. They were not so dark, and wanted
+the bold, daring beauty of the Greek, but altogether were far more
+attractive. The great charm of their appearance was an exceeding
+modesty, united with affability and elegance of manner; in fact, there
+was a calm and quiet loveliness about them that would have made any one
+of them dangerous to be shut up alone with, i.e., if a man could talk
+with her without an interpreter. This was one of the occasions when I
+numbered among the pains of life the confusion of tongues. But,
+notwithstanding this, the whole scene was beautiful; and, with all the
+simplicity of a Dutchman's fireside, the style of the house, the pebbled
+hall, the garden, the foliage, and the oriental costumes, threw a charm
+around it which now, while I write, comes over me again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+    An American Original.--Moral Changes in Turkey.--Wonders of Steam
+      Navigation.--The March of Mind.--Classic Localities.--Sestos and
+      Abydos.--Seeds of Pestilence.
+
+
+ON my return from Ephesus I heard of the arrival in Smyrna of two
+American travellers, father and son, from Egypt; and the same day, at
+Mr. Langdon's, I met the father, Dr. N. of Mississippi. The doctor had
+made a long and interesting tour in Egypt and the Holy Land,
+interrupted, however, by a severe attack of ophthalmia on the Nile, from
+which he had not yet recovered, and a narrow escape from the plague at
+Cairo. He was about fifty-five, of a strong, active, and inquiring
+mind; and the circumstances which had brought him to that distant
+country were so peculiar, that I cannot help mentioning them. He had
+passed all his life on the banks of the Mississippi, and for many years
+had busied himself with speculations in regard to the creation of the
+world. Year after year he had watched the deposites and the formation of
+soil on the banks of the Mississippi, had visited every mound and
+mountain indicating any peculiar geological formation, and, unable to
+find any data to satisfy him, he started from his plantation directly
+for the banks of the Nile. He possessed all the warm, high-toned
+feelings of the Southerner, but a thorough contempt for the usages of
+society and everything like polish of manners. He came to New-York and
+embarked for Havre. He had never been even to New-York before; was
+utterly ignorant of any language but his own; despised all foreigners,
+and detested their "jabber." He worked his way to Marseilles with the
+intention of embarking for Alexandria, but was taken sick, and retraced
+his steps directly to his plantation on the Mississippi. Recovering, he
+again set out for the Nile the next year, accompanied by his son, a
+young man of about twenty-three, acquainted with foreign languages, and
+competent to profit by foreign travel. This time he was more successful,
+and, when I saw him, he had rambled over the Pyramids and explored the
+ruined temples of Egypt. The result of his observations had been to
+fortify his preconceived notions, that the age of this world far exceeds
+six thousand years. Indeed, he was firmly persuaded that some of the
+temples of the Nile were built more than six thousand years ago. He had
+sent on to Smyrna enormous boxes of earth and stones, to be shipped to
+America, and was particularly curious on the subject of trees, having
+examined and satisfied himself as to the age of the olive-trees in the
+Garden of Gethsemane and the cedars of Lebanon. I accompanied him to his
+hotel, where I was introduced to his son; and I must not forget another
+member of this party, who is, perhaps, already known to some of my
+readers by the name of Paolo Nuozzo, or, more familiarly, Paul. This
+worthy individual had been travelling on the Nile with two Hungarian
+counts, who discharged him, or whom he discharged (for they differed as
+to the fact), at Cairo. Dr. N. and his son were in want, and Paul
+entered their service as dragoman and superintendent of another man,
+who, they said, was worth a dozen of Paul. I have a very imperfect
+recollection of my first interview with this original. Indeed, I hardly
+remember him at all until my arrival at Constantinople, and have only an
+indistinct impression of a dark, surly-looking, mustached man following
+at the heels of Dr. N., and giving crusty answers in horrible English.
+
+Before my visit to Ephesus I had talked with a Prussian baron of going
+up by land to Constantinople; but on my return I found myself attacked
+with a recurrence of an old malady, and determined to wait for the
+steamboat. The day before I left Smyrna, accompanied by Mr. O. Langdon,
+I went out to Boujac to dine with Mr. Styth. The great beauty of Smyrna
+is its surrounding country. Within a few miles there are three villages,
+Bournabat, Boujac, and Sediguey, occupied by Franks, of which Boujac is
+the favourite. The Franks are always looking to the time of going out to
+their country houses, and consider their residences in their villages
+the most agreeable part of their year; and, from what I saw of it,
+nothing can be more agreeable. Not more than half of them had yet moved
+out, but after dinner we went round and visited all who were there.
+They are all well acquainted, and, living in a strange and barbarous
+country, are drawn closer together than they would be in their own.
+Every evening there is a reunion at some of their houses, and there is
+among them an absence of all unnecessary form and ceremony, without
+which there can be no perfect enjoyment of the true pleasures of social
+intercourse. These villages, too, are endeared to them as places of
+refuge during the repeated and prolonged visitations of the plague, the
+merchant going into the city every morning and returning at night, and
+during the whole continuance of the disease avoiding to touch any member
+of his family. The whole region of country around their villages is
+beautiful in landscape and scenery, producing the choicest flowers and
+fruits; the fig tree particularly growing with a luxuriance unknown in
+any other part of the world. But the whole of this beautiful region lies
+waste and uncultivated, although, if the government could be relied on,
+holding out, by reason of its fertility, its climate, and its facility
+of access, particularly now by means of steamboats, far greater
+inducements to European emigration than any portion of our own country.
+I will not impose upon the reader my speculations on this subject; my
+notes are burdened with them; but, in my opinion, the Old World is in
+process of regeneration, and at this moment offers greater opportunities
+for enterprise than the New.
+
+On Monday, accompanied by Dr. N. and his son and Paolo Nuozzo, I
+embarked on board the steamboat Maria Dorothea for Constantinople; and
+here follows another letter, and the last, dated from the capital of the
+Eastern empire.
+
+
+                                         Constantinople, May ----, 1835.
+
+  MY DEAR ****,
+
+    Oh you who hope one day to roam in Eastern lands, to bend your
+    curious eyes upon the people warmed by the rising sun, come quickly,
+    for all things are changing. You who have pored over the story of
+    the Turk; who have dreamed of him as a gloomy enthusiast, hating,
+    spurning, and slaying all who do not believe and call upon the
+    Prophet;
+
+      "One of that saintly, murderous brood,
+      To carnage and the Koran given,
+      Who think through unbelievers' blood
+      Lies their directest path to Heaven;"
+
+    come quickly, for that description of Turk is passing away. The day
+    has gone by when the haughty Mussulman spurned and persecuted the
+    "Christian dog." A few years since it would have been at peril of a
+    man's life to appear in many parts of Turkey in a European dress;
+    but now the European is looked upon, not only as a creature fit to
+    live, but as a man to be respected. The sultan himself, the great
+    head of the nation and the religion, the vicegerent of God upon
+    earth, has taken off the turban, and all the officers of government
+    have followed his example. The army wears a bastard European
+    uniform, and the great study of the sultan is to introduce European
+    customs. Thanks to the infirmities of human nature, many of these
+    customs have begun to insinuate themselves. The pious follower of
+    the Prophet has dared to raise the winecup to his lips; and in many
+    instances, at the peril of losing his paradise of houris, has given
+    himself up to strong drink. Time was when the word of a Turk was
+    sacred as a precept of the Koran; now he can no more be relied upon
+    than a Jew or a Christian. He has fallen with great facility into
+    lying, cheating, and drinking, and if the earnest efforts to change
+    him are attended with success, perhaps we may soon add stealing and
+    having but one wife. And all this change, this mighty fall, is
+    ascribed by the Europeans here to the destruction of the janisaries,
+    a band of men dangerous to government, brave, turbulent, and bloody,
+    but of indomitable pride; who were above doing little things, and
+    who gave a high tone to the character of the whole people. If I was
+    not bent upon a gallop, and could stop for the jogtrot of an
+    argument, I would say that the destruction of the janisaries is a
+    mere incidental circumstance, and that the true cause is--_steam
+    navigation_. Do not laugh, but listen. The Turks have ever been a
+    proud people, possessing a sort of peacock pride, an extravagantly
+    good opinion of themselves, and a superlative contempt for all the
+    rest of the world. Heretofore they have had comparatively little
+    intercourse with Europeans, consequently but little opportunity of
+    making comparisons, and consequently, again, but little means of
+    discovering their own inferiority. But lately things have changed;
+    the universal peace in Europe and the introduction of steamboats
+    into the Mediterranean have brought the Europeans and the Turks
+    comparatively close together. It seems to me that the effect of
+    steamboats here has as yet hardly begun to be felt. There are but
+    few of them, indifferent boats, constantly getting out of order, and
+    running so irregularly that no reliance can be placed upon them. But
+    still their effects are felt, their convenience is acknowledged;
+    and, so far as my knowledge extends, they have never been introduced
+    anywhere yet without multiplying in numbers, and driving all other
+    vessels off the water. Now the Mediterranean is admirably suited to
+    the use of steamboats; indeed, the whole of these inland waters,
+    the Mediterranean, the Adriatic, the Archipelago, the Dardanelles,
+    the Sea of Marmora, the Bosphorus, and the Black Sea, from the
+    Straits of Gibraltar to the Sea of Azoff, offer every facility that
+    can be desired for steam navigation; and when we consider that the
+    most interesting cities in the world are on the shores of these
+    waters, I cannot but believe that in a very few years they will be,
+    to a certain extent, covered with steamboats. At all events, I have
+    no doubt that in two or three years you will be able to go from
+    Paris to Constantinople in fifteen or twenty days; and, when that
+    time comes, it will throw such numbers of Europeans into the East as
+    will have a sensible effect upon the manners and customs of the
+    people. These eastern countries will be invaded by all classes of
+    people, travellers, merchants, and mechanics, gentlemen of elegant
+    leisure, and blacksmiths, shoemakers, tinkers, and tailors, nay,
+    even mantuamakers, milliners, and bandboxes, the last being an
+    incident to civilized life as yet unknown in Turkey. Indeed,
+    wonderful as the effects of steamboats have been under our own eyes,
+    we are yet to see them far more wonderful in bringing into close
+    alliance, commercial and social, people from distant countries, of
+    different languages and habits; in removing national prejudices, and
+    in breaking down the great characteristic distinctions of nations.
+    Nous verrons, twenty years hence, what steamboats will have done in
+    this part of the world!
+
+    But, in standing up for steamboats, I must not fail in doing justice
+    to the grand seignior. His highness has not always slept upon a bed
+    of roses. He had to thank the petticoats of a female slave for
+    saving his life when a boy, and he had hardly got upon his throne
+    before he found that he should have a hard task to keep it. It lay
+    between him and the janisaries. In spite of them and of the general
+    prejudices of the people, he determined to organize an army
+    according to European tactics. He staked his throne and his head
+    upon the issue; and it was not until he had been pushed to the
+    desperate expedient of unfurling the sacred standard of the Prophet,
+    parading it through the streets of Constantinople, and calling upon
+    all good Mussulmans to rally round it; in short, it was not until
+    the dead bodies of thirty thousand janisaries were floating down the
+    Bosphorus, that he found himself the master in his own dominions.
+    Since that time, either because he is fond of new things, or because
+    he really sees farther than those around him, he is constantly
+    endeavouring to introduce European improvements. For this purpose he
+    invites talent, particularly mechanical and military, from every
+    country, and has now around him Europeans among his most prominent
+    men, and directing nearly all his public works.
+
+    The Turks are a sufficiently intelligent people, and cannot help
+    feeling the superiority of strangers. Probably the immediate effect
+    may be to make them prone rather to catch the faults and vices than
+    the virtues of Europeans; but afterward better things will come;
+    they will fall into our better ways; and perhaps, though that is
+    almost more than we dare hope for, they will embrace a better
+    religion.
+
+    But, however this may be, or whatever may be the cause, all ye who
+    would see the Turk of Mohammed; the Turk who swept the plains of
+    Asia, who leaned upon his bloody sword before the walls of Vienna,
+    and threatened the destruction of Christendom in Europe; the Turk of
+    the turban, and the pipe, and the seraglio, come quickly, for he is
+    becoming another man. A little longer, and the great characteristic
+    distinctions will be broken down; the long pipe, the handsome
+    pipe-bearer, and the amber mouthpiece are gone, and oh, death to all
+    that is beautiful in Eastern romance, the walls of the seraglio are
+    prostrated, the doors of the harem thrown open, the black eunuch and
+    the veiled woman are no more seen, while the honest Turk trudges
+    home from a quiet tea-party stripped of his retinue of fair ones,
+    with his one and only wife tucked under his arm, his head drooping
+    between his shoulders, taking a lecture from his better half for an
+    involuntary sigh to the good old days that are gone. And oh you who
+    turn up your aristocratic noses at such parvenues as Mohammed and
+    the Turks; who would go back to those distant ages which time covers
+    with its dim and twilight glories,
+
+      "When the world was fresh and young,
+      And the great deluge still had left it green;"
+
+    you who come piping-hot from college, your brains teeming with
+    recollections of the heroic ages; who would climb Mount Ida, to sit
+    in council with the gods, come quickly, also, for all things are
+    changing. A steamboat--shade of Hector, Ajax, and Agamemnon, forgive
+    the sins of the day--an Austrian steamboat is now splashing the
+    island-studded Ćgean, and paddling the classic waters of the
+    Hellespont. Oh ye princes and heroes who armed for the Trojan war,
+    and covered these waters with your thousand ships, with what pious
+    horror must you look down from your blessed abodes upon the impious
+    modern monster of the deep, which strips the tall mast of its
+    flowing canvass, renders unnecessary the propitiation of the gods,
+    and flounders on its way in spite of wind and weather!
+
+    A new and unaccountable respect for the classics almost made me
+    scorn the newfangled conveyance, though much to the comfort of
+    wayfaring men; but sundry recollections of Greek caiques, and also
+    an apprehension that there might be those yet living who had heard
+    me in early days speak anything but respectfully of Homer, suggested
+    to me that one man could not stem the current of the times, and that
+    it was better for a humble individual like myself to float with the
+    tide. This idea, too, of currents and tides made me think better of
+    Prince Metternich and his steamboat; and smothering, as well as I
+    could, my sense of shame, I sneaked on board the Maria Dorothea for
+    a race to Constantinople. Join me, now, in this race; and if your
+    heart does not break at going by at the rate of eight or ten miles
+    an hour, I will whip you over a piece of the most classic ground
+    consecrated in history, mythology, or poetry, and in less time than
+    ever the swiftfooted Achilles could have travelled it. At eleven
+    o'clock on a bright sunny day the Maria Dorothea turned her back
+    upon the city and beautiful bay of Smyrna; in about two hours passed
+    the harbour of Vourla, then used as a quarantine station, the yellow
+    plague flag floating in the city and among the shipping; and toward
+    dark, turning the point of the gulf, came upon my old acquaintance
+    Foggi, the little harbour into which I had been twice driven by
+    adverse winds. My Greek friend happened to be on board, and, in the
+    honesty of his heart, congratulated me upon being this time
+    independent of the elements, without seeming to care a fig whether
+    he profaned the memory of his ancestors in travelling by so
+    unclassical a conveyance. If he takes it so coolly, thought I, what
+    is it to me? they are his relations, not mine. In the evening we
+    were moving close to the Island of Mytilene, the ancient Lesbos, the
+    country of Sappho, Alcćus, and Terpander, famed for the excellence
+    of its wine and the beauty of its women, and pre-eminently
+    distinguished for dissipation and debauchery, the fatal plague flag
+    now floating mournfully over its walls, marking it as the abode of
+    pestilence and death.
+
+    Early in the morning I found myself opposite the promontory of
+    Lectum, now Cape Baba, separating the ancient Troas from Ćolia; a
+    little to the right, but hardly visible, were the ruins of Assos,
+    where the apostles stopped to take in Paul; a little farther the
+    ruins of Alexandria Troas, one of the many cities founded by
+    Alexander during his conquests in Asia; to the left, at some
+    distance in the sea, is the Island of Lemnos, in the songs of the
+    poets overshadowed by the lofty Olympus, the island that received
+    Vulcan after he was kicked out of heaven by Jupiter. A little
+    farther, nearer the land, is the Island of Tenedos, the ancient
+    Leucophrys, where Paris first landed after carrying off Helen, and
+    behind which the Greeks withdrew their fleet when they pretended to
+    have abandoned the siege of Troy. Still farther, on the mainland, is
+    the promontory of Sigćum, where the Scamander empties into the sea,
+    and near which were fought the principal of Homer's battles. A
+    little farther--but hold, stop the engine! If there be a spot of
+    classic ground on earth in which the historical, and the poetical,
+    and the fabulous are so beautifully blended together that we would
+    not separate them even to discover the truth, it is before us now.
+    Extending for a great distance along the shore, and back as far as
+    the eye can reach, under the purest sky that ever overshadowed the
+    earth, lies a rich and beautiful plain, and it is the plain of Troy,
+    the battle-ground of heroes. Oh field of glory and of blood, little
+    does he know, that surly Turk who is now lazily following his plough
+    over thy surface, that every blade of thy grass could tell of
+    heroic deeds, the shock of armies, the meeting of war chariots, the
+    crashing of armour, the swift flight, the hot pursuit, the shouts of
+    victors, and the groans of the dying. Beyond it, towering to the
+    heavens, is a lofty mountain, and it is Mount Ida, on whose top
+    Paris adjudged the golden apple to the goddess of beauty, and paved
+    the way for those calamities which brought on the ten years' siege,
+    and laid in ruins the ancient city of Priam. Two small streams,
+    taking their rise from the mountain of the gods, join each other in
+    the middle of the plain; Scamander and Simois, whose waters once
+    washed the walls of the ancient city of Dardanus; and that small,
+    confused, and shapeless mass of ruins, that beautiful sky and the
+    songs of Homer, are all that remain to tell us that "Troy was."
+    Close to the sea, and rising like mountains above the plain, are two
+    immense mounds of earth; they are the tombs of Ajax and Achilles.
+    Shades of departed heroes, fain would we stop and pay the tribute
+    which we justly owe, but we are hurried past by an engine of a
+    hundred horse power.
+
+    Onward, still onward! We have reached the ancient Hellespont, the
+    Dardanelles of the Turks, famed as the narrow water that divides
+    Europe from Asia, for the beauties that adorn its banks, and for its
+    great Turkish fortifications. Three miles wide at the mouth, it
+    becomes gradually narrower, until, in the narrowest part, the
+    natives of Europe and Asia can talk together from the opposite
+    sides. For sixty miles (its whole length) it presents a continued
+    succession of new beauties, and in the hands of Europeans,
+    particularly English, improved as country seats, would make one of
+    the loveliest countries in the world. I had just time to reflect
+    that it was melancholy, and seemed inexplicable that this and other
+    of the fairest portions of the earth should be in the hands of the
+    Turks, who neither improve it themselves nor allow others to do so.
+    At three o'clock we arrived at the Dardanelles, a little Turkish
+    town in the narrowest and most beautiful part of the straits; a
+    strong fort with enormous cannon stands frowning on each side. These
+    are the terrible fortifications of Mohammed II., the keys of
+    Constantinople. The guns are enormous; of one in particular, the
+    muzzle is two feet three inches in diameter; but, with Turkish
+    ingenuity, they are so placed as to be discharged when a ship is
+    directly opposite. If the ship is not disabled by the first fire,
+    and does not choose to go back and take another, she is safe. At
+    every moment a new picture presents itself; a new fort, a new villa,
+    or the ruins of an ancient city. A naked point on the European side,
+    so ugly compared with all around it as to attract particular
+    attention, projects into the strait, and here are the ruins of
+    Sestos; here Xerxes built his bridge of boats to carry over his
+    millions to the conquest of Greece; and here, when he returned with
+    the wreck of his army, defeated and disgraced, found his bridge
+    destroyed by a tempest, and, in his rage, ordered the chains to be
+    thrown into the sea and the waves to be lashed with rods. From this
+    point, too, Leander swam the Hellespont for love of Hero, and Lord
+    Byron and Mr. Ekenhead for fun. Nearly opposite, close to a Turkish
+    fort, are the ruins of Abydos. Here Xerxes, and Leander, and Lord
+    Byron, and Mr. Ekenhead landed.
+
+    Our voyage is drawing to a close. At Gallipoli, a large Turkish town
+    handsomely situated at the mouth of the Dardanelles, we took on
+    board the Turkish governor, with his pipe-bearer and train of
+    attendants, escorted by thirty or forty boats, containing three or
+    four hundred people, his mightiness taking a deck passage. Toward
+    evening we were entering the Sea of Marmora, the ancient Propontis,
+    like one of our small lakes, and I again went to sleep lulled by the
+    music of a high-pressure engine. At daylight we were approaching
+    Constantinople; twelve miles this side, on the bank of the Sea of
+    Marmora, is the village of St. Stephano, the residence of Commodore
+    Porter. Here the domes and minarets of the ancient city, with their
+    golden points and glittering crescents, began to appear in sight.
+    High above the rest towered the mosque of Sultan Achmet and the
+    beautiful dome of St. Sophia, the ancient Christian church, but now,
+    for nearly four hundred years, closed against the Christians' feet.
+    We approach the walls and pass a range of gloomy turrets; there are
+    the Seven Towers, prisons, portals of the grave, whose mysteries few
+    live to publish: the bowstring and the sea reveal no secrets. That
+    palace, with its blinded windows and its superb garden, surrounded
+    by a triple range of walls, is the far-famed seraglio; there beauty
+    lingers in a splendid cage, and, lolling on her rich divan, sighs
+    for the humblest lot and freedom. In front, that narrow water, a
+    thousand caiques shooting through it like arrows, and its beautiful
+    banks covered with high palaces and gardens in the oriental style,
+    is the Thracian Bosphorus. We float around the walls of the
+    seraglio, enter the Golden Horn, and before us, with its thousand
+    mosques and its myriad of minarets, their golden points glittering
+    in the sun, is the Roman city of Constantinople, the Thracian
+    Byzantium, the Stamboul of the Turks; the city which, more than all
+    others, excites the imagination and interests the feelings; once
+    dividing with Rome the empire of the world; built by a Christian
+    emperor and consecrated as a Christian city, a "burning and a
+    shining light" in a season of universal darkness, all at once lost
+    to the civilized world; falling into the hands of a strange and
+    fanatic people, the gloomy followers of a successful soldier; a city
+    which, for nearly four centuries, has sat with its gates closed in
+    sullen distrust and haughty defiance of strangers; which once sent
+    forth large and terrible armies, burning, slaying, and destroying,
+    shaking the hearts of princes and people, now lying like a fallen
+    giant, huge, unwieldy, and helpless, ready to fall into the hands of
+    the first invader, and dragging out a precarious and ignoble
+    existence but by the mercy or policy of the great Christian powers.
+    The morning sun, now striking upon its domes and minarets, covers
+    it, as it were, with burnished gold; a beautiful verdure surrounds
+    it, and pure waters wash it on every side. Can this beautiful city,
+    rich with the choicest gifts of Heaven, be pre-eminently the abode
+    of pestilence and death? where a man carries about with him the
+    seeds of disease to all whom he holds dear? if he extend the hand of
+    welcome to a friend, if he embrace his child or rub against a
+    stranger, the friend, and the child, and the stranger follow him to
+    the grave? where, year after year, the angel of death stalks through
+    the streets, and thousands and tens of thousands look him calmly in
+    the face, and murmuring "Allah, Allah, God is merciful," with a
+    fatal trust in the Prophet, lie down and die? We enter the city, and
+    these questions are quickly answered. A lazy, lounging, and filthy
+    population; beggars basking in the sun, and dogs licking their
+    sores; streets never cleaned but by the winds and rains; immense
+    burying-grounds all over the city; tombstones at the corners of the
+    streets; graves gaping ready to throw out their half-buried dead,
+    the whole approaching to one vast charnel-house, dispel all
+    illusions and remove all doubts, and we are ready to ask ourselves
+    if it be possible that, in such a place, health can ever dwell. We
+    wonder that it should ever, for the briefest moment, be free from
+    that dreadful scourge which comes with every summer's sun and strews
+    its streets with dead.
+
+                                                             ****
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+    Mr. Churchill.--Commodore Porter.--Castle of the Seven Towers.--The
+      Sultan's Naval Architect.--Launch of the Great Ship.--Sultan
+      Mahmoud.--Jubilate.--A National Grievance.--Visit to a
+      Mosque.--The Burial-grounds.
+
+
+THERE is a good chance for an enterprising Connecticut man to set up a
+hotel in Constantinople. The reader will see that I have travelled with
+my eyes open, and I trust this shrewd observation on entering the city
+of the Cćsars will be considered characteristic and American. Paul was
+at home in Pera, and conducted us to the Hotel d'Italia, which was so
+full that we could not get admission, and so vile a place that we were
+not sorry for it. We then went to Madame Josephine's, a sort of private
+boarding-house, but excellent of its kind. We found there a collection
+of travellers, English, French, German, and Russian, and the dinner was
+particularly social; but Dr. N. was so disgusted with the clatter of
+foreign tongues, that he left the table with the first course, and swore
+he would not stay there another day. We tried to persuade him. I
+reminded him that there was an Englishman among them, but this only made
+him worse; he hated an Englishman, and wondered how I, as an American,
+could talk with one as I had with him. In short, he was resolved, and
+had Paul running about every street in Pera looking for rooms.
+Notwithstanding his impracticabilities as a traveller, I liked the
+doctor, and determined to follow him, and before breakfast the next
+morning we were installed in a suite of rooms in the third story of a
+house opposite the old palace of the British ambassador.
+
+For two or three days I was _hors du combat_, and put myself under the
+hands of Dr. Zohrab, an Armenian, educated at Edinburgh, whom I
+cordially recommend both for his kindness and medical skill. On going
+out, one of my first visits was to my banker, Mr. Churchill, a gentleman
+whose name has since rung throughout Europe, and who at one time seemed
+likely to be the cause of plunging the whole civilized world into a war.
+He was then living in Sedikuey, on the site of the ancient Chalcedon, in
+Asia; and I have seldom been more shocked than by reading in a
+newspaper, while in the lazaretto at Malta, that, having accidentally
+shot a Turkish boy with a fowling-piece, he had been seized by the
+Turks, and, in defiance of treaties, _bastinadoed_ till he was almost
+dead. I had seen the infliction of that horrible punishment; and,
+besides the physical pain, there was a sense of the indignity that
+roused every feeling. I could well imagine the ferocious spirit with
+which the Turks would stand around and see a Christian scourged. The
+civilized world owes a deep debt of gratitude to the English government
+for the uncompromising stand taken in this matter with the sultan, and
+the firmness with which it insisted on, and obtained, the most ample
+redress for Mr. Churchill, and atonement for the insult offered to all
+Christendom in his person.
+
+My companions and myself had received several invitations from Commodore
+Porter, and, accompanied by Mr. Dwight, one of our American
+missionaries, to whom I am under particular obligations for his
+kindness, early in the morning we took a caique with three athletic
+Turks, and, after a beautiful row, part of it from the seraglio point to
+the Seven Towers, a distance of five miles, being close under the walls
+of the city, in two hours reached the commodore's residence at St.
+Stephano, twelve miles from Constantinople, on the borders of the Sea of
+Marmora. The situation is beautiful, abounding in fruit-trees, among
+which are some fig trees of the largest size; and the commodore was then
+engaged in building a large addition to his house. It will be remembered
+that Commodore Porter was the first envoy ever sent by the United
+States' government to the Sublime Porte. He had formerly lived at
+Buyukdere, on the Bosphorus, with the other members of the diplomatic
+corps; but his salary as chargé being inadequate to sustain a becoming
+style, he had withdrawn to this place. I had never seen Commodore Porter
+before. I afterward passed a month with him in the lazaretto at Malta,
+and I trust he will not consider me presuming when I say that our
+acquaintance ripened into friendship. He is entirely different from the
+idea I had formed of him; small, dark, weather-beaten, much broken in
+health, and remarkably mild and quiet in his manners. His eye is his
+best feature, though even that does not indicate the desperate hardihood
+of character which he has exhibited on so many occasions. Perhaps I
+ought not to say so, but he seemed ill at ease in his position, and I
+could not but think that he ought still to be standing in the front rank
+of that service he so highly honoured. He spoke with great bitterness of
+the Foxardo affair, and gave me an account of an interesting interview
+between General Jackson and himself on his recall from South America.
+General Jackson wished him to resume his rank in the navy, but he
+answered that he would never accept service with men who had suspended
+him for doing what, they said in their sentence of condemnation, was
+done "to sustain the honour of the American flag."
+
+At the primitive hour of one we sat down to a regular family dinner. We
+were all Americans. The commodore's sister, who was living with him,
+presided, and we looked out on the Sea of Marmora and talked of home. I
+cannot describe the satisfaction of these meetings of Americans so far
+from their own country. I have often experienced it most powerfully in
+the houses of the missionaries in the East. Besides having, in many
+instances, the same acquaintances, we had all the same habits and ways
+of thinking; their articles of furniture were familiar to me, and there
+was scarcely a house in which I did not find an article unknown except
+among Americans, a Boston rocking-chair.
+
+We talked over the subject of our difficulties with France, then under
+discussion in the Chamber of Deputies, and I remember that Commodore
+Porter was strong in the opinion that the bill paying the debt would
+pass. Before rising from table, the commodore's janisary came down from
+Constantinople, with papers and letters just arrived by the courier from
+Paris. He told me that I should have the honour of breaking the seals,
+and I took out the paper so well known all over Europe, "Galignani's
+Messenger," and had the satisfaction of reading aloud, in confirmation
+of the commodore's opinion, that the bill for paying the American claims
+had passed the Chamber of Deputies by a large majority.
+
+[Illustration: Castle of the Seven Towers.]
+
+About four o'clock we embarked in our caique to return to Constantinople.
+In an hour Mr. D. and I landed at the foot of the Seven Towers, and few
+things in this ancient city interested me more than my walk around its
+walls. We followed them the whole extent on the land side, from the Sea
+of Marmora to the Golden Horn. They consist of a triple range, with five
+gates, the principal of which is the Cannon Gate, through which Mohammed
+II. made his triumphal entry into the Christian city. They have not been
+repaired since the city fell into the hands of the Turks, and are the
+same walls which procured for it the proud name of the "well-defended
+city;" to a great extent, they are the same walls which the first
+Constantine built and the last Constantine died in defending. Time has
+laid his ruining hand upon them, and they are everywhere weak and
+decaying, and would fall at once before the thunder of modern war. The
+moat and fossé have alike lost their warlike character, and bloom and
+blossom with the vine and fig tree. Beyond, hardly less interesting than
+the venerable walls, and extending as far as the eye can reach, is one
+continued burying-ground, with thousands and tens of thousands of
+turbaned headstones, shaded by thick groves of the mourning cypress.
+Opposite the Damascus Gate is an elevated enclosure, disconnected from
+all around, containing five headstones in a row, over the bodies of Ali
+Pacha, the rebel chief of Yanina, and his four sons. The fatal mark of
+death by the bowstring is conspicuous on the tombs, as a warning to
+rebels that they cannot escape the sure vengeance of the Porte. It was
+toward the sunset of a beautiful evening, and all Stamboul was out among
+the tombs. At dark we reached the Golden Horn, crossed over in a caique,
+and in a few minutes were in Pera.
+
+The next day I took a caique at Tophana, and went up to the shipyards at
+the head of the Golden Horn to visit Mr. Rhodes, to whom I had a letter
+from a friend in Smyrna. Mr. Rhodes is a native of Long Island, but from
+his boyhood a resident of this city, and I take great pleasure in saying
+that he is an honour to our state and country. The reader will remember
+that, some years ago, Mr. Eckford, one of our most prominent citizens,
+under a pressure of public and domestic calamities, left his native
+city. He sailed from New-York in a beautiful corvette, its destination
+unknown, and came to anchor under the walls of the seraglio in the
+harbour of Constantinople. The sultan saw her, admired her, and bought
+her; and I saw her "riding like a thing of life" on the waters of the
+Golden Horn, a model of beauty.
+
+The fame of his skill, and the beautiful specimen he carried out with
+him, recommended Mr. Eckford to the sultan as a fit instrument to build
+up the character of the Ottoman navy; and afterward, when his full value
+became known, the sultan remarked of him that America must be a great
+nation if she could spare from her service such a man. Had he lived,
+even in the decline of life he would have made for himself a reputation
+in that distant quarter of the globe equal to that he had left behind
+him, and doubtless would have reaped the attendant pecuniary reward. Mr.
+Rhodes went out as Mr. Eckford's foreman, and on his death the task of
+completing his employer's work devolved on him. It could not have
+fallen upon a better man. From a journeyman shipbuilder, all at once Mr.
+Rhodes found himself brought into close relations with the seraskier
+pacha, the reis effendi, the grand vizier, and the sultan himself; but
+his good sense never deserted him. He was then preparing for the launch
+of the great ship; the longest, as he said, and he knew the dimensions
+of every ship that floated, in the world. I accompanied him over the
+ship and through the yards, and it was with no small degree of interest
+that I viewed a townsman, an entire stranger in the country, by his
+skill alone standing at the head of the great naval establishment of the
+sultan. He was dressed in a blue roundabout jacket, without whiskers or
+mustache, and, except that he wore the tarbouch, was thorough American
+in his appearance and manners, while his dragoman was constantly by his
+side, communicating his orders to hundreds of mustached Turks, and in
+the same breath he was talking with me of shipbuilders in New-York, and
+people and things most familiar in our native city. Mr. Rhodes knows and
+cares but little for things that do not immediately concern him; his
+whole thoughts are of his business, and in that he possesses an ambition
+and industry worthy of all praise. As an instance of his discretion,
+particularly proper in the service of that suspicious and despotic
+government, I may mention that, while standing near the ship and
+remarking a piece of cloth stretched across her stern, I asked him her
+name, and he told me he did not know; that it was painted on her stern,
+and his dragoman knew, but he had never looked under, that he might not
+be able to answer when asked. I have seldom met a countryman abroad with
+whom I was more pleased, and at parting he put himself on a pinnacle in
+my estimation by telling me that, if I came to the yard the next day at
+one, I would see the sultan! There was no man living whom I had a
+greater curiosity to see. At twelve o'clock I was at the yard, but the
+sultan did not come. I went again, and his highness had come two hours
+before the time; had accompanied Mr. Rhodes over the ship, and left the
+yard less than five minutes before my arrival; his caique was still
+lying at the little dock, his attendants were carrying trays of
+refreshments to a shooting-ground in the rear, and two black eunuchs
+belonging to the seraglio, handsomely dressed in long black cloaks of
+fine pelisse cloth, with gold-headed canes and rings on their fingers,
+were still lingering about the ship, their effeminate faces and musical
+voices at once betraying their neutral character.
+
+The next was the day of the launch; and early in the morning, in the
+suite of Commodore Porter, I went on board an old steamer provided by
+the sultan expressly for the use of Mr. Rhodes's American friends. The
+waters of the Golden Horn were already covered; thousands of caiques,
+with their high sharp points, were cutting through it, or resting like
+gulls upon its surface; and there were ships with the still proud banner
+of the crescent, and strangers with the flags of every nation in
+Christendom, and sailboats, longboats, and rowboats, ambassadors'
+barges, and caiques of effendis, beys, and pachas, with red silk flags
+streaming in the wind, while countless thousands were assembled on the
+banks to behold the extraordinary spectacle of an American ship, the
+largest in the world, launched in the harbour of old Stamboul. The
+sultan was then living at his beautiful palace at Sweet Waters, and was
+obliged to pass by our boat; he had made a great affair of the launch;
+had invited all the diplomatic corps, and, through the reis effendi,
+particularly requested the presence of Commodore Porter; had stationed
+his harem on the opposite side of the river; and as I saw prepared for
+himself near the ship a tent of scarlet cloth trimmed with gold, I
+expected to see him appear in all the pomp and splendour of the greatest
+potentate on earth. I had already seen enough to convince me that the
+days of Eastern magnificence had gone by, or that the gorgeous scenes
+which my imagination had always connected with the East had never
+existed; but still I could not divest myself of the lingering idea of
+the power and splendour of the sultan. His commanding style to his own
+subjects: "I command you, ----, my slave, that you bring the head of ----,
+my slave, and lay it at my feet;" and then his lofty tone with foreign
+powers: "I, who am, by the infinite grace of the great, just, and
+all-powerful Creator, and the abundance of the miracles of the chief of
+his prophets, emperor of powerful emperors; refuge of sovereigns;
+distributor of crowns to the kings of the earth; keeper of the two very
+holy cities (Mecca and Medina); governor of the holy city of Jerusalem;
+master of Europe, Asia, and Africa, conquered with our victorious sword
+and our terrible lance; lord of two seas (Black and White); of Damascus,
+the odour of Paradise; of Bagdad, the seat of the califs; of the
+fortresses of Belgrade, Agra, and a multitude of countries, isles,
+straits, people, generations, and of so many victorious armies who
+repose under the shade of our Sublime Porte; I, in short, who am the
+shadow of God upon earth;" I was rolling these things through my mind
+when a murmur, "the sultan is coming," turned me to the side of the
+boat, and one view dispelled all my gorgeous fancies. There was no
+style, no state, a citizen king, a republican president, or a
+democratic governor, could not have made a more unpretending appearance
+than did this "shadow of God upon earth." He was seated in the bottom of
+a large caique, dressed in the military frockcoat and red tarbouch, with
+his long black beard, the only mark of a Turk about him, and he moved
+slowly along the vacant space cleared for his passage, boats with the
+flags of every nation, and thousands of caiques falling back, and the
+eyes of the immense multitude earnestly fixed upon him, but without any
+shouts or acclamations; and when he landed at the little dock, and his
+great officers bowed to the dust before him, he looked the plainest,
+mildest, kindest man among them. I had wished to see him as a wholesale
+murderer, who had more blood upon his hands than any man living; who had
+slaughtered the janisaries, drenched the plains of Greece, to say
+nothing of bastinadoes, impalements, cutting off heads, and tying up in
+sacks, which are taking place every moment; but I will not believe that
+Sultan Mahmoud finds any pleasure in shedding blood. Dire necessity, or,
+as he himself would say, fate, has ever been driving him on. I look upon
+him as one of the most interesting characters upon earth; as the
+creature of circumstances, made bloody and cruel by the necessities of
+his position. I look at his past life and at that which is yet in store
+for him, through all the stormy scenes he is to pass until he completes
+his unhappy destiny, the last of a powerful and once-dreaded race,
+bearded by those who once crouched at the footstool of his ancestors,
+goaded by rebellious vassals, conscious that he is going a downward
+road, and yet unable to resist the impulse that drives him on. Like the
+strong man encompassed with a net, he finds no avenue of escape, and
+cannot break through it.
+
+The seraskier pacha and other principal officers escorted him to his
+tent, and now all the interest which I had taken in the sultan was
+transferred to Mr. Rhodes. He had great anxiety about the launch, and
+many difficulties to contend with: first, in the Turks' jealousy of a
+stranger, which obliged him to keep constantly on the watch lest some of
+his ropes should be cut or fastenings knocked away; and he had another
+Turkish prejudice to struggle against: the day had been fixed twice
+before, but the astronomers found an unfortunate conjunction of the
+stars, and it was postponed, and even then the stars were unpropitious;
+but Mr. Rhodes had insisted that the work had gone so far that it could
+not be stopped. And, besides these, he had another great difficulty in
+his ignorance of their language. With more than a thousand men under
+him, all his orders had to pass through interpreters, and often, too,
+the most prompt action was necessary, and the least mistake might prove
+fatal. Fortunately, he was protected from treachery by the kindness of
+Mr. Churchill and Dr. Zohrab, one of whom stood on the bow and the other
+in the stern of the ship, and through whom every order was transmitted
+in Turkish. Probably none there felt the same interest that we did; for
+the flags of the barbarian and every nation in Christendom were waving
+around us, and at that distance from home the enterprise of a single
+citizen enlisted the warmest feelings of every American. We watched the
+ship with as keen an interest as if our own honour and success in life
+depended upon her movements. For a long time she remained perfectly
+quiet. At length she moved, slowly and almost imperceptibly; and then,
+as if conscious that the eyes of an immense multitude were on her, and
+that the honour of a distant nation was in some measure at stake, she
+marched proudly to the water, plunged in with a force that almost buried
+her, and, rising like a huge leviathan, parted the foaming waves with
+her bow, and rode triumphantly upon them. Even Mussulman indifference
+was disturbed; all petty jealousies were hushed; the whole immense mass
+was roused into admiration; loud and long-continued shouts of applause
+rose with one accord from Turks and Christians, and the sultan was so
+transported that he jumped up and clapped his hands like a schoolboy.
+
+Mr. Rhodes's triumph was complete; the sultan called him to his tent,
+and with his own hands fixed on the lappel of his coat a gold medal set
+in diamonds, representing the launching of a ship. Mr. Rhodes has
+attained among strangers the mark of every honourable man's ambition,
+the head of his profession. He has put upon the water what Commodore
+Porter calls the finest ship that ever floated, and has a right to be
+proud of his position and prospects under the "shade of the Sublime
+Porte." The sultan wishes to confer upon him the title of chief naval
+constructor, and to furnish him with a house and a caique with four
+oars. In compliment to his highness, who detests a hat, Mr. Rhodes wears
+the tarbouch; but he declines all offices and honours, and anything that
+may tend to fix him as a Turkish subject, and looks to return and enjoy
+in his own country and among his own people the fruits of his honourable
+labours. If the good wishes of a friend can avail him, he will soon
+return to our city rich with the profits of untiring industry, and an
+honourable testimony to his countrymen of the success of American skill
+and enterprise abroad.
+
+To go back a moment. All day the great ship lay in the middle of the
+Golden Horn, while perhaps more than a hundred thousand Turks shot
+round her in their little caiques, looking up from the surface of the
+water to her lofty deck: and in Pera, wherever I went, perhaps because I
+was an American, the only thing I heard of was the American ship. Proud
+of the admiration excited so far from home by this noble specimen of the
+skill of an American citizen, I unburden myself of a long-smothered
+subject of complaint against my country. I cry out with a loud voice for
+_reform_, not in the hackneyed sense of petty politicians, but by a
+liberal and enlarged expenditure of public money; by increasing the
+outfits and salaries of our foreign ambassadors and ministers. We claim
+to be rich, free from debt, and abundant in resources, and yet every
+American abroad is struck with a feeling of mortification at the
+inability of his representative to take that position in social life to
+which the character of his country entitles him. We may talk of
+republican simplicity as we will, but there are certain usages of
+society and certain appendages of rank which, though they may be
+unmeaning and worthless, are sanctioned, if not by the wisdom, at least
+by the practice of all civilized countries. We have committed a fatal
+error since the time when Franklin appeared at the court of France in a
+plain citizen's dress; everywhere our representative conforms to the
+etiquette of the court to which he is accredited, and it is too late to
+go back and begin anew; and now, unless our representative is rich and
+willing to expend his own fortune for the honour of the nation, he is
+obliged to withdraw from the circles and position in which he has a
+right and ought to move, or to move in them on an inferior footing,
+under an acknowledgment of inability to appear as an equal.
+
+And again: our whole consular system is radically wrong, disreputable,
+and injurious to our character and interests. While other nations
+consider the support of their consuls a part of the expenses of their
+government, we suffer ourselves to be represented by merchants, whose
+pecuniary interests are mixed up with all the local and political
+questions that affect the place and who are under a strong inducement to
+make their office subservient to their commercial relations. I make no
+imputations against any of them. I could not if I would, for I do not
+know an American merchant holding the office who is not a respectable
+man; but the representative of our country ought to be the
+representative of our country only; removed from any distracting or
+conflicting interests, standing like a watchman to protect the honour of
+his nation and the rights of her citizens. And more than this, all over
+the Mediterranean there are ports where commerce presents no inducements
+to the American merchant, and there the office falls into the hands of
+the natives; and at this day the American arms are blazoned on the
+doors, and the American flag is waving over the houses, of Greeks,
+Italians, Jews, and Arabs, and all the mongrel population of that inland
+sea; and in the ports under the dominion of Turkey particularly, the
+office is coveted as a means of protecting the holder against the
+liabilities to his own government, and of revenue by selling that
+protection to others. I will not mention them by name, for I bear them
+no ill will personally, and I have received kindness from most of the
+petty vagabonds who live under the folds of the American flag; but the
+consuls at Gendoa and Algiers are a disgrace to the American name.
+Congress has lately turned its attention to this subject, and will,
+before long, I hope, effect a complete change in the character of our
+consular department, and give it the respectability which it wants; the
+only remedy is by following the example of other nations, in fixing
+salaries to the office, and forbidding the holders to engage in trade.
+Besides the leading inducements to this change, there is a secondary
+consideration, which, in my eyes, is not without its value, in that it
+would furnish a valuable school of instruction for our young men. The
+offices would be sought by such. A thousand or fifteen hundred dollars a
+year would maintain them respectably, in most of the ports of the
+Mediterranean, and young men resident in those places, living upon
+salaries, and not obliged to engage in commerce, would employ their
+leisure hours in acquiring the language of the country, in communicating
+with the interior, and among them would return upon us an accumulation
+of knowledge far more than repaying us for all the expense of supporting
+them abroad.
+
+Doubtless the reader expects other things in Constantinople; but all
+things are changing. The day has gone by when the Christian could not
+cross the threshold of a mosque and live. Even the sacred mosque of St.
+Sophia, the ancient Christian church, so long closed against the
+Christians' feet, now, upon great occasions, again opens its doors to
+the descendants of its Christian builders. One of these great occasions
+happened while I was there. The sultan gave a firman to the French
+ambassador, under which all the European residents and travellers
+visited it. Unfortunately, I was unwell, and could not go out that day,
+and was obliged afterward to content myself with walking around its
+walls, with uplifted eyes and a heavy heart, admiring the glittering
+crescent and thinking of the prostrate cross.
+
+But no traveller can leave Constantinople without having seen the
+interior of a mosque; and accordingly, under the guidance of Mustapha,
+the janisary of the British consul, I visited the mosque of Sultan
+Suliman, next in point of beauty to that of St. Sophia, though far
+inferior in historical interest. At an early hour we crossed the Golden
+Horn to old Stamboul; threaded our way through its narrow and intricate
+streets to an eminence near the seraskier pacha's tower; entered by a
+fine gateway into a large courtyard, more than a thousand feet square,
+handsomely paved and ornamented with noble trees, and enclosed by a high
+wall; passed a marble fountain of clear and abundant water, where, one
+after another, the faithful stopped to make their ablutions; entered a
+large colonnade, consisting of granite and marble pillars of every form
+and style, the plunder of ancient temples, worked in without much regard
+to architectural fitness, yet, on the whole, producing a fine effect;
+pulled off our shoes at the door, and, with naked feet and noiseless
+step, crossed the sacred threshold of the mosque. Silently we moved
+among the kneeling figures of the faithful scattered about in different
+parts of the mosque and engaged in prayer; paused for a moment under the
+beautiful dome sustained by four columns from the Temple of Diana at
+Ephesus; leaned against a marble pillar which may have supported, two
+thousand years ago, the praying figure of a worshipper of the great
+goddess; gazed at the thousand small lamps suspended from the lofty
+ceiling, each by a separate cord, and with a devout feeling left the
+mosque.
+
+[Illustration: Mosque of Sultan Suliman.]
+
+In the rear, almost concealed from view by a thick grove of trees,
+shrubs, and flowers, is a circular building about forty feet in
+diameter, containing the tomb of Suliman, the founder of the mosque, his
+brother, his favourite wife Roxala, and two other wives. The monuments
+are in the form of sarcophagi, with pyramidal tops, covered with rich
+Cashmere shawls, having each at the head a large white turban, and
+enclosed by a railing covered with mother-of-pearl. The great beauty of
+the sepulchral chamber is its dome, which is highly ornamented, and
+sparkles with brilliants. In one corner is a plan of Mecca, the holy
+temple, and tomb of the Prophet.
+
+In the afternoon I went for the last time to the Armenian burying-ground.
+In the East the graveyards are the general promenades, the places of
+rendezvous, and the lounging-places; and in Constantinople the Armenian
+burying-ground is the most beautiful, and the favourite. Situated in the
+suburbs of Pera, overlooking the Bosphorus, shaded by noble palm-trees,
+almost regularly toward evening I found myself sitting upon the same
+tombstone, looking upon the silvery water at my feet, studded with
+palaces, flashing and glittering with caiques from the golden palace of
+the sultan to the seraglio point, and then turned to the animated groups
+thronging the burying-ground; the Armenian in his flowing robes, the
+dashing Greek, the stiff and out-of-place-looking Frank; Turks in their
+gay and bright costume, glittering arms, and solemn beards, enjoying the
+superlative of existence in dozing over their pipe; and women in long
+white veils, apart under some delightful shade, in little picnic
+parties, eating ices and confectionary. Here and there, toward the
+outskirts, was the araba, the only wheeled carriage known among the
+Turks, with a long low body, highly carved and gilded, drawn by oxen
+fancifully trimmed with ribands, and filled with soft cushions, on which
+the Turkish and Armenian ladies almost buried themselves. Instead of the
+cypress, the burying-ground is shaded by noble plane-trees; and the
+tombstones, instead of being upright, are all flat, having at the head a
+couple of little niches scooped out to hold water, with the beautiful
+idea to induce birds to come there and drink and sing among the trees.
+Their tombstones, too, have another mark, which, in a country where men
+are apt to forget who their fathers were, would exclude them even from
+that place where all mortal distinctions are laid low, viz., a mark
+indicating the profession or occupation of the deceased; as, a pair of
+shears to mark the grave of a tailor; a razor that of a barber; and on
+many of them was another mark indicating the manner of death, the
+bowstring, or some other mark, showing that the stone covered a victim
+of Turkish cruelty. But all these things are well known; nothing has
+escaped the prying eyes of curious travellers; and I merely state, for
+my own credit's sake, that I followed the steps of those who had gone
+before me, visited the Sweet Waters, Scutary, and Belgrade, the
+reservoirs, aqueducts, and ruins of the palace of Constantine, and saw
+the dancing dervishes; rowed up the Bosphorus to Buyukdere, lunched
+under the tree where Godfrey encamped with his gallant crusaders, and
+looked out upon the Black Sea from the top of the Giant's Mountain.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+    Visit to the Slave-market.--Horrors of Slavery.--Departure from
+      Stamboul.--The stormy Euxine.--Odessa.--The Lazaretto.--Russian
+      Civility.--Returning Good for Evil.
+
+
+THE day before I left Constantinople I went, in company with Dr. N. and
+his son, and attended by Paul, to visit the slave-market; crossing over
+to Stamboul, we picked up a Jew in the bazars, who conducted us through
+a perfect labyrinth of narrow streets to a quarter of the city from
+which it would have been utterly impossible for me to extricate myself
+alone. I only know that it was situated on high ground, and that we
+passed through a gateway into a hollow square of about a hundred and
+fifty or two hundred feet on each side. It was with no small degree of
+emotion that I entered this celebrated place, where so many Christian
+hearts have trembled; and, before crossing the threshold, I ran over in
+my mind all the romantic stories and all the horrible realities that I
+could remember connected with its history: the tears of beauty, the
+pangs of brave men, and so down to the unsentimental exclamation of
+Johnson to his new friend Don Juan:
+
+        "Yon black eunuch seems to eye us;
+    I wish to God that somebody would buy us."
+
+The bazar forms a hollow square, with little chambers about fifteen feet
+each way around it, in which the slaves belonging to the different
+dealers are kept. A large shed or portico projects in front, under
+which, and in front of each chamber, is a raised platform, with a low
+railing around it, where the slave-merchant sits and gossips, and dozes
+over his coffee and pipes. I had heard so little of this place, and it
+was so little known among Europeans, taking into consideration,
+moreover, that in a season of universal peace the market must be without
+a supply of captives gained in war, that I expected to see but a remnant
+of the ancient traffic, supposing that I should find but few slaves, and
+those only black; but, to my surprise, I found there twenty or thirty
+white women. Bad, horrible as this traffic is under any circumstances,
+to my habits and feelings it loses a shade of its horrors when confined
+to blacks; but here whites and blacks were exposed together in the same
+bazar. The women were from Circassia and the regions of the Caucasus,
+that country so renowned for beauty; they were dressed in the Turkish
+costume, with the white shawl wrapped around the mouth and chin, and
+over the forehead, shading the eyes, so that it was difficult to judge
+with certainty as to their personal appearance. Europeans are not
+permitted to purchase, and their visits to this bazar are looked upon
+with suspicion. If we stopped long opposite a door, it was closed upon
+us; but I was not easily shaken off, and returned so often at odd times,
+that I succeeded in seeing pretty distinctly all that was to be seen. In
+general, the best slaves are not exposed in the bazars, but are kept at
+the houses of the dealers; but there was one among them not more than
+seventeen, with a regular Circassian face, a brilliantly fair
+complexion, a mild and cheerful expression; and in the slave-market,
+under the partial disguise of the Turkish shawl, it required no great
+effort of the imagination to make her decidedly beautiful. Paul stopped,
+and with a burst of enthusiasm, the first I had discovered in him,
+exclaimed "Quelle beauté!" She noticed my repeatedly stopping before
+her bazar; and, when I was myself really disposed to be sentimental,
+instead of drooping her head with the air of a distressed heroine, to my
+great surprise she laughed and nodded, and beckoned me to come to her.
+Paul was very much struck; and repeating his warm expression of
+admiration at her beauty, told me that she wanted me to buy her. Without
+waiting for a reply, he went off and inquired the price, which was two
+hundred and fifty dollars; and added that he could easily get some Turk
+to let me buy her in his name, and then I could put her on board a
+vessel, and carry her where I pleased. I told him it was hardly worth
+while at present; and he, thinking my objection was merely to the
+person, in all honesty and earnestness told me he had been there
+frequently, and never saw anything half so handsome; adding that, if I
+let slip this opportunity, I would scarcely have another as good, and
+wound up very significantly by declaring that, if he was a gentleman, he
+would not hesitate a moment. A gentleman, in the sense in which Paul
+understood the word, is apt to fall into irregular ways in the East.
+Removed from the restraints which operate upon men in civilized
+countries, if he once breaks through the trammels of education, he goes
+all lengths; and it is said to be a matter of general remark, that
+slaves are always worse treated by Europeans than by the Turks. The
+slave-dealers are principally Jews, who buy children when young, and, if
+they have beauty train up the girls in such accomplishments as may
+fascinate the Turks. Our guide told us that, since the Greek revolution,
+the slave-market had been comparatively deserted; but, during the whole
+of that dreadful struggle, every day presented new horrors; new captives
+were brought in, the men raving and struggling, and vainly swearing
+eternal vengeance against the Turks, and the women shrieking
+distractedly in the agony of a separation. After the massacre at Scio,
+in particular, hundreds of young girls, with tears streaming down their
+cheeks, and bursting hearts, were sold to the unhallowed embraces of the
+Turks for a few dollars a head. We saw nothing of the horrors and
+atrocities of this celebrated slave-market. Indeed, except prisoners of
+war and persons captured by Turkish corsairs, the condition of those who
+now fill the slave-market is not the horrible lot that a warm
+imagination might suppose. They are mostly persons in a semibarbarous
+state; blacks from Sennaar and Abyssinia, or whites from the regions of
+the Caucasus, bought from their parents for a string of beads or a
+shawl; and, in all probability, the really beautiful girl whom I saw had
+been sold by parents who could not feed or clothe her, who considered
+themselves rid of an encumbrance, and whom she left without regret; and
+she, having left poverty and misery behind her, looked to the
+slave-market as the sole means of advancing her fortune; and, in
+becoming the favoured inmate of a harem, expected to attain a degree of
+happiness she could never have enjoyed at home.
+
+I intended to go from Constantinople to Egypt, but the plague was raging
+there so violently that it would have been foolhardy to attempt it; and
+while making arrangements with a Tartar to return to Europe on horseback
+across the Balkan, striking the Danube at Semlin and Belgrade, a Russian
+government steamer was advertised for Odessa; and as this mode of
+travelling at that moment suited my health better, I altered my whole
+plan, and determined to leave the ruined countries of the Old World for
+a land just emerging from a state of barbarism, and growing into
+gigantic greatness. With great regret I took leave of Dr. N. and his
+son, who sailed the same day for Smyrna, and I have never seen them
+since. Paul was the last man to whom I said farewell. At the moment of
+starting my shirts were brought in dripping wet, and Paul bestowed a
+malediction upon the Greek while he wrung them out and tumbled them into
+my carpet-bag. I afterward found him at Malta, whence he accompanied me
+on my tour in Egypt, Arabia Petrća, and the Holy Land, by which he is,
+perhaps, already known to some of my readers.
+
+With my carpet-bag on the shoulders of a Turk, I walked for the last
+time to Tophana. A hundred caiquemen gathered around me, but I pushed
+them all back, and kept guard over my carpet-bag, looking out for one
+whom I had been in the habit of employing ever since my arrival in
+Constantinople. He soon spied me; and when he took my luggage and myself
+into his caique, manifested that he knew it was for the last time.
+Having an hour to spare, I directed him to row once more under the walls
+of the seraglio; and still loath to leave, I went on shore and walked
+around the point, until I was stopped by a Turkish bayonet. The Turk
+growled, and his mustache curled fiercely as he pointed it at me. I had
+been stopped by Frenchmen, Italians, and by a mountain Greek, but found
+nothing that brings a man to such a dead stand as the Turkish bayonet.
+
+I returned to my caique, and went on board the steamer. She was a
+Russian government vessel, more classically called a pyroscaphe, a
+miserable old thing; and yet as much form and circumstance were observed
+in sending her off as in fitting out an _exploring expedition_.
+Consuls' and ambassadors' boats were passing and repassing, and after
+an enormous fuss and preparation, we started under a salute of cannon,
+which was answered from one of the sultan's frigates. We had the usual
+scene of parting with friends, waving of handkerchiefs, and so on; and
+feeling a little lonely at the idea of leaving a city containing a
+million inhabitants without a single friend to bid me Godspeed, I took
+my place on the quarter-deck, and waved my handkerchief to my caiqueman,
+who, I have no doubt, independent of the loss of a few piasters per day,
+was very sorry to lose me; for we had been so long together, that, in
+spite of our ignorance of each other's language, we understood each
+other perfectly.
+
+I found on board two Englishmen whom I had met at Corfu, and a third,
+who had joined them at Smyrna, going to travel in the Crimea; our other
+cabin-passengers were Mr. Luoff, a Russian officer, an aiddecamp of
+the emperor, just returned from travels in Egypt and Syria, Mr.
+Perseani, secretary to the Russian legation in Greece; a Greek merchant,
+with a Russian protection, on his way to the Sea of Azoff; and a French
+merchant of Odessa. The tub of a steamboat dashed up the Bosphorus at
+the rate of three miles an hour; while the classic waters, as if
+indignant at having such a bellowing, blowing, blustering monster upon
+their surface, seemed to laugh at her unwieldy and ineffectual efforts.
+Slowly we mounted the beautiful strait, lined on the European side
+almost with one continued range of houses, exhibiting in every beautiful
+nook a palace of the sultan, and at Terapeia and Buyukdere the palaces
+of the foreign ambassadors; passed the Giant's Mountain, and about an
+hour before dark were entering a new sea, the dark and stormy Euxine.
+
+Advancing, the hills became more lofty and ragged, terminating on the
+Thracian side in high rocky precipices. The shores of this extremity of
+the Bosphorus were once covered with shrines, altars, and temples,
+monuments of the fears or gratitude of mariners who were about to leave,
+or who had escaped, the dangers of the inhospitable Euxine; and the
+remains of these antiquities were so great that a traveller almost in
+our own day describes the coasts as "covered by their ruins." The
+castles on the European and the Asiatic side of the strait are supposed
+to occupy the sites where stood, in ancient days, the great temples of
+Jupiter Serapis and Jupiter Urius. The Bosphorus opens abruptly, without
+any enlargement at its mouth, between two mountains. The parting view of
+the strait, or, rather, of the coast on each side, was indescribably
+grand, presenting a stupendous wall opposed to the great bed of waters,
+as if torn asunder by an earthquake, leaving a narrow rent for their
+escape. On each side, a miserable lantern on the top of a tower, hardly
+visible at the distance of a few miles, is the only light to guide the
+mariner at night; and as there is another opening called the false
+Bosphorus, the entrance is difficult and dangerous, and many vessels are
+lost here annually.
+
+As the narrow opening closed before me, I felt myself entering a new
+world; I was fairly embarked upon that wide expanse of water which once,
+according to ancient legends, mingled with the Caspian, and covered the
+great oriental plain of Tartary, and upon which Jason, with his
+adventurous Argonauts, having killed the dragon and carried off the
+golden fleece from Colchis, if those same legends be true (which some
+doubt), sailed across to the great ocean. I might and should have
+speculated upon the great changes in the face of nature and the great
+deluge recorded by Grecian historians and poets, which burst the narrow
+passage of the Thracian Bosphorus for the outlet of the mighty waters;
+but who could philosophize in a steamboat on the Euxine? Oh Fulton! much
+as thou hast done for mechanics and the useful arts, thy hand has fallen
+rudely upon all cherished associations. We boast of thee; I have myself
+been proud of thee as an American; but as I sat at evening on the stern
+of the steamer, and listened to the clatter of the engine, and watched
+the sparks rushing out of the high pipes, and remembered that this was
+on the dark and inhospitable Euxine, I wished that thy life had begun
+after mine was ended. I trust I did his memory no wrong; but if I had
+borne him malice, I could not have wished him worse than to have all his
+dreams of the past disturbed by the clatter of one of his own engines.
+
+I turned away from storied associations to a new country grown up in our
+own day. We escaped, and, I am obliged to say, without noticing them,
+the Cyaneć, "the blue Symplegades," or "wandering islands," which, lying
+on the European and Asiatic side, floated about, or, according to Pliny,
+"were alive, and moved to and fro more swiftly than the blast," and in
+passing through which the good ship Argo had a narrow escape, and lost
+the extremity of her stern. History and poetry have invested this sea
+with extraordinary and ideal terrors; but my experience both of the
+Mediterranean and Black Sea was unfortunate for realizing historical and
+poetical accounts. I had known the beautiful Mediterranean a sea of
+storm and sunshine, in which the storm greatly predominated. I found the
+stormy Euxine calm as an untroubled lake; in fact, the Black Sea is in
+reality nothing more than a lake, not as large as many of our own,
+receiving the waters of the great rivers of the north: the Don, the
+Cuban, the Phase, the Dnieper, and the Danube, and pouring their
+collected streams through the narrow passage of the Bosphorus into the
+Mediterranean. Still, if the number of shipwrecks be any evidence of its
+character, it is indeed entitled to its ancient reputation of a
+dangerous sea, though probably these accidents proceed, in a great
+measure, from the ignorance and unskilfulness of mariners, and the want
+of proper charts and of suitable lighthouses at the opening of the
+Bosphorus. At all events, we outblustered the winds and waves with our
+steamboat; passed the Serpent Isles, the ancient Leuce, with a roaring
+that must have astonished the departed heroes whose souls, according to
+the ancient poets, were sent there to enjoy perpetual paradise, and
+scared the aquatic birds which every morning dipped their wings in the
+sea, and sprinkled the Temple of Achilles, and swept with their plumage
+its sacred pavement.
+
+[Illustration: Odessa.]
+
+On the third day we made the low coast of Moldavia or Bess Arabia,
+within a short distance of Odessa, the great seaport of Southern Russia.
+Here, too, there was nothing to realize preconceived notions; for,
+instead of finding a rugged region of eternal snows, we were suffering
+under an intensely hot sun when we cast anchor in the harbour of Odessa.
+The whole line of the coast is low and destitute of trees; but Odessa is
+situated on a high bank; and, with its beautiful theatre, the exchange,
+the palace of the governor, &c., did not look like a city which, thirty
+years ago, consisted only of a few fishermen's huts.
+
+The harbour of Odessa is very much exposed to the north and east winds,
+which often cause great damage to the shipping. Many hundred anchors
+cover the bottom, which cut the rope cables; and, the water being
+shallow, vessels are often injured by striking on them. An Austrian brig
+going out, having struck one, sank in ten minutes. There are two moles,
+the quarantine mole, in which we came to anchor, being the principal.
+Quarantine flags were flying about the harbour, the yellow indicating
+those undergoing purification, and the red the fatal presence of the
+plague. We were prepared to undergo a vexatious process. At
+Constantinople I had heard wretched accounts of the rude treatment of
+lazaretto subjects, and the rough, barbarous manners of the Russians to
+travellers, and we had a foretaste of the light in which we were to be
+regarded, in the conduct of the health-officer who came alongside. He
+offered to take charge of any letters for the town, purify them that
+night, and deliver them in the morning; and, according to his
+directions, we laid them down on the deck, where he took them up with a
+pair of long iron tongs, and putting them into an iron box, shut it up
+and rowed off.
+
+In the morning, having received notice that the proper officers were
+ready to attend us, we went ashore. We landed in separate boats at the
+end of a long pier, and, forgetting our supposed pestiferous influence,
+were walking up toward a crowd of men whom we saw there, when their
+retrograde movements, their gestures, and unintelligible shouts reminded
+us of our situation. One of our party, in a sort of ecstasy at being on
+shore, ran capering up the docks, putting to flight a group of idlers,
+and, single-handed, might have depopulated the city of Odessa, if an
+ugly soldier with a bayonet had not met him in full career and put a
+stop to his gambols. The soldier conducted us to a large building at the
+upper end of the pier; and carefully opening the door, and falling back
+so as to avoid even the wind that might blow from us in his direction,
+told us to go in. At the other end of a large room, divided by two
+parallel railings, sat officers and clerks to examine our passports and
+take a general account of us. We were at once struck with the military
+aspect of things, every person connected with the establishment wearing
+a military uniform; and now commenced a long process. The first
+operation was to examine our passports, take down our names, and make a
+memorandum of the purposes for which we severally entered the dominions
+of the emperor and autocrat of all the Russias. We were all called up,
+one after the other, captain, cook, and cabin-boy, cabin and deck
+passengers; and never, perhaps, did steamboat pour forth a more motley
+assemblage than we presented. We were Jews, Turks, and Christians;
+Russians, Poles, and Germans; English, French, and Italians; Austrians,
+Greeks, and Illyrians; Moldavians, Wallachians, Bulgarians, and
+Sclavonians; Armenians, Georgians, and Africans; and one American. I had
+before remarked the happy facility of the Russians in acquiring
+languages, and I saw a striking instance in the officer who conducted
+the examination, and who addressed every man in his own language with
+apparently as much facility as though it had been his native tongue.
+After the oral commenced a corporeal examination. We were ordered one by
+one into an adjoining room, where, on the other side of a railing,
+stood a doctor, who directed us to open our shirt bosoms, and slap our
+hands smartly under our arms and upon our groins, these being the places
+where the fatal plague-marks first exhibit themselves.
+
+This over, we were forthwith marched to the lazaretto, escorted by
+guards and soldiers, who behaved very civilly and kept at a respectful
+distance from us. Among our deck passengers were forty or fifty Jews,
+dirty and disgusting objects, just returned from a pilgrimage to
+Jerusalem. An old man, who seemed to be, in a manner, the head of the
+party, and exceeded them all in rags and filthiness, but was said to be
+rich, in going up to the lazaretto amused us and vexed the officers by
+sitting down on the way, paying no regard to them when they urged him
+on, being perfectly assured that they would not dare to touch him. Once
+he resolutely refused to move; they threatened and swore at him, but he
+kept his place until one got a long pole and punched him on ahead.
+
+In this way we entered the lazaretto; but if it had not been called by
+that name, and if we had not looked upon it as a place where we were
+compelled to stay for a certain time, nolens volens, we should have
+considered it a beautiful spot. It is situated on high ground, within an
+enclosure of some fifteen or twenty acres, overlooking the Black Sea,
+laid out in lawn and gravel walks, and ornamented with rows of
+acacia-trees. Fronting the sea was a long range of buildings divided
+into separate apartments, each with a little courtyard in front
+containing two or three acacias. The director, a fine, military-looking
+man, with a decoration on his lapel, met us on horseback within the
+enclosure, and with great suavity of manner said that he could not bid
+us welcome to a prison, but that we should have the privilege of
+walking at will over the grounds, and visiting each other, subject only
+to the attendance of a guardiano; and that all that could contribute to
+our comfort should be done for us.
+
+We then selected our rooms, and underwent another personal examination.
+This was the real touchstone; the first was a mere preliminary
+observation by a medical understrapper; but this was conducted by a more
+knowing doctor. We were obliged to strip naked; to give up the clothes
+we pulled off, and put on a flannel gown, drawers, and stockings, and a
+woollen cap provided by the government, until our own should be smoked
+and purified. In everything, however, the most scrupulous regard was
+paid to our wishes, and a disposition was manifested by all to make this
+rather vexatious proceeding as little annoying as possible. The bodily
+examination was as delicate as the nature of the case would admit; for
+the doctor merely opened the door, looked in, and went out without
+taking his hand from off the knob. It was none of my business, I know,
+and may be thought impertinent, but, as he closed the door, I could not
+help calling him back to ask him whether he held the same inquisition
+upon the fair sex; to which he replied with a melancholy upturning of
+the eyes that in the good old days of Russian barbarism this had been
+part of his duties, but that the march of improvement had invaded his
+rights, and given this portion of his professional duties to a _sage
+femme_.
+
+All our effects were then taken to another chamber, and arranged on
+lines, each person superintending the disposition of his own, so as to
+prevent all confusion, and left there to be fumigated with sulphuric
+acid for twenty-four hours. So particular were they in fumigating
+everything susceptible of infection, that I was obliged to leave there
+a black riband which I wore round my neck as a guard to my watch. Toward
+evening the principal director, one of the most gentlemanly men I ever
+met, came round, and with many apologies and regrets for his inability
+to receive us better, requested us to call upon him freely for anything
+we might want. Not knowing any of us personally, he did me the honour to
+say that he understood there was an American in the party, who had been
+particularly recommended to him by a Russian officer and fellow-passenger.
+Afterward came the commissary, or chief of the department, and repeated
+the same compliments, and left us with an exalted opinion of Russian
+politeness. I had heard horrible accounts of the rough treatment of
+travellers in Russia, and I made a note at the time, lest after
+vexations should make me forget it, that I had received more politeness
+and civility from these northern barbarians, as they are called by the
+people of the south of Europe, than I ever found amid their boasted
+civilization.
+
+Having still an hour before dark, I strolled out, followed by my
+guardiano, to take a more particular survey of our prison. In a
+gravel walk lined with acacias, immediately before the door of my little
+courtyard, I came suddenly upon a lady of about eighteen, whose dark
+hair and eyes I at once recognised as Grecian, leading by the hand a
+little child. I am sure my face brightened at the first glimpse of this
+vision which promised to shine upon us in our solitude; and perhaps my
+satisfaction was made too manifest by my involuntarily moving toward
+her. But my presumption received a severe and mortifying check; for
+though at first she merely crossed to the other side of the walk, she
+soon forgot all ceremony, and, fairly dragging the child after her, ran
+over the grass to another walk to avoid me; my mortification, however,
+was but temporary; for though, in the first impulse of delight and
+admiration, I had forgotten time, place, and circumstance, the repulse I
+had received made me turn to myself, and I was glad to find an excuse
+for the lady's flight in the flannel gown and long cap and slippers,
+which marked me as having just entered upon my season of purification.
+
+I was soon initiated into the routine of lazaretto ceremonies and
+restrictions. By touching a quarantine patient, both parties are
+subjected to the longest term of either; so that if a person, on the
+last day of his term, should come in contact with another just entered,
+he would lose all the benefit of his days of purification, and be
+obliged to wait the full term of the latter. I have seen, in various
+situations in life, a system of operations called keeping people at a
+distance, but I never saw it so effectually practised as in quarantine.
+For this night, at least, I had full range. I walked where I pleased,
+and was very sure that every one would keep out of my way. During the
+whole time, however, I could not help treasuring up the precipitate
+flight of the young lady; and I afterward told her, and, I hope, with
+the true spirit of one ready to return good for evil, that if she had
+been in my place, and the days of my purification had been almost ended,
+in spite of plague and pestilence she might have rushed into my arms
+without my offering the least impediment.
+
+In making the tour of the grounds, I had already an opportunity of
+observing the relation in which men stand to each other in Russia. When
+an officer spoke to a soldier, the latter stood motionless as a statue,
+with his head uncovered during the whole of the conference; and when a
+soldier on guard saw an officer, no matter at what distance, he
+presented arms, and remained in that position until the officer was out
+of sight. Returning, I passed a grating, through which I saw our
+deck passengers, forty or fifty in number, including the Jewish
+pilgrims, miserable, dirty-looking objects, turned in together for
+fourteen days, to eat, drink, and sleep as best they might, like brutes.
+With a high idea of the politeness of the Russians toward the rich and
+great, or those whom they believed to be so, and with a strong
+impression already received confirming the accounts of the degraded
+condition of the lower classes, I returned to my room, and, with a
+Frenchman and a Greek for my room-mates, my window opening upon the
+Black Sea, I spent my first night in quarantine.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+    The Guardiano.--One too many.--An Excess of Kindness.--The last Day
+      of Quarantine.--Mr. Baguet.--Rise of Odessa.--City-making.--Count
+      Woronzow.--A Gentleman Farmer.--An American Russian.
+
+
+I SHALL pass over briefly the whole of our _pratique_. The next morning
+I succeeded in getting a room to myself. A guardiano was assigned to
+each room, who took his place in the antechamber, and was always in
+attendance. These guardianos are old soldiers, entitled by the rules of
+the establishment to so much a day; but, as they always expect a
+gratuity, their attention and services are regulated by that
+expectation. I was exceedingly fortunate in mine; he was always in the
+antechamber, cleaning his musket, mending his clothes, or stretched on a
+mattress looking at the wall; and, whenever I came through with my hat
+on, without a word he put on his belt and followed me; and very soon,
+instead of regarding him as an encumbrance, I became accustomed to him,
+and it was a satisfaction to have him with me. Sometimes, in walking for
+exercise, I moved so briskly that it tired him to keep up with me; and
+then I selected a walk where he could sit down and keep his eye upon me,
+while I walked backward and forward before him. Besides this, he kept my
+room in order, set my table, carried my notes, brushed my clothes, and
+took better care of me than any servant I ever had.
+
+Our party consisted of eight, and being subjected to the same
+quarantine, and supposed to have the same quantum of infection, we were
+allowed to visit each other; and every afternoon we met in the yard,
+walked an hour or two, took tea together, and returned to our own
+rooms, where our guardianos mounted guard in the antechamber; our gates
+were locked up, and a soldier walked outside as sentinel. I was
+particularly intimate with the Russian officer, whom I found one of the
+most gentlemanly, best educated, and most amiable men I ever met. He had
+served and been wounded in the campaign against Poland; had with him two
+soldiers, his own serfs, who had served under him in that campaign, and
+had accompanied him in his tour in Egypt and Syria. He gave me his
+address at St. Petersburgh and promised me the full benefit of his
+acquaintance there. I have before spoken of the three Englishmen. Two of
+them I had met at Corfu; the third joined them at Smyrna, and added
+another proof to the well-established maxim that three spoil company;
+for I soon found that they had got together by the ears; and the
+new-comer having connected himself with one of the others, they were
+anxious to get rid of the third. Many causes of offence existed between
+them; and though they continued to room together, they were merely
+waiting till the end of our pratique for an opportunity to separate. One
+morning the one who was about being thrown off came to my room, and told
+me that he did not care about going to the Crimea, and proposed
+accompanying me. This suited me very well; it was a long and expensive
+journey, and would cost a mere fraction more for two than for one; and
+when the breach was widened past all possibility of being healed, the
+cast-off and myself agreed to travel together. I saw much of the
+secretary of legation, and also of the Greek and Frenchman, my
+room-mates for the first night. Indeed, I think I may say that I was an
+object of special interest to all our party. I was unwell, and my
+companions overwhelmed me with prescriptions and advice; they brought
+in their medicine chests; one assuring me that he had been cured by
+this, another by that, and each wanted me to swallow his own favourite
+medicine, interlarding their advice with anecdotes of whole sets of
+passengers who had been detained, some forty, some fifty, and some sixty
+days, by the accidental sickness of one. I did all I could for them,
+always having regard to the circumstance that it was not of such vital
+importance to me, at least, to hold out fourteen days if I broke down on
+the fifteenth. In a few days the doctor, in one of his rounds, told me
+he understood I was unwell, and I confessed to him the reason of my
+withholding the fact, and took his prescriptions so well, that, at
+parting, he gave me a letter to a friend in Chioff, and to his brother,
+a distinguished professor in the university at St. Petersburgh.
+
+We had a restaurant in the lazaretto, with a new bill of fare every day;
+not first-rate, perhaps, but good enough. I had sent a letter of
+introduction to Mr. Baguet, the Spanish consul, also to a German, the
+brother of a missionary at Constantinople, and a note to Mr. Ralli, the
+American consul, and had frequent visits from them, and long talks at
+the parlatoria through the grating. The German was a knowing one, and
+came often; he had a smattering of English, and would talk in that
+language, as I thought, in compliment to me; but the last time he came
+he thanked me kindly, and told me he had improved more in his English
+than by a year's study. When I got out he never came near me.
+
+Sunday, June seventh, was our last day in quarantine. We had counted the
+days anxiously; and though our time had passed as agreeably as, under
+the circumstances, it could pass, we were in high spirits at the
+prospect of our liberation. To the last, the attention and civility of
+the officers of the yard continued unremitted. Every morning regularly
+the director knocked at each gate to inquire how we had passed the
+night, and whether he could do anything for us; then the doctor, to
+inquire into our corporeal condition; and every two or three days,
+toward evening, the director, with the same decoration on the lapel of
+his coat, and at the same hour, inquired whether we had any complaints
+to make of want of attendance or improper treatment.
+
+Our last day in the lazaretto is not to be forgotten. We kept as clear
+of the rest of the inmates as if they had been pickpockets, though once
+I was thrown into a cold sweat by an act of forgetfulness. A child fell
+down before me; I sprang forward to pick him up, and should infallibly
+have been fixed for ten days longer if my guardiano had not caught me.
+Lingering for the last time on the walk overlooking the Black Sea, I saw
+a vessel coming up under full sail, bearing, as I thought, the American
+flag. My heart almost bounded at seeing the stars and stripes on the
+Black Sea; but I was deceived; and almost dejected with the
+disappointment, called my guardiano, and returned for the last time to
+my room.
+
+The next morning we waited in our rooms till the doctor paid his final
+visit, and soon after we all gathered before the door of the directory,
+ready to sally forth. Every one who has made a European voyage knows the
+metamorphosis in the appearance of the passengers on the day of landing.
+It was much the same with us; we had no more slipshod, long-bearded
+companions, but all were clean shirted and shaved becomingly, except our
+old Jew and his party, who probably had not changed a garment or washed
+their faces since the first day in quarantine, nor perhaps for many
+years before. They were people from whom, under any circumstances, one
+would be apt to keep at a respectful distance; and to the last they
+carried everything before them.
+
+We had still another vexatious process in passing our luggage through
+the custom-house. We had handed in a list of all our effects the night
+before, in which I intentionally omitted to mention Byron's poems, these
+being prohibited in Russia. He had been my companion in Italy and
+Greece, and I was loath to part with him; so I put the book under my
+arm, threw my cloak over me, and walked out unmolested. Outside the gate
+there was a general shaking of hands; the director, whom we had seen
+every day at a distance, was the first to greet us, and Mr. Baguet, the
+brother of the Spanish consul, who was waiting to receive me, welcomed
+me to Russia. With sincere regret I bade good-by to my old soldier,
+mounted a drosky, and in ten minutes was deposited in a hotel, in size
+and appearance equal to the best in Paris. It was a pleasure once more
+to get into a wheel-carriage; I had not seen one since I left Italy,
+except the old hack I mentioned at Argos, and the arabas at
+Constantinople. It was a pleasure, too, to see hats, coats, and
+pantaloons. Early associations will cling to a man; and, in spite of a
+transient admiration for the dashing costume of the Greek and Turk, I
+warmed to the ungraceful covering of civilized man, even to the long
+surtout and bell-crowned hat of the Russian marchand; and, more than
+all, I was attracted by an appearance of life and energy particularly
+striking after coming from among the dead-and-alive Turks.
+
+While in quarantine I had received an invitation to dine with Mr.
+Baguet, and had barely time to make one tour of the city in a drosky
+before it was necessary to dress for dinner. Mr. Baguet was a bachelor
+of about forty, living in pleasant apartments, in an unpretending and
+gentlemanly style. As in all the ports of the Levant, except where there
+are ambassadors, the consuls are the nobility of the place. Several of
+them were present; and the European consuls in those places are a
+different class of men from ours, as they are paid by salaries from
+their respective governments, while ours, who receive no pay, are
+generally natives of the place, who serve for the honour or some other
+accidental advantage. We had, therefore, the best society in Odessa at
+Mr. Baguet's, the American consul not being present, which, by-the-way,
+I do not mean in a disrespectful sense, as Mr. Ralli seemed every way
+deserving of all the benefits that the station gives.
+
+In the evening the consul and myself took two or three turns on the
+boulevards, and at about eleven I returned to my hotel. After what I
+have said of this establishment, the reader will be surprised to learn
+that, when I went to my room, I found there a bedstead, but no bed or
+bedclothes. I supposed it was neglect, and ordered one to be prepared;
+but, to my surprise, was told that there were no beds in the hotel. It
+was kept exclusively for the rich seigneurs who always carry their own
+beds with them. Luckily, the bedstead was not corded, but contained a
+bottom of plain slabs of wood, about six or eight inches wide, and the
+same distance apart, laid crosswise, so that lengthwise there was no
+danger of falling through; and wrapping myself in my cloak, and putting
+my carpet-bag under my head, I went to sleep.
+
+Before breakfast the next morning I had learned the topography of
+Odessa. To an American Russia is an interesting country. True, it is not
+classic ground; but as for me, who had now travelled over the faded and
+wornout kingdoms of the Old World, I was quite ready for something new.
+Like our own, Russia is a new country, and in many respects resembles
+ours. It is true that we began life differently. Russia has worked her
+way to civilization from a state of absolute barbarism, while we sprang
+into being with the advantage of all the lights of the Old World. Still
+there are many subjects of comparison, and even of emulation, between
+us; and nowhere in all Russia is there a more proper subject to begin
+with than my first landing-place.
+
+Odessa is situated in a small bay between the mouths of the Dnieper and
+Dniester. Forty years ago it consisted of a few miserable fishermen's
+huts on the shores of the Black Sea. In 1796 the Empress Catharine
+resolved to built a city there; and the Turks being driven from the
+dominion of the Black Sea, it became a place of resort and speculation
+for the English, Austrians, Neapolitans, Dutch, Ragusans, and Greeks of
+the Ionian republic. In eighteen hundred and two, two hundred and
+eighty vessels arrived from Constantinople and the Mediterranean; and
+the Duke de Richelieu, being appointed governor-general by Alexander,
+laid out a city upon a gigantic scale, which, though at first its growth
+was not commensurate with his expectations, now contains sixty thousand
+inhabitants, and bids fair to realize the extravagant calculations of
+its founder. Mr. Baguet and the gentlemen whom I met at his table were
+of opinion that it is destined to be the greatest commercial city in
+Russia, as the long winters and the closing of the Baltic with ice must
+ever be a great disadvantage to St. Petersburgh; and the interior of the
+country can as well be supplied from Odessa as from the northern
+capital.
+
+There is no country where cities have sprung up so fast and increased so
+rapidly as in ours; and, altogether, perhaps nothing in the world can be
+compared with our Buffalo, Rochester, Cincinnati, &c. But Odessa has
+grown faster than any of these, and has nothing of the appearance of one
+of our new cities. We are both young, and both marching with gigantic
+strides to greatness, but we move by different roads; and the whole face
+of the country, from the new city on the borders of the Black Sea to the
+steppes of Siberia, shows a different order of government and a
+different constitution of society. With us, a few individuals cut down
+the trees of the forest, or settle themselves by the banks of a stream,
+where they happen to find some local advantages, and build houses suited
+to their necessities; others come and join them; and, by degrees, the
+little settlement becomes a large city. But here a gigantic government,
+endowed almost with creative powers, says, "Let there be a city," and
+immediately commences the erection of large buildings. The rich
+seigneurs follow the lead of government, and build hotels to let out in
+apartments. The theatre, casino, and exchange at Odessa are perhaps
+superior to any buildings in the United States. The city is situated on
+an elevation about a hundred feet above the sea; a promenade three
+quarters of a mile long, terminated at one end by the exchange, and at
+the other by the palace of the governor, is laid out in front along the
+margin of the sea, bounded on one side by an abrupt precipice, and
+adorned with trees, shrubs, flowers, statues, and busts, like the garden
+of the Tuileries, the Borghese Villa, or the Villa Recali at Naples. On
+the other side is a long range of hotels built of stone, running the
+whole length of the boulevards, some of them with façades after the best
+models in Italy. A broad street runs through the centre of the city,
+terminating with a semicircular enlargement at the boulevards, and in
+the centre of this stands a large equestrian statue erected to the Duke
+de Richelieu; and parallel and at right angles are wide streets lined
+with large buildings, according to the most approved plans of modern
+architecture. The custom which the people have of taking apartments in
+hotels causes the erection of large buildings, which add much to the
+general appearance of the city; while with us, the universal disposition
+of every man to have a house to himself, conduces to the building of
+small houses, and, consequently, detracts from general effect. The city,
+as yet, is not generally paved, and is, consequently, so dusty, that
+every man is obliged to wear a light cloak to save his dress.
+Paving-stone is brought from Trieste and Malta, and is very expensive.
+
+About two o'clock Mr. Ralli, our consul, called upon me. Mr. Ralli is a
+Greek of Scio. He left his native island when a boy; has visited every
+port in Europe as a merchant, and lived for the last eight years in
+Odessa. He has several brothers in England, Trieste, and some of the
+Greek islands, and all are connected in business. When Mr. Rhind, who
+negotiated our treaty with the Porte, left Odessa, he authorized Mr.
+Ralli to transact whatever consular business might be required, and on
+his recommendation Mr. Ralli afterward received a regular appointment as
+consul. Mr. Rhind, by-the-way, expected a great trade from opening the
+Black Sea to American bottoms; but he was wrong in his anticipations,
+and there have been but two American vessels there since the treaty. Mr.
+Ralli is rich and respected, being vice-president of the commercial
+board, and very proud of the honour of the American consulate, as it
+gives him a position among the dignitaries of the place, enables him to
+wear a uniform and sword on public occasions, and yields him other
+privileges which are gratifying, at least, if not intrinsically
+valuable.
+
+No traveller can pass through Odessa without having to acknowledge the
+politeness of Count Woronzow, the governor of the Crimea, one of the
+richest seigneurs in Russia, and one of the pillars of the throne. At
+the suggestion of Mr. Ralli, I accompanied him to the palace and was
+presented. The palace is a magnificent building, and the interior
+exhibits a combination of wealth and taste. The walls are hung with
+Italian paintings, and, for interior ornaments and finish, the palace is
+far superior to those in Italy; the knobs of the doors are of amber, and
+the doors of the dining-room from the old imperial palace at St.
+Petersburgh. The count is a military-looking man of about fifty, six
+feet high, with sallow complexion and gray hair. His father married an
+English lady of the Sidney family, and his sister married the Earl of
+Pembroke. He is a soldier in bearing and appearance, held a high rank
+during the French invasion of Russia, and distinguished himself
+particularly at Borodino; in rank and power he is the fourth military
+officer in the empire. He possesses immense wealth in all parts of
+Russia, particularly in the Crimea; and his wife's mother, after
+Demidoff and Scheremetieff, is the richest subject in the whole empire.
+He speaks English remarkably well, and, after a few commonplaces, with
+his characteristic politeness to strangers, invited me to dine at the
+palace the next day. I was obliged to decline, and he himself suggested
+the reason, that probably I was engaged with my countryman, Mr. Sontag
+(of whom more anon), whom the count referred to as his old friend,
+adding that he would not interfere with the pleasure of a meeting
+between two countrymen so far from home, and asked me for the day after,
+or any other day I pleased. I apologized on the ground of my intended
+departure, and took my leave.
+
+My proposed travelling companion had committed to me the whole
+arrangements for our journey, or, more properly, had given me the whole
+trouble of making them; and, accompanied by one of Mr. Ralli's clerks, I
+visited all the carriage repositories to purchase a vehicle, after which
+I accompanied Mr. Ralli to his country-house to dine. He occupied a
+pretty little place a few versts from Odessa, with a large fruit and
+ornamental garden. Mr. Ralli's lady is also a native of Greece, with
+much of the cleverness and _spirituelle_ character of the educated
+Greeks. One of her _bons mots_ current in Odessa is, that her husband is
+consul for the other world. A young Italian, with a very pretty wife,
+dined with us, and, after dinner and a stroll through the garden, we
+walked over to Mr. Perseani's, the father of our Russian secretary;
+another walk in the garden with a party of ladies, tea, and I got back
+to Odessa in time for a walk on the boulevards and the opera.
+
+Before my attention was turned to Odessa, I should as soon have thought
+of an opera-house at Chicago as there; but I already found, what
+impressed itself more forcibly upon me at every step, that Russia is a
+country of anomalies. The new city on the Black Sea contains many French
+and Italian residents, who are willing to give all that is not necessary
+for food and clothing for the opera; the Russians themselves are
+passionately fond of musical and theatrical entertainments, and
+government makes up all deficiencies. The interior of the theatre
+corresponds with the beauty of its exterior. All the decorations are in
+good taste, and the Corinthian columns, running from the foot to the
+top, particularly beautiful. The opera was the Barber of Seville; the
+company in _full_ undress, and so barbarous as to pay attention to the
+performance. I came out at about ten o'clock, and, after a turn or two
+on the boulevards, took an icecream at the café of the Hotel de
+Petersbourgh. This hotel is beautifully situated on one corner of the
+main street, fronting the boulevards, and opposite the statue of the
+Duke de Richelieu; and looking from the window of the café, furnished
+and fitted up in a style superior to most in Paris, upon the crowd still
+thronging the boulevards, I could hardly believe that I was really on
+the borders of the Black Sea.
+
+Having purchased a carriage and made all my arrangements for starting, I
+expected to pass this day with an unusual degree of satisfaction, and I
+was not disappointed. I have mentioned incidentally the name of a
+countryman resident in Odessa; and, being so far from home, I felt a
+yearning toward an American. In France or Italy I seldom had this
+feeling, for there Americans congregate in crowds; but in Greece and
+Turkey I always rejoiced to meet a compatriot; and when, on my arrival
+at Odessa, before going into the lazaretto, the captain told me that
+there was an American residing there, high in character and office, who
+had been twenty years in Russia, I requested him to present my
+compliments, and say that, if he had not forgotten his fatherland, a
+countryman languishing in the lazaretto would be happy to see him
+through the gratings of his prison-house. I afterward regretted having
+sent this message, as I heard from other sources that he was a
+prominent man, and during the whole term of my quarantine I never heard
+from him personally. I was most agreeably disappointed, however, when,
+on the first day of my release, I met him at dinner at the Spanish
+consul's. He had been to the Crimea with Count Woronzow; had only
+returned that morning, and had never heard of my being there until
+invited to meet me at dinner. I had wronged him by my distrust; for,
+though twenty years an exile, his heart beat as true as when he left our
+shores. Who can shake off the feeling that binds him to his native land?
+Not hardships nor disgrace at home; not favour nor success abroad; not
+even time, can drive from his mind the land of his birth or the friends
+of his youthful days.
+
+General Sontag was a native of Philadelphia; had been in our navy, and
+served as sailing-master on board the Wasp; became dissatisfied from
+some cause which he did not mention, left our navy, entered the Russian,
+and came round to the Black Sea as captain of a frigate; was transferred
+to the land service, and, in the campaign of 1814, entered Paris with
+the allied armies as colonel of a regiment. In this campaign he formed a
+friendship with Count Woronzow, which exists in full force at this day.
+He left the army with the rank of brigadier-general. By the influence of
+Count Woronzow, he was appointed inspector of the port of Odessa, in
+which office he stood next in rank to the Governor of the Crimea, and,
+in fact, on one occasion, during the absence of Count Woronzow, lived in
+the palace and acted as governor for eight months. He married a lady of
+rank, with an estate and several hundred slaves at Moscow; wears two or
+three ribands at his buttonhole, badges of different orders; has gone
+through the routine of offices and honours up to the grade of grand
+counsellor of the empire; and a letter addressed to him under the title
+of "his excellency" will come to the right hands. He was then living at
+his country place, about eight versts from Odessa, and asked me to go
+out and pass the next day with him. I was strongly tempted, but, in
+order that I might have the full benefit of it, postponed the pleasure
+until I had completed my arrangements for travelling. The next day
+General Sontag called upon me, but I did not see him; and this morning,
+accompanied by Mr. Baguet the younger, I rode out to his place. The land
+about Odessa is a dead level, the road was excessively dry, and we were
+begrimed with dust when we arrived. General Sontag was waiting for us,
+and, in the true spirit of an American farmer at home, proposed taking
+us over his grounds. His farm is his hobby; it contains about six
+hundred acres, and we walked all over it. His crop was wheat, and,
+although I am no great judge of these matters, I think I never saw
+finer. He showed me a field of very good wheat, which had not been sowed
+in three years, but produced by the fallen seed of the previous crops.
+We compared it with our Genesee wheat, and to me it was an interesting
+circumstance to find an American cultivating land on the Black Sea, and
+comparing it with the products of our Genesee flats, with which he was
+perfectly familiar.
+
+One thing particularly struck me, though, as an American, perhaps I
+ought not to have been so sensitive. A large number of men were at work
+in the field, and they were all slaves. Such is the force of education
+and habit, that I have seen hundreds of black slaves without a
+sensation; but it struck rudely upon me to see white men slaves to an
+American, and he one whose father had been a soldier of the revolution,
+and had fought to sustain the great principle that "all men are by
+nature free and equal." Mr. Sontag told me that he valued his farm at
+about six thousand dollars, on which he could live well, have a bottle
+of Crimea wine, and another every day for a friend, and lay up one
+thousand dollars a year; but I afterward heard that he was a complete
+enthusiast on the subject of his farm; a bad manager, and that he really
+knew nothing of its expense or profit.
+
+Returning to the house, we found Madame Sontag ready to receive us. She
+is an authoress of great literary reputation, and of such character
+that, while the emperor was prosecuting the Turkish war in person, and
+the empress remained at Odessa, the young archduchesses were placed
+under her charge. At dinner she talked with much interest of America,
+and expressed a hope, though not much expectation, of one day visiting
+it. But General Sontag himself, surrounded as he is by Russian
+connexions, is all American. Pointing to the riband on his buttonhole,
+he said he was entitled to one order which he should value above all
+others; that his father had been a soldier of the revolution, and member
+of the Cincinnati Society, and that in Russia the decoration of that
+order would be to him the proudest badge of honour that an American
+could wear. After dining we retired into a little room fitted up as a
+library, which he calls America, furnished with all the standard
+American books, Irving, Paulding, Cooper, &c., engravings of
+distinguished Americans, maps, charts, canal and railroad reports, &c.;
+and his daughter, a lovely little girl and only child, has been taught
+to speak her father's tongue and love her father's land. In honour of me
+she played on the piano "Hail Columbia" and "Yankee Doodle," and the
+day wore away too soon. We took tea on the piazza, and at parting I
+received from him a letter to his agent on his estate near Moscow, and
+from Madame Sontag one which carried me into the imperial household,
+being directed to Monsieur l'Intendant du Prince héritiere,
+Petersbourgh. A few weeks ago I received from him a letter, in which he
+says, "the visit of one of my countrymen is so great a treat, that I can
+assure you, you are never forgotten by any one of my little family; and
+when my daughter wishes to make me smile, she is sure to succeed if she
+sits down to her piano and plays 'Hail Columbia' or 'Yankee Doodle;'
+this brings to mind Mr. ----, Mr. ----, Mr. ----, and Mr. ----, who have
+passed through this city; to me alone it brings to mind my country,
+parents, friends, youth, and a world of things and ideas past, never to
+return. Should any of our countrymen be coming this way, do not forget
+to inform them that in Odessa lives one who will be glad to see them;"
+and I say now to any of my countrymen whom chance may throw upon the
+shores of the Black Sea, that if he would receive so far from home the
+welcome of a true-hearted American, General Sontag will be glad to
+render it.
+
+It was still early in the evening when I returned to the city. It was
+moonlight, and I walked immediately to the boulevards. I have not spoken
+as I ought to have done of this beautiful promenade, on which I walked
+every evening under the light of a splendid moon. The boulevards are
+bounded on one side by the precipitous shore of the sea; are three
+quarters of a mile in length, with rows of trees on each side, gravel
+walks and statues, and terminated at one end by the exchange, and at the
+other by the palace of Count Woronzow. At this season of the year it
+was the promenade of all the beauty and fashion of Odessa, from an hour
+or two before dark until midnight. This evening the moon was brighter,
+and the crowd was greater and gayer than usual. The great number of
+officers, with their dashing uniforms, the clashing of their swords, and
+rattling of their spurs, added to the effect; and woman never looks so
+interesting as when leaning on the arm of a soldier. Even in Italy or
+Greece I have seldom seen a finer moonlight scene than the columns of
+the exchange through the vista of trees lining the boulevards. I
+expected to leave the next day, and I lingered till a late hour. I
+strolled up and down the promenade, alone among thousands. I sat down
+upon a bench, and looked for the last time on the Black Sea, the stormy
+Euxine, quiet in the moonbeams, and glittering like a lake of burnished
+silver. By degrees the gay throng disappeared; one after another, party
+after party withdrew; a few straggling couples, seeming all the world to
+each other, still lingered, like me, unable to tear themselves away. It
+was the hour and the place for poetry and feeling. A young officer and a
+lady were the last to leave; they passed by me, but did not notice me;
+they had lost all outward perceptions; and as, in passing for the last
+time, she raised her head for a moment, and the moon shone full upon her
+face, I saw there an expression that spoke of heaven. I followed them as
+they went out, murmured involuntarily "Happy dog," whistled "Heighho,
+says Thimble," and went to my hotel to bed.
+
+
+END OF VOL. I.
+
+
+
+
+List of Corrections:
+
+  p. iii, Preface: "Egypt, Arabia Petrć, and the Holy Land." was changed
+  to "Egypt, Arabia Petrća, and the Holy Land."
+
+  p. 14: "that we coud" was changed to "that we could."
+
+  p. 87: "friends in this county" was changed to "friends in this
+  country."
+
+  p. 90: "but we connot" was changed to "but we cannot."
+
+  p. 99: "Gate of the Lyons" was changed to "Gate of the Lions" as in
+  the rest of the book.
+
+  p. 130: "to favour such a suiter" was changed to "to favour such a
+  suitor."
+
+  p. 174: "it is confirmed by poetry, hat" was changed to "it is
+  confirmed by poetry, that."
+
+  p. 183: "the jackall's cry was heard" was changed to "the jackal's cry
+  was heard."
+
+  p. 184: "cartainly whip them" was changed to "certainly whip them."
+
+  p. 233: "threade our way" was changed to "threaded our way."
+
+  p. 234: "Cachmere shawls" was changed to "Cashmere shawls."
+
+  p. 244: "the Phase, the Dneiper, and the Danube" was changed to "the
+  Phase, the Dnieper, and the Danube."
+
+  p. 258: "the mouths of the Dneiper and Dneister" was changed to "the
+  mouths of the Dnieper and Dniester."
+
+  p. 268: "quiet in the moonbeans" was changed to "quiet in the
+  moonbeams."
+
+
+Errata:
+
+The summary in the table of contents is not always consistent with the
+summary at the beginning of each chapter. The original has been
+retained.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Incidents of Travel in Greece, Turkey,
+Russia, and Poland, Vol. I (of 2), by John Lloyd Stephens
+
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+   Russia, and Poland Vol. I, by John Lloyd Stephens.
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Incidents of Travel in Greece, Turkey,
+Russia, and Poland, Vol. I (of 2), by John Lloyd Stephens
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Incidents of Travel in Greece, Turkey, Russia, and Poland, Vol. I (of 2)
+
+Author: John Lloyd Stephens
+
+Release Date: October 30, 2011 [EBook #37889]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL, VOL 1 OF 2 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Julia Miller, Eleni Christofaki and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+book was produced from scanned images of public domain
+material from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class='tnote'>
+<h3>Transcriber's notes:</h3>
+
+<p>Punctuation and hyphenation have been normalised. Variable, archaic or
+unusual spelling has been retained. A list of the few corrections made can found at the end of the book.
+In the text, corrections are indicated with red dotted underlining;
+hover the mouse over the <span class="err" title="like this">underlined text</span> to see a Transcriber's Note.</p></div>
+
+<hr class="l65" />
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/full_map.jpg" width="80%" alt="map" title="map" />
+</div>
+
+<hr class="l65" />
+<h1>INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL <br /><br />
+
+<span class="small">IN</span><br /><br />
+
+GREECE, TURKEY, RUSSIA,<br /><br />
+
+<span class="small">AND</span><br /><br />
+
+POLAND.</h1>
+
+<h2>BY THE AUTHOR OF<br />
+
+"INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL IN EGYPT, ARABIA PETRĆA, AND THE
+HOLY LAND."</h2>
+<p><br /><br /></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="smallb">WITH A MAP AND ENGRAVINGS.</span></p>
+<p><br /><br /></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="smallb">IN TWO VOLUMES.</span></p>
+<p><br /></p>
+<p class="center">VOL. I.</p>
+
+<p class="center">SEVENTH EDITION.</p>
+<p><br /></p>
+<p class="center">NEW YORK:</p>
+
+<p class="center">HARPER &amp; BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS.</p>
+
+<p class="center">329 &amp; 331 PEARL STREET,</p>
+
+<p class="center">FRANKLIN SQUARE.</p>
+
+<p class="center">1853.</p>
+
+<hr class="l65" />
+
+<p class="center">
+Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1838, by<br />
+<span class="smcap">Harper &amp; Brothers,</span><br />
+in the Clerk's Office of the Southern District of New York.</p>
+
+<hr class="l65" />
+<h2><a name="PREFACE_TO_THE_FIFTH_EDITION" id="PREFACE_TO_THE_FIFTH_EDITION"></a>PREFACE
+TO
+THE FIFTH EDITION.</h2>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> fourth edition of this work was published during
+the author's absence from the city. His publishers, in
+a preface in his behalf, returned his acknowledgments
+to the public, and he can but respond to the acknowledgments
+there made. He has made some alterations
+in the page relating to the American phil-Hellenists;
+and for the rest, he concludes as in the preface to his
+first edition.</p>
+
+<p>The author has been induced by his publishers to
+put forth his "Incidents of Travel in Greece, Turkey,
+Russia, and Poland." In point of time they precede
+his tour in Egypt, Arabia <span class="err" title="original: Petrć">Petrća</span>, and the Holy Land.
+The countries which form the subject of the following
+pages perhaps do not, in themselves, possess the same
+interest with those in his first work; but the author has
+reason to believe that part of his route, particularly from
+the Black Sea to the Baltic, through the interior of
+Russia, and from St. Petersburgh through the interior
+of Poland to Warsaw and Cracow, is comparatively
+new to most of his countrymen. As in his first <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">iv</a></span>work,
+his object has been to present a picture of the every-day
+scenes which occur to the traveller in the countries
+referred to, rather than any detailed description of the
+countries themselves.</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>New York, November, 1838.</i></p>
+
+<hr class="l65" />
+<h2>CONTENTS<br />
+
+<span class="small">OF</span><br />
+
+THE FIRST VOLUME</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I.</a></p>
+<p class="right">Page</p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>A Hurricane.&mdash;An Adventure.&mdash;Missilonghi.&mdash;Siege of Missilonghi.&mdash;Byron.&mdash;Marco
+Bozzaris.&mdash;Visit to the Widow, Daughters, and Brother of
+Bozzaris.&mdash;Halleck's "Marco Bozzaris."</p></div><p class="right">13</p>
+
+<p class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II.</a></p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>Choice of a Servant.&mdash;A Turnout.&mdash;An Evening Chat.&mdash;Scenery of the
+Road.&mdash;Lepanto.&mdash;A projected Visit.&mdash;Change of Purpose.&mdash;Padras.&mdash;Vostitza.&mdash;Variety
+and Magnificence of Scenery.</p></div>
+<p class="right">28</p>
+
+<p class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III.</a></p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>Quarrel with the Landlord.&mdash;Ćgina.&mdash;Sicyon.&mdash;Corinth.&mdash;A distinguished
+Reception.&mdash;Desolation of Corinth.&mdash;The Acropolis.&mdash;View from the
+Acropolis.&mdash;Lechćum and Cenchreć.&mdash;Kaka Scala.&mdash;Arrival at Athens.</p></div>
+<p class="right">46</p>
+
+<p class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV.</a></p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>American Missionary School.&mdash;Visit to the School.&mdash;Mr. Hill and the
+Male Department.&mdash;Mrs. Hill and the Female Department.&mdash;Maid of
+Athens.&mdash;Letter from Mr. Hill.&mdash;Revival of Athena.&mdash;Citizens of the
+World.</p></div>
+<p class="right">61</p>
+
+<p class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V.</a></p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>Ruins of Athens.&mdash;Hill of Mars.&mdash;Temple of the Winds.&mdash;Lantern of
+Demosthenes.&mdash;Arch of Adrian.&mdash;Temple of Jupiter Olympus.&mdash;Temple
+of Theseus.&mdash;The Acropolis.&mdash;The Parthenon.&mdash;Pentelican Mountain.&mdash;Mount
+Hymettus.&mdash;The Pirćus.&mdash;Greek Fleas.&mdash;Napoli. </p></div>
+<p class="right">73</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">x</a></span><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI.</a></p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>Argos.&mdash;Parting and Farewell.&mdash;Tomb of Agamemnon.&mdash;Mycenć.&mdash;Gate
+of the Lions.&mdash;A Misfortune.&mdash;Meeting in the Mountains.&mdash;A Landlord's
+Troubles.&mdash;A Midnight Quarrel.&mdash;One good Turn deserves another.&mdash;Gratitude
+of a Greek Family.&mdash;Megara.&mdash;The Soldiers' Revel.</p></div>
+<p class="right">99</p>
+
+<p class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII.</a></p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>A Dreary Funeral.&mdash;Marathon.&mdash;Mount Pentelicus.&mdash;A Mystery.&mdash;Woes
+of a Lover.&mdash;Reveries of Glory.&mdash;Scio's Rocky Isle.&mdash;A blood-stained
+Page of History.&mdash;A Greek Prelate.&mdash;Desolation.&mdash;The Exile's Return.</p></div>
+<p class="right">118</p>
+
+<p class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII.</a></p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>A Noble Grecian Lady.&mdash;Beauty of Scio.&mdash;An Original.&mdash;Foggi.&mdash;A Turkish
+Coffee-house.&mdash;Mussulman at Prayers.&mdash;Easter Sunday.&mdash;A Greek
+Priest.&mdash;A Tartar Guide.&mdash;Turkish Ladies.&mdash;Camel Scenes.&mdash;Sight of a
+Harem.&mdash;Disappointed Hopes.&mdash;A rare Concert.&mdash;Arrival at Smyrna.</p></div>
+<p class="right">149</p>
+
+<p class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX.</a></p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>First Sight of Smyrna.&mdash;Unveiled Women.&mdash;Ruins of Ephesus.&mdash;Ruin, all
+Ruin.&mdash;Temple of Diana.&mdash;Encounter with a Wolf.&mdash;Love at first Sight.&mdash;Gatherings
+on the Road.</p></div><p class="right">173</p>
+
+<p class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X.</a></p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>Position of Smyrna.&mdash;Consular Privileges.&mdash;The Case of the Lover.&mdash;End
+of the Love Affair.&mdash;The Missionary's Wife.&mdash;The Casino.&mdash;Only
+a Greek Row.&mdash;Rambles in Smyrna.&mdash;The Armenians.&mdash;Domestic Enjoyments.</p></div>
+<p class="right">188</p>
+
+<p class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI.</a></p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>An American Original.&mdash;Moral Changes in Turkey.&mdash;Wonders of Steam
+Navigation.&mdash;The March of Mind.&mdash;Classic Localities.&mdash;Sestos and Abydos.&mdash;Seeds
+of Pestilence.</p></div><p class="right">203</p>
+
+<p class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII.</a></p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>Mr. Churchill.&mdash;Commodore Porter.&mdash;Castle of the Seven Towers.&mdash;The
+Sultan's Naval Architect.&mdash;Launch of the Great Ship.&mdash;Sultan Mahmoud.&mdash;Jubilate.&mdash;A
+National Grievance.&mdash;Visit to a Mosque.&mdash;The
+Burial-grounds.</p></div><p class="right">218</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">xi</a></span><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII.</a></p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>Visit to the Slave-market.&mdash;Horrors of Slavery.&mdash;Departure from Stamboul.&mdash;The
+stormy Euxine.&mdash;Odessa.&mdash;The Lazaretto.&mdash;Russian Civility.&mdash;Returning
+Good for Evil.</p></div> <p class="right">236</p>
+
+<p class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV.</a></p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>The Guardiano.&mdash;One too many.&mdash;An Excess of Kindness.&mdash;The last Day
+of Quarantine.&mdash;Mr. Baguet.&mdash;Rise of Odessa.&mdash;City-making.&mdash;Count
+Woronzow.&mdash;A Gentleman Farmer.&mdash;An American Russian.</p></div>
+<p class="right">258</p>
+
+<hr class="l65" />
+<p class="title">INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL<br /><br />
+
+<span class="small">IN</span><br /><br />
+
+<span class="big">GREECE, TURKEY, RUSSIA, AND POLAND.</span></p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+<div class="chapblock"><p>A Hurricane.&mdash;An Adventure.&mdash;Missilonghi.&mdash;Siege of Missilonghi.&mdash;Byron.&mdash;Marco
+Bozzaris.&mdash;Visit to the Widow, Daughters, and Brother of
+Bozzaris.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">On</span> the evening of the &mdash;&mdash; February, 1835, by a bright
+starlight, after a short ramble among the Ionian Islands,
+I sailed from Zante in a beautiful cutter of about forty
+tons for Padras. My companions were Doctor W., an
+old and valued friend from New-York, who was going
+to Greece merely to visit the Episcopal missionary
+school at Athens, and a young Scotchman, who had
+travelled with me through Italy, and was going farther,
+like myself, he knew not exactly why. There was
+hardly a breath of air when we left the harbour, but a
+breath was enough to fill our little sail. The wind,
+though of the gentlest, was fair; and as we crawled
+from under the lee of the island, in a short time it became
+a fine sailing breeze. We sat on the deck till a late
+hour, and turned in with every prospect of being at
+Padras in the morning. Before daylight, however, the
+wind chopped about, and set in dead ahead, and when I
+went on deck in the morning it was blowing a hurricane.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">14</a></span>We had passed the point of Padras; the wind was
+driving down the Gulf of Corinth as if old Ćolus had
+determined on thwarting our purpose; and our little
+cutter, dancing like a gull upon the angry waters, was
+driven into the harbour of Missilonghi.</p>
+
+<p>The town was full in sight, but at such a distance, and
+the waves were running so high, that we <span class="err" title="original: coud">could</span> not reach
+it with our small boat. A long flat extends several
+miles into the sea, making the harbour completely inaccessible
+except to small Greek caiques built expressly
+for such navigation. We remained on board all day;
+and the next morning, the gale still continuing, made signals
+to a fishing boat to come off and take us ashore.
+In a short time she came alongside; we bade farewell
+to our captain&mdash;an Italian and a noble fellow, cradled,
+and, as he said, born to die on the Adriatic&mdash;and in a few
+minutes struck the soil of fallen but immortal Greece.</p>
+
+<p>Our manner of striking it, however, was not such as
+to call forth any of the warm emotions struggling in the
+breast of the scholar, for we were literally stuck in the
+mud. We were yet four or five miles from the shore,
+and the water was so low that the fishing-boat, with the
+additional weight of four men and luggage, could not
+swim clear. Our boatmen were two long, sinewy
+Greeks, with the red tarbouch, embroidered jacket,
+sash, and large trousers, and with their long poles set us
+through the water with prodigious force; but, as soon
+as the boat struck, they jumped out, and, putting their
+brawny shoulders under her sides, heaved her through
+into better water, and then resumed their poles. In this
+way they propelled her two or three miles, working alternately
+with their poles and shoulders, until they got
+her into a channel, when they hoisted the sail, laid directly
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">15</a></span>for the harbour, and drove upon the beach with
+canvass all flying.</p>
+
+<p>During the late Greek revolution, Missilonghi was
+the great debarking-place of European adventurers;
+and, probably, among all the desperadoes who ever landed
+there, none were more destitute and in better condition
+to "go ahead" than I; for I had all that I was
+worth on my back. At one of the Ionian Islands I
+had lost my carpet-bag, containing my notebook and every
+article of wearing apparel except the suit in which
+I stood. Every condition, however, has its advantages;
+mine put me above porters and custom-house officers;
+and while my companions were busy with these
+plagues of travellers, I paced with great satisfaction the
+shore of Greece, though I am obliged to confess that
+this satisfaction was for reasons utterly disconnected
+with any recollections of her ancient glories. Business
+before pleasure: one of our first inquiries was for a
+breakfast. Perhaps, if we had seen a monument, or
+solitary column, or ruin of any kind, it would have inspired
+us to better things; but there was nothing, absolutely
+nothing, that could recall an image of the past.
+Besides, we did not expect to land at Missilonghi, and
+were not bound to be inspired at a place into which we
+were thrown by accident; and, more than all, a drizzling
+rain was penetrating to our very bones; we were
+wet and cold, and what can men do in the way of sentiment
+when their teeth are chattering?</p>
+
+<p>The town stands upon a flat, marshy plain, which extends
+several miles along the shore. The whole was
+a mass of new-made ruins&mdash;of houses demolished and
+black with smoke&mdash;the tokens of savage and desolating
+war. In front, and running directly along the shore,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">16</a></span>was a long street of miserable one-story shantees, run
+up since the destruction of the old town, and so near
+the shore that sometimes it is washed by the sea, and
+at the time of our landing it was wet and muddy from
+the rain. It was a cheerless place, and reminded me
+of Communipaw in bad weather. It had no connexion
+with the ancient glory of Greece, no name or place on
+her historic page, and no hotel where we could get a
+breakfast; but one of the officers of the customs conducted
+us to a shantee filled with Bavarian soldiers
+drinking. There was a sort of second story, accessible
+only by a ladder; and one end of this was partitioned
+off with boards, but had neither bench, table, nor any
+other article of housekeeping. We had been on and
+almost <i>in</i> the water since daylight, exposed to a keen
+wind and drizzling rain, and now, at eleven o'clock,
+could probably have eaten several chickens apiece; but
+nothing came amiss, and, as we could not get chickens,
+we took eggs, which, for lack of any vessel to boil them
+in, were roasted. We placed a huge loaf of bread on
+the middle of the floor, and seated ourselves around it,
+spreading out so as to keep the eggs from rolling away,
+and each hewing off bread for himself. Fortunately,
+the Greeks have learned from their quondam Turkish
+masters the art of making coffee, and a cup of this Eastern
+cordial kept our dry bread from choking us.</p>
+
+<p>When we came out again the aspect of matters was
+more cheerful; the long street was swarming with
+Greeks, many of them armed with pistols and yataghan,
+but miserably poor in appearance, and in such numbers
+that not half of them could find the shelter of a roof at
+night. We were accosted by one dressed in a hat and
+frockcoat, and who, in occasional visits to Corfu and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">17</a></span>Trieste, had picked up some Italian and French, and
+a suit of European clothes, and was rather looked up
+to by his untravelled countrymen. As a man of the
+world, who had received civilities abroad, he seemed
+to consider it incumbent upon him to reciprocate at
+home, and, with the tacit consent of all around, he undertook
+to do the honours of Missilonghi.</p>
+
+<p>If, as a Greek, he had any national pride about him,
+he was imposing upon himself a severe task; for all
+that he could do was to conduct us among ruins, and,
+as he went along, tell us the story of the bloody siege
+which had reduced the place to its present woful state.
+For more than a year, under unparalleled hardships, its
+brave garrison resisted the combined strength of the
+Turkish and Egyptian armies, and, when all hope was
+gone, resolved to cut their way through the enemy or
+die in the attempt. Many of the aged and sick, the
+wounded and the women, refused to join in the sortie,
+and preferred to shut themselves up in an old mill, with
+the desperate purpose of resisting until they should bring
+around them a large crowd of Turks, when they would
+blow all up together. An old invalid soldier seated
+himself in a mine under the Bastion Bozzaris (the ruins
+of which we saw), the mine being charged with thirty
+kegs of gunpowder; the last sacrament was administered
+by the bishop and priests to the whole population
+and, at a signal, the besieged made their desperate
+sortie. One body dashed through the Turkish ranks,
+and, with many women and children, gained the mountains;
+but the rest were driven back. Many of the women
+ran to the sea and plunged in with their children;
+husbands stabbed their wives with their own hands to
+save them from the Turks, and the old soldier under
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">18</a></span>the bastion set fire to the train, and the remnant of the
+heroic garrison buried themselves under the ruins of
+Missilonghi.</p>
+
+<p>Among them were thirteen foreigners, of whom only
+one escaped. One of the most distinguished was Meyer,
+a young Swiss, who entered as a volunteer at the
+beginning of the revolution, became attached to a beautiful
+Missilonghiote girl, married her, and, when the final
+sortie was made, his wife being sick, he remained with
+her, and was blown up with the others. A letter
+written a few days before his death, and brought away
+by one who escaped in the sortie, records the condition
+of the garrison.</p>
+
+<p>"A wound which I have received in my shoulder,
+while I am in daily expectation of one which will be
+my passport to eternity, has prevented me till now from
+bidding you a last adieu. We are reduced to feed upon
+the most disgusting animals. We are suffering horribly
+with hunger and thirst. Sickness adds much to the
+calamities which overwhelm us. Seventeen hundred
+and forty of our brothers are dead; more than a hundred
+thousand bombs and balls thrown by the enemy
+have destroyed our bastions and our homes. We have
+been terribly distressed by the cold, for we have suffered
+great want of food. Notwithstanding so many privations,
+it is a great and noble spectacle to behold the ardour
+and devotedness of the garrison. A few days
+more, and these brave men will be angelic spirits, who
+will accuse before God the indifference of Christendom.
+In the name of all our brave men, among whom are
+Notho Bozzaris, *** I announce to you the resolution
+sworn to before Heaven, to defend, foot by foot, the
+land of Missilonghi, and to bury ourselves, without listening
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">19</a></span>to any capitulation, under the ruins of this city.
+We are drawing near our final hour. History will render
+us justice. I am proud to think that the blood of
+a Swiss, of a child of William Tell, is about to mingle
+with that of the heroes of Greece."</p>
+
+<p>But Missilonghi is a subject of still greater interest
+than this, for the reader will remember it as the place
+where Byron died. Almost the first questions I asked
+were about the poet, and it added to the dreary interest
+which the place inspired, to listen to the manner in which
+the Greeks spoke of him. It might be thought that
+here, on the spot where he breathed his last, malignity
+would have held her accursed tongue; but it was not
+so. He had committed the fault, unpardonable in the
+eyes of political opponents, of attaching himself to one
+of the great parties that then divided Greece; and
+though he had given her all that man could give, in his
+own dying words, "his time, his means, his health, and,
+lastly, his life," the Greeks spoke of him with all the
+rancour and bitterness of party spirit. Even death had
+not won oblivion for his political offences; and I heard
+those who saw him die in her cause affirm that Byron
+was no friend to Greece.</p>
+
+<p>His body, the reader will remember, was transported
+to England and interred in the family sepulchre. The
+church where it lay in state is a heap of ruins, and
+there is no stone or monument recording his death,
+but, wishing to see some memorial connected with his
+residence here, we followed our guide to the house in
+which he died. It was a large square building of stone,
+one of the walls still standing, black with smoke, the
+rest a confused and shapeless mass of ruins. After
+his death it was converted into a hospital and magazine;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">20</a></span>and, when the Turks entered the city, they set fire to
+the powder; the sick and dying were blown into the
+air, and we saw the ruins lying as they fell after the
+explosion. It was a melancholy spectacle, but it seemed
+to have a sort of moral fitness with the life and fortunes
+of the poet. It was as if the same wild destiny, the
+same wreck of hopes and fortunes that attended him
+through life, were hovering over his grave. Living and
+dead, his actions and his character have been the subject
+of obloquy and reproach, perhaps justly; but it would
+have softened the heart of his bitterest enemy to see the
+place in which he died.</p>
+
+<p>It was in this house that, on his last birthday, he
+came from his bedroom and produced to his friends
+the last notes of his dying muse, breathing a spirit of
+sad foreboding and melancholy recollections; of devotion
+to the noble cause in which he had embarked, and
+a prophetic consciousness of his approaching end.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"My days are in the yellow leaf,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The flowers and fruits of love are gone;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The worm, the canker, and the grief<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Are mine alone.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr class="l5" />
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"If thou regret'st thy youth, <i>why live?</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The land of honourable death<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is here: up to the field, and give<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Away thy breath!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Seek out&mdash;less often sought than found&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A soldier's grave, for thee the best;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then look around, and choose thy ground,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">And take thy rest."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Moving on beyond the range of ruined houses, though
+still within the line of crumbling walls, we came to a
+spot perhaps as interesting as any that Greece in her
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">21</a></span>best days could show. It was the tomb of Marco Bozzaris!
+No monumental marble emblazoned his deeds
+and fame; a few round stones piled over his head,
+which, but for our guide, we should have passed without
+noticing, were all that marked his grave. I would
+not disturb a proper reverence for the past; time covers
+with its dim and twilight glories both distant scenes and
+the men who acted in them, but, to my mind, Miltiades
+was not more of a hero at Marathon or Leonidas
+at Thermopylć than Marco Bozzaris at Missilonghi.
+When they went out against the hosts of Persia, Athens
+and Sparta were great and free, and they had the prospect
+of <i>glory</i> and the praise of men, to the Greeks always
+dearer than life. But when the Suliote chief
+drew his sword, his country lay bleeding at the feet
+of a giant, and all Europe condemned the Greek revolution
+as foolhardy and desperate. For two months, with
+but a few hundred men, protected only by a ditch and
+slight parapet of earth, he defended the town where his
+body now rests against the whole Egyptian army. In
+stormy weather, living upon bad and unwholesome bread,
+with no covering but his cloak, he passed his days and
+nights in constant vigil; in every assault his sword cut
+down the foremost assailant, and his voice, rising above
+the din of battle, struck terror into the hearts of the
+enemy. In the struggle which ended with his life, with
+two thousand men he proposed to attack the whole army
+of Mustapha Pacha, and called upon all who were willing
+to die for their country to stand forward. The whole
+band advanced to a man. Unwilling to sacrifice so
+many brave men in a death-struggle, he chose three
+hundred, the sacred number of the Spartan band, his
+tried and trusty Suliotes. At midnight he placed himself
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">22</a></span>at their head, directing that not a shot should be fired
+till he sounded his bugle; and his last command was,
+"If you lose sight of me, seek me in the pacha's tent."
+In the moment of victory he ordered the pacha to be
+seized, and received a ball in the loins; his voice still
+rose above the din of battle, cheering his men until he
+was struck by another ball in the head, and borne dead
+from the field of his glory.</p>
+
+<p>Not far from the grave of Bozzaris was a pyramid
+of sculls, of men who had fallen in the last attack upon
+the city, piled up near the blackened and battered wall
+which they had died in defending. In my after wanderings
+I learned to look more carelessly upon these
+things; and, perhaps, noticing everywhere the light estimation
+put upon human life in the East, learned to think
+more lightly of it myself; but, then, it was melancholy
+to see bleaching in the sun, under the eyes of their
+countrymen, the unburied bones of men who, but a little
+while ago, stood with swords in their hands, and animated
+by the noble resolution to free their country or die
+in the attempt. Our guide told us that they had all been
+collected in that place with a view to sepulture; and
+that King Otho, as soon as he became of age and took
+the government in his own hands, intended to erect a
+monument over them. In the mean time, they are at
+the mercy of every passing traveller; and the only remark
+that our guide made was a comment upon the force
+and unerring precision of the blow of the Turkish sabre,
+almost every scull being laid open on the side nearly
+down to the ear.</p>
+
+<p>But the most interesting part of our day at Missilonghi
+was to come. Returning from a ramble round the
+walls, we noticed a large square house, which, our
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">23</a></span>guide told us, was the residence of Constantine, the
+brother of Marco Bozzaris. We were all interested in
+this intelligence, and our interest was in no small degree
+increased when he added that the widow and two of
+the children of the Suliote chief were living with his
+brother. The house was surrounded by a high stone
+wall, a large gate stood most invitingly wide open, and
+we turned toward it in the hope of catching a glimpse
+of the inhabitants; but, before we reached the gate,
+our interest had increased to such a point that, after
+consulting with our guide, we requested him to say that,
+if it would not be considered an intrusion, three travellers,
+two of them Americans, would feel honoured in
+being permitted to pay their respects to the widow and
+children of Marco Bozzaris.</p>
+
+<p>We were invited in, and shown into a large room on
+the right, where three Greeks were sitting cross-legged
+on a divan, smoking the long Turkish chibouk. Soon
+after the brother entered, a man about fifty, of middling
+height, spare built, and wearing a Bavarian uniform, as
+holding a colonel's commission in the service of King
+Otho. In the dress of the dashing Suliote he would
+have better looked the brother of Marco Bozzaris, and
+I might then more easily have recognised the daring
+warrior who, on the field of battle, in a moment of extremity,
+was deemed, by universal acclamation, worthy
+of succeeding the fallen hero. Now the straight military
+frockcoat, buttoned tight across the breast, the stock,
+tight pantaloons, boots, and straps, seemed to repress
+the free energies of the mountain warrior; and I could
+not but think how awkward it must be for one who had
+spent all his life in a dress which hardly touched him, at
+fifty to put on a stock, and straps to his boots. Our
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">24</a></span>guide introduced us, with an apology for our intrusion.
+The colonel received us with great kindness, thanked
+us for the honour done his brother's widow, and, requesting
+us to be seated, ordered coffee and pipes.</p>
+
+<p>And here, on the very first day of our arrival in
+Greece, and from a source which made us proud, we
+had the first evidence of what afterward met me at
+every step, the warm feeling existing in Greece toward
+America; for almost the first thing that the brother of
+Marco Bozzaris said was to express his gratitude as a
+Greek for the services rendered his country by our
+own; and, after referring to the provisions sent out for
+his famishing countrymen, his eyes sparkled and his
+cheek flushed as he told us that, when the Greek revolutionary
+flag first sailed into the port of Napoli di Romania,
+among hundreds of vessels of all nations, an
+American captain was the first to recognise and salute it.</p>
+
+<p>In a few moments the widow of Marco Bozzaris
+entered. I have often been disappointed in my preconceived
+notions of personal appearance, but it was not so
+with the lady who now stood before me; she looked the
+widow of a hero; as one worthy of her Grecian mothers,
+who gave their hair for bowstrings, their girdle for
+a sword-belt, and, while their heartstrings were cracking,
+sent their young lovers from their arms to fight
+and perish for their country. Perhaps it was she that
+led Marco Bozzaris into the path of immortality; that
+roused him from the wild guerilla warfare in which he
+had passed his early life, and fired him with the high
+and holy ambition of freeing his country. Of one
+thing I am certain, no man could look in her face without
+finding his wavering purposes fixed, without treading
+more firmly in the path of high and honourable enterprise.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">25</a></span>She was under forty, tall and stately in person
+and habited in deep black, fit emblem of her widowed
+condition, with a white handkerchief laid flat over her
+head, giving the Madonna cast to her dark eyes and
+marble complexion. We all rose as she entered the
+room; and though living secluded, and seldom seeing
+the face of a stranger, she received our compliments and
+returned them with far less embarrassment than we
+both felt and exhibited.</p>
+
+<p>But our embarrassment, at least I speak for myself,
+was induced by an unexpected circumstance. Much
+as I was interested in her appearance, I was not insensible
+to the fact that she was accompanied by two young
+and beautiful girls, who were introduced to us as her
+daughters. This somewhat bewildered me. While
+waiting for their appearance, and talking with Constantine
+Bozzaris, I had in some way conceived the idea
+that the daughters were mere children, and had fully
+made up my mind to take them both on my knee and
+kiss them; but the appearance of the stately mother
+recalled me to the grave of Bozzaris; and the daughters
+would probably have thought that I was taking liberties
+upon so short an acquaintance if I had followed up my
+benevolent purpose in regard to them; so that, with
+the long pipe in my hand, which, at that time, I did not
+know how to manage well, I cannot flatter myself that
+I exhibited any of the benefit of Continental travel.</p>
+
+<p>The elder was about sixteen, and even in the opinion
+of my friend Doctor W., a cool judge in these matters,
+a beautiful girl, possessing in its fullest extent
+all the elements of Grecian beauty: a dark, clear complexion,
+dark hair, set off by a little red cap embroidered
+with gold thread, and a long blue tassel hanging down
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">26</a></span>behind, and large black eyes, expressing a melancholy
+quiet, but which might be excited to shoot forth glances
+of fire more terrible than her father's sword. Happily,
+too, for us, she talked French, having learned it from
+a French marquis who had served in Greece and been
+domesticated with them; but young and modest, and
+unused to the company of strangers, she felt the embarrassment
+common to young ladies when attempting to
+speak a foreign language. And we could not talk to
+her on common themes. Our lips were sealed, of
+course, upon the subject which had brought us to her
+house. We could not sound for her the praises of her
+gallant father. At parting, however, I told them that
+the name of Marco Bozzaris was as familiar in America
+as that of a hero of our own revolution, and that it
+had been hallowed by the inspiration of an American
+poet; and I added that, if it would not be unacceptable,
+on my return to my native country I would send the
+tribute referred to, as an evidence of the feeling existing
+in America toward the memory of Marco Bozzaris.
+My offer was gratefully accepted; and afterward, while
+in the act of mounting my horse to leave Missilonghi,
+our guide, who had remained behind, came to me with
+a message from the widow and daughters reminding me
+of my promise.</p>
+
+<p>I do not see that there is any objection to my mentioning
+that I wrote to a friend, requesting him to procure
+Halleck's "Marco Bozzaris," and send it to my
+banker at Paris. My friend, thinking to enhance its
+value, applied to Mr. Halleck for a copy in his own
+handwriting. Mr. Halleck, with his characteristic modesty,
+evaded the application; and on my return home I
+told him the story of my visit, and reiterated the same
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">27</a></span>request. He evaded me as he had done my friend, but
+promised me a copy of the new edition of his poems,
+which he afterward gave me, and which, I hope, is
+now in the hands of the widow and daughters of the
+Grecian hero.</p>
+
+<p>I make no apology for introducing in a book the
+widow and daughters of Marco Bozzaris. True, I was
+received by them in private, without any expectation,
+either on their part or mine, that all the particulars of
+the interview would be noted and laid before the eyes of
+all who choose to read. I hope it will not be considered
+invading the sanctity of private life; but, at all events,
+I make no apology; the widow and children of Marco
+Bozzaris are the property of the world.</p>
+
+<hr class="l65" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">28</a></span></h2>
+
+<div class="chapblock"><p>Choice of a Servant.&mdash;A Turnout.&mdash;An Evening Chat.&mdash;Scenery of the
+Road.&mdash;Lepanto.&mdash;A projected Visit.&mdash;Change of Purpose.&mdash;Padras.&mdash;Vostitza.&mdash;Variety
+and Magnificence of Scenery.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Barren</span> as our prospect was on landing, our first day
+in Greece had already been full of interest. Supposing
+that we should not find anything to engage us
+long, before setting out on our ramble we had directed
+our servant to procure horses, and when we returned
+we found all ready for our departure.</p>
+
+<p>One word with regard to this same servant. We had
+taken him at Corfu, much against my inclination. We
+had a choice between two, one a full-blooded Greek
+in fustinellas, who in five minutes established himself
+in my good graces, so that nothing but the democratic
+principle of submitting to the will of the majority could
+make me give him up. He held at that time a very
+good office in the police at Corfu, but the eagerness
+which he showed to get out of regular business and go
+roving warmed me to him irresistibly. He seemed to
+be distracted between two opposing feelings; one the
+strong bent of his natural vagabond disposition to be
+rambling, and the other a sort of tugging at his heartstrings
+by wife and children, to keep him in a place
+where he had a regular assured living, instead of trusting
+to the precarious business of guiding travellers.
+He had a boldness and confidence that won me; and
+when he drew on the sand with his yataghan a map of
+Greece, and told us the route he would take us, zigzag
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">29</a></span>across the Gulf of Corinth to Delphi and the top of
+Parnassus, I wondered that my companions could resist
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Our alternative was an Italian from somewhere on
+the coast of the Adriatic, whom I looked upon with an
+unfavourable eye, because he came between me and my
+Greek; and on the morning of our departure I was earnestly
+hoping that he had overslept himself, or got into
+some scrape and been picked up by the guard; but,
+most provokingly, he came in time, and with more baggage
+than all of us had together. Indeed, he had so
+much of his own, that, in obedience to Nature's first
+law, he could not attend to ours, and in putting ashore
+some British soldiers at Cephalonia he contrived to let
+my carpet-bag go with their luggage. This did not
+increase my amiable feeling toward him, and, perhaps,
+assisted in making me look upon him throughout with a
+jaundiced eye; in fact, before we had done with him, I
+regarded him as a slouch, a knave, and a fool, and had
+the questionable satisfaction of finding that my companions,
+though they sustained him as long as they could,
+had formed very much the same opinion.</p>
+
+<p>It was to him, then, that, on our return from our
+visit to the widow and daughters of Marco Bozzaris,
+we were indebted for a turnout that seemed to astonish
+even the people of Missilonghi. The horses were
+miserable little animals, hidden under enormous saddles
+made of great clumps of wood over an old carpet or
+towcloth, and covering the whole back from the shoulders
+to the tail; the luggage was perched on the tops
+of these saddles, and with desperate exertions and the
+help of the citizens of Missilonghi we were perched
+on the top of the luggage. The little animals had a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">30</a></span>knowing look as they peered from under the superincumbent
+mass, and, supported on either side by the by-standers
+till we got a little steady in our seats, we put
+forth from Missilonghi. The only gentleman of our
+party was our servant, who followed on a European
+saddle which he had brought for his own use, smoking
+his pipe with great complacency, perfectly satisfied with
+our appearance and with himself.</p>
+
+<p>It was four o'clock when we crossed the broken walls
+of Missilonghi. For three hours our road lay over a
+plain extending to the sea. I have no doubt, if my
+Greek had been there, he would have given an interest
+to the road by referring to scenes and incidents connected
+with the siege of Missilonghi; but Demetrius&mdash;as
+he now chose to call himself&mdash;knew nothing of
+Greece, ancient or modern; he had no sympathy of
+feeling with the Greeks; had never travelled on this
+side of the Gulf of Corinth before; and so he lagged
+behind and smoked his pipe.</p>
+
+<p>It was nearly dark when we reached the miserable
+little village of Bokara. We had barely light enough
+to look around for the best khan in which to pass the
+night. Any of the wretched tenants would have been
+glad to receive us for the little remuneration we might
+leave with them in the morning. The khans were all
+alike, one room, mud floor and walls, and we selected
+one where the chickens had already gone to roost, and
+prepared to measure off the dirt floor according to our
+dimensions. Before we were arranged a Greek of a
+better class, followed by half a dozen villagers, came
+over, and, with many regrets for the wretched state of
+the country, invited us to his house. Though dressed
+in the Greek costume, it was evident that he had acquired
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">31</a></span>his manners in a school beyond the bounds of his
+miserable little village, in which his house now rose like
+the Leaning Tower of Pisa, higher than everything else,
+but rather rickety. In a few minutes we heard the
+death notes of some chickens, and at about nine o'clock
+sat down to a not unwelcome meal. Several Greeks
+dropped in during the evening, and one, a particular
+friend of our host's, supped with us. Both talked
+French, and had that perfect ease of manner and savoir faire
+which I always remarked with admiration in
+all Greeks who had travelled. They talked much of
+their travels; of time spent in Italy and Germany, and
+particularly of a long residence at Bucharest. They
+talked, too, of Greece; of her long and bitter servitude,
+her revolution, and her independence; and from their
+enthusiasm I could not but think that they had fought
+and bled in her cause. I certainly was not lying in
+wait to entrap them, but I afterward gathered from their
+conversation that they had taken occasion to be on their
+travels at the time when the bravest of their countrymen
+were pouring out their blood like water to emancipate
+their native land. A few years before I might have felt
+indignation and contempt for men who had left their
+country in her hour of utmost need, and returned to enjoy
+the privileges purchased with other men's blood; but
+I had already learned to take the world as I found it, and
+listened quietly while our host told us that, confiding in
+the permanency of the government secured by the three
+great powers, England, France, and Russia, he had returned
+to Greece, and taken a lease of a large tract of
+land for fifty years, paying a thousand drachms, a
+drachm being one sixth of a dollar, and one tenth of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">32</a></span>annual fruits, at the end of which time one half of the
+land under cultivation was to belong to his heirs in fee.</p>
+
+<p>As our host could not conveniently accommodate us
+all, M. and Demetrius returned to the khan at which we
+had first stopped and where, to judge from the early
+hour at which they came over to us the next morning,
+they had not spent the night as well as we did. At
+daylight we took our coffee, and again perched our luggage
+on the backs of the horses, and ourselves on top
+of the luggage. Our host wished us to remain with
+him, and promised the next day to accompany us to Padras;
+but this was not a sufficient inducement; and taking
+leave of him, probably for ever, we started for Lepanto.</p>
+
+<p>We rode about an hour on the plain; the mountains
+towered on our left, and the rich soil was broken into
+rough sandy gullies running down to the sea. Our
+guides had some apprehensions that we should not be
+able to cross the torrents that were running down from
+the mountain; and when we came to the first, and had
+to walk up along the bank, looking out for a place
+to ford, we fully participated in their apprehensions.
+Bridges were a species of architecture entirely unknown
+in that part of modern Greece; indeed, no
+bridges could have stood against the mountain torrents.
+There would have been some excitement in encountering
+these rapid streams if we had been well mounted;
+but, from the manner in which we were hitched on our
+horses, we did not feel any great confidence in our seats.
+Still nothing could be wilder or more picturesque than
+our process in crossing them, except that it might have
+added somewhat to the effect to see one of us floating
+down stream, clinging to the tail of his horse. But we
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">33</a></span>got over or through them all. A range of mountains
+then formed on our right, cutting us off from the sea,
+and we entered a valley lying between the two parallel
+ranges. At first the road, which was exceedingly difficult
+for a man or a sure-footed horse, lay along a
+beautiful stream, and the whole of the valley extending
+to the Gulf of Lepanto is one of the loveliest regions of
+country I ever saw. The ground was rich and verdant,
+and, even at that early season of the year, blooming
+with wild flowers of every hue, but wholly uncultivated,
+the olive-trees having all been cut down by the
+Turks, and without a single habitation on the whole
+route. My Scotch companion, who had a good eye for
+the picturesque and beautiful in natural scenery, was in
+raptures with this valley. I have since travelled in
+Switzerland, not, however, in all the districts frequented
+by tourists; but in what I saw, beautiful as it is, I
+do not know a place where the wildness of mountain
+scenery is so delightfully contrasted with the softness
+of a rich valley.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of the valley, directly opposite Padras,
+and on the borders of the gulf, is a wild road called
+Scala Cativa, running along the sides of a rocky,
+mountainous precipice overlooking the sea. It is a wild
+and almost fearful road; in some places I thought it like
+the perpendicular sides of the Palisades; and when the
+wind blows in a particular direction it is impossible to
+make headway against it. Our host told us that we
+should find difficulty that day; and there was just rudeness
+enough to make us look well to our movements.
+Directly at our feet was the Gulf of Corinth; opposite
+a range of mountains; and in the distance the island
+of Zante. On the other side of the valley is an extraordinary
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">34</a></span>mountain, very high, and wanting a large
+piece in the middle, as if cut out with a chisel, leaving
+two straight parallel sides, and called by the unpoetical
+name of the armchair. In the wildest pan of the Scala,
+where a very slight struggle would have precipitated us
+several hundred feet into the sea, an enormous shepherd's
+dog came bounding and barking toward us;
+and we were much relieved when his master, who was
+hanging with his flock of goats on an almost inaccessible
+height, called him away. At the foot of the mountain
+we entered a rich plain, where the shepherds were
+pasturing their flocks down to the shore of the sea, and
+in about two hours arrived at Lepanto.</p>
+
+<p>After diligent search by Demetrius (the name by
+which we had taken him, whose true name, however,
+we found to be Jerolamon), and by all the idlers whom
+the arrival of strangers attracted, we procured a room
+near the farthest wall; it was reached by ascending a
+flight of steps outside, and boasted a floor, walls, and an
+apology for a roof. We piled up our baggage in one
+corner, or, rather, my companions did theirs, and went
+prowling about in search of something to eat. Our servant
+had not fully apprized us of the extreme poverty of
+the country, the entire absence of all accommodations
+for travellers, and the absolute necessity of carrying
+with us everything requisite for comfort. He was a
+man of few words, and probably thought that, as between
+servant and master, example was better than precept,
+and that the abundant provision he had made for
+himself might serve as a lesson for us; but, in our case,
+the objection to this mode of teaching was, that it came
+too late to be profitable. At the foot of the hill fronting
+the sea was an open place, in one side of which was a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">35</a></span>little cafteria, where all the good-for-nothing loungers
+of Lepanto were assembled. We bought a loaf of bread
+and some eggs, and, with a cup of Turkish coffee, made
+our evening meal.</p>
+
+<p>We had an hour before dark, and strolled along the
+shore. Though in a ruinous condition, Lepanto is in
+itself interesting, as giving an exact idea of an ancient
+Greek city, being situated in a commanding position
+on the side of a mountain running down to the sea,
+with its citadel on the top, and enclosed by walls and
+turrets. The port is shut within the walls, which run
+into the sea, and are erected on the foundations of the
+ancient Naupactus. At a distance was the promontory
+of Actium, where Cleopatra, with her fifty ships,
+abandoned Antony, and left to Augustus the empire of
+the world; and directly before us, its surface dotted
+with a few straggling Greek caiques, was the scene of
+a battle which has rung throughout the world, the great
+battle of the Cross against the Crescent, where the allied
+forces of Spain, Venice, and the pope, amounting to
+nearly three hundred sail, under the command of Don
+John of Austria, humbled for ever the naval pride of the
+Turks. One hundred and thirty Turkish galleys were
+taken and fifty-five sunk; thirty thousand Turks were
+killed, ten thousand taken prisoners, fifteen thousand
+Christian slaves delivered; and Pope Pius VI., with
+holy fervour, exclaimed, "There was a man sent from
+God, and his name was John." Cervantes lost his left
+hand in this battle; and it is to wounds he received
+here that he makes a touching allusion when reproached
+by a rival: "What I cannot help feeling deeply is, that
+I am stigmatized with being old and maimed, as though
+it belonged to me to stay the course of time; or as
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">36</a></span>though my wounds had been received in some tavern
+broil, instead of the most lofty occasion which past
+ages have yet seen, or which shall ever be seen by
+those to come. The scars which the soldier wears on
+his person, instead of badges of infamy, are stars to
+guide the daring in the path of glory. As for mine,
+though they may not shine in the eyes of the envious,
+they are at least esteemed by those who know where
+they were received; and, even was it not yet too late
+to choose, I would rather remain as I am, maimed and
+mutilated, than be now whole of my wounds, without
+having taken part in so glorious an achievement."</p>
+
+<p>I shall, perhaps, be reproached for mingling with
+the immortal names of Don John of Austria and Cervantes
+those of George Wilson, of Providence, Rhode
+Island, and James Williams, a black of Baltimore,
+cook on board Lord Cochrane's flagship in the great
+battle between the Greek and Turkish fleets. George
+Wilson was a gunner on board one of the Greek ships,
+and conducted himself with so much gallantry, that
+Lord Cochrane, at a dinner in commemoration of the
+event, publicly drank his health. In the same battle
+James Williams, who had lost a finger in the United
+States service under Decatur at Algiers, and had conducted
+himself with great coolness and intrepidity in
+several engagements, when no Greek could be found to
+take the helm, volunteered his services, and was struck
+down by a splinter, which broke his legs and arms.
+The historian will probably never mention these gallant
+fellows in his quarto volumes; but I hope the American
+traveller, as he stands at sunset by the shore of the
+Gulf of Lepanto, and recalls to mind the great achievements
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">37</a></span>of Don John and Cervantes, will not forget
+<i>George Wilson</i> and <i>James Williams</i>.</p>
+
+<p>At evening we returned to our room, built a fire in the
+middle, and, with as much dignity as we could muster,
+sitting on the floor, received a number of Greek
+visiters. When they left us we wrapped ourselves
+in our cloaks and lay down to sleep. Sleep, however,
+is not always won when wooed. Sometimes it takes
+the perverse humour of the wild Irish boy: "The
+more you call me, the more I won't come." Our room
+had no chimney; and though, as I lay all night looking
+up at the roof, there appeared to be apertures enough
+to let out the smoke, it seemed to have a loving feeling
+toward us in our lowly position, and clung to us so
+closely that we were obliged to let the fire go out, and
+lie shivering till morning.</p>
+
+<p>Every schoolboy knows how hard it is to write poetry,
+but few know the physical difficulties of climbing
+the poetical mountain itself. We had made arrangements
+to sleep the next night at Castri, by the side of
+the sacred oracle of Delphi, a mile up Parnassus.
+Our servant wanted to cross over and go up on the
+other side of the gulf, and entertained us with several
+stories of robberies committed on this road, to which
+we paid no attention. The Greeks who visited us in
+the evening related, with much detail, a story of a celebrated
+captain of brigands having lately returned to his
+haunt on Parnassus, and attacked nine Greek merchants,
+of whom he killed three; the recital of which
+interesting incident we ascribed to Demetrius, and disregarded.</p>
+
+<p>Early in the morning we mounted our horses and
+started for Parnassus. At the gate of the town we
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">38</a></span>were informed that it was necessary, before leaving,
+to have a passport from the eparchos, and I returned
+to procure it. The eparchos was a man about forty-five,
+tall and stout, with a clear olive complexion and a
+sharp black eye, dressed in a rich Greek costume, and,
+fortunately, able to speak French. He was sitting
+cross-legged on a divan, smoking a pipe, and looking
+out upon the sea; and when I told him my business,
+he laid down his pipe, repeated the story of the robbery
+and murder that we had heard the night before, and
+added that we must abandon the idea of travelling that
+road. He said, farther, that the country was in a distracted
+state; that poverty was driving men to desperation;
+and that, though they had driven out the Turks,
+the Greeks were not masters of their own country.
+Hearing that I was an American, and as if in want of a
+bosom in which to unburden himself, and as one assured
+of sympathy, he told me the whole story of their long
+and bloody struggle for independence, and the causes
+that now made the friends of Greece tremble for her
+future destiny. I knew that the seat of the muses bore
+a rather suspicious character, and, in fact, that the rocks
+and caves about Parnassus were celebrated as the abodes
+of robbers, but I was unwilling to be driven from our
+purpose of ascending it. I went to the military commandant,
+a Bavarian officer, and told him what I had
+just heard from the eparchos. He said frankly that he
+did not know much of the state of the country, as he
+had but lately arrived in it; but, with the true Bavarian
+spirit, advised me, as a general rule, not to believe anything
+a Greek should tell me. I returned to the gate,
+and made my double report to my companions. Dr.
+W. returned with me to the eparchos, where the latter
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">39</a></span>repeated, with great earnestness, all he had told me; and
+when I persisted in combating his objections, shrugged
+his shoulders in a manner that seemed to say, "your
+blood be on your own heads;" that he had done his duty,
+and washed his hands of the consequences. As we
+were going out he called me back, and, recurring to our
+previous conversation, said that he had spoken to me
+as an American more freely than he would have done
+to a stranger, and begged that, as I was going to Athens,
+I would not repeat his words where they could do him
+injury. I would not mention the circumstance now,
+but that the political clouds which then hung over the
+horizon of Greece have passed away; King Otho has
+taken his seat on the throne, and my friend has probably
+long since been driven or retired from public life. I
+was at that time a stranger to the internal politics of
+Greece, but I afterward found that the eparchos was
+one of a then powerful body of Greeks opposed to the
+Bavarian influence, and interested in representing the
+state of the country as more unsettled than it really
+was. I took leave of him, however, as one who had
+intended me a kindness, and, returning to the gate,
+found our companion sitting on his horse, waiting the
+result of our farther inquiries. Both he and my fellow
+envoy were comparatively indifferent upon the subject,
+while I was rather bent on drinking from the Castalian
+fount, and sleeping on the top of Parnassus. Besides,
+I was in a beautiful condition to be robbed. I had
+nothing but what I had on my back, and I felt sure that
+a Greek mountain robber would scorn my stiff coat and
+pantaloons and black hat. My companions, however
+were not so well situated, particularly M., who had
+drawn money at Corfu, and had no idea of trusting it to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">40</a></span>the tender mercies of a Greek bandit. In the teeth of
+the advice we had received, it would, perhaps, have
+been foolhardy to proceed; and, to my great subsequent
+regret, for the first and the last time in my ramblings, I
+was turned aside from my path by fear of perils on the
+road. Perhaps, after all, I had a lucky escape; for, if
+the Greek tradition be true, whoever sleeps on the
+mountain becomes an inspired poet or a madman, either
+of which, for a professional man, is a catastrophe to be
+avoided.</p>
+
+<p>Our change of plan suited Demetrius exactly; he had
+never travelled on this side of the Gulf of Corinth; and,
+besides that, he considered it a great triumph that his
+stories of robbers were confirmed by others, showing
+his superior knowledge of the state of the country; he
+was glad to get on a road which he had travelled before,
+and on which he had a chance of meeting some of his
+old travelling acquaintance. In half an hour he had us
+on board a caique. We put out from the harbour of
+Lepanto with a strong and favourable wind; our little
+boat danced lightly over the waters of the Gulf of Corinth;
+and in three hours, passing between the frowning
+castles of Romelia and Morea, under the shadow of
+the walls of which were buried the bodies of the Christians
+who fell in the great naval battle, we arrived at
+Padras.</p>
+
+<p>The first thing we recognised was the beautiful little
+cutter which we had left at Missilonghi, riding gracefully
+at anchor in the harbour, and the first man we spoke
+to on landing was our old friend the captain. We exchanged
+a cordial greeting, and he conducted us to Mr.
+Robertson, the British vice-consul, who, at the moment
+of our entering, was in the act of directing a letter to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">41</a></span>me at Athens. The subject was my interesting carpet-bag.
+There being no American consul at Padras, I had
+taken the liberty of writing to Mr. Robertson, requesting
+him, if my estate should find its way into his hands, to
+forward it to me at Athens, and the letter was to assure
+me of his attention to my wishes. It may be considered
+treason against classical taste, but it consoled me somewhat
+for the loss of Parnassus to find a stranger taking
+so warm an interest in my fugitive habiliments.</p>
+
+<p>There was something, too, in the appearance of Padras,
+that addressed itself to other feelings than those
+connected with the indulgence of a classical humour.
+Our bones were still aching with the last night's rest, or,
+rather, the want of it, at Lepanto; and when we found
+ourselves in a neat little locanda, and a complaisant
+Greek asked us what we would have for dinner, and
+showed us our beds for the night, we almost agreed
+that climbing Parnassus and such things were fit only
+for boys just out of college.</p>
+
+<p>Padras is beautifully situated at the mouth of the
+Gulf of Corinth, and the windows of our locanda commanded
+a fine view of the bold mountains on the opposite
+side of the gulf, and the parallel range forming the
+valley which leads to Missilonghi. It stands on the site
+of the ancient Patrć, enumerated by Herodotus among
+the twelve cities of Achaia. During the intervals of
+peace in the Peloponnesian war, Alcibiades, about four
+hundred and fifty years before Christ, persuaded its inhabitants
+to build long walls down to the sea. Philip
+of Macedon frequently landed there in his expeditions
+to Peloponnesus. Augustus Cćsar, after the battle of
+Actium, made it a Roman colony, and sent thither a
+large body of his veteran soldiers; and, in the time of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">42</a></span>Cicero, Roman merchants were settled there just as
+French and Italians are now. The modern town has
+grown up since the revolution, or rather since the accession
+of Otho, and bears no marks of the desolation at
+Missilonghi and Lepanto. It contains a long street of
+shops well supplied with European goods; the English
+steamers from Corfu to Malta touch here; and, besides
+the little Greek caiques trading in the Gulf of Corinth,
+vessels from all parts of the Adriatic are constantly
+in the harbour.</p>
+
+<p>Among others, there was an Austrian man-of-war from
+Trieste, on her way to Alexandria. By a singular fortune,
+the commandant had been in one of the Austrian
+vessels that carried to New-York the unfortunate Poles;
+the only Austrian man-of-war which had ever been to
+the United States. A day or two after their arrival at
+New-York I had taken a boat at the Battery and gone
+on board this vessel, and had met the officers at some
+parties given to them at which he had been present;
+and though we had no actual acquaintance with each
+other, these circumstances were enough to form an immediate
+link between us, particularly as he was enthusiastic
+in his praises of the hospitality of our citizens
+and the beauty of our women. Lest, however, any
+of the latter should be vainglorious at hearing that their
+praises were sounded so far from home, I consider it
+my duty to say that the commandant was almost blind,
+very slovenly, always smoking a pipe, and generally a
+little tipsy.</p>
+
+<p>Early in the morning we started for Athens. Our
+turnout was rather better than at Missilonghi, but not
+much. The day, however, was fine; the cold wind
+which, for several days, had been blowing down the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">43</a></span>Gulf of Corinth, had ceased, and the air was warm,
+and balmy, and invigorating. We had already found
+that Greece had something to attract the stranger besides
+the recollections of her ancient glories, and often
+forgot that the ground we were travelling was consecrated
+by historians and poets, in admiration of its
+own wild and picturesque beauty. Our road for about
+three hours lay across a plain, and then close along
+the gulf, sometimes winding by the foot of a wild
+precipitous mountain, and then again over a plain, with
+the mountains rising at some distance on our right.
+Sometimes we rose and crossed their rugged summits,
+and again descended to the seashore. On our left
+we had constantly the gulf, bordered on the opposite
+side by a range of mountains sometimes receding and
+then rising almost out of the water, while high above
+the rest rose the towering summits of Parnassus covered
+with snow.</p>
+
+<p>It was after dark when we arrived at Vostitza, beautifully
+situated on the banks of the Gulf of Corinth.
+This is the representative of the ancient Ćgium, one of
+the most celebrated cities in Greece, mentioned by Homer
+as having supplied vessels for the Trojan war,
+and in the second century containing sixteen sacred
+edifices, a theatre, a portico, and an agora. For many
+ages it was the seat of the Achaian Congress. Probably
+the worthy delegates who met here to deliberate
+upon the affairs of Greece had better accommodations
+than we obtained, or they would be likely, I should
+imagine, to hold but short sessions.</p>
+
+<p>We stopped at a vile locanda, the only one in the
+place, where we found a crowd of men in a small room,
+gathered around a dirty table, eating, one of whom
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">44</a></span>sprang up and claimed me as an old acquaintance.
+He had on a Greek capote and a large foraging cap
+slouched over his eyes, so that I had some difficulty
+in recognising him as an Italian who, at Padras, had
+tried to persuade me to go by water up to the head of
+the gulf. He had started that morning, about the same
+time we did, with a crowd of passengers, half of whom
+were already by the ears. Fortunately, they were
+obliged to return to their boats, and left all the house
+to us; which, however, contained little besides a strapping
+Greek, who called himself its proprietor.</p>
+
+<p>Before daylight we were again in the saddle. During
+the whole day's ride the scenery was magnificent.
+Sometimes we were hemmed in as if for ever enclosed
+in an amphitheatre of wild and gigantic rocks; then
+from some lofty summit we looked out upon lesser
+mountains, broken, and torn, and thrown into every wild
+and picturesque form, as if by an earthquake; and after
+riding among deep dells and craggy steeps, yawning
+ravines and cloud-capped precipices, we descended to a
+quiet valley and the seashore.</p>
+
+<p>At about four o'clock we came down, for the last time,
+to the shore, and before us, at some distance, espied a
+single khan, standing almost on the edge of the water.
+It was a beautiful resting-place for a traveller; the afternoon
+was mild, and we walked on the shore till the
+sun set. The khan was sixty or seventy feet long, and
+contained an upper room running the whole length of
+the building. This room was our bedchamber. We
+built a fire at one end, made tea, and roasted some eggs,
+the smoke ascending and curling around the rafters, and
+finally passing out of the openings in the roof; we
+stretched ourselves in our cloaks and, with the murmur
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">45</a></span>of the waves in our ears, looked through the apertures
+in the roof upon the stars, and fell asleep.</p>
+
+<p>About the middle of the night the door opened with
+a rude noise, and a tall Greek, almost filling the doorway,
+stood on the threshold. After pausing a moment
+he walked in, followed by half a dozen gigantic companions,
+their tall figures, full dresses, and the shining
+of their pistols and yataghans wearing a very ugly look
+to a man just roused from slumber. But they were
+merely Greek pedlers or travelling merchants, and,
+without any more noise, kindled the fire anew, drew
+their capotes around them, stretched themselves upon
+the floor, and were soon asleep.</p>
+
+<hr class="l65" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">46</a></span></h2>
+
+<div class="chapblock"><p>Quarrel with the Landlord.&mdash;Ćgina.&mdash;Sicyon.&mdash;Corinth.&mdash;A distinguished
+Reception.&mdash;Desolation of Corinth.&mdash;The Acropolis.&mdash;View from the
+Acropolis.&mdash;Lechćum and Cenchreć.&mdash;Kaka Scala.&mdash;Arrival at Athens.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">In</span> the morning Demetrius had a roaring quarrel with
+the keeper of the locanda, in which he tried to keep
+back part of the money we gave him to pay for us. He
+did this, however, on principle, for we had given twice
+as much as our lodging was worth, and no man ought
+to have more. His character was at stake in preventing
+any one from cheating us too much; and, in order
+to do this, he stopped our funds in transitu.</p>
+
+<p>We started early, and for some time our road lay
+along the shore. It was not necessary, surrounded by
+such magnificent scenery, to draw upon historical recollections
+for the sake of giving interest to the road; still
+it did not diminish that interest to know that, many centuries
+ago, great cities stood here, whose sites are now
+desolate or occupied as the miserable gathering-places
+of a starving population. Directly opposite Parnassus,
+and at the foot of a hill crowned with the ruins of an
+acropolis, in perfect desolation now, stood the ancient
+Ćgira; once numbering a population of ten thousand
+inhabitants, and in the second century containing three
+hiera, a temple, and another sacred edifice. Farther on,
+and toward the head of the Gulf of Corinth, the miserable
+village of Basilico stands on the site of the ancient
+Sicyon, boasting as high an antiquity as any city in
+Greece, and long celebrated as the first of her schools
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">47</a></span>of painting. In five hours we came in sight of the
+Acropolis of Corinth, and, shortly after, of Corinth itself.</p>
+
+<p>The reader need not fear my plunging him deeply into
+antiquities. Greece has been explored, and examined,
+and written upon, till the subject is almost threadbare;
+and I do not flatter myself that I discovered in it anything
+new. Still no man from such a distant country
+as mine can find himself crossing the plain of Corinth,
+and ascending to the ancient city, without a strange and
+indescribable feeling. We have no old monuments, no
+classical associations; and our history hardly goes beyond
+the memory of that venerable personage, "the
+oldest inhabitant." Corinth is so old that its early records
+are blended with the history of the heathen gods.
+The Corinthians say that it was called after the son
+of Jupiter, and its early sovereigns were heroes of the
+Grecian mythology. It was the friend of Sparta and
+the rival of Athens; the first city to build war-galleys
+and send forth colonies, which became great empires.
+It was the assembling-place of their delegates, who
+elected Philip, and afterward Alexander the Great, to
+conduct the war against the Persians. In painting,
+sculpture, and architecture surpassing all the achievements
+of Greece, or which the genius of man has ever
+since accomplished. Conquered by the then barbarous
+Romans, her walls were razed to the ground, her men
+put to the sword, her women and children sold into captivity,
+and the historian who records her fall writes that
+he saw the finest pictures thrown wantonly on the
+ground, and Roman soldiers playing on them at draughts
+and dice. For many years deserted, Corinth was again
+peopled; rose rapidly from its ruins; and, when St.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">48</a></span>Paul abode there "a year and six months"&mdash;to the Christian
+the most interesting period in her history&mdash;she was
+again a populous city, and the Corinthians a luxurious
+people.</p>
+
+<p>Its situation in the early ages of the world could not
+fail to make it a great commercial emporium. In the
+inexperienced navigation of early times it was considered
+difficult and dangerous to go around the point of
+the Peloponnesus, and there was a proverb, "Before
+the mariner doubles Cape Malea, he should forget all
+he holds dearest in the world." Standing on the isthmus
+commanding the Adriatic and Ćgean Seas; receiving
+in one hand the riches of Asia and in the other those
+of Europe; distributing them to every quarter of the
+then known world, wealth followed commerce, and
+then came luxury and extravagance to such an extent
+that it became a proverb, "It is not for every man to
+go to Corinth."</p>
+
+<p>As travellers having regard to supper and lodging, we
+should have been glad to see some vestige of its ancient
+luxury; but times are changed; the ruined city stands
+where stood Corinth of old, but it has fallen once more;
+the sailor no longer hugs the well-known coasts, but
+launches fearlessly into the trackless ocean, and Corinth
+can never again be what she has been.</p>
+
+<p>Our servant had talked so much of the hotel at Corinth,
+that perhaps the idea of bed and lodging was rather too
+prominent in our reveries as we approached the fallen
+city. He rode on before to announce our coming, and,
+working our way up the hill through narrow streets,
+stared at by all the men, followed by a large representation
+from the juvenile portion of the modern Corinthians,
+and barked at by the dogs, we turned into a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">49</a></span>large enclosure, something like a barnyard, on which
+opened a ruined balcony forming the entrance to the
+hotel. Demetrius was standing before it with our host,
+as unpromising a looking scoundrel as ever took a traveller
+in. He had been a notorious captain of brigands,
+and when his lawless band was broken up and half of
+its number hanged, he could not overcome his disposition
+to prey upon travellers, but got a couple of mattresses
+and bedsteads, and set up a hotel at Corinth.
+Demetrius had made a bargain for us at a price that
+made him hang his head when he told it, and we were
+so indignant at the extortion that we at first refused to
+dismount. Our host stood aloof, being used to such
+scenes, and perfectly sure that, after storming a little,
+we should be glad to take the only beds between Padras
+and Athens. In the end, however, we got the better
+both of him and Demetrius; for, as he had fixed separate
+prices for dinner, beds, and breakfast, we went to a
+little Greek coffee-house, and raised half Corinth to get
+us something to eat, and paid him only for our lodging.</p>
+
+<p>We had a fine afternoon before us, and our first
+movement was to the ruins of a temple, the only monument
+of antiquity in Corinth. The city has been so
+often sacked and plundered, that not a column of the
+Corinthian order exists in the place from which it derives
+its name. Seven columns of the old temple are
+still standing, fluted and of the Doric order, though
+wanting in height the usual proportion to the diameter;
+built probably before that order had attained its
+perfection, and long before the Corinthian order was
+invented; though when it was built, by whom, or to
+what god it was consecrated, antiquaries cannot agree
+in deciding. Contrasted with these solitary columns
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">50</a></span>of an unknown antiquity are ruins of yesterday. Houses
+fallen, burned, and black with smoke, as if the wretched
+inmates had fled before the blaze of their dwellings;
+and high above the ruined city, now as in the days
+when the Persian and Roman invaded it, still towers
+the Acropolis, a sharp and naked rock, rising abruptly
+a thousand feet from the earth, inaccessible and impregnable
+under the science of ancient war; and in all
+times of invasion and public distress, from her earliest
+history down to the bloody days of the late revolution,
+the refuge of the inhabitants.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" >
+<img src="images/i_v1_p050.jpg" width="60%" alt="Corinth." title="Corinth" />
+<p class="caption">Corinth.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>It was late in the afternoon when we set out for the
+Acropolis. About a mile from the city we came to
+the foot of the hill, and ascended by a steep and difficult
+path, with many turnings and windings, to the first
+gate. Having been in the saddle since early in the
+morning, we stopped several times to rest, and each
+time lingered and looked out with admiration upon the
+wild and beautiful scenery around us; and we thought
+of the frequently recurring times when hostile armies
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">51</a></span>had drawn up before the city at our feet, and the inhabitants,
+in terror and confusion, had hurried up this path
+and taken refuge within the gate before us.</p>
+
+<p>Inside the gate were the ruins of a city, and here, too,
+we saw the tokens of ruthless war; the fire-brand was
+hardly yet extinguished, and the houses were in ruins.
+Within a few years it has been the stronghold and
+refuge of infidels and Christians, taken and retaken, destroyed,
+rebuilt, and destroyed again, and the ruins of
+Turkish mosques and Christian churches are mingled
+together in undistinguishable confusion. This enclosure
+is abundantly supplied with water, issuing from
+the rock, and is capable of containing several thousand
+people. The fountain of Pyrene, which supplies the
+Acropolis, called the most salubrious in Greece, is celebrated
+as that at which Pegasus was drinking when
+taken by Bellerophon. Ascending among ruined and
+deserted habitations, we came to a second gate flanked
+by towers. A wall about two miles in circumference
+encloses the whole summit of the rock, including two
+principal points which still rise above the rest. One is
+crowned with a tower and the other with a mosque,
+now in ruins; probably erected where once stood a heathen
+temple. Some have mistaken it for a Christian
+church, but all agree that it is a place built and consecrated
+to divine use, and that, for unknown ages
+men have gone up to this cloud-capped point to worship
+their Creator. It was a sublime idea to erect on
+this lofty pinnacle an altar to the Almighty. Above us
+were only the unclouded heavens; the sun was setting
+with that brilliancy which attends his departing glory
+nowhere but in the East; and the sky was glowing with
+a lurid red, as of some great conflagration. The scene
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">52</a></span>around and below was wondrously beautiful. Mountains
+and rivers, seas and islands, rocks, forests, and
+plains, thrown together in perfect wantonness, and yet
+in the most perfect harmony, and every feature in the
+expanded landscape consecrated by the richest associations.
+On one side the Saronic Gulf, with its little islands,
+and Ćgina and Salamis, stretching off to "Sunium's
+marble height," with the ruins of its temple looking
+out mournfully upon the sea; on the other, the Gulf
+of Corinth or Lepanto, bounded by the dark and dreary
+mountains of Cytheron, where Acteon, gazing at
+the goddess, was changed into a stag, and hunted to
+death by his own hounds; and where Bacchus, with his
+train of satyrs and frantic bacchantes, celebrated his
+orgies. Beyond were Helicon, sacred to Apollo and
+the Muses, and Parnassus, covered with snow. Behind
+us towered a range of mountains stretching away to Argos
+and the ancient Sparta, and in front was the dim
+outline of the temple of the Acropolis at Athens. The
+shades of evening gathered thick around us while we
+remained on the top of the Acropolis, and it was dark
+long before we reached our locanda.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning we breakfasted at the coffee-house,
+and left Corinth wonderfully pleased at having outwitted
+Demetrius and our brigand host, who gazed after
+us with a surly scowl as we rode away, and probably
+longed for the good old days when, at the head of
+his hanged companions, he could have stopped us at
+the first mountain-pass and levied contributions at his
+own rate. I probably condemn myself when I say that
+we left this ancient city with such a trifle uppermost
+in our thoughts, but so it was; we bought a loaf of
+bread as we passed through the market-place, and descended
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">53</a></span>to the plain of Corinth. We had still the same
+horses which we rode from Padras; they were miserable
+animals, and I did not mount mine the whole
+day. Indeed, this is the true way to travel in Greece;
+the country is mountainous, and the road or narrow
+horse-path so rough and precipitous that the traveller
+is often obliged to dismount and walk. The exercise
+of clambering up the mountains and the purity of the
+air brace every nerve in the body, and not a single
+feature of the scenery escapes the eye.</p>
+
+<p>But, as yet, there are other things beside scenery; on
+each side of the road and within site of each other
+are the ruins of the ancient cities of Lechćum and Cenchreć,
+the ports of Corinth on the Corinthian and Saronic
+Gulfs; the former once connected with it by two
+long walls, and the road to the latter once lined with
+temples and sepulchres, the ruins of which may still be
+seen. The isthmus connecting the Peloponnesus with
+the continent is about six miles wide, and Corinth owed
+her commercial greatness to the profits of her merchants
+in transporting merchandise across it. Entire vessels
+were sometimes carried from one sea and launched into
+the other. The project of a canal across suggested itself
+both to the Greeks and Romans, and there yet exist
+traces of a ditch commenced for that purpose.</p>
+
+<p>On the death of Leonidas, and in apprehension of a
+Persian invasion, the Peloponnesians built a wall across
+the isthmus from Lechćum to Cenchreć. This wall
+was at one time fortified with a hundred and fifty towers;
+it was often destroyed and as often rebuilt; and in
+one place, about three miles from Corinth, vestiges of it
+may still be seen. Here were celebrated those Isthmian
+games so familiar to every tyro in Grecian literature and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">54</a></span>history; toward Mount Oneus stands on an eminence an
+ancient mound, supposed to be the tomb of Melicertes,
+their founder, and near it is at this day a grove of
+the sacred pine, with garlands of the leaves of which
+the victors were crowned.</p>
+
+<p>In about three hours from Corinth we crossed the
+isthmus, and came to the village of Kalamaki on the
+shore of the Saronic Gulf, containing a few miserable
+buildings, fit only for the miserable people who occupied
+them. Directly on the shore was a large coffee-house
+enclosed by mud walls, and having branches of
+trees for a roof; and in front was a little flotilla of Greek
+caiques.</p>
+
+<p>Next to the Greek's love for his native mountains is
+his passion for the waters that roll at their feet; and
+many of the proprietors of the rakish little boats in the
+harbour talked to us of the superior advantage of the
+sea over a mountainous road, and tried to make us abandon
+our horses and go by water to Athens; but we clung
+to the land, and have reason to congratulate ourselves
+upon having done so, for our road was one of the most
+beautiful it was ever my fortune to travel over. For
+some distance I walked along the shore, on the edge
+of a plain running from the foot of Mount Geranion.
+The plain was intersected by mountain torrents, the
+channel-beds of which were at that time dry. We
+passed the little village of Caridi, supposed to be the
+Sidus of antiquity, while a ruined church and a few
+old blocks of marble mark the site of ancient Crommyon,
+celebrated as the haunt of a wild boar destroyed
+by Theseus.</p>
+
+<p>At the other end of the plain we came to the foot
+of Mount Geranion, stretching out boldly to the edge of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">55</a></span>the gulf, and followed the road along its southern side
+close to and sometimes overhanging the sea. From
+time immemorial this has been called the Kaka Scala,
+or bad way. It is narrow, steep, and rugged, and wild
+to sublimity. Sometimes we were completely hemmed
+in by impending mountains, and then rose upon a lofty
+eminence commanding an almost boundless view. On
+the summit of the range the road runs directly along the
+mountain's brink, overhanging the sea, and so narrow
+that two horsemen can scarcely pass abreast; where a
+stumble would plunge the traveller several hundred yards
+into the waters beneath. Indeed, the horse of one of
+my companions stumbled and fell, and put him in such
+peril that both dismounted and accompanied me on foot.
+In the olden time this wild and rugged road was famous
+as the haunt of the robber Sciron, who plundered the
+luckless travellers, and then threw them from this precipice.
+The fabulous account is, that Theseus, three
+thousand years before, on his first visit to Athens, encountered
+the famous robber, and tossed him from the
+same precipice whence he had thrown so many better
+men. According to Ovid, the earth and the sea refused
+to receive the bones of Sciron, which continued for
+some time suspended in the open air, until they were
+changed into large rocks, whose points still appear at
+the foot of the precipice; and to this day, say the sailors,
+knock the bottoms out of the Greek vessels. In
+later days this road was so infested by corsairs and pirates,
+that even the Turks feared to travel on it; at one
+place, that looks as though it might be intended as a
+jumping-off point into another world, Ino, with her son
+Melicertes in her arms (so say the Greek poets), threw
+herself into the sea to escape the fury of her husband;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">56</a></span>and we know that in later days St. Paul travelled on
+this road to preach the gospel to the Corinthians.</p>
+
+<p>But, independently of all associations, and in spite
+of its difficulties and dangers, if a man were by accident
+placed on the lofty height without knowing where
+he was, he would be struck with the view which it
+commands, as one of the most beautiful that mortal
+eyes ever beheld. It was my fortune to pass over it a
+second time on foot, and I often seated myself on some
+wild point, and waited the coming up of my muleteers,
+looking out upon the sea, calm and glistening as if
+plated with silver, and studded with islands in continuous
+clusters stretching away into the Ćgean.</p>
+
+<p>During the greater part of the passage of the Kaka
+Scala my companions walked with me; and, as we
+always kept in advance, when we seated ourselves on
+some rude rock overhanging the sea to wait for our
+beasts and attendants, few things could be more picturesque
+than their approach.</p>
+
+<p>On the summit of the pass we fell into the ancient
+paved way that leads from Attica into the Peloponnesus,
+and walked over the same pavement which the
+Greeks travelled, perhaps, three thousand years ago.
+A ruined wall and gate mark the ancient boundary; and
+near this an early traveller observed a large block of
+white marble projecting over the precipice, and almost
+ready to fall into the sea, which bore an inscription, now
+illegible. Here it is supposed stood the Stčle erected
+by Theseus, bearing on one side the inscription, "Here
+is Peloponnesus, not Ionia;" and on the other the equally
+pithy notification, "Here is not Peloponnesus, but
+Ionia." It would be a pretty place of residence for a
+man in misfortune; for, besides the extraordinary beauty
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">57</a></span>of the scenery, by a single step he might avoid the service
+of civil process, and set the sheriff of Attica or
+the Peloponnesus at defiance. Descending, we saw
+before us a beautiful plain, extending from the foot
+of the mountain to the sea, and afar off, on an eminence
+commanding the plain, was the little town of Megara.</p>
+
+<p>It is unfortunate for the reader that every ruined village
+on the road stands on the site of an ancient city.
+The ruined town before us was the birthplace of Euclid,
+and the representative of that Megara which is distinguished
+in history more than two thousand years ago;
+which sent forth its armies in the Persian and Peloponnesian
+wars; alternately the ally and enemy of Corinth
+and Athens; containing numerous temples, and the
+largest public houses in Greece; and though exposed,
+with her other cities, to the violence of a fierce democracy,
+as is recorded by the historian, "the Megareans
+retained their independence and lived in peace." As a
+high compliment, the people offered to Alexander the
+Great the freedom of their city. When we approached
+it its appearance was a speaking comment upon human
+pride.</p>
+
+<p>It had been demolished and burned by Greeks and
+Turks, and now presented little more than a mass of
+blackened ruins. A few apartments had been cleared
+out and patched up, and occasionally I saw a solitary
+figure stalking amid the desolation.</p>
+
+<p>I had not mounted my horse all day; had kicked out
+a pair of Greek shoes on my walk, and was almost barefoot
+when I entered the city. A little below the town
+was a large building enclosed by a high wall, with a
+Bavarian soldier lounging at the gate. We entered, and
+found a good coffee-room below, and a comfortable bed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">58</a></span>chamber above, where we found good quilts and mattresses,
+and slept like princes.</p>
+
+<p>Early in the morning we set out for Athens, our road
+for some time lying along the sea. About half way to
+the Pirćus, a ruined village, with a starving population,
+stands on the site of the ancient Eleusis, famed
+throughout all Greece for the celebration of the mysterious
+rites of Ceres. The magnificent temple of the
+goddess has disappeared, and the colossal statue made
+by the immortal Phidias now adorns the vestibule of
+the University at Cambridge. We lingered a little
+while in the village, and soon after entered the Via Sacra,
+by which, centuries ago, the priests and people
+moved in solemn religious processions from Athens to
+the great temple of Ceres. At first we passed underneath
+the cliff along the shore, then rose by a steep ascent
+among the mountains, barren and stony, and wearing
+an aspect of desolation equal to that of the Roman
+Campagna; then we passed through a long defile, upon
+the side of which, deeply cut in the rock, are seen the
+marks of chariot-wheels; perhaps of those used in the
+sacred processions. We passed the ruined monastery of
+Daphne, in a beautifully picturesque situation, and in a
+few minutes saw the rich plain of Attica; and our muleteers
+and Demetrius, with a burst of enthusiasm, perhaps
+because the journey was ended, clapped their
+hands and cried out, "Atinć! Atinć!"</p>
+
+<p>The reader, perhaps, trembles at the name of Athens,
+but let him take courage. I promise to let him off
+easily. A single remark, however, before reaching it.
+The plain of Attica lies between two parallel ranges of
+mountains, and extends from the sea many miles back
+into the interior. On the border of the sea stands the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">59</a></span>Pirćus, now, as in former times, the harbour of the city,
+and toward the east, on a little eminence, Athens itself,
+like the other cities in Greece, presenting a miserable appearance,
+the effects of protracted and relentless wars.
+But high above the ruins of the modern city towers the
+Acropolis, holding up to the skies the ruined temples
+of other days, and proclaiming what Athens was. We
+wound around the temple of Theseus, the most beautiful
+and perfect specimen of architecture that time has
+spared; and in striking contrast with this monument of
+the magnificence of past days, here, in the entrance to
+the city, our horses were struggling and sinking up to
+their saddle-girths in the mud.</p>
+
+<p>We did in Athens what we should have done in Boston
+or Philadelphia; rode up to the best hotel, and, not
+being able to obtain accommodations there, rode to
+another; where, being again refused admittance, we
+were obliged to distribute ourselves into three parcels.
+Dr. Willet went to Mr. Hill's (of whom more anon).
+M. found entrance at a new hotel in the suburbs, and I
+betook myself to the Hotel de France. The garçon
+was rather bothered when I threw him a pair of old
+boots which I had hanging at my saddle-bow, and told
+him to take care of my baggage; he asked me when the
+rest would come up; and hardly knew what to make of
+me when I told him that was all I travelled with.</p>
+
+<p>I was still standing in the court of the hotel, almost
+barefoot, and thinking of the prosperous condition of the
+owner of a dozen shirts, and other things conforming,
+when Mr. Hill came over and introduced himself; and
+telling me that his house was the house of every American,
+asked me to waive ceremony and bring my luggage
+over at once. This was again hitting my sore point;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">60</a></span>everybody seemed to take a special interest in my
+luggage, and I was obliged to tell my story more than
+once. I declined Mr. Hill's kind invitation, but called
+upon him early the next day, dined with him, and, during
+the whole of my stay in Athens, was in the habit, to a
+great extent, of making his house my home; and this,
+I believe, is the case with all the Americans who go
+there; besides which, some borrow his money, and
+others his clothes.</p>
+
+<hr class="l65" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">61</a></span></h2>
+
+<div class="chapblock"><p>American Missionary School.&mdash;Visit to the School.&mdash;Mr. Hill and the
+Male Department.&mdash;Mrs. Hill and the Female Department.&mdash;Maid of Athens.&mdash;Letter
+from Mr. Hill.&mdash;Revival of Athens.&mdash;Citizens of the World.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> first thing we did in Athens was to visit the
+American missionary school. Among the extraordinary
+changes of an ever-changing world, it is not the least
+that the young America is at this moment paying back
+the debt which the world owes to the mother of science,
+and the citizen of a country which the wisest of the
+Greeks never dreamed of, is teaching the descendants
+of Plato and Aristotle the elements of their own tongue.
+I did not expect among the ruins of Athens to find anything
+that would particularly touch my national feelings,
+but it was a subject of deep and interesting reflection
+that, in the city which surpassed all the world in learning,
+where Socrates, and Plato, and Aristotle taught,
+and Cicero went to study, the only door of instruction
+was that opened by the hands of American citizens, and
+an American missionary was the only schoolmaster;
+and I am ashamed to say that I was not aware of the
+existence of such an institution until advised of it by my
+friend Dr. W.</p>
+
+<p>In eighteen hundred and thirty the Rev. Messrs. Hill
+and Robinson, with their families, sailed from this city
+(New-York) as the agents of the Episcopal missionary
+society, to found schools in Greece. They first established
+themselves in the Island of Tenos; but, finding
+that it was not the right field for their labours, employed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">62</a></span>themselves in acquiring a knowledge of the language,
+and of the character and habits of the modern Greeks.
+Their attention was directed to Athens, and in the spring
+of eighteen hundred and thirty-one they made a visit to
+that city, and were so confirmed in their impressions,
+that they purchased a lot of ground on which to erect
+edifices for a permanent establishment, and, in the mean
+time, rented a house for the immediate commencement
+of a school. They returned to Tenos for their families
+and effects, and again arrived at Athens about the end
+of June following. From the deep interest taken in
+their struggle for liberty, and the timely help furnished
+them in their hour of need, the Greeks were warmly prepossessed
+in favour of our countrymen; and the conduct
+of the missionaries themselves was so judicious, that
+they were received with the greatest respect and the
+warmest welcome by the public authorities and the
+whole population of Athens. Their furniture, printing-presses,
+and other effects were admitted free of duties;
+and it is but justice to them to say that, since that time,
+they have moved with such discretion among an excitable
+and suspicious people, that, while they have advanced
+in the great objects of their mission, they have
+grown in the esteem and good-will of the best and most
+influential inhabitants of Greece; and so great was Mr.
+Hill's confidence in their affections, that, though there
+was at that time a great political agitation, and it was
+apprehended that Athens might again become the scene
+of violence and bloodshed, he told me he had no fears,
+and felt perfectly sure that, in any outbreaking of popular
+fury, himself and family, and the property of the
+mission, would be respected.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">63</a></span>In the middle of the summer of their arrival at Athens,
+Mrs. Hill opened a school for girls in the magazine
+or cellar of the house in which they resided; the first
+day she had twenty pupils, and in two months one hundred
+and sixty-seven. Of the first ninety-six, not more
+than six could read at all, and that very imperfectly;
+and not more than ten or twelve knew a letter. At the
+time of our visit the school numbered nearly five hundred;
+and when we entered the large room, and the
+scholars all rose in a body to greet us as Americans, I
+felt a deep sense of regret that, personally, I had no
+hand in such a work, and almost envied the feelings
+of my companion, one of its patrons and founders.
+Besides teaching them gratitude to those from whose
+country they derived the privileges they enjoyed, Mr.
+Hill had wisely endeavoured to impress upon their
+minds a respect for the constituted authorities, particularly
+important in that agitated and unsettled community;
+and on one end of the wall, directly fronting the
+seats of the scholars, was printed, in large Greek characters,
+the text of Scripture, "Fear God, honour the king."</p>
+
+<p>It was all important for the missionaries not to offend
+the strong prejudices of the Greeks by any attempt
+to withdraw the children from the religion of their fathers;
+and the school purports to be, and is intended
+for, the diffusion of elementary education only; but it
+is opened in the morning with prayer, concluding with
+the Lord's Prayer as read in our churches, which is
+repeated by the whole school aloud; and on Sundays,
+besides the prayers, the creed, and sometimes the Ten
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">64</a></span>Commandments, are recited, and a chapter from the
+Gospels is read aloud by one of the scholars, the missionaries
+deeming this more expedient than to conduct
+the exercises themselves. The lesson for the day is
+always the portion appointed for the gospel of the day
+in their own church; and they close by singing a hymn.
+The room is thrown open to the public, and is frequently
+resorted to by the parents of the children and strangers;
+some coming, perhaps, says Mr. Hill, to "hear
+what these babblers will say," and "other some" from a
+suspicion that "we are setters forth of strange gods."</p>
+
+<p>The boys' school is divided into three departments,
+the lowest under charge of a Greek qualified on the
+Lancasterian system. They were of all ages, from three
+to eighteen; and, as Mr. Hill told me, most of them
+had been half-clad, dirty, ragged little urchins, who,
+before they were put to their A, B, C, or, rather, their
+Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, had to be thoroughly
+washed, rubbed, scrubbed, doctored, and dressed, and,
+but for the school, would now, perhaps, be prowling
+vagabonds in the streets of Athens, or training for robbery
+in the mountains. They were a body of fine-looking
+boys, possessing, as Mr. Hill told me, in an
+extraordinary degree, all that liveliness of imagination,
+that curiosity and eagerness after knowledge, which distinguished
+the Greeks of old, retaining, under centuries
+of dreadful oppression, the recollection of the greatness
+of their fathers, and, what was particularly interesting,
+many of them bearing the great names so familiar in
+Grecian history; I shook hands with a little Miltiades,
+Leonidas, Aristides, &amp;c., in features and apparent intelligence
+worthy descendants of the immortal men
+whose names they bear. And there was one who
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">65</a></span>startled me, he was the son of the Maid of Athens!
+To me the Maid of Athens was almost an imaginary
+being, something fanciful, a creation of the brain,
+and not a corporeal substance, to have a little urchin
+of a boy. But so it was. The Maid of Athens is
+married. She had a right to marry, no doubt; and it
+is said that there is poetry in married life, and, doubtless,
+she is a much more interesting person now than
+the Maid of Athens at thirty-six could be; but the Maid
+of Athens is married to a Scotchman! the Maid of
+Athens is now Mrs. Black! wife of George Black.
+Comment is unnecessary.</p>
+
+<p>But the principal and most interesting part of this
+missionary school was the female department, under
+the direction of Mrs. Hill, the first, and, except at Syra,
+the only school for females in all Greece, and particularly
+interesting to me from the fact that it owed its
+existence to the active benevolence of my own country-women.
+At the close of the Greek revolution, female
+education was a thing entirely unknown in Greece, and
+the women of all classes were in a most deplorable state
+of ignorance. When the strong feeling that ran through
+our country in favour of this struggling people had subsided,
+and Greece was freed from the yoke of the
+Mussulman, an association of ladies in the little town
+of Troy, perhaps instigated somewhat by an inherent
+love of power and extended rule, and knowing the influence
+of their sex in a cultivated state of society, formed
+the project of establishing at Athens a school exclusively
+for the education of females; and, humble and
+unpretending as was its commencement, it is becoming
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">66</a></span>a more powerful instrument in the civilization and moral
+and religious improvement of Greece, than all that
+European diplomacy has ever done for her. The girls
+were distributed in different classes, according to their
+age and advancement; they had clean faces and hands,
+a rare thing with Greek children, and were neatly
+dressed, many of them wearing frocks made by ladies
+at home (probably at some of our sewing societies); and
+some of them had attained such an age, and had such
+fine, dark, rolling eyes as to make even a northern temperament
+feel the powerful influence they would soon
+exercise over the rising, excitable generation of Greeks
+and almost make him bless the hands that were directing
+that influence aright.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. and Mrs. Hill accompanied us through the whole
+establishment, and, being Americans, we were everywhere
+looked upon and received by the girls as patrons
+and fathers of the school, both which characters I waived
+in favour of my friend; the one because he was really
+entitled to it, and the other because some of the girls
+were so well grown that I did not care to be regarded as
+standing in that venerable relationship. The didaskalissas,
+or teachers, were of this description, and they
+spoke English. Occasionally Mr. Hill called a little
+girl up to us, and told us her history, generally a melancholy
+one, as, being reduced to the extremity of want
+by the revolution; or an orphan, whose parents had
+been murdered by the Turks; and I had a conversation
+with a little Penelope, who, however, did not look as if
+she would play the faithful wife of Ulysses, and, if I
+am a judge of physiognomy, would never endure widowhood
+twenty years for any man.</p>
+
+<p>Before we went away the whole school rose at once,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">67</a></span>and gave us a glorious finale with a Greek hymn. In
+a short time these girls will grow up into women and
+return to their several families; others will succeed
+them, and again go out, and every year hundreds will
+distribute themselves in the cities and among the fastnesses
+of the mountains, to exercise over their fathers,
+and brothers, and lovers, the influence of the education
+acquired here; instructed in all the arts of woman in
+civilized domestic life, firmly grounded in the principles
+of morality, and of religion purified from the follies, absurdities,
+and abominations of the Greek faith. I have
+seen much of the missionary labours in the East, but I
+do not know an institution which promises so surely the
+happiest results. If the women are educated, the men
+cannot remain ignorant; if the women are enlightened
+in religion, the men cannot remain debased and degraded
+Christians.</p>
+
+<p>The ex-secretary Rigos was greatly affected at the
+appearance of this female school; and, after surveying
+it attentively for some moments, pointed to the Parthenon
+on the summit of the Acropolis, and said to Mrs.
+Hill, with deep emotion, "Lady, you are erecting in
+Athens a monument more enduring and more noble than
+yonder temple;" and the king was so deeply impressed
+with its value, that, a short time before my arrival, he
+proposed to Mr. Hill to take into his house girls from
+different districts and educate them as teachers, with
+the view of sending them back to their districts, there
+to organize new schools, and carry out the great work
+of female education. Mr. Hill acceded to the proposal,
+and the American missionary school now stands as the
+nucleus of a large and growing system of education in
+Greece; and, very opportunely for my purpose, within
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">68</a></span>a few days I have received a letter from Mr. Hill, in
+which, in relation to the school, he says, "Our missionary
+establishment is much increased since you saw
+it; our labours are greatly increased, and I think I may
+say we have now reached the summit of what we had
+proposed to ourselves. We do not think it possible
+that it can be extended farther without much larger
+means and more personal aid. We do not wish or intend
+to ask for either. We have now nearly forty persons
+residing with us, of whom thirty-five are Greeks,
+all of whom are brought within the influence of the gospel;
+the greater part of them are young girls from different
+parts of Greece, and even from Egypt and Turkey
+(Greeks, however), whom we are preparing to become
+instructresses of youth hereafter in their various
+districts. We have five hundred, besides, under daily
+instruction in the different schools under our care, and
+we employ under us in the schools twelve native teachers,
+who have themselves been instructed by us. We
+have provided for three of our dear pupils (all of whom
+were living with us when you were here), who are honourably
+and usefully settled in life. One is married to
+a person every way suited to her, and both husband and
+wife are in our missionary service. One has charge of
+the government female school at the Pirćus, and supports
+her father and mother and a large family by her
+salary; and the third has gone with our missionaries to
+Crete, to take charge of the female schools there. We
+have removed into our new house" (of which the foundation
+was just laid at the time of my visit), "and, large
+as it is, it is not half large enough. We are trying to
+raise ways and means to enlarge it considerably, that
+we may take more boarders under our own roof, which
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">69</a></span>we look up to as the most important means of making
+sure of our labour; for every one who comes to reside
+with us is taken away from the corrupt example exhibited
+at home, and brought within a wholesome influence.
+Lady Byron has just sent us one hundred pounds toward
+enlarging our house with this view, and we have
+commenced the erection of three additional dormitories
+with the money."</p>
+
+<p>Athens is again the capital of a kingdom. Enthusiasts
+see in her present condition the promise of a restoration
+to her ancient greatness; but reason and observation
+assure us that the world is too much changed
+for her ever to be what she has been. In one respect,
+her condition resembles that of her best days; for, as
+her fame then attracted strangers from every quarter
+of the world to study in her schools, so now the capital
+of King Otho has become a great gathering-place of
+wandering spirits from many near and distant regions.
+For ages difficult and dangerous of access, the ancient
+capital of the arts lay shrouded in darkness, and almost
+cut off from the civilized world. At long intervals, a
+few solitary travellers only found their way to it; but,
+since the revolution, it has again become a place of frequent
+resort and intercourse. It is true that the ancient
+halls of learning are still solitary and deserted, but strangers
+from every nation now turn hither; the scholar to
+roam over her classic soil, the artist to study her ancient
+monuments, and the adventurer to carve his way to
+fortune.</p>
+
+<p>The first day I dined at the hotel I had an opportunity
+of seeing the variety of material congregated in the reviving
+city. We had a long table, capable of accommodating
+about twenty persons. The manner of living
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">70</a></span>was ŕ la carte, each guest dining when he pleased; but,
+by tacit consent, at about six o'clock all assembled at
+the table. We presented a curious medley. No two
+were from the same country. Our discourse was in
+English, French, Italian, German, Greek, Russian, Polish,
+and I know not what else, as if we were the very
+people stricken with confusion of tongues at the Tower
+of Babel. Dinner over, all fell into French, and the
+conversation became general. Every man present was,
+in the fullest sense of the term, a citizen of the world.
+It had been the fortune of each, whether good or bad,
+to break the little circle in which so many are born, revolve,
+and die; and the habitual mingling with people
+of various nations had broken down all narrow prejudices,
+and given to every one freedom of mind and force
+of character. All had seen much, had much to communicate,
+and felt that they had much yet to learn. By
+some accident, moreover, all seemed to have become
+particularly interested in the East. They travelled
+over the whole range of Eastern politics, and, to a certain
+extent, considered themselves identified with Eastern
+interests. Most of the company were or had been
+soldiers, and several wore uniforms and stars, or decorations
+of some description. They spoke of the different
+campaigns in Greece in which some of them had served;
+of the science of war; of Marlborough, Eugene, and
+more modern captains; and I remember that they
+startled my feelings of classical reverence by talking of
+Leonidas at Thermopylć and Miltiades at Marathon in
+the same tone as of Napoleon at Leipsic and Wellington
+at Waterloo. One of them constructed on the table,
+with the knives and forks and spoons, a map of Marathon,
+and with a sheathed yataghan pointed out the position
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">71</a></span>of the Greeks and Persians, and showed where
+Miltiades, as a general, was wrong. They were not
+blinded by the dust of antiquity. They had been
+knocked about till all enthusiasm and all reverence for
+the past were shaken out of them, and they had learned
+to give things their right names. A French engineer
+showed us the skeleton of a map of Greece, which was
+then preparing under the direction of the French Geographical
+Society, exhibiting an excess of mountains
+and deficiency of plain which surprised even those who
+had travelled over every part of the kingdom. One had
+just come from Constantinople, where he had seen the
+sultan going to mosque; another had escaped from an
+attack of the plague in Egypt; a third gave the dimensions
+of the Temple of the Sun at Baalbeck; and a
+fourth had been at Babylon, and seen the ruins of the
+Tower of Babel. In short, every man had seen something
+which the others had not seen, and all their
+knowledge was thrown into a common stock. I found
+myself at once among a new class of men; and I turned
+from him who sneered at Miltiades to him who had
+seen the sultan, or to him who had been at Bagdad, and
+listened with interest, somewhat qualified by consciousness
+of my own inferiority. I was lying in wait, however,
+and took advantage of an opportunity to throw in
+something about America; and, at the sound, all turned
+to me with an eagerness of curiosity that I had not anticipated.</p>
+
+<p>In Europe, and even in England, I had often found
+extreme ignorance of my own country; but here I was
+astonished to find, among men so familiar with all parts
+of the Old World, such total lack of information about
+the New. A gentleman opposite me, wearing the uniform
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">72</a></span>of the King of Bavaria, asked me if I had ever
+been in America. I told him that I was born, and, as
+they say in Kentucky, raised there. He begged my
+pardon, but doubtfully <i>suggested</i>, "You are not black?"
+and I was obliged to explain to him that in our section
+of America the Indian had almost entirely disappeared,
+and that his place was occupied by the descendants of
+the Gaul and the Briton. I was forthwith received into
+the fraternity, for my home was farther away than any
+of them had ever been; my friend opposite considered
+me a bijou, asked me innumerable questions, and seemed
+to be constantly watching for the breaking out of the
+cannibal spirit, as if expecting to see me bite my neighbour.
+At first I had felt myself rather a small affair
+but, before separating, <i>l'Americain</i>, or <i>le sauvage</i>, or
+finally, <i>le cannibal</i> found himself something of a lion.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Since my return home I have seen in a newspaper an account of a
+popular commotion at Syra, in which the printing-presses and books at
+the missionaries were destroyed, and Mr. Robinson was threatened with
+personal violence.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="l65" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">73</a></span></h2>
+
+<div class="chapblock"><p>Ruins of Athens.&mdash;Hill of Mars.&mdash;Temple of the Winds.&mdash;Lantern of
+Demosthenes.&mdash;Arch of Adrian.&mdash;Temple of Jupiter Olympus.&mdash;Temple
+of Theseus.&mdash;The Acropolis.&mdash;The Parthenon.&mdash;Pentelican Mountain.&mdash;Mount
+Hymettus.&mdash;The Pirćus.&mdash;Greek Fleas.&mdash;Napoli.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> next morning I began my survey of the ruins
+of Athens. It was my intention to avoid any description
+of these localities and monuments, because so
+many have preceded me, stored with all necessary
+knowledge, ripe in taste and sound in judgment, who
+have devoted to them all the time and research they so
+richly merit; but as, in our community, through the
+hurry and multiplicity of business occupations, few are
+able to bestow upon these things much time or attention,
+and, farthermore, as the books which treat of them
+are not accessible to all, I should be doing injustice to
+my readers if I were to omit them altogether. Besides,
+I should be doing violence to my own feelings,
+and cannot get fairly started in Athens, without recurring
+to scenes which I regarded at the time with extraordinary
+interest. I have since visited most of the
+principal cities in Europe, existing as well as ruined
+and I hardly know any to which I recur with more satisfaction
+than Athens. If the reader tire in the brief
+reference I shall make, he must not impute it to any
+want of interest in the subject; and as I am not in the
+habit of going into heroics, he will believe me when I
+say that, if he have any reverence for the men or things
+consecrated by the respect and admiration of ages, he
+will find it called out at Athens. In the hope that I
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">74</a></span>may be the means of inducing some of my countrymen
+to visit that famous city, I will add another inducement
+by saying that he may have, as I had, Mr. Hill for a
+cicerone. This gentleman is familiar with every locality
+and monument around or in the city, and, which I
+afterward found to be an unusual thing with those living
+in places consecrated in the minds of strangers, he
+retains for them all that freshness of feeling which we
+possess who only know them from books and pictures.</p>
+
+<p>By an arrangement made the evening before, early in
+the morning of my second day in Athens Mr. Hill was
+at the door of my hotel to attend us. As we descended
+the steps a Greek stopped him, and, bowing with his
+hand on his heart, addressed him in a tone of earnestness
+which we could not understand; but we were struck
+with the sonorous tones of his voice and the musical
+cadence of his sentences; and when he had finished,
+Mr. Hill told us that he had spoken in a strain which,
+in the original, was poetry itself, beginning, "Americanos,
+I am a Stagyrite. I come from the land of Aristotle,
+the disciple of Plato," &amp;c., &amp;c.; telling him the whole
+story of his journey from the ancient Stagyra and his
+arrival in Athens; and that, having understood that Mr.
+Hill was distributing books among his countrymen, he
+begged for one to take home with him. Mr. Hill said
+that this was an instance of every-day occurrence, showing
+the spirit of inquiry and thirst for knowledge among
+the modern Greeks. This little scene with a countryman
+of Aristotle was a fit prelude to our morning
+ramble.</p>
+
+<p>The house occupied by the American missionary as
+a school stands on the site of the ancient Agora or
+market-place, where St. Paul "disputed daily with the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">75</a></span>Athenians." A few columns still remain; and near
+them is an inscription mentioning the price of oil. The
+schoolhouse is built partly from the ruins of the Agora;
+and to us it was an interesting circumstance, that a
+missionary from a newly-discovered world was teaching
+to the modern Greeks the same saving religion
+which, eighteen hundred years ago, St. Paul, on the
+same spot, preached to their ancestors.</p>
+
+<p>Winding around the foot of the Acropolis, within the
+ancient and outside the modern wall, we came to the
+Areopagus or Hill of Mars, where, in the early days of
+Athens, her judges sat in the open air; and, for many
+ages, decided with such wisdom and impartiality, that to
+this day the decisions of the court of Areopagites are regarded
+as models of judicial purity. We ascended this
+celebrated hill, and stood on the precise spot where St.
+Paul, pointing to the temples which rose from every section
+of the city and towered proudly on the Acropolis,
+made his celebrated address: "Ye men of Athens, I
+see that in all things ye are too superstitious." The
+ruins of the very temples to which he pointed were before
+our eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Descending, and rising toward the summit of another
+hill, we came to the Pnyx, where Demosthenes,
+in the most stirring words that ever fell from human
+lips, roused his countrymen against the Macedonian invader.
+Above, on the very summit of the hill, is the
+old Pnyx, commanding a view of the sea of Salamis, and
+of the hill where Xerxes sat to behold the great naval
+battle. During the reign of the thirty tyrants the Pnyx
+was removed beneath the brow of the hill, excluding the
+view of the sea, that the orator might not inflame the passions
+of the people by directing their eyes to Salamis,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">76</a></span>the scene of their naval glory. But, without this, the
+orator had material enough; for, when he stood on the
+platform facing the audience, he had before him the city
+which the Athenians loved and the temples in which
+they worshipped, and I could well imagine the irresistible
+force of an appeal to these objects of their enthusiastic
+devotion, their firesides and altars. The place is
+admirably adapted for public speaking. The side of
+the hill has been worked into a gently inclined plane,
+semicircular in form, and supported in some places by
+a wall of immense stones. This plain is bounded above
+by the brow of the hill, cut down perpendicularly. In
+the centre the rock projects into a platform about eight
+or ten feet square, which forms the Pnyx or pulpit for
+the orator. The ascent is by three steps cut out of the
+rock, and in front is a place for the scribe or clerk. We
+stood on this Pnyx, beyond doubt on the same spot
+where Demosthenes thundered his philippics in the ears
+of the Athenians. On the road leading to the Museum
+hill we entered a chamber excavated in the rock, which
+tradition hallows as the prison of Socrates; and though
+the authority for this is doubtful, it is not uninteresting
+to enter the damp and gloomy cavern wherein, according
+to the belief of the modern Athenians, the wisest of
+the Greeks drew his last breath. Farther to the south
+is the hill of Philopappus, so called after a Roman governor
+of that name. On the very summit, near the extreme
+angle of the old wall, and one of the most conspicuous
+objects around Athens, is a monument erected
+by the Roman governor in honour of the Emperor Trajan.
+The marble is covered with the names of travellers,
+most of whom, like Philopappus himself, would
+never have been heard of but for that monument.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">77</a></span>Descending toward the Acropolis, and entering the
+city among streets encumbered with ruined houses, we
+came to the Temple of the Winds, a marble octagonal
+tower, built by Andronicus. On each side is a sculptured
+figure, clothed in drapery adapted to the wind he
+represents; and on the top was formerly a Triton with a
+rod in his hand, pointing to the figure marking the wind.
+The Triton is gone, and great part of the temple buried
+under ruins. Part of the interior, however, has been
+excavated, and probably, before long, the whole will be
+restored.</p>
+
+<p>East of the foot of the Acropolis, and on the way to
+Adrian's Gate, we came to the Lantern of Demosthenes
+(I eschew its new name of the Choragic Monument
+of Lysichus), where, according to an absurd tradition,
+the orator shut himself up to study the rhetorical
+art. It is considered one of the most beautiful monuments
+of antiquity, and the capitals are most elegant
+specimens of the Corinthian order refined by Attic
+taste. It is now in a mutilated condition, and its many
+repairs make its dilapidation more perceptible. Whether
+Demosthenes ever lived here or not, it derives an interest
+from the fact that Lord Byron made it his residence
+during his visit to Athens. Farther on, and
+forming part of the modern wall, is the Arch of Adrian,
+bearing on one side an inscription in Greek, "This is
+the city of Theseus;" and on the other, "But this is
+the city of Adrian." On the arrival of Otho a placard
+was erected, on which was inscribed, "These were the
+cities of Theseus and Adrian, but now of Otho." Many
+of the most ancient buildings in Athens have totally
+disappeared. The Turks destroyed many of them to
+construct the wall around the city, and even the modern
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">78</a></span>Greeks have not scrupled to build their miserable
+houses with the plunder of the temples in which their
+ancestors worshipped.</p>
+
+<p>Passing under the Arch of Adrian, outside the gate,
+on the plain toward the Ilissus, we came to the ruined
+Temple of Jupiter Olympus, perhaps once the most
+magnificent in the world. It was built of the purest
+white marble, having a front of nearly two hundred feet,
+and more than three hundred and fifty in length, and
+contained one hundred and twenty columns, sixteen of
+which are all that now remain; and these, fluted and
+having rich Corinthian capitals, tower more than sixty
+feet above the plain, perfect as when they were reared.
+I visited these ruins often, particularly in the afternoon;
+they are at all times mournfully beautiful, but I have
+seldom known anything more touching than, when the
+sun was setting, to walk over the marble floor, and look
+up at the lonely columns of this ruined temple. I cannot
+imagine anything more imposing than it must have
+been when, with its lofty roof supported by all its columns,
+it stood at the gate of the city, its doors wide
+open, inviting the Greeks to worship. That such an
+edifice should be erected for the worship of a heathen
+god! On the architrave connecting three of the columns
+a hermit built his lonely cell, and passed his life
+in that elevated solitude, accessible only to the crane
+and the eagle. The hermit is long since dead, but his
+little habitation still resists the whistling of the wind,
+and awakens the curiosity of the wondering traveller.</p>
+
+<p>The Temple of Theseus is the last of the principal
+monuments, but the first which the traveller sees on
+entering Athens. It was built after the battle of Marathon,
+and in commemoration of the victory which drove
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">79</a></span>the Persians from the shores of Greece. It is a small
+but beautiful specimen of the pure Doric, built of Pentelican
+marble, centuries of exposure to the open air
+giving it a yellowish tint, which softens the brilliancy
+of the white. Three Englishmen have been buried
+within this temple. The first time I visited it a company
+of Greek recruits, with some negroes among
+them, was drawn up in front, going through the manual
+under the direction of a German corporal; and, at the
+same time, workmen were engaged in fitting it up for
+the coronation of King Otho!</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" >
+<img src="images/i_v1_p079.jpg" width="60%" alt="Temple of Jupiter Olympus and Acropolis at Athena." title="Temple of Jupiter Olympus" />
+<p class="caption">Temple of Jupiter Olympus and Acropolis at Athena.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>These are the principal monuments around the city,
+and, except the temples at Pćstum, they are more
+worthy of admiration than all the ruins in Italy; but
+towering above them in position, and far exceeding
+them in interest, are the ruins of the Acropolis. I have
+since wandered among the ruined monuments of Egypt
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">80</a></span>and the desolate city of Petra, but I look back with
+unabated reverence to the Athenian Acropolis. Every
+day I had gazed at it from the balcony of my hotel, and
+from every part of the city and suburbs. Early on my
+arrival I had obtained the necessary permit, paid a hurried
+visit, and resolved not to go again until I had examined
+all the other interesting objects. On the fourth
+day, with my friend M., I went again. We ascended
+by a broad road paved with stone. The summit is enclosed
+by a wall, of which some of the foundation stones,
+very large, and bearing an appearance of great antiquity,
+are pointed out as part of the wall built by Themistocles
+after the battle of Salamis, four hundred and eighty
+years before Christ. The rest is Venetian and Turkish,
+falling to decay, and marring the picturesque effect
+of the ruins from below. The guard examined
+our permit, and we passed under the gate. A magnificent
+propylon of the finest white marble, the blocks of
+the largest size ever laid by human hands, and having
+a wing of the same material on each side, stands at the
+entrance. Though broken and ruined, the world contains
+nothing like it even now. If my first impressions
+do not deceive me, the proudest portals of Egyptian
+temples suffer in comparison. Passing this magnificent
+propylon, and ascending several steps, we reached
+the Parthenon or ruined Temple of Minerva; an immense
+white marble skeleton, the noblest monument of
+architectural genius which the world ever saw. Standing
+on the steps of this temple, we had around us all
+that is interesting in association and all that is beautiful
+in art. We might well forget the capital of King Otho,
+and go back in imagination to the golden age of Athens.
+Pericles, with the illustrious throng of Grecian
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">81</a></span>heroes, orators, and sages, had ascended there to worship,
+and Cicero and the noblest of the Romans had
+gone there to admire; and probably, if the fashion of
+modern tourists had existed in their days, we should see
+their names inscribed with their own hands on its walls.
+The great temple stands on the very summit of the
+Acropolis, elevated far above the Propylća and the
+surrounding edifices. Its length is two hundred and
+eight feet, and breadth one hundred and two. At each
+end were two rows of eight Doric columns, thirty-four
+feet high and six feet in diameter, and on each side
+were thirteen more. The whole temple within and
+without was adorned with the most splendid works of
+art, by the first sculptors in Greece, and Phidias himself
+wrought the statue of the goddess, of ivory and
+gold, twenty-six cubits high, having on the top of her
+helmet a sphinx, with griffins on each of the sides; on
+the breast a head of Medusa wrought in ivory, and a
+figure of Victory about four cubits high, holding a spear
+in her hand and a shield lying at her feet. Until the
+latter part of the seventeenth century, this magnificent
+temple, with all its ornaments, existed entire. During
+the siege of Athens by the Venetians, the central part
+was used by the Turks as a magazine; and a bomb,
+aimed with fatal precision or by a not less fatal chance,
+reached the magazine, and, with a tremendous explosion,
+destroyed a great part of the buildings. Subsequently
+the Turks used it as a quarry, and antiquaries and travellers,
+foremost among whom is Lord Elgin, have contributed
+to destroy "what Goth, and Turk, and Time had
+spared."</p>
+
+<p>Around the Parthenon, and covering the whole summit
+of the Acropolis, are strewed columns and blocks
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">82</a></span>of polished white marble, the ruins of ancient temples.
+The remains of the Temples of Erectheus and Minerva
+Polias are pre-eminent in beauty; the pillars of the latter
+are the most perfect specimens of the Ionic in existence,
+and its light and graceful proportions are in elegant
+contrast with the severe and simple majesty of the
+Parthenon. The capitals of the columns are wrought
+and ornamented with a delicacy surpassing anything of
+which I could have believed marble susceptible. Once
+I was tempted to knock off a corner and bring it home,
+as a specimen of the exquisite skill of the Grecian artist,
+which it would have illustrated better than a volume
+of description; but I could not do it; it seemed
+nothing less than sacrilege.</p>
+
+<p>Afar off, and almost lost in the distance, rises the
+Pentelican Mountain, from the body of which were
+hewed the rough rude blocks which, wrought and perfected
+by the sculptor's art, now stand the lofty and
+stately columns of the ruined temple. What labour
+was expended upon each single column! how many
+were employed in hewing it from its rocky bed, in bearing
+it to the foot of the mountain, transporting it across
+the plain of Attica, and raising it to the summit of the
+Acropolis! and then what time, and skill, and labour, in
+reducing it from a rough block to a polished shaft, in
+adjusting its proportions, in carving its rich capitals, and
+rearing it where it now stands, a model of majestic
+grace and beauty! Once, under the direction of Mr.
+Hill, I clambered up to the very apex of the pediment,
+and, lying down at full length, leaned over and saw under
+the frieze the acanthus leaf delicately and beautifully
+painted on the marble, and, being protected from
+exposure, still retaining its freshness of colouring. It
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">83</a></span>was entirely out of sight from below, and had been discovered,
+almost at the peril of his life, by the enthusiasm
+of an English artist. The wind was whistling
+around me as I leaned over to examine it, and, until
+that moment, I never appreciated fully the immense
+labour employed and the exquisite finish displayed in
+every portion of the temple.</p>
+
+<p>The sentimental traveller must already mourn that
+Athens has been selected as the capital of Greece. Already
+have speculators and the whole tribe of "improvers"
+invaded the glorious city; and while I was
+lingering on the steps of the Parthenon, a German, who
+was quietly smoking among the ruins, a sort of superintendent
+whom I had met before, came up, and offering
+me a segar, and leaning against one of the lofty
+columns of the temple, opened upon me with "his
+plans of city improvements;" with new streets, and projected
+railroads, and the rise of lots. At first I almost
+thought it personal, and that he was making a fling at
+me in allusion to one of the greatest hobbies of my native
+city; but I soon found that he was as deeply bitten
+as if he had been in Chicago or Dunkirk; and the way
+in which he talked of moneyed facilities, the wants of
+the community, and a great French bank then contemplated
+at the Pirćus, would have been no discredit to
+some of my friends at home. The removal of the
+court has created a new era in Athens; but, in my
+mind, it is deeply to be regretted that it has been
+snatched from the ruin to which it was tending. Even
+I, deeply imbued with the utilitarian spirit of my country,
+and myself a quondam speculator in "up-town
+lots," would fain save Athens from the ruthless hand
+of renovation; from the building mania of modern speculators.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">84</a></span>I would have her go on till there was not
+a habitation among her ruins; till she stood, like Pompeii,
+alone in the wilderness, a sacred desert, where
+the traveller might sit down and meditate alone and
+undisturbed among the relics of the past. But already
+Athens has become a heterogeneous anomaly; the
+Greeks in their wild costume are jostled in the streets
+by Englishmen, Frenchmen, Italians, Dutchmen, Spaniards,
+and Bavarians, Russians, Danes, and sometimes
+Americans. European shops invite purchasers
+by the side of Eastern bazars, coffee-houses, and billiard-rooms,
+and French and German restaurants are
+opened all over the city. Sir Pultney Malcolm has
+erected a house to hire near the site of Plato's Academy.
+Lady Franklin has bought land near the foot of
+Mount Hymettus for a country-seat. Several English
+gentlemen have done the same. Mr. Richmond, an
+American clergyman, has purchased a farm in the
+neighbourhood; and in a few years, if the "march of
+improvement" continues, the Temple of Theseus will
+be enclosed in the garden of the palace of King Otho;
+the Temple of the Winds will be concealed by a German
+opera-house, and the Lantern of Demosthenes by
+a row of "three-story houses."</p>
+
+<p>I was not a sentimental traveller, but I visited all the
+localities around Athens, and, therefore, briefly mention
+that several times I jumped over the poetic and perennial
+Ilissus, trotted my horse over the ground where
+Aristotle walked with his peripatetics, and got muddied
+up to my knees in the garden of Plato.</p>
+
+<p>One morning my Scotch friend and I set out early
+to ascend Mount Hymettus. The mountain is neither
+high nor picturesque, but a long flat ridge of bare rock,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">85</a></span>the sides cut up into ravines, fissures, and gullies.
+There is an easy path to the summit, but we had no
+guide, and about midday, after a wild scramble, were
+worn out, and descended without reaching the top,
+which is exceedingly fortunate for the reader, as otherwise
+he would be obliged to go through a description
+of the view therefrom.</p>
+
+<p>Returning, we met the king taking his daily walk,
+attended by two aids, one of whom was young Marco
+Bozzaris. Otho is tall and thin, and, when I saw him,
+was dressed in a German military frockcoat and cap,
+and altogether, for a king, seemed to be an amiable
+young man enough. All the world speaks well of him,
+and so do I. We touched our hats to him, and he returned
+the civility; and what could he do more without
+inviting us to dinner? In old times there was a divinity
+about a king; but now, if a king is a gentleman, it is as
+much as we can expect. He has spent his money like a
+gentleman, that is, he cannot tell what has become of
+it. Two of the three-millions loan are gone, and there
+is no colonization, no agricultural prosperity, no opening
+of roads, no security in the mountains; not a town
+in Greece but is in ruins, and no money to improve
+them. Athens, however, is to be embellished. With
+ten thousand pounds in the treasury, he is building a
+palace of white Pentelican marble, to cost three hundred
+thousand pounds.</p>
+
+<p>Otho was very popular, because, not being of age,
+all the errors of his administration were visited upon
+Count Armansbergh and the regency, who, from all
+accounts, richly deserved it; and it was hoped that,
+on receiving the crown, he would shake off the Bavarians
+who were preying upon the vitals of Greece, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">86</a></span>gather around him his native-born subjects. In private
+life he bore a most exemplary character. He had no
+circle of young companions, and passed much of his
+time in study, being engaged, among other things, in
+acquiring the Greek and English languages. His position
+is interesting, though not enviable; and if, as the
+first king of emancipated Greece, he entertains recollections
+of her ancient greatness, and the ambition of
+restoring her to her position among the nations of the
+earth, he is doomed to disappointment. Otho is since
+crowned and married. The pride of the Greeks was
+considerably humbled by a report that their king's proposals
+to several daughters of German princes had been
+rejected; but the king had great reason to congratulate
+himself upon the spirit which induced the daughter of
+the Duke of Oldenburgh to accept his hand. From her
+childhood she had taken an enthusiastic interest in Greek
+history, and it had been her constant wish to visit Greece;
+and when she heard that Otho had been called to the
+throne, she naively expressed an ardent wish to share
+it with him. Several years afterward, by the merest
+accident, she met Otho at a German watering-place, travelling
+with his mother, the Queen of Bavaria, as the
+Count de Missilonghi; and in February last she accompanied
+him to Athens, to share the throne which had
+been the object of her youthful wish.</p>
+
+<p>M. dined at my hotel, and, returning to his own, he
+was picked up and carried to the guardhouse. He started
+for his hotel without a lantern, the requisition to carry
+one being imperative in all the Greek and Turkish cities;
+the guard could not understand a word he said
+until he showed them some money, which made his
+English perfectly intelligible; and they then carried him
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">87</a></span>to a Bavarian corporal, who, after two hours' detention,
+escorted him to his hotel. After that we were rather
+careful about staying out late at night.</p>
+
+<p>"Thursday. I don't know the day of the month." I
+find this in my notes, the caption of a day of business,
+and at this distance of time will not undertake to correct
+the entry. Indeed, I am inclined to think that my notes
+in those days are rather uncertain and imperfect; certainly
+not taken with the precision of one who expected to
+publish them. Nevertheless, the residence of the court,
+the diplomatic corps, and strangers form an agreeable
+society at Athens. I had letters to some of the foreign
+ministers, but did not present them, as I was hardly
+presentable myself without my carpet-bag. On "Thursday,"
+however, in company with Dr. W., I called upon
+Mr. Dawkins, the British minister. Mr. Dawkins went
+to Greece on a special mission, which he supposed
+would detain him six months from home, and had remained
+there ten years. He is a high tory, but retained
+under a whig administration, because his services could
+not well be dispensed with. He gave us much interesting
+information in regard to the present condition
+and future prospects of Greece; and, in answer to my
+suggestion that the United States were not represented
+at all in Greece, not even by a consul, he said, with
+emphasis, "You are better represented than any power
+in Europe. Mr. Hill has more influence here than any
+minister plenipotentiary among us." A few days after,
+when confined to my room by indisposition, Mr. Dawkins
+returned my visit, and again spoke in the same
+terms of high commendation of Mr. Hill. It was pleasing
+to me, and I have no doubt it will be so to Mr. Hill's
+numerous friends in this
+<span class="err" title="original: county">country</span>, to know that a private
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">88</a></span>American citizen, in a position that keeps him aloof
+from politics, was spoken of in such terms by the representative
+of one of the great powers of Europe. I
+had heard it intimated that there was a prospect of Mr.
+Dawkins being transferred to this country, and parted
+with him in the hope at some future day of seeing him
+the representative of his government here.</p>
+
+<p>I might have been presented to the king, but my carpet-bag&mdash;Dr.
+W. borrowed a hat, and was presented;
+the doctor had an old white hat, which he had worn all
+the way from New-York. The tide is rolling backward;
+Athens is borrowing her customs from the barbarous
+nations of the north; and it is part of the etiquette
+to enter a drawing-room with a hat (a black one)
+under the arm. The doctor, in his republican simplicity,
+thought that a hat, good enough to put on his own
+head, was good enough to go into the king's presence;
+but he was advised to the contrary, and took one of Mr.
+Hill's, not very much too large for him. He was presented
+by Dr. &mdash;&mdash;, a German, the king's physician,
+with whom he had discoursed much of the different
+medical systems in Germany and America. Dr. W.
+was much pleased with the king. Did ever a man talk
+with a king who was not pleased with him? But the
+doctor was particularly pleased with King Otho, as the
+latter entered largely into discourse on the doctor's favourite
+theme, Mr. Hill's school, and the cause of education
+in Greece. Indeed, it speaks volumes in favour
+of the young king, that education is one of the things in
+which he takes the deepest interest. The day the doctor
+was to be presented we dined at Mr. Hill's, having made
+arrangements for leaving Athens that night; the doctor
+and M. to return to Europe. In the afternoon, while
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">89</a></span>the doctor remained to be presented, M. and I walked
+down to the Pirćus, now, as in the days of her glory,
+the harbour of Athens. The ancient harbour is about
+five miles from Athens, and was formerly joined to it
+by <i>long walls</i> built of stone of enormous size, sixty
+feet high, and broad enough on the top for two wagons
+to pass abreast. These have long since disappeared,
+and the road is now over a plain shaded a great part of
+the way by groves of olives. As usual at this time of
+day, we met many parties on horseback, sometimes with
+ladies; and I remember particularly the beautiful and
+accomplished daughters of Count Armansbergh, both of
+whom are since married and dead.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> It is a beautiful
+ride, in the afternoon particularly, as then the dark outline
+of the mountains beyond, and the reflections of
+light and shade, give a peculiarly interesting effect to
+the ruins of the Acropolis. Toward the other end we
+paced between the ruins of the old walls, and entered
+upon a scene which reminded me of home. Eight
+months before there was only one house at the Pirćus;
+but, as soon as the court removed to Athens, the old
+harbour revived; and already we saw long ranges of
+stores and warehouses, and all the hurry and bustle of
+one of our rising western towns. A railroad was in
+contemplation, and many other improvements, which
+have since failed; but an <i>omnibus!</i> that most modern
+and commonplace of inventions, is now running regularly
+between the Pirćus and Athens. A friend who
+visited Greece six months after me brought home with
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">90</a></span>him an advertisement printed in Greek, English, French,
+and German, the English being in the words and figures
+following, to wit:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquotin"><p class="center">"ADVERTISEMENT.</p>
+
+<p>"The public are hereby informed, that on the nineteenth instant an omnibus
+will commence running between Athena and the Pirćus, and will continue
+to do so every day at the undermentioned hours until farther notice.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Hours of Departure.</i></p>
+<table summary="schedule">
+<tr>
+<td class="center">
+From Athens.</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td class="center"> From Pirćus.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Half past seven o'clock A.M.</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td>Half past eight o'clock A.M.</td></tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Ten o'clock A.M.</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td>Eleven o'clock A.M.</td></tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Two o'clock P.M.</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td>Three o'clock P.M.</td></tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Half past four P.M.</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td> Half past five P.M.</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>"The price of a seat in the omnibus is one drachme.</p>
+
+<p>"Baggage, if not too bulky and heavy, can be taken on the roof.</p>
+
+<p>"Smoking cannot be allowed in the omnibus, nor can dogs be admitted.</p>
+
+<p>"Small parcels and packages may be sent by this conveyance at a moderate
+charge, and given to the care of the conducteur.</p>
+
+<p>"The omnibus starts from the corner of the Hermes and Ćolus streets at
+Athens and from the bazar at the Pirćus, and will wait five minutes at each
+place, during which period the conducteur will sound his horn.</p>
+
+<p>"Athens, 17th, 29th September, 1836."</p></div>
+
+<p>Old things are passing away, and all things are becoming
+new. For a little while yet we may cling to
+the illusions connected with the past, but the mystery
+is fast dissolving, the darkness is breaking away, and
+Greece, and Rome, and even Egypt herself, henceforward
+claim our attention with objects and events of the
+present hour. Already they have lost much of the deep
+and absorbing interest with which men turned to them
+a generation ago. All the hallowed associations of these
+ancient regions are fading away. We may regret it,
+we may mourn over it, but we <span class="err" title="original: connot">cannot</span> help it. The
+world is marching onward; I have met parties of my
+own townsmen while walking in the silent galleries of
+the Coliseum; I have seen Americans drinking Champagne
+in an excavated dwelling of the ancient Pompeii,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">91</a></span>and I have dined with Englishmen among the ruins of
+Thebes, but, blessed be my fortune, I never rode in an
+omnibus from the Pirćus to Athens.</p>
+
+<p>We put our baggage on board the caique, and lounged
+among the little shops till dark, when we betook ourselves
+to a dirty little coffee-house filled with Greeks
+dozing and smoking pipes. We met there a boat's
+crew of a French man-of-war, waiting for some of the
+officers, who were dining with the French ambassador
+at Athens. One of them had been born to a better condition
+than that of a common sailor. One juvenile indiscretion
+after another had brought him down, and,
+without a single vice, he was fairly on the road to ruin.
+Once he brushed a tear from his eyes as he told us of
+prospects blighted by his own follies; but, rousing himself,
+hurried away, and his reckless laugh soon rose
+above the noise and clamour of his wild companions.</p>
+
+<p>About ten o'clock the doctor came in, drenched with
+rain and up to his knees in mud. We wanted to embark
+immediately, but the appearance of the weather
+was so unfavourable that the captain preferred waiting
+till after midnight. The Greeks went away from
+the coffee-house, the proprietor fell asleep in his seat,
+and we extended ourselves on the tables and chairs;
+and now the fleas, which had been distributed about
+among all the loungers, made a combined onset upon
+us. Life has its cares and troubles, but few know that
+of being given up to the tender mercies of Greek fleas.
+We bore the infliction till human nature could endure
+no longer; and, at about three in the morning, in the
+midst of violent wind and rain, broke out of the coffee-house
+and went in search of our boat. It was very
+dark, but we found her and got on board. She was a
+caique, having an open deck with a small covering over
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">92</a></span>the stern. Under this we crept, and with our cloaks and
+a sailcloth spread over us, our heated blood cooled, and
+we fell asleep. When we woke we were on the way
+to Epidaurus. The weather was raw and cold. We
+passed within a stone's throw of Salamis and Ćgina, and
+at about three o'clock, turning a point which completely
+hid it from view, entered a beautiful little bay, on which
+stands the town of Epidaurus. The old city, the birthplace
+of Esculapius, stands upon a hill projecting into
+the bay, and almost forming an island. In the middle
+of the village is a wooden building containing a large
+chamber, where the Greek delegates, a band of mountain
+warriors, with arms in their hands, "in the name of
+the Greek nation, proclaimed before gods and men its
+independence."</p>
+
+<p>At the locanda there was by chance one bed, which
+not being large enough for three, I slept on the floor.
+At seven o'clock, after a quarrel with our host and paying
+him about half his demand, we set out for Napoli di Romania.
+For about an hour we moved in the valley running
+off from the beautiful shore of Epidaurus; soon the
+valley deepened into a glen, and in an hour we turned
+off on a path that led into the mountains, and, riding
+through wild and rugged ravines, fell into the dry bed
+of a torrent; following which, we came to the Hieron
+Elios, or Sacred Grove of Esculapius. This was the
+great watering-place for the invalids of ancient Greece,
+the prototype of the Cheltenham and Saratoga of modern
+days. It is situated in a valley surrounded by high
+mountains, and was formerly enclosed by walls, within
+which, that the credit of the God might not be impeached,
+<i>no man was allowed to die, and no woman to be delivered</i>.
+Within this enclosure were temples, porticoes
+and fountains, now lying in ruins hardly distinguishable.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">93</a></span>The theatre is the most beautiful and best preserved.
+It is scooped out of the side of the mountain,
+rather more than semicircular in form, and containing
+fifty-four seats. These seats are of pink marble, about
+fifteen inches high and nearly three feet wide. In the
+middle of each seat is a groove, in which, probably,
+woodwork was constructed, to prevent the feet of those
+above from incommoding them who sat below, and also
+to support the backs of an invalid audience. The theatre
+faces the north, and is so arranged that, with the
+mountain towering behind it, the audience was shaded
+nearly all the day. It speaks volumes in favour of the
+intellectual character of the Greeks, that it was their
+favourite recreation to listen to the recitation of their
+poets and players. And their superiority in refinement
+over the Romans is in no way manifested more
+clearly than by the fact, that in the ruined cities of
+the former are found the remains of theatres, and in the
+latter of amphitheatres, showing the barbarous taste of
+the Romans for combats of gladiators and wild beasts.
+It was in beautiful keeping with this intellectual taste of
+the Greeks, that their places of assembling were in the
+open air, amid scenery calculated to elevate the mind;
+and, as I sat on the marble steps of the theatre, I could
+well imagine the high satisfaction with which the Greek,
+under the shade of the impending mountain, himself all
+enthusiasm and passion, rapt in the interest of some
+deep tragedy, would hang upon the strains of Euripides
+or Sophocles. What deep-drawn exclamations, what
+shouts of applause had rung through that solitude, what
+bursts of joy and grief had echoed from those silent
+benches! And then, too, what flirting and coqueting,
+the state of society at the springs in the Grove of Esculapius
+being probably much the same as at Saratoga
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">94</a></span>in our own days. The whole grove is now a scene of
+desolation. The lentisculus is growing between the
+crevices of the broken marble; birds sing undisturbed
+among the bushes; the timid hare steals among the
+ruined fragments; and sometimes the snake is seen
+gliding over the marble steps.</p>
+
+<p>We had expected to increase the interest of our visit
+by taking our noonday refection on the steps of the theatre,
+but it was too cold for a picnic <i>al fresco</i>; and, mounting
+our horses, about two o'clock we came in sight of
+Argos, on the opposite side of the great plain; and in
+half an hour more, turning the mountain, saw Napoli
+di Romania beautifully situated on a gentle elevation
+on the shore of the gulf. The scenery in every direction
+around Napoli is exceedingly beautiful; and, when
+we approached it, bore no marks of the sanguinary
+scenes of the late revolution. The plain was better
+cultivated than any part of the adjacent country; and
+the city contained long ranges of houses and streets,
+with German names, such as Heidecker, Maurer-street,
+&amp;c., and was seemingly better regulated than any other
+city in Greece. We drove up to the Hotel des Quatre
+Nations, the best we had found in Greece, dined at a
+restaurant with a crowd of Bavarian officers and adventurers,
+and passed the evening in the streets and coffee-houses.</p>
+
+<p>The appearance of Otho-street, which is the principal,
+is very respectable; it runs from what was the palace
+to the grand square or esplanade, on one side of
+which are the barracks of the Bavarian soldiers, with a
+park of artillery posted so as to sweep the square and
+principal streets; a speaking comment upon the liberty
+of the Greeks, and the confidence reposed in them by
+the government.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">95</a></span>Everything in Napoli recalls the memory of the brief
+and unfortunate career of Capo d'Istria. Its recovery
+from the horrors of barbarian war, and the thriving appearance
+of the country around, are ascribed to the impulse
+given by his administration. A Greek by birth,
+while his country lay groaning under the Ottoman yoke
+he entered the Russian service, distinguished himself
+in all the diplomatic correspondence during the
+French invasion, was invested with various high offices
+and honours, and subscribed the treaty of Paris in 1815
+as imperial Russian plenipotentiary. He withdrew from
+her service because Russia disapproved the efforts of
+his countrymen to free themselves from the Turkish
+yoke; and, after passing five years in Germany and
+Switzerland, chiefly at Geneva, in 1827 he was called
+to the presidency of Greece. On his arrival at Napoli
+amid the miseries of war and anarchy, he was received
+by the whole people as the only man capable of saving
+their country. Civil war ceased on the very day of his
+arrival, and the traitor Grievas placed in his hands the
+key of the Palimethe. I shall not enter into any speculations
+upon the character of his administration. The
+rank he had attained in a foreign service is conclusive
+evidence of his talents, and his withdrawal from that
+service for the reason stated is as conclusive of his
+patriotism; but from the moment he took into his hands
+the reins of government, he was assailed by every so-called
+liberal press in Europe with the party cry of
+Russian influence. The Greeks were induced to believe
+that he intended to sell them to a stranger; and Capo
+d'Istria, strong in his own integrity, and confidently
+relying on the fidelity and gratitude of his countrymen,
+was assassinated in the streets on his way to mass.
+Young Mauromichalis, the son of the old Bey of Maina,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">96</a></span>struck the fatal blow, and fled for refuge to the house
+of the French ambassador. A gentleman attached to
+the French legation told me that he himself opened
+the door when the murderer rushed in with the bloody
+dagger in his hand, exclaiming, "I have killed the tyrant."
+He was not more than twenty-one, tall and noble
+in his appearance, and animated by the enthusiastic belief
+that he had delivered his country. My informant
+told me that he barred all the doors and windows, and
+went up stairs to inform the minister, who had not yet
+risen. The latter was embarrassed and in doubt what
+he should do. A large crowd gathered round the house;
+but, as yet, they were all Mauromichalis's friends. The
+young enthusiast spoke of what he had done with a high
+feeling of patriotism and pride; and while the clamour
+out of doors was becoming outrageous, he ate his breakfast
+and smoked his pipe with the utmost composure.
+He remained at the embassy more than two hours, and
+until the regular troops drew up before the house. The
+French ambassador, though he at first refused, was
+obliged to deliver him up; and my informant saw him
+shot under a tree outside the gate of Napoli, dying gallantly
+in the firm conviction that he had played the
+Brutus and freed his country from a Cćsar.</p>
+
+<p>The fate of Capo d'Istria again darkened the prospects
+of Greece, and the throne went begging for an
+occupant until it was accepted by the King of Bavaria
+for his second son Otho. The young monarch arrived
+at Napoli in February, eighteen hundred and thirty-three.
+The whole population came out to meet him,
+and the Grecian youth ran breast deep in the water to
+touch his barge as it approached the shore. In February,
+eighteen hundred and thirty-four, it was decided
+to establish Athens as the capital. The propriety of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">97</a></span>this removal has been seriously questioned, for Napoli
+possessed advantages in her location, harbour, fortress
+and a town already built; but the King of Bavaria, a
+scholar and an antiquary, was influenced more, perhaps,
+by classical feeling than by regard for the best interests
+of Greece. Napoli has received a severe blow
+from the removal of the seat of government; still it was
+by far the most European in its appearance of any city
+I had seen in Greece. It had several restaurants and
+coffee-houses, which were thronged all the evening with
+Bavarian officers and broken-down European adventurers,
+discussing the internal affairs of that unfortunate
+country, which men of every nation seemed to think
+they had a right to assist in governing. Napoli had
+always been the great gathering-place of the phil-Hellenists,
+and many appropriating to themselves that
+sacred name were hanging round it still. All over
+Europe thousands of men are trained up to be shot at
+for so much per day; the soldier's is as regular a business
+as that of the lawyer or merchant, and there is
+always a large class of turbulent spirits constantly on
+the look-out for opportunities, and ever ready with their
+swords to carve their way to fortune. I believe that there
+were men who embarked in the cause of Greece with
+as high and noble purposes as ever animated the warrior;
+but of many, there is no lack of charity in saying that,
+however good they might be as fighters, they were not
+much as men; and I am sorry to add that, from the
+accounts I heard in Greece, some of the American phil-Hellenists
+were rather shabby fellows. Mr. M., then
+resident in Napoli, was accosted one day in the streets
+by a young man, who asked him where he could find
+General Jarvis. "What do you want with him?" said
+Mr. M. "I hope to obtain a commission in his army."
+"Do you see that dirty fellow yonder?" said Mr. M.,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">98</a></span>pointing to a ragged patriot passing at the moment;
+"well, twenty such fellows compose Jarvis's army, and
+Jarvis himself is no better off." "Well, then," said
+the young <i>American</i>, "I believe I'll join the Turks!"
+Allen, another American patriot, was hung at Constantinople.
+One bore the sacred name of Washington;
+a brave but unprincipled man. Mr. M. had heard him
+say, that if the devil himself should raise a regiment
+and would give him a good commission, he would willingly
+march under him. He was struck by a shot from
+the fortress of Napoli while directing a battery against
+it; was taken on board his Britannic majesty's ship Asia,
+and breathed his last uttering curses on his country.</p>
+
+<p>There were others, however, who redeemed the
+American character. The agents sent out by the Greek
+committee (among them our townsmen, Messrs. Post
+and Stuyvesant), under circumstances of extraordinary
+difficulty fulfilled the charitable purposes of their mission
+with such zeal and discretion as to relieve the
+wants of a famishing people, and secure the undying
+gratitude of the Greeks. Dr. Russ, another of the
+agents, established an American hospital at Poros, and,
+under the most severe privations, devoted himself gratuitously
+to attendance upon the sick and wounded.
+Dr. Howe, one of the earliest American phil-Hellenists,
+in the darkest hour of the revolution, and at a time when
+the Greeks were entirely destitute of all medical aid,
+with an honourable enthusiasm, and without any hope
+of pecuniary reward, entered the service as surgeon,
+was the fellow-labourer of Dr. Russ in establishing the
+American hospital, and, at the peril of his life, remained
+with them during almost the whole of their dreadful
+struggle. Colonel Miller, the principal agent, now
+resident in Vermont, besides faithfully performing the
+duties of his trust, entered the army, and conducted himself
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">99</a></span>with such distinguished gallantry that he was called
+by the Greek braves the American Delhi, or Daredevil.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> They married two brothers, the young princes Cantacuzenes. Some
+scruples being raised against this double alliance on the score of consanguinity,
+the difficulty was removed by each couple going to separate
+churches with separate priests to pronounce the mystic words at precisely
+the same moment; so that neither could be said to espouse his sister-in-law.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> In the previous editions of his work, the author's remarks were so
+general as to reflect upon the character of individuals who stand in our
+community above reproach. The author regrets that the carelessness of
+his expressions should have wounded where he never intended, and hopes
+the gentlemen affected will do him the justice to believe that he would not
+wantonly injure any man's character or feelings.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="l65" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+
+<div class="chapblock"><p>Argos.&mdash;Tomb of Agamemnon.&mdash;Mycenć.&mdash;
+Gate of the <span class="err" title="original: Lyons">Lions</span>.&mdash;A Misfortune.&mdash;A
+Midnight Quarrel.&mdash;Gratitude of a Greek Family.&mdash;Megara.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">In</span> the morning, finding a difficulty in procuring
+horses, some of the loungers about the hotel told us
+there was a carriage in Napoli, and we ordered it to
+be brought out, and soon after saw moving majestically
+down the principal street a bella carozza, imported by
+its enterprising proprietor from the Strada Toledo at
+Naples. It was painted a bright flaring yellow, and
+had a big breeched Albanian for coachman. While
+preparing to embark, a Greek came up with two horses,
+and we discharged the bella carozza. My companion
+hired the horses for Padras, and I threw my cloak on
+one of them and followed on foot.</p>
+
+<p>The plain of Argos is one of the most beautiful I ever
+saw. On every side except toward the sea it is bounded
+by mountains, and the contrast between these mountains,
+the plain, and the sea is strikingly beautiful.
+The sun was beating upon it with intense heat; the
+labourers were almost naked, or in several places lying
+asleep on the ground, while the tops of the mountains
+were covered with snow. I walked across the
+whole plain, being only six miles, to Argos. This ancient
+city is long since in ruins; her thirty temples, her
+costly sepulchres, her gymnasium, and her numerous
+and magnificent monuments and statues have disappeared,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">100</a></span>and the only traces of her former greatness are
+some remains of her Cyclopean walls, and a ruined
+theatre cut in the rock and of magnificent proportions.
+Modern Argos is nothing more than a straggling village.
+Mr. Riggs, an American missionary, was stationed
+there, but was at that time at Athens with an invalid
+wife. I was still on foot, and wandered up and down
+the principal street looking for a horse. Every Greek
+in Argos soon knew my business, and all kinds of four-legged
+animals were brought to me at exorbitant prices.
+When I was poring over the Iliad I little thought that
+I should ever visit Argos; still less that I should create
+a sensation in the ancient city of the Danai; but man
+little knows for what he is reserved.</p>
+
+<p>Argos has been so often visited that Homer is out of
+date. Every middy from a Mediterranean cruiser has
+danced on the steps of her desolate theatre, and, instead
+of busying myself with her ancient glories, I
+roused half the population in hiring a horse. In fact,
+in this ancient city I soon became the centre of a
+regular horsemarket. Every rascally jockey swore
+that his horse was the best, and, according to the descendants
+of the respectable sons of Atreus, blindness,
+lameness, spavin, and staggers were a recommendation.
+A Bavarian officer, whom I had met in the bazars,
+came to my assistance, and stood by me while I
+made my bargain. I had more regard to the guide
+than the horse; and picking out one who had been
+particularly noisy, hired him to conduct me to Corinth
+and Athens. He was a lad of about twenty, with a
+bright sparkling eye, who, laughing roguishly at his
+unsuccessful competitors, wanted to pitch me at once
+on the horse and be off. I joined my companions, and
+in a few minutes we left Argos.</p>
+
+<p>The plain of Argos has been immortalized by poetic
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">101</a></span>genius as the great gathering-place of the kings and
+armies that assembled for the siege of Troy. To the
+scholar and poet few plains in the world are more interesting.
+It carries him back to the heroic ages, to the
+history of times bordering on the fabulous, when fact
+and fiction are so beautifully blended that we would not
+separate them if we could. I had but a little while longer
+to remain with my friends, for we were approaching
+the point where our roads separated, and about eleven
+o'clock we halted and exchanged our farewell greetings.
+We parted in the middle of the plain, they to return to
+Padras and Europe, and I for the tomb of Agamemnon,
+and back to Athens, and I hardly know where besides.
+Dr. W. I did not meet again until my return home.
+About a year afterward I arrived in Antwerp in the evening
+from Rotterdam. The city was filled with strangers,
+and I was denied admission at a third hotel, when a young
+man brushed by me in the doorway, and I recognised
+Maxwell. I hailed him, but in cap and cloak, and with
+a large red shawl around my neck, he did not know me.
+I unrolled and discovered myself, and it is needless to
+say that I did not leave the hotel that night. It was
+his very last day of two years' travel on the Continent;
+he had taken his passage in the steamer for London,
+and one day later I should have missed him altogether.
+I can give but a faint idea of the pleasure of this meeting.
+He gave me the first information of the whereabout
+of Dr. W.; we talked nearly all night, and about noon
+the next day I again bade him farewell on board the
+steamer.</p>
+
+<p>I have for some time neglected our servant. When
+we separated, the question was who should <i>not</i> keep him.
+We were all heartily tired of him, and I would not have
+had him with me on any account. Still, at the moment
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">102</a></span>of parting in that wild and distant region, never expecting
+to see him again, I felt some slight leaning toward him.
+Touching the matter of shirts, it will not be surprising
+to a man of the world that, at the moment of parting,
+I had one of M.'s on my back; and, in justice to him, I
+must say it was a very good one, and lasted a long time.
+A friend once wrote to me on a like occasion not to wear
+his out of its turn, but M. laid no such restriction upon
+me. But this trifling gain did not indemnify me for the
+loss of my friends. I had broken the only link that
+connected me with home, and was setting out alone for
+I knew not where. I felt at once the great loss I had
+sustained, for my young muleteer could speak only his
+own language, and, as Queen Elizabeth said to Sir Walter
+Raleigh of her Hebrew, we had "forgotten our"
+Greek.</p>
+
+<p>But on that classical soil I ought not to have been
+lonely. I should have conjured up the ghosts of the
+departed Atridć, and held converse on their own ground
+with Homer's heroes. Nevertheless, I was not in the
+mood; and, entirely forgetting the glories of the past, I
+started my horse into a gallop. My companion followed
+on a full run, close at my heels, belabouring my horse
+with a stick, which when he broke, he pelted him with
+stones; indeed, this mode of scampering over the ground
+seemed to hit his humour, for he shouted, hurraed, and
+whipped, and sometimes laying hold of the tail of the
+beast, was dragged along several paces with little effort
+of his own. I soon tired of this, and made signs to him
+to stop; but it was his turn now, and I was obliged to
+lean back till I reached him with my cane before I could
+make him let go his hold, and then he commenced
+shouting and pelting again with stones.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">103</a></span>In this way we approached the village of Krabata,
+about a mile below the ruins of Mycenć, and the most
+miserable place I had seen in Greece. With the fertile
+plain of Argos uncultivated before them, the inhabitants
+exhibited a melancholy picture of the most abject poverty.
+As I rode through, crowds beset me with outstretched
+arms imploring charity; and a miserable old
+woman, darting out of a wretched hovel, laid her gaunt
+and bony hand upon my leg, and attempted to stop me.
+I shrunk from her grasp, and, under the effect of a
+sudden impulse, threw myself off on the other side, and
+left my horse in her hands.</p>
+
+<p>Hurrying through the village, a group of boys ran
+before me, crying out "Agamemnon," "Agamemnon."
+I followed, and they conducted me to the tomb of "the
+king of kings," a gigantic structure, still in good preservation,
+of a conical form, covered with turf; the stone
+over the door is twenty-seven feet long and seventeen
+wide, larger than any hewn stone in the world except
+Pompey's Pillar. I entered, my young guides going
+before with torches, and walked within and around this
+ancient sepulchre. A worthy Dutchman, Herman Van
+Creutzer, has broached a theory that the Trojan war is a
+mere allegory, and that no such person as Agamemnon
+ever existed. Shame upon the cold-blooded heretic.
+I have my own sins to answer for in that way, for I
+have laid my destroying hand upon many cherished illusions;
+but I would not, if I could, destroy the mystery
+that overhangs the heroic ages. The royal sepulchre
+was forsaken and empty; the shepherd drives within it
+his flock for shelter; the traveller sits under its shade
+to his noonday meal; and, at the moment, a goat was
+dozing quietly in one corner. He started as I entered,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">104</a></span>and seemed to regard me as an intruder; and when I
+flared before him the light of my torch, he rose up to
+butt me. I turned away and left him in quiet possession.
+The boys were waiting outside, and crying
+"Mycenć," "Mycenć," led me away. All was solitude,
+and I saw no marks of a city until I reached the
+relics of her Cyclopean walls. I never felt a greater
+degree of reverence than when I approached the lonely
+ruins of Mycenć. At Argos I spent most of my time
+in the horsemarket, and I had galloped over the great
+plain as carelessly as if it had been the road to Harlem;
+but all the associations connected with this most interesting
+ground here pressed upon me at once. Its extraordinary
+antiquity, its gigantic remains, and its utter
+and long-continued desolation, came home to my
+heart. I moved on to the Gate of the Lions, and stood
+before it a long time without entering. A broad street
+led to it between two immense parallel walls; and this
+street may, perhaps, have been a market-place. Over
+the gate are two lions rampant, like the supporters of a
+modern coat-of-arms, rudely carved, and supposed to be
+the oldest sculptured stone in Greece. Under this very
+gate Agamemnon led out his forces for the siege of
+Troy; three thousand years ago he saw them filing before
+him, glittering in brass, in all the pomp and panoply
+of war; and I held in my hand a book which told me
+that this city was so old that, more than seventeen hundred
+years ago, travellers came as I did to visit its ruins;
+and that Pausanias had found the Gate of the Lions in
+the same state in which I beheld it now. A great part
+is buried by the rubbish of the fallen city. I crawled
+under, and found myself within the walls, and then
+mounted to the height on which the city stood. It was
+covered with a thick soil and a rich carpet of grass.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">105</a></span>My boys left me, and I was alone. I walked all over
+it, following the line of the walls. I paused at the great
+blocks of stone, the remnants of Cyclopic masonry, the
+work of wandering giants. The heavens were unclouded,
+and the sun was beaming upon it with genial
+warmth. Nothing could exceed the quiet beauty of the
+scene. I became entangled in the long grass, and picked
+up wild flowers growing over long-buried dwellings.
+Under it are immense caverns, their uses now unknown;
+and the earth sounded hollow under my feet, as if I were
+treading on the sepulchre of a buried city. I looked across
+the plain to Argos; all was as beautiful as when Homer
+sang its praises; the plain, and the mountains, and the
+sea were the same, but the once magnificent city, her numerous
+statues and gigantic temples, were gone for ever;
+and but a few remains were left to tell the passing traveller
+the story of her fallen greatness. I could have
+remained there for hours; I could have gone again and
+again, for I had not found a more interesting spot in
+Greece; but my reveries were disturbed by the appearance
+of my muleteer and my juvenile escort. They
+pointed to the sun as an intimation that the day was
+passing; and crying "Cavallo," "Cavallo," hurried me
+away. To them the ruined city was a playground; they
+followed capering behind; and, in descending, three or
+four of them rolled down upon me; they hurried me
+through the Gate of the Lions, and I came out with my
+pantaloons, my only pantaloons, rent across the knee
+almost irreparably. In an instant I was another man;
+I railed at the ruins for their strain upon wearing apparel,
+and bemoaned my unhappy lot in not having
+with me a needle and thread. I looked up to the old
+gate with a sneer. This was the city that Homer had
+made such a noise about; a man could stand on the citadel
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">106</a></span>and almost throw a stone beyond the boundary-line
+of Agamemnon's kingdom. In full sight, and just at the
+other side of the plain, was the kingdom of Argos. The
+little state of Rhode Island would make a bigger kingdom
+than both of them together.</p>
+
+<p>But I had no time for deep meditation, having a long
+journey to Corinth before me. Fortunately, my young
+Greek had no tire in him; he started me off on a gallop,
+whipping and pelting my horse with stones, and
+would have hurried me on, over rough and smooth, till
+either he, or I, or the horse broke down, if I had not
+jumped off and walked. As soon as I dismounted he
+mounted, and then he moved so leisurely that I had to
+hurry him on in turn. In this way we approached the
+range of mountains separating the plain of Argos from
+the Isthmus of Corinth. Entering the pass, we rode
+along a mountain torrent, of which the channel-bed was
+then dry, and ascended to the summit of the first range.
+Looking back, the scene was magnificent. On my
+right and left were the ruined heights of Argos and Mycenć;
+before me, the towering Acropolis of Napoli di
+Romania; at my feet, the rich plain of Argos, extending
+to the shore of the sea; and beyond, the island-studded
+Ćgean. I turned away with a feeling of regret that, in
+all probability, I should never see it more.</p>
+
+<p>I moved on, and in a narrow pass, not wide enough
+to turn my horse if I had been disposed to take to my
+heels, three men rose up from behind a rock, armed to
+the teeth with long guns, pistols, yataghans, and sheepskin
+cloaks&mdash;the dress of the klept or mountain robber&mdash;and
+altogether presenting a most diabolically cutthroat
+appearance. If they had asked me for my purse
+I should have considered it all regular, and given up
+the remnant of my stock of borrowed money without a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">107</a></span>murmur; but I was relieved from immediate apprehension
+by the cry of passe porta. King Otho has begun
+the benefits of civilized government in Greece by introducing
+passports, and mountain warriors were stationed
+in the different passes to examine strangers. They
+acted, however, as if they were more used to demanding
+purses than passports, for they sprang into the road
+and rattled the butts of their guns on the rock with a
+violence that was somewhat startling. Unluckily, my
+passport had been made out with those of my companions,
+and was in their possession, and when we
+parted neither thought of it; and this demand to me,
+who had nothing to lose, was worse than that of my
+purse. A few words of explanation might have relieved
+me from all difficulty, but my friends could not understand
+a word I said. I was vexed at the idea of being
+sent back, and thought I would try the effect of a little
+impudence; so, crying out "Americanos," I attempted
+to pass on; but they answered me "Nix," and turned
+my horse's head toward Argos. The scene, which a
+few moments before had seemed so beautiful, was now
+perfectly detestable. Finding that bravado had not the
+desired effect, I lowered my tone and tried a bribe;
+this was touching the right chord; half a dollar removed
+all suspicions from the minds of these trusty
+guardians of the pass; and, released from their attentions,
+I hurried on.</p>
+
+<p>The whole road across the mountain is one of the
+wildest in Greece. It is cut up by numerous ravines,
+sufficiently deep and dangerous, which at every step
+threaten destruction to the incautious traveller. During
+the late revolution the soil of Greece had been
+drenched with blood; and my whole journey had been
+through cities and over battle-fields memorable for
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">108</a></span>scenes of slaughter unparalleled in the annals of modern
+war. In the narrowest pass of the mountains my
+guide made gestures indicating that it had been the
+scene of a desperate battle. When the Turks, having
+penetrated to the plain of Argos, were compelled to fall
+back again upon Corinth, a small band of Greeks, under
+Niketas and Demetrius Ypsilanti, waylaid them in
+this pass. Concealing themselves behind the rocks,
+and waiting till the pass was filled, all at once they
+opened a tremendous fire upon the solid column below,
+and the pass was instantly filled with slain. Six thousand
+were cut down in a few hours. The terrified survivers
+recoiled for a moment; but, as if impelled by an
+invisible power, rushed on to meet their fate. "The
+Mussulman rode into the passes with his sabre in his
+sheath and his hands before his eyes, the victim of destiny."
+The Greeks again poured upon them a shower
+of lead, and several thousand more were cut down before
+the Moslem army accomplished the passage of this
+terrible defile.</p>
+
+<p>It was nearly dark when we rose to the summit of
+the last range of mountains, and saw, under the rich
+lustre of the setting sun, the Acropolis of Corinth, with
+its walls and turrets, towering to the sky, the plain
+forming the Isthmus of Corinth; the dark, quiet waters
+of the Gulf of Lepanto; and the gloomy mountains of
+Cithćron, and Helicon, and Parnassus covered with
+snow. It was after dark when we passed the region of
+the Nemean Grove, celebrated as the haunt of the lion
+and the scene of the first of the twelve labours of Hercules.
+We were yet three hours from Corinth; and,
+if the old lion had still been prowling in the grove, we
+could not have made more haste to escape its gloomy
+solitude. Reaching the plain, we heard behind us the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">109</a></span>clattering of horses' hoofs, at first sounding in the stillness
+of evening as if a regiment of cavalry or a troop
+of banditti was at our heels, but it proved to be only a
+single traveller, belated like ourselves, and hurrying on
+to Corinth. I could see through the darkness the shining
+butts of his pistols and hilt of his yataghan, and took
+his dimensions with more anxiety, perhaps, than exactitude.
+He recognised my Frank dress; and accosted
+me in bad Italian, which he had picked up at Padras
+(being just the Italian in which I could meet him on
+equal ground), and told me that he had met a party of
+Franks on the road to Padras, whom, from his description,
+I recognised as my friends.</p>
+
+<p>It was nearly midnight when we rattled up to the
+gate of the old locanda. The yard was thronged with
+horses and baggage, and Greek and Bavarian soldiers.
+On the balcony stood my old brigand host, completely
+crestfallen, and literally turned out of doors in his own
+house; a detachment of Bavarian soldiers had arrived
+that afternoon from Padras, and taken entire possession,
+giving him and his wife the freedom of the outside.
+He did not recognise me, and, taking me for an Englishman,
+began, "Sono Inglesi Signor" (he had lived
+at Corfu under the British dominion); and, telling me
+the whole particulars of his unceremonious ouster,
+claimed, through me, the arm of the British government
+to resent the injury to a British subject; his wife was
+walking about in no very gentle mood, but, in truth,
+very much the contrary. I did not speak to her, and she
+did not trust herself to speak to me; but, addressing
+myself to the husband, introduced the subject of my own
+immediate wants, a supper and night's lodging. The
+landlord told me, however, that the Bavarians had eaten
+everything in the house, and he had not a room, bed,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">110</a></span>blanket, or coverlet to give me; that I might lie down
+in the hall or the piazza, but there was no other place.</p>
+
+<p>I was outrageous at the hard treatment he had received
+from the Bavarians. It was too bad to turn an honest
+innkeeper out of his house, and deny him the pleasure
+of accommodating a traveller who had toiled hard all
+day, with the perfect assurance of finding a bed at night.
+I saw, however, that there was no help for it; and noticing
+an opening at one end of the hall, went into a
+sort of storeroom filled with all kinds of rubbish, particularly
+old barrels. An unhinged door was leaning
+against the wall, and this I laid across two of the barrels,
+pulled off my coat and waistcoat, and on this extemporaneous
+couch went to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>I was roused from my first nap by a terrible fall
+against my door. I sprang up; the moon was shining
+through the broken casement, and, seizing a billet of
+wood, I waited another attack. In the mean time I heard
+the noise of a violent scuffling on the floor of the hall,
+and, high above all, the voices of husband and wife,
+his evidently coming from the floor in a deprecating
+tone, and hers in a high towering passion, and enforced
+with severe blows of a stick. As soon as I was fairly
+awake I saw through the thing at once. It was only a
+little matrimonial <i>tęte-ŕ-tęte</i>. The unamiable humour in
+which I had left them against the Bavarians had ripened
+into a private quarrel between themselves, and she had
+got him down, and was pummelling him with a broomstick
+or something of that kind. It seemed natural and
+right enough, and was, moreover, no business of mine;
+and remembering that whoever interferes between man
+and wife is sure to have both against him, I kept quiet.
+Others, however, were not so considerate, and the occupants
+of the different rooms tumbled into the hall in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">111</a></span>every variety of fancy night-gear, among whom was one
+whose only clothing was a military coat and cap, with
+a sword in his hand. When the hubbub was at its highest
+I looked out, and found, as I expected, the husband
+and wife standing side by side, she still brandishing the
+stick, and both apparently outrageous at everything and
+everybody around them. I congratulated myself upon
+my superior knowledge of human nature, and went back
+to my bed on the door.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning I was greatly surprised to find that,
+instead of whipping her husband, she had been taking
+his part. Two German soldiers, already half intoxicated,
+had come into the hall, and insisted upon having
+more wine; the host refused, and when they moved toward
+my sleeping place, where the wine was kept, he
+interposed, and all came down together with the noise
+which had woke me. His wife came to his aid, and
+the blows which, in my simplicity, I had supposed to
+be falling upon him, were bestowed on the two Bavarians.
+She told me the story herself; and when she complained
+to the officers, they had capped the climax of
+her passion by telling her that her husband deserved
+more than he got. She was still in a perfect fury; and
+as she looked at them in the yard arranging for their departure,
+she added, in broken English, with deep and,
+as I thought, ominous passion, "'Twas better to be under
+the Turks."</p>
+
+<p>I learned all this while I was making my toilet on the
+piazza, that is, while she was pouring water on my hands
+for me to wash; and, just as I had finished, my eye fell
+upon my muleteer assisting the soldiers in loading their
+horses. At first I did not notice the subdued expression
+of his usually bright face, nor that he was loading my
+horse with some of their camp equipage; but all at
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">112</a></span>once it struck me that they were pressing him into their
+service. I was already roused by what the woman had
+told me, and, resolving that they should not serve me
+as they did the Greeks, I sprang off the piazza, cleared
+my way through the crowd, and going up to my horse,
+already staggering under a burden poised on his back,
+but not yet fastened, put my hand under one side and
+tumbled it over with a crash on the other. The soldiers
+cried out furiously; and, while they were sputtering
+German at me, I sprang into the saddle. I was
+in admirable pugilistic condition, with nothing on but
+pantaloons, boots, and shirt, and just in a humour to get a
+whipping, if nothing worse; but I detested the manner in
+which the Bavarians lorded it in Greece; and riding up
+to a group of officers who were staring at me, told them
+that I had just tumbled their luggage off my horse, and
+they must bear in mind that they could not deal with
+strangers quite so arbitrarily as they did with the Greeks.
+The commandant was disposed to be indignant and
+very magnificent; but some of the others making suggestions
+to him, he said he understood I had only hired
+my horse as far as Corinth; but, if I had taken him for
+Athens, he would not interfere; and, apologizing on the
+ground of the necessities of government, ordered him
+to be released. I apologized back again, returned the
+horse to my guide, whose eyes sparkled with pleasure,
+and went in for my hat and coat.</p>
+
+<p>I dressed myself, and, telling him to be ready when
+I had finished my breakfast, went out expecting to start
+forthwith; but, to my surprise, my host told me that
+the lad refused to go any farther without an increase of
+pay; and, sure enough, there he stood, making no preparation
+for moving. The cavalcade of soldiers had
+gone, and taken with them every horse in Corinth, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">113</a></span>the young rascal intended to take advantage of my necessity.
+I told him that I had hired him to Athens for
+such a price, and that I had saved him from impressment,
+and consequent loss of wages, by the soldiers,
+which he admitted. I added that he was a young rascal,
+which he neither admitted nor denied, but answered
+with a roguish laugh. The extra price was no object
+compared with the vexation of a day's detention; but a
+traveller is apt to think that all the world is conspiring
+to impose upon him, and, at times, to be very resolute
+in resisting. I was peculiarly so then, and, after a few
+words, set off to complain to the head of the police.
+Without any ado he trotted along with me, and we proceeded
+together, followed by a troup of idlers, I in something
+of a passion, he perfectly cool, good-natured, and
+considerate, merely keeping out of the way of my stick.
+Hurrying along near the columns of the old temple, I
+stumbled, and he sprang forward to assist me, his face
+expressing great interest, and a fear that I had hurt myself;
+and when I walked toward a house which I had
+mistaken for the bureau of the police department, he
+ran after me to direct me right. All this mollified me
+considerably; and, before we reached the door, the
+affair began to strike me as rather ludicrous.</p>
+
+<p>I stated my case, however, to the eparchos, a Greek
+in Frank dress, who spoke French with great facility,
+and treated me with the greatest consideration. He
+was so full of professions that I felt quite sure of a decision
+in my favour; but, assuming my story to be true,
+and without asking the lad for his excuse, he shrugged
+his shoulders, and said it would take time to examine
+the matter, and, if I was in a hurry, I had better submit.
+To be sure, he said, the fellow was a great rogue,
+and he gave his countrymen in general a character that
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">114</a></span>would not tell well in print; but added, in their justification,
+that they were imposed upon and oppressed by
+everybody, and therefore considered that they had a
+right to take their advantage whenever an opportunity
+offered. The young man sat down on the floor, and
+looked at me with the most frank, honest, and open expression,
+as if perfectly unconscious that he was doing
+anything wrong. I could not but acknowledge that
+some excuse for him was to be drawn from the nature
+of the school in which he had been brought up, and,
+after a little parley, agreed to pay him the additional
+price, if, at the end of the journey, I was satisfied with
+his conduct. This was enough; his face brightened,
+he sprang up and took my hand, and we left the house
+the best friends in the world. He seemed to be hurt as
+well as surprised at my finding fault with him, for to
+him all seemed perfectly natural; and, to seal the reconciliation,
+he hurried on ahead, and had the horse
+ready when I reached the locanda. I took leave of my
+host with a better feeling than before, and set out a
+second time on the road to Athens.</p>
+
+<p>At Kalamaki, while walking along the shore, a
+Greek who spoke the lingua Franca came from on
+board one of the little caiques, and, when he learned
+that I was an American, described to me the scene that
+had taken place on that beach upon the arrival of provisions
+from America; when thousands of miserable
+beings who had fled from the blaze of their dwellings,
+and lived for months upon plants and roots; grayheaded
+men, mothers with infants at their breasts, emaciated
+with hunger and almost frantic with despair, came
+down from their mountain retreats to receive the welcome
+relief. He might well remember the scene, for
+he had been one of that starving people; and he took
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">115</a></span>me to his house, and showed me his wife and four
+children, now nearly all grown, telling me that they
+had all been rescued from death by the generosity of
+my countrymen. I do not know why, but in those
+countries it did not seem unmanly for a bearded and
+whiskered man to weep; I felt anything but contempt
+for him when, with his heart overflowing and his eyes
+filled with tears, he told me, when I returned home, to
+say to my countrymen that I had seen and talked with
+a recipient of their bounty; and though the Greeks
+might never repay us, they could never forget what
+we had done for them. I remembered the excitement
+in our country in their behalf, in colleges and schools,
+from the graybearded senator to the prattling schoolboy,
+and reflected that, perhaps, my mite, cast carelessly
+upon the waters, had saved from the extremity
+of misery this grateful family. I wish that the
+cold-blooded prudence which would have checked our
+honest enthusiasm in favour of a people, under calamities
+and horrors worse than ever fell to the lot of man
+struggling to be free, could have listened to the gratitude
+of this Greek family. With deep interest I bade
+them farewell, and, telling my guide to follow with my
+horse, walked over to the foot of the mountain.</p>
+
+<p>Ascending, I saw in one of the openings of the road
+a packhorse and a soldier in the Bavarian uniform, and,
+hoping to find some one to talk with, I hailed him.
+He was on the top of the mountain, so far off that he
+did not hear me; and when, with the help of my
+Greek, I had succeeded in gaining his attention, he
+looked for some time without being able to see me.
+When he did, however, he waited; but, to my no small
+disappointment, he answered my first question with the
+odious "Nix." We tried each other in two or three
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">116</a></span>dialects; but, finding it of no use, I sat down to rest,
+and he, for courtesy, joined me; my young Greek, in
+the spirit of good-fellowship, doing the same. He was
+a tall, noble-looking fellow, and, like myself, a stranger
+in Greece; and, though we could not say so, it was understood
+that we were glad to meet and travel together
+as comrades. The tongue causes more evils than the
+sword; and, as we were debarred the use of this mischievous
+member, and walked all day side by side, seldom
+three paces apart, before night we were sworn
+friends.</p>
+
+<p>About five o'clock in the afternoon we arrived at
+Megara. A group of Bavarian soldiers was lounging
+round the door of the khan, who welcomed their expected
+comrade and me as his companion. My friend
+left me, and soon returned with the compliments of the
+commandant, and an invitation to visit him in the evening.
+I had, however, accepted a prior invitation from
+the soldiers for a rendezvous in the locanda. I wandered
+till dark among the ruined houses of the town,
+thought of Euclid and Alexander the Great, and returning,
+went up to the same room in which I had slept with
+my friends, pored over an old map of Greece hanging on
+the wall, made a few notes, and throwing myself back
+on a sort of divan, while thinking what I should do fell
+asleep.</p>
+
+<p>About ten o'clock I was roused by the loud roar of a
+chorus, not like a sudden burst, but a thing that seemed
+to have swelled up to that point by degrees; and rubbing
+my eyes, and stumbling down stairs, I entered
+the banqueting hall; a long, rough wooden table extended
+the whole length of the room, supplied with only
+two articles, wine-flagons and tobacco-pouches; forty
+or fifty soldiers were sitting round it, smoking pipes
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">117</a></span>and singing with all their souls, and, at the moment I
+entered, waving their pipes to the dying cadence of a
+hunting chorus. Then followed a long thump on the
+table, and they all rose; my long travelling friend, with
+a young soldier who spoke a little French, came up, and,
+escorting me to the head of the table, gave me a seat
+by the side of the chairman. One of them attempted
+to administer a cup of wine, and the other thrust at me
+the end of a pipe, and I should have been obliged to
+kick and abscond but for the relief afforded me by the
+entrance of another new-comer. This was no other
+than the corporal's wife; and if I had been received
+warmly, she was greeted with enthusiasm. Half the
+table sprang forward to escort her, two of them collared
+the president and hauled him off his seat, and the whole
+company, by acclamation, installed her in his place.
+She accepted it without any hesitation, while two of
+them, with clumsy courtesy, took off her bonnet, which
+I, sitting at her right hand, took charge of. All then resumed
+their places, and the revel went on more gayly
+than ever. The lady president was about thirty, plainly
+but neatly dressed, and, though not handsome, had
+a frank, amiable, and good-tempered expression, indicating
+that greatest of woman's attributes, a good heart.
+In fact, she looked what the young man at my side told
+me she was, the peacemaker of the regiment; and he
+added, that they always tried to have her at their convivial
+meetings, for when she was among them the brawling
+spirits were kept down, and every man would be
+ashamed to quarrel in her presence. There was no
+chivalry, no heroic devotion about them, but their manner
+toward her was as speaking a tribute as was ever
+paid to the influence of woman; and I question whether
+beauty in her bower, surrounded by belted knights and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">118</a></span>barons bold, ever exercised in her more exalted sphere
+a more happy influence. I talked with her, and with
+the utmost simplicity she told me that the soldiers all
+loved her; that they were all kind to her, and she looked
+upon them all as brothers. We broke up at about
+twelve o'clock with a song, requiring each person to
+take the hand of his neighbour; one of her hands fell
+to me, and I took it with a respect seldom surpassed in
+touching the hand of woman; for I felt that she was
+cheering the rough path of a soldier's life, and, among
+scenes calculated to harden the heart, reminding them
+of mothers, and sisters, and sweethearts at home.</p>
+
+<hr class="l65" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+
+<div class="chapblock"><p>A Dreary Funeral.&mdash;Marathon.&mdash;Mount Pentelicus.&mdash;A Mystery.&mdash;Woes
+of a Lover.&mdash;Reveries of Glory.&mdash;Scio's Rocky Isle.&mdash;A blood-stained
+Page of History.&mdash;A Greek Prelate.&mdash;Desolation.&mdash;The Exile's Return.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Early</span> in the morning I again started. In a little
+khan at Eleusis I saw three or four Bavarian soldiers
+drinking, and ridiculing the Greek proprietor, calling
+him patrioti and capitani. The Greek bore their gibes
+and sneers without a word; but there was a deadly expression
+in his look, which seemed to say, "I bide my
+time;" and I remember then thinking that the Bavarians
+were running up an account which would one day
+be settled with blood. In fact, the soldiers went too
+far; and, as I thought, to show off before me, one of
+them slapped the Greek on the back, and made him
+spill a measure of wine which he was carrying to a
+customer, when the latter turned upon him like lightning,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">119</a></span>threw him down, and would have strangled him if
+he had not been pulled off by the by-standers. Indeed,
+the Greeks had already learned both their intellectual
+and physical superiority over the Bavarians; and, a
+short time before, a party of soldiers sent to subdue a
+band of Maniote insurgents had been captured, and,
+after a farce of selling them at auction at a dollar a head,
+were kicked, and whipped, and sent off.</p>
+
+<p>About four o'clock I arrived once more at Athens,
+dined at my old hotel, and passed the evening at Mr.
+Hill's.</p>
+
+<p>The next day I lounged about the city. I had been
+more than a month without my carpet-bag, and the
+way in which I managed during that time is a thing
+between my travelling companions and myself. A prudent
+Scotchman used to boast of a careful nephew,
+who, in travelling, instead of leaving some of his clothes
+at every hotel on the road, always brought home <i>more</i>
+than he took away with him. I was a model of this
+kind of carefulness while my opportunities lasted; but
+my companions had left me, and this morning I went to
+the bazars and bought a couple of shirts. Dressed up
+in one of them, I strolled outside the walls; and, while
+sitting in the shadow of a column of the Temple of Jupiter,
+I saw coming from the city, through Hadrian's
+Gate, four men, carrying a burden by the corners of a
+coverlet, followed by another having in his hands a bottle
+and spade. As they approached I saw they were
+bearing the dead body of a woman, whom, on joining
+them, I found to be the wife of the man who followed.
+He was an Englishman or an American (for he called
+himself either, as occasion required) whom I had seen
+at my hotel and at Mr. Hill's; had been a sailor, and
+probably deserted from his ship, and many years a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">120</a></span>resident of Athens, where he married a Greek woman.
+He was a thriftless fellow, and, as he told me, had
+lived principally by the labour of his wife, who washed
+for European travellers. He had been so long in
+Greece, and his connexions and associations were so
+thoroughly Greek, that he had lost that sacredness of
+feeling so powerful both in Englishmen and Americans
+of every class in regard to the decent burial of the
+dead, though he did say that he had expected to procure
+a coffin, but the police of the city had sent officers to
+take her away and bury her. There was something so
+forlorn in the appearance of this rude funeral, that my
+first impulse was to turn away; but I checked myself
+and followed. Several times the Greeks laid the corpse
+on the ground and stopped to rest, chattering indifferently
+on various subjects. We crossed the Ilissus, and
+at some distance came to a little Greek chapel excavated
+in the rock. The door was so low that we were
+obliged to stoop on entering, and when within we could
+hardly stand upright. The Greeks laid down the body
+in front of the altar; the husband went for the priest,
+the Greeks to select a place for a grave, and I remained
+alone with the dead. I sat in the doorway, looking inside
+upon the corpse, and out upon the Greeks digging
+the grave. In a short time the husband returned with
+a priest, one of the most miserable of that class of
+"blind teachers" who swarm in Greece. He immediately
+commenced the funeral service, which continued
+nearly an hour, by which time the Greeks returned
+and, taking up the body, carried it to the graveside and
+laid it within. I knew the hollow sound of the first
+clod of earth which falls upon the lid of a coffin, and
+shrunk from its leaden fall upon the uncovered body.
+I turned away, and, when at some distance, looked back
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">121</a></span>and saw them packing the earth over the grave. I
+never saw so dreary a burial-scene.</p>
+
+<p>Returning, I passed by the ancient stadium of Herodes
+Atticus, once capable of containing twenty-five
+thousand spectators; the whole structure was covered
+with the purest white marble. All remains of its magnificence
+are now gone; but I could still trace on the
+excavated side of the hill its ancient form of a horseshoe,
+and walked through the subterraneous passage by
+which the vanquished in the games retreated from the
+presence of the spectators.</p>
+
+<p>Returning to the city, I learned that an affray had
+just taken place between some Greeks and Bavarians,
+and, hurrying to the place near the bazars, found a
+crowd gathered round a soldier who had been stabbed
+by a Greek. According to the Greeks, the affair had
+been caused by the habitual insults and provocation
+given by the Bavarians, the soldier having wantonly
+knocked a drinking-cup out of the Greek's hand while
+he was drinking. In the crowd I met a lounging Italian
+(the same who wanted me to come up from Padras
+by water), a good-natured and good-for-nothing fellow,
+and skilled in tongues; and going with him into a coffee-house
+thronged with Bavarians and Europeans of
+various nations in the service of government, heard
+another story, by which it appeared that the Greeks,
+as usual, were in the wrong, and that the poor Bavarian
+had been stabbed without the slightest provocation,
+purely from the Greeks' love of stabbing. Tired of
+this, I left the scene of contention, and a few streets
+off met an Athenian, a friend of two or three days'
+standing, and, stopping under a window illuminated by
+a pair of bright eyes from above, happened to express
+my admiration of the lady who owned them, when he
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">122</a></span>tested the strength of my feelings on the subject by
+asking me if I would like to marry her. I was not
+prepared at the moment to give precisely that proof,
+and he followed up his blow by telling me that, if I
+wished it, he would engage to secure her for me before
+the next morning. The Greeks are almost universally
+poor. With them every traveller is rich, and
+they are so thoroughly civilized as to think that a rich
+man is, of course, a good match.</p>
+
+<p>Toward evening I paid my last visit to the Acropolis.
+Solitude, silence, and sunset are the nursery of
+sentiment. I sat down on a broken capital of the Parthenon;
+the owl was already flitting among the ruins.
+I looked up at the majestic temple and down at the
+ruined and newly-regenerated city, and said to myself,
+"Lots must rise in Athens!" I traced the line of the
+ancient walls, ran a railroad to the Pirćus, and calculated
+the increase on "up-town lots" from building the
+king's palace near the Garden of Plato. Shall I or
+shall I not "make an operation" in Athens? The
+court has removed here, the country is beautiful, climate
+fine, government fixed, steamboats are running,
+all the world is coming, and lots must rise. I bought
+(in imagination) a tract of good tillable land, laid it out
+in streets, had my Plato, and Homer, and Washington
+Places, and Jackson Avenue, built a row of houses
+to improve the neighbourhood where nobody lived, got
+maps lithographed, and sold off at auction. I was in
+the right condition to "go in," for I had nothing to lose;
+but, unfortunately, the Greeks were very far behind the
+spirit of the age, knew nothing of the beauties of the
+credit system, and could not be brought to dispose of
+their consecrated soil "on the usual terms," <i>ten per
+cent. down, balance on bond and mortgage</i>, so, giving
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">123</a></span>up the idea, at dark I bade farewell to the ruins of the
+Acropolis, and went to my hotel to dinner.</p>
+
+<p>Early the next morning I started for the field of
+Marathon. I engaged a servant at the hotel to accompany
+me, but he disappointed me, and I set out alone
+with my muleteer. Our road lay along the base of
+Mount Hymettus, on the borders of the plain of Attica,
+shaded by thick groves of olives. At noon I was on the
+summit of a lofty mountain, at the base of which, still
+and quiet as if it had never resounded with the shock
+of war, the great battle-ground of the Greeks and Persians
+extended to the sea. The descent was one of
+the finest things I met with in Greece; wild, rugged,
+and, in fact, the most magnificent kind of mountain
+scenery. At the foot of the mountain we came to a
+ruined convent, occupied by an old white-bearded
+monk. I stopped there and lunched, the old man laying
+before me his simple store of bread and olives, and
+looking on with pleasure at my voracious appetite.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/i_v1_p123.jpg" width="60%" alt="Mound of Marathon." title="Mound of Marathon" />
+<p class="caption">Mound of Marathon.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>This over, I hurried to the battle-field. Toward the
+centre is a large mound of earth, erected over the Athenians
+who fell in the battle. I made directly for this
+mound, ascended it, and threw the reins loose over my
+horse's neck; and, sitting on the top, read the account of
+the battle in Herodotus.</p>
+
+<p>After all, is not our reverence misplaced, or, rather
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">124</a></span>does not our respect for deeds hallowed by time render
+us comparatively unjust? The Greek revolution teems
+with instances of as desperate courage, as great love of
+country, as patriotic devotion, as animated the men of
+Marathon, and yet the actors in these scenes are not
+known beyond the boundaries of their native land.
+Thousands whose names were never heard of, and
+whose bones, perhaps, never received burial, were as
+worthy of an eternal monument as they upon whose grave
+I sat. Still that mound is a hallowed sepulchre;
+and the shepherd who looks at it from his mountain
+home, the husbandman who drives his plough to its
+base, and the sailor who hails it as a landmark from
+the deck of his caique, are all reminded of the glory of
+their ancestors. But away with the mouldering relics
+of the past. Give me the green grave of Marco Bozzaris.
+I put Herodotus in my pocket, gathered a few
+blades of grass as a memorial, descended the mound,
+betook myself to my saddle, and swept the plain on a
+gallop, from the mountain to the sea.</p>
+
+<p>It is about two miles in width, and bounded by
+rocky heights enclosing it at either extremity. Toward
+the shore the ground is marshy, and at the place
+where the Persians escaped to their ships are some unknown
+ruins; in several places the field is cultivated,
+and toward evening, on my way to the village of Marathon,
+I saw a Greek ploughing; and when I told him
+that I was an American, he greeted me as the friend
+of Greece. It is the last time I shall recur to this feeling;
+but it was music to my heart to hear a ploughman
+on immortal Marathon sound in my ears the praises
+of my country.</p>
+
+<p>I intended to pass the night at the village of Marathon;
+but every khan was so cluttered up with goats, chickens,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">125</a></span>and children, that I rode back to the monastery at the
+foot of the mountain. It was nearly dark when I
+reached it. The old monk was on a little eminence at
+the door of his chapel, clapping two boards together to
+call his flock to vespers. With his long white beard,
+his black cap and long black gown, his picturesque position
+and primitive occupation, he seemed a guardian
+spirit hovering on the borders of Marathon in memory
+of its ancient glory. He came down to the monastery
+to receive me, and, giving me a paternal welcome, and
+spreading a mat on the floor, returned to his chapel. I
+followed, and saw his little flock assemble. The ploughman
+came up from the plain and the shepherd came
+down from the mountain; the old monk led the way to
+the altar, and all kneeled down and prostrated themselves
+on the rocky floor. I looked at them with deep interest.
+I had seen much of Greek devotion in cities and
+villages, but it was a spectacle of extraordinary interest
+to see these wild and lawless men assembled on this
+lonely mountain to worship in all sincerity, according to
+the best light they had, the god of their fathers. I could
+not follow them in their long and repeated kneelings
+and prostrations; but my young Greek, as if to make
+amends for me, and, at the same time, to show how
+they did things in Athens, led the van. The service
+over, several of them descended with us to the monastery;
+the old monk spread his mat, and again brought
+out his frugal store of bread and olives. I contributed
+what I had brought from Athens, and we made our
+evening meal. If I had judged from appearances, I
+should have felt rather uneasy at sleeping among such
+companions; but the simple fact of having seen them
+at their devotions gave me confidence. Though I had
+read and heard that the Italian bandit went to the altar
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">126</a></span>to pray forgiveness for the crimes he intended to commit,
+and, before washing the stains from his hands, hung up the
+bloody poniard upon a pillar of the church, and asked pardon
+for murder, I always felt a certain degree of confidence
+in him who practised the duties of his religion,
+whatever that religion might be. I leaned on my elbow,
+and, by the blaze of the fire, read Herodotus, while my
+muleteer, as I judged from the frequent repetition of the
+word Americanos, entertained them with long stories
+about me. By degrees the blaze of the fire died away,
+the Greeks stretched themselves out for sleep, the old
+monk handed me a bench about four inches high for a
+pillow, and, wrapping myself in my cloak, in a few moments
+I was wandering in the land of dreams.</p>
+
+<p>Before daylight my companions were in motion. I
+intended to return by the marble quarries on the Pentelican
+Mountain; and crying "Cavallo" in the ear of my
+still sleeping muleteer, in a few minutes I bade farewell
+for ever to the good old monk of Marathon. Almost
+from the door of the monastery we commenced ascending
+the mountain. It was just peep of day, the weather
+raw and cold, the top of the mountain covered with
+clouds, and in an hour I found myself in the midst of
+them. The road was so steep and dangerous that I
+could not ride; a false step of my horse might have
+thrown me over a precipice several hundred feet deep;
+and the air was so keen and penetrating, that, notwithstanding
+the violent exercise of walking, I was perfectly
+chilled. The mist was so dense, too, that, when my
+guide was a few paces in advance, I could not see him,
+and I was literally groping my way through the clouds.
+I had no idea where I was nor of the scene around me,
+but I felt that I was in a measure lifted above the earth.
+The cold blasts drove furiously along the sides of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">127</a></span>mountain, whistled against the precipices, and bellowed
+in the hollows of the rocks, sometimes driving so furiously
+that my horse staggered and fell back. I was
+almost bewildered in struggling blindly against them;
+but, just before reaching the top of the mountain, the
+thick clouds were lifted as if by an invisible hand, and
+I saw once more the glorious sun pouring his morning
+beams upon a rich valley extending a great distance to
+the foot of the Pentelican Mountain. About half way
+down we came to a beautiful stream, on the banks of
+which we took out our bread and olives. Our appetites
+were stimulated by the mountain air, and we divided
+till our last morsel was gone.</p>
+
+<p>At the foot of the mountain, lying between it and
+Mount Pentelicus, was a large monastery, occupied by
+a fraternity of monks. We entered and walked through
+it, but found no one to receive us. In a field near by
+we saw one of the monks, from whom we obtained a
+direction to the quarries. Moving on to the foot of the
+mountain, which rises with a peaked summit into the
+clouds, we commenced ascending, and soon came upon
+the strata of beautiful white marble for which Mount
+Pentelicus has been celebrated thousands of years. Excavations
+appear to have been made along the whole
+route, and on the roadside were blocks, and marks caused
+by the friction of the heavy masses transported to Athens.
+The great quarries are toward the summit. The surface
+has been cut perpendicularly smooth, perhaps
+eighty or a hundred feet high, and one hundred and fifty
+or two hundred feet in width, and excavations have been
+made within to an unknown extent. Whole cities might
+have been built with the materials taken away, and yet
+by comparison with what is left, there is nothing gone.
+In front are entrances to a large chamber, in one corner
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">128</a></span>of which, on the right, is a chapel with the painted
+figure of the Virgin to receive the Greeks' prayers.
+Within are vast humid caverns, over which the wide
+roof awfully extends, adorned with hollow tubes like icicles,
+while a small transparent petrifying stream trickles
+down the rock. On one side are small chambers communicating
+with subterraneous avenues, used, no doubt,
+as places of refuge during the revolution, or as the
+haunts of robbers. Bones of animals and stones blackened
+with smoke showed that but lately some part had
+been occupied as a habitation. The great excavations
+around, blocks of marble lying as they fell, perhaps,
+two thousand years ago, and the appearances of having
+been once a scene of immense industry and labour, stand
+in striking contrast with the desolation and solitude now
+existing. Probably the hammer and chisel will never
+be heard there more, great temples will no more be
+raised, and modern genius will never, like the Greeks
+of old, make the rude blocks of marble speak.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" >
+<img src="images/i_v1_p128.jpg" width="60%" alt="Quarries of Pentelicus." title="Quarries of Pentelicus" />
+<p class="caption">Quarries of Pentelicus.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>At dark I was dining at the Hotel de France, when
+Mr. Hill came over with the welcome intelligence that
+my carpet-bag had arrived. On it was pinned a large
+paper, with the words "Huzzah!" "Huzzah!" "Huzzah!"
+by my friend Maxwell, who had met it on horse
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">129</a></span>back on the shores of the Gulf of Lepanto, travelling under
+the charge of a Greek in search of me. I opened it
+with apprehension, and, to my great satisfaction, found
+undisturbed the object of my greatest anxiety, the precious
+notebook from which I now write, saved from the
+peril of an anonymous publication or of being used up
+for gun-waddings.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning, before I was up, I heard a gentle
+rap at my door, which was followed by the entrance
+of a German, a missionary, whom I had met several
+times at Mr. Hill's, and who had dined with me once at
+my hotel. I apologized for being caught in bed, and
+told him that he must possess a troubled spirit to send
+him so early from his pillow. He answered that I was
+right; that he did indeed possess a troubled spirit; and
+closing the door carefully, came to my bedside, and
+said he had conceived a great regard for me, and intended
+confiding in me an important trust. I had several
+times held long conversations with him at Mr.
+Hill's, and very little to my edification, as his English
+was hardly intelligible; but I felt pleased at having,
+without particularly striving for it, gained the favourable
+opinion of one who bore the character of a very learned
+and a very good man. I requested him to step into
+the dining-room while I rose and dressed myself; but
+he put his hand upon my breast to keep me down, and
+drawing a chair, began, "You are going to Smyrna."
+He then paused, but, after some moments of hesitation,
+proceeded to say that the first name I would hear on
+my arrival there would be his own; that, unfortunately,
+it was in everybody's mouth. My friend was a short
+and very ugly middle-aged man, with a very large
+mouth, speaking English with the most disagreeable
+German sputter, lame from a fall, and, altogether, of a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">130</a></span>most uninteresting and unsentimental aspect; and he
+surprised me much by laying before me a veritable
+<i>affaire du c&#339;ur</i>. It was so foreign to my expectations,
+that I should as soon have expected to be made a confidant
+in a love affair by the Archbishop of York. After
+a few preliminaries he went into particulars; lavished
+upon the lady the usual quota of charms "in such case
+made and provided," but was uncertain, rambling, and
+discursive in regard to the position he held in her regard.
+At first I understood that it was merely the old
+story, a flirtation and a victim; then that they were
+very near being married, which I afterward understood
+to be only so near as this, that he was willing and she
+not; and, finally, it settled down into the every-day occurrence,
+the lady smiled, while the parents and a stout
+two-fisted brother frowned. I could but think, if such
+a homely expression may be introduced in describing
+these tender passages, that he had the boot on the
+wrong leg, and that the parents were much more likely
+than the daughter to favour such a <span class="err" title="original: suiter">suitor</span>. However,
+on this point I held my peace. The precise business
+he wished to impose on me was, immediately on my
+arrival in Smyrna to form the acquaintance of the lady
+and her family, and use all my exertions in his favour.
+I told him I was an entire stranger in Smyrna, and
+could not possibly have any influence with the parties;
+but, being urged, promised him that, if I could interfere
+without intruding myself improperly, he should
+have the benefit of my mediation. At first he intended
+giving me a letter to the lady, but afterward determined
+to give me one to the Rev. Mr. Brewer, an American
+missionary, who, he said, was a particular friend of his,
+and intimate with the beloved and her family, and acquainted
+with the whole affair. Placing himself at my
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">131</a></span>table, on which were pens, ink, and paper, he proceeded
+to write his letter, while I lay quietly till he turned
+over the first side, when, tired of waiting, I rose, dressed
+myself, packed up, and, before he had finished, stood
+by the table with my carpet-bag, waiting until he should
+have done to throw in my writing materials. He bade
+me good-by after I had mounted my horse to leave,
+and, when I turned back to look at him, I could not but
+feel for the crippled, limping victim of the tender passion,
+though, in honesty, and with the best wishes for
+his success, I did not think it would help his suit for
+the lady to see him.</p>
+
+<p>An account of my journey from Athens to Smyrna,
+given in a letter to friends at home, was published during
+my absence and without my knowledge, in successive
+numbers of the American Monthly Magazine,
+and perhaps the favourable notice taken of it had some
+influence in inducing me to write a book. I give the
+papers as they were then published.</p>
+
+<div class="letter">
+<p class="right">
+<i>Smyrna, April</i>, 1835.</p>
+<p class="salutation">
+<span class="smcap">My dear</span> ****,
+</p>
+
+<p>I have just arrived at this place, and I live to tell it.
+I have been three weeks performing a voyage usually
+made in three days. It has been tedious beyond all
+things; but, as honest Dogberry would say, if it had
+been ten times as tedious, I could find it in my heart to
+bestow it all upon you. To begin at the beginning: on
+the morning of the second instant, I and my long-lost
+carpet-bag left the eternal city of Athens, without knowing
+exactly whither we were going, and sincerely regretted
+by Miltiades Panajotti, the garçon of the hotel.
+We wound round the foot of the Acropolis, and, giving
+a last look to its ruined temples, fell into the road to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">132</a></span>the Pirćus, and in an hour found ourselves at that ancient
+harbour, almost as celebrated in the history of
+Greece as Athens itself. Here we took counsel as to
+farther movements, and concluded to take passage in a
+caique to sail that evening for Syra, being advised that
+that island was a great place of rendezvous for vessels,
+and that from it we could procure a passage to any
+place we chose. Having disposed of my better half
+(I may truly call it so, for what is man without pantaloons,
+vests, and shirts), I took a little sailboat to float
+around the ancient harbour and muse upon its departed
+glories.</p>
+
+<p>The day that I lingered there before bidding farewell,
+perhaps for ever, to the shores of Greece, is deeply impressed
+upon my mind. I had hardly begun to feel the
+magic influence of the land of poets, patriots, and heroes,
+until the very moment of my departure. I had travelled
+in the most interesting sections of the country, and
+found all enthusiasm dead within me when I had expected
+to be carried away by the remembrance of the
+past; but here, I know not how it was, without any effort,
+and in the mere act of whiling away my time, all
+that was great, and noble, and beautiful in her history
+rushed upon me at once; the sun and the breeze, the
+land and the sea, contributed to throw a witchery around
+me; and in a rich and delightful frame of mind, I found
+myself among the monuments of her better days, gliding
+by the remains of the immense wall erected to enclose
+the harbour during the Peloponnesian war, and
+was soon floating upon the classic waters of Salamis.</p>
+
+<p>If I had got there by accident it would not have occurred
+to me to dream of battles and all the fierce panoply
+of war upon that calm and silvery surface. But
+I knew where I was, and my blood was up. I was
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">133</a></span>among the enduring witnesses of the Athenian glory.
+Behind me was the ancient city, the Acropolis, with
+its ruined temples, the telltale monuments of by-gone
+days, towering above the plain; here was the harbour
+from which the galleys carried to the extreme parts of
+the then known world the glories of the Athenian name;
+before me was unconquered Salamis; here the invading
+fleet of Xerxes; there the little navy, the last hope
+of the Athenians; here the island of Ćgina, from which
+Aristides, forgetting his quarrel with Themistocles, embarked
+in a rude boat, during the hottest of the battle,
+for the ship of the latter; and there the throne of Xerxes,
+where the proud invader stationed himself as spectator
+of the battle that was to lay the rich plain of Attica at
+his feet. There could be no mistake about localities;
+the details have been handed down from generation to
+generation, and are as well known to the Greeks of the
+present day as they were to their fathers. So I went
+to work systematically, and fought the whole battle
+through. I gave the Persians ten to one, but I made
+the Greeks fight like tigers; I pointed them to their
+city; to their wives and children; I brought on long
+strings of little innocents, urging them as in the farce,
+"sing out, young uns;" I carried old Themistocles
+among the Persians like a modern Greek fireship
+among the Turks; I sunk ship after ship, and went on
+demolishing them at a most furious rate, until I saw old
+Xerxes scudding from his throne, and the remnant of
+the Persian fleet scampering away to the tune of "devil
+take the hindmost." By this time I had got into the
+spirit of the thing; and moving rapidly over that water,
+once red with blood of thousands from the fields of Asia,
+I steered for the shore and mounted the vacant throne
+of Xerxes. This throne is on a hill near the shore, not
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">134</a></span>very high, and as pretty a place as a man could have
+selected to see his friends whipped and keep out of
+harm's way himself; for you will recollect that in those
+days there was no gunpowder nor cannon balls, and,
+consequently, no danger from long chance shots. I selected
+a particular stone, which I thought it probable
+Xerxes, as a reasonable man, and with an eye to perspective,
+might have chosen as his seat on the eventful
+day of the battle; and on that same stone sat down to
+meditate upon the vanity of all earthly greatness. But,
+most provokingly, whenever I think of Xerxes, the first
+thing that presents itself to my mind is the couplet in
+the Primer,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Xerxes the Great did die,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And so must you and I."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noi">This is a very sensible stanza, no doubt, and worthy
+of always being borne in mind; but it was not exactly
+what I wanted. I tried to drive it away; but the
+more I tried, the more it stuck to me. It was all in
+vain. I railed at early education, and resolved that acquired
+knowledge hurts a man's natural faculties; for if
+I had not received the first rudiments of education, I
+should not have been bothered with the vile couplet,
+and should have been able to do something on my own
+account. As it was, I lost one of the best opportunities
+ever a man had for moralizing; and you, my dear &mdash;&mdash;,
+have lost at least three pages. I give you, however,
+all the materials; put yourself on the throne of Xerxes,
+and do what you can, and may your early studies be no
+stumbling-block in your way. As for me, vexed and
+disgusted with myself, I descended the hill as fast as
+the great king did of yore, and jumping into my boat,
+steered for the farthest point of the Pirćus; from the
+throne of <i>Xerxes</i> to the tomb of Themistocles.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">135</a></span>I was prepared to do something here. This was
+not merely a place where he had been; I was to tread
+upon the earth that covered his bones; here were
+his ashes; here was all that remained of the best and
+bravest of the Greeks, save his immortal name. As
+I approached I saw the large square stones that enclosed
+his grave, and mused upon his history; the deliverer
+of his country, banished, dying an exile, his
+bones begged by his repenting countrymen, and buried
+with peculiar propriety near the shore of the sea commanding
+a full view of the scene of his naval glory.
+For more than two thousand years the waves have almost
+washed over his grave, the sun has shone and the
+winds have howled over him; while, perhaps, his spirit
+has mingled with the sighing of the winds and the
+murmur of the waters, in moaning over the long captivity
+of his countrymen; perhaps, too, his spirit has been
+with them in their late struggle for liberty; has hovered
+over them in the battle and the breeze, and is now
+standing sentinel over his beloved and liberated country.
+I approached as to the grave of one who will never die.
+His great name, his great deeds, hallowed by the lapse
+of so many ages; the scene&mdash;I looked over the wall
+with a feeling amounting to reverence, when, directly
+before me, the first thing I saw, the only thing I could
+see, so glaring and conspicuous that nothing else could
+fix my eye, was a tall, stiff, wooden headboard, painted
+white, with black letters, to the memory of an Englishman
+with as unclassical a name as that of <i>John Johnson</i>.
+My eyes were blasted with the sight; I was ferocious;
+I railed at him as if he had buried himself there
+with his own hands. What had he to do there? I railed
+at his friends. Did they expect to give him a name
+by mingling him with the ashes of the immortal dead?
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">136</a></span>Did they expect to steal immortality like fire from the
+flint? I dashed back to my boat, steered directly for
+the harbour, gave sentiment to the dogs, and in half an
+hour was eating a most voracious and spiteful dinner.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening I embarked on board my little caique.
+She was one of the most rakish of that rakish description
+of vessels. I drew my cloak around me and
+stretched myself on the deck as we glided quietly out
+of the harbour; saw the throne of Xerxes, the island of
+Salamis, and the shores of Greece gradually fade from
+view; looked at the dusky forms of the Greeks in their
+capotes lying asleep around me; at the helmsman sitting
+cross-legged at his post, apparently without life or
+motion; gave one thought to home, and fell asleep.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning I began to examine my companions.
+They were, in all, a captain and six sailors, probably all
+part owners, and two passengers from one of the islands,
+not one of whom could speak any other language than
+Greek. My knowledge of that language was confined
+to a few rolling hexameters, which had stuck by me in
+some unaccountable way as a sort of memento of college
+days. These, however, were of no particular use,
+and, consequently, I was pretty much tongue-tied during
+the whole voyage. I amused myself by making my observations
+quietly upon my companions, as they did
+more openly upon me, for I frequently heard the word
+"Americanos" pass among them. I had before had
+occasion to see something of Greek sailors, and to admire
+their skill and general good conduct, and I was
+fortified in my previous opinion by what I saw of my
+present companions. Their temperance in eating and
+drinking is very remarkable, and all my comparisons
+between them and European sailors were very much in
+their favour. Indeed, I could not help thinking, as they
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">137</a></span>sat collectively, Turkish fashion, around their frugal meal
+of bread, caviari, and black olives, that I had never seen
+finer men. Their features were regular, in that style
+which we to this day recognise as Grecian; their figures
+good, and their faces wore an air of marked character
+and intelligence; and these advantages of person
+were set off by the island costume, the fez or red cloth
+cap, with a long black tassel at the top, a tight vest and
+jacket, embroidered and without collars, large Turkish
+trousers coming down a little below the knee, legs bare,
+sharp-pointed slippers, and a sash around the waist, tied
+under the left side, with long ends hanging down, and a
+knife sticking out about six inches. There was something
+bold and daring in their appearance; indeed, I may
+say, rakish and piratical; and I could easily imagine
+that, if the Mediterranean should again become infested
+with pirates, my friends would cut no contemptible figure
+among them. But I must not detain you as long
+on the voyage as I was myself. The sea was calm;
+we had hardly any wind; our men were at the oars
+nearly all the time, and, passing slowly by Ćgina, Cape
+Sunium, with its magnificent ruins mournfully overlooking
+the sea, better known in modern times as Colonna's
+Height and the scene of Falconer's shipwreck, passing
+also the island of Zea, the ancient Chios, Thermia, and
+other islands of lesser note, in the afternoon of the third
+day we arrived at Syra.</p>
+
+<p>With regard to Syra I shall say but little; I am as
+loath to linger about it now as I was to stay there then.
+The fact is, I cannot think of the place with any degree
+of satisfaction. The evening of my arrival I heard,
+through a Greek merchant to whom I had a letter from
+a friend in Athens, of a brig to sail the next day for
+Smyrna; and I lay down on a miserable bed in a miserable
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">138</a></span>locanda, in the confident expectation of resuming
+my journey in the morning. Before morning, however,
+I was roused by "blustering Boreas" rushing through
+the broken casement of my window; and for more than
+a week all the winds ever celebrated in the poetical history
+of Greece were let loose upon the island. We were
+completely cut off from all communication with the rest
+of the world. Not a vessel could leave the port, while
+vessel after vessel put in there for shelter. I do not mean
+to go into any details; indeed, for my own credit's sake
+I dare not; for if I were to draw a true picture of things
+as I found them; if I were to write home the truth, I
+should be considered as utterly destitute of taste and
+sentiment; I should be looked upon as a most unpoetical
+dog, who ought to have been at home poring over
+the revised statutes instead of breathing the pure air of
+poetry and song. And now, if I were writing what might
+by chance come under the eyes of a sentimental young
+lady or a young gentleman in his teens, the truth
+would be the last thing I would think of telling. No,
+though my teeth chatter, though a cold sweat comes
+over me when I think of it, I would go through the
+usual rhapsody, and huzzah for "the land of the East
+and the clime of the sun." Indeed, I have a scrap in
+my portfolio, written with my cloak and greatcoat on,
+and my feet over a brazier, beginning in that way.
+But to you, my dear &mdash;&mdash;, who know my touching sensibilities,
+and who, moreover, have a tender regard
+for my character and will not publish me, I would as
+soon tell the truth as not. And I therefore do not hesitate
+to say, but do not whisper it elsewhere, that in one
+of the beautiful islands of the Ćgean; in the heart of
+the Cyclades, in the sight of Delos, and Paros, and
+Antiparos, any one of which is enough to throw one
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">139</a></span>who has never seen them into raptures with their fancied
+beauties, here, in this paradise of a young man's
+dreams, in the middle of April, I would have hailed
+"chill November's surly blast" as a zephyr; I would
+have exchanged all the beauties of this balmy clime for
+the sunny side of Kamschatka; I would have given
+my room and the whole Island of Syra for a third-rate
+lodging in Communipaw. It was utterly impossible to
+walk out, and equally impossible to stay in my room;
+the house, to suit that delightful climate, being built
+without windows or window-shutters. If I could forget
+the island, I could remember with pleasure the society
+I met there. I passed my mornings in the library
+of Mr. R., one of our worthy American missionaries;
+and my evenings at the house of Mr. W., the British
+consul. This gentleman married a Greek lady of
+Smyrna, and had three beautiful daughters, more than
+half Greeks in their habits and feelings; one of them
+is married to an English baronet, another to a Greek
+merchant of Syra, and the third&mdash;.</p>
+
+<p>On the ninth day the wind fell, the sun once more
+shone brightly, and in the evening I embarked on board
+a rickety brig for Smyrna. At about six o'clock P.M.
+thirty or forty vessels were quietly crawling out of the
+harbour like rats after a storm. It was almost a calm
+when we started: in about two hours we had a favourable
+breeze; we turned in, going at the rate of eight
+miles an hour, and rose with a strong wind dead ahead.
+We beat about all that day; the wind increased to a
+gale, and toward evening we took shelter in the harbour
+of Scio.</p>
+
+<p>The history of this beautiful little island forms one
+of the bloodiest pages in the history of the world, and
+one glance told that dreadful history. Once the most
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">140</a></span>beautiful island of the Archipelago, it is now a mass of
+ruins. Its fields, which once "budded and blossomed
+as the rose," have become waste places; its villages are
+deserted, its towns are in ruins, its inhabitants murdered,
+in captivity, and in exile. Before the Greek revolution
+the Greeks of Scio were engaged in extensive
+commerce, and ranked among the largest merchants in
+the Levant. Though living under hard taskmasters,
+subject to the exactions of a rapacious pacha, their industry
+and enterprise, and the extraordinary fertility of
+their island, enabled them to pay a heavy tribute to the
+Turks and to become rich themselves. For many
+years they had enjoyed the advantages of a college, with
+professors of high literary and scientific attainments,
+and their library was celebrated throughout all that
+country; it was, perhaps, the only spot in Greece
+where taste and learning still held a seat. But the island
+was far more famed for its extraordinary natural
+beauty and fertility. Its bold mountains and its soft
+valleys, the mildness of its climate and the richness of
+its productions, bound the Greeks to its soil by a tie
+even stronger than the chain of their Turkish masters.
+In the early part of the revolution the Sciotes took no
+part with their countrymen in their glorious struggle
+for liberty. Forty of their principal citizens were given
+up as hostages, and they were suffered to remain in
+peace. Wrapped in the rich beauties of their island,
+they forgot the freedom of their fathers and their own
+chains; and, under the precarious tenure of a tyrant's
+will, gave themselves up to the full enjoyment of all
+that wealth and taste could purchase. We must not
+be too hard upon human nature; the cause seemed desperate;
+they had a little paradise at stake; and if there
+is a spot on earth, the risk of losing which could excuse
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">141</a></span>men in forgetting that they were slaves in a land
+where their fathers were free, it is the Island of Scio.
+But the sword hung suspended over them by a single
+hair. In an unexpected hour, without the least note of
+preparation, they were startled by the thunder of the
+Turkish cannon; fifty thousand Turks were let loose
+like bloodhounds upon the devoted island. The affrighted
+Greeks lay unarmed and helpless at their feet,
+but they lay at the feet of men who did not know mercy
+even by name; at the feet of men who hungered
+and thirsted after blood; of men, in comparison with
+whom wild beasts are as lambs. The wildest beast of
+the forest may become gorged with blood; not so with
+the Turks at Scio. Their appetite "grew with what it
+fed on," and still longed for blood when there was not a
+victim left to bleed. Women were ripped open, children
+dashed against the walls, the heads of whole families
+stuck on pikes out of the windows of their houses,
+while their murderers gave themselves up to riot and
+plunder within. The forty hostages were hung in a
+row from the walls of the castle; an indiscriminate and
+universal burning and massacre took place; in a few
+days the ground was cumbered with the dead, and one
+of the loveliest spots on earth was a pile of smoking
+ruins. Out of a population of one hundred and ten
+thousand, sixty thousand are supposed to have been
+murdered, twenty thousand to have escaped, and thirty
+thousand to have been sold into slavery. Boys and
+young girls were sold publicly in the streets of Smyrna
+and Constantinople at a dollar a head. And all this
+did not arise from any irritated state of feeling toward
+them. It originated in the cold-blooded, calculating
+policy of the sultan, conceived in the same spirit which
+drenched the streets of Constantinople with the blood
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">142</a></span>of the Janisaries; it was intended to strike terror into
+the hearts of the Greeks, but the murderer failed in his
+aim. The groans of the hapless Sciotes reached the
+ears of their countrymen, and gave a headlong and irresistible
+impulse to the spirit then struggling to be
+free. And this bloody tragedy was performed in our
+own days, and in the face of the civilized world.
+Surely if ever Heaven visits in judgment a nation for a
+nation's crimes, the burning and massacre at Scio will
+be deeply visited upon the accursed Turks.</p>
+
+<p>It was late in the afternoon when I landed, and my
+landing was under peculiarly interesting circumstances.
+One of my fellow-passengers was a native of the island,
+who had escaped during the massacre, and now
+revisited it for the first time. He asked me to accompany
+him ashore, promising to find some friends at
+whose house we might sleep; but he soon found himself
+a stranger in his native island: where he had once
+known everybody, he now knew nobody. The town
+was a complete mass of ruins; the walls of many fine
+buildings were still standing, crumbling to pieces, and
+still black with the fire of the incendiary Turks. The
+town that had grown up upon the ruins consisted of a
+row of miserable shantees, occupied as shops for the
+sale of the mere necessaries of life, where the shopman
+slept on his window-shutter in front. All my companion's
+efforts to find an acquaintance who would give
+us a night's lodging were fruitless. We were determined
+not to go on board the vessel, if possible to avoid
+it; her last cargo had been oil, the odour of which still
+remained about her. The weather would not permit
+us to sleep on deck, and the cabin was intolerably disagreeable.
+To add to our unpleasant position, and, at
+the same time, to heighten the cheerlessness of the scene
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">143</a></span>around us, the rain began to fall violently. Under the
+guidance of a Greek we searched among the ruins for
+an apartment where we might build a fire and shelter
+ourselves for the night, but we searched in vain; the
+work of destruction was too complete.</p>
+
+<p>Cold, and thoroughly drenched with rain, we were
+retracing our way to our boat, when our guide told my
+companion that a Greek archbishop had lately taken up
+his abode among the ruins. We immediately went
+there, and found him occupying apartments, partially
+repaired, in what had once been one of the finest houses
+in Scio. The entrance through a large stone gateway
+was imposing; the house was cracked from top to bottom
+by fire, nearly one half had fallen down, and the
+stones lay scattered as they fell; but enough remained
+to show that in its better days it had been almost a palace.
+We ascended a flight of stone steps to a terrace,
+from which we entered into a large hall perhaps thirty
+feet wide and fifty feet long. On one side of this hall
+the wall had fallen down the whole length, and we
+looked out upon the mass of ruins beneath. On the
+other side, in a small room in one corner, we found
+the archbishop. He was sick, and in bed with all his
+clothes on, according to the universal custom here, but
+received us kindly. The furniture consisted of an iron
+bedstead with a mattress, on which he lay with a quilt
+spread over him, a wooden sofa, three wooden chairs,
+about twenty books, and two large leather cases containing
+clothes, napkins, and, probably, all his worldly
+goods. The rain came through the ceiling in several
+places; the bed of the poor archbishop had evidently
+been moved from time to time to avoid it, and I was
+obliged to change my position twice. An air of cheerless
+poverty reigned through the apartment. I could
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">144</a></span>not help comparing his lot with that of more favoured
+and, perhaps, not more worthy servants of the church.
+It was a style so different from that of the priests at
+Rome, the pope and his cardinals, with their gaudy
+equipages and multitudes of footmen rattling to the Vatican;
+or from the pomp and state of the haughty English
+prelates, or even from the comforts of our own missionaries
+in different parts of this country, that I could not
+help feeling deeply for the poor priest before me. But
+he seemed contented and cheerful, and even thankful
+that, for the moment, there were others worse off than
+himself, and that he had it in his power to befriend them.</p>
+
+<p>Sweetmeats, coffee, and pipes were served; and in
+about an hour we were conducted to supper in a large
+room, also opening from the hall. Our supper would
+not have tempted an epicure, but suited very well an
+appetite whetted by exercise and travel. It consisted
+of a huge lump of bread and a large glass of water for
+each of us, caviari, black olives, and two kinds of Turkish
+sweetmeats. We were waited upon by two priests:
+one of them, a handsome young man, not more than
+twenty, with long black hair hanging over his shoulders
+like a girl's, stood by with a napkin on his arm and a
+pewter vessel, with which he poured water on our
+hands, receiving it again in a basin. This was done
+both before and after eating; then came coffee and
+pipes. During the evening the young priest brought
+out an edition of Homer, and I surprised <i>him</i>, and astounded
+<i>myself</i>, by being able to translate a passage in
+the Iliad. I translated it in French, and my companion
+explained it in modern Greek to the young priest. Our
+beds were cushions laid on a raised platform or divan
+extending around the walls, with a quilt for each of us.
+In the morning, after sweetmeats, coffee, and pipes, we
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">145</a></span>paid our respects to the good old archbishop, and took
+our leave. When we got out of doors, finding that the
+wind was the same, and that there was no possibility
+of sailing, my friend proposed a ride into the country.
+We procured a couple of mules, took a small basket of
+provisions for a collation, and started.</p>
+
+<p>Our road lay directly along the shore; on one side
+the sea, and on the other the ruins of houses and gardens,
+almost washed by the waves. At about three
+miles' distance we crossed a little stream, by the side
+of which we saw a sarcophagus, lately disinterred, containing
+the usual vases of a Grecian tomb, including
+the piece of money to pay Charon his ferriage over the
+river Styx, and six pounds of dust; being all that remained
+of a <i>man</i>&mdash;perhaps one who had filled a large
+space in the world; perhaps a hero&mdash;buried probably
+more than two thousand years ago. After a ride
+of about five miles we came to the ruins of a large village,
+the style of which would anywhere have fixed the
+attention, as having been once a favoured abode of
+wealth and taste. The houses were of brown stone,
+built together, strictly in the Venetian style, after the
+models left during the occupation of the island by the
+Venetians, large and elegant, with gardens of three or
+four acres, enclosed by high walls of the same kind of
+stone, and altogether in a style far superior to anything
+I had seen in Greece. These were the country-houses
+and gardens of the rich merchants of Scio. The manner
+of living among the proprietors here was somewhat peculiar,
+and the ties that bound them to this little village
+were peculiarly strong. This was the family home;
+the community was essentially mercantile, and most
+of their business transactions were carried on elsewhere.
+When there were three or four brothers in a family, one
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">146</a></span>would be in Constantinople a couple of years, another
+at Trieste, and so on, while another remained at home;
+so that those who were away, while toiling amid the
+perplexities of business, were always looking to the occasional
+family reunion; and all trusted to spend the
+evening of their days among the beautiful gardens of
+Scio. What a scene for the heart to turn to now! The
+houses and gardens were still there, some standing almost
+entire, others black with smoke and crumbling to
+ruins. But where were they who once occupied them?
+Where were they who should now be coming out to
+rejoice in the return of a friend and to welcome a
+stranger? An awful solitude, a stillness that struck a
+cold upon the heart, reigned around us. We saw nobody;
+and our own voices, and the tramping of our
+horses upon the deserted pavements, sounded hollow
+and sepulchral in our ears. It was like walking among
+the ruins of Pompeii; it was another city of the dead;
+but there was a freshness about the desolation that
+seemed of to-day; it seemed as though the inhabitants
+should be sleeping and not dead. Indeed, the high
+walls of the gardens, and the outside of the houses too,
+were generally so fresh and in so perfect a state, that it
+seemed like riding through a handsome village at an
+early hour before the inhabitants had risen; and I sometimes
+could not help thinking that in an hour or two
+the streets would be thronged with a busy population.
+My friend continued to conduct me through the solitary
+streets; telling me, as we went along, that this was the
+house of such a family, this of such a family, with some
+of whose members I had become acquainted in Greece,
+until, stopping before a large stone gateway, he dismounted
+at the gate of his father's house. In that house
+he was born; there he had spent his youth; he had
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">147</a></span>escaped from it during the dreadful massacre, and this
+was the first time of his revisiting it. What a tide of
+recollections must have rushed upon him!</p>
+
+<p>We entered through the large stone gateway into
+a courtyard beautifully paved in mosaic in the form
+of a star, with small black and white round stones.
+On our left was a large stone reservoir, perhaps twenty-five
+feet square, still so perfect as to hold water,
+with an arbour over it supported by marble columns;
+a venerable grapevine completely covered the arbour.
+The garden covered an extent of about four acres, filled
+with orange, lemon, almond, and fig trees; overrun
+with weeds, roses, and flowers, growing together in wild
+confusion. On the right was the house, and a melancholy
+spectacle it was; the wall had fallen down on
+one side, and the whole was black with smoke. We
+ascended a flight of stone steps, with marble balustrades,
+to the terrace, a platform about twenty feet square, overlooking
+the garden. From the terrace we entered the
+saloon, a large room with high ceilings and fresco paintings
+on the walls; the marks of the fire kindled on the
+stone floor still visible, all the woodwork burned to a
+cinder, and the whole black with smoke. It was a
+perfect picture of wanton destruction. The day, too,
+was in conformity with the scene; the sun was obscured,
+the wind blew through the ruined building, it
+rained, was cold and cheerless. What were the feelings
+of my friend I cannot imagine; the houses of three
+of his uncles were immediately adjoining; one of these
+uncles was one of the forty hostages, and was hanged;
+the other two were murdered; his father, a venerable-looking
+old man, who came down to the vessel when
+we started to see him off, had escaped to the mountains,
+from thence in a caique to Ipsara, and from thence into
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">148</a></span>Italy. I repeat it, I cannot imagine what were his feelings;
+he spoke but little; they must have been too
+deep for utterance. I looked at everything with intense
+interest; I wanted to ask question after question, but
+could not, in mercy, probe his bleeding wounds. We
+left the house and walked out into the garden. It
+showed that there was no master's eye to watch over
+it; I plucked an orange which had lost its flavour; the
+tree was withering from want of care; our feet became
+entangled among weeds, and roses, and rare hothouse
+plants growing wildly together. I said that he did not
+talk much; but the little he did say amounted to volumes.
+Passing a large vase in which a beautiful plant
+was running wildly over the sides, he murmured indistinctly
+"the same vase" (le męme vase), and once he
+stopped opposite a tree, and, turning to me, said, "This
+is the only tree I do not remember." These and other
+little incidental remarks showed how deeply all the particulars
+were engraved upon his mind, and told me,
+plainer than words, that the wreck and ruin he saw
+around him harrowed his very soul. Indeed, how could
+it be otherwise? This was his father's house, the home
+of his youth, the scene of his earliest, dearest, and
+fondest recollections. Busy memory, that source of all
+our greatest pains as well as greatest pleasures, must
+have pressed sorely upon him, must have painted the
+ruined and desolate scene around him in colours even
+brighter, far brighter, than they ever existed in; it must
+have called up the faces of well-known and well-loved
+friends; indeed, he must have asked himself, in bitterness
+and in anguish of spirit, "The friends of my youth
+where are they?" while the fatal answer fell upon his
+heart, "Gone murdered, in captivity and in exile."</p></div>
+
+<hr class="l65" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">149</a></span></h2>
+
+<div class="chapblock"><p>A Noble Grecian Lady.&mdash;Beauty of Scio.&mdash;An Original.&mdash;Foggi.&mdash;A Turkish
+Coffee-house.&mdash;Mussulman at Prayers.&mdash;Easter Sunday.&mdash;A Greek
+Priest.&mdash;A Tartar Guide.&mdash;Turkish Ladies.&mdash;Camel Scenes.&mdash;Sight of a
+Harem.&mdash;Disappointed Hopes.&mdash;A rare Concert.&mdash;Arrival at Smyrna.</p></div>
+
+<p class="center">(<i>Continuation of the Letter.</i>)</p>
+
+<div class="letter"><p><span class="smcap">We</span> returned to the house, and seeking out a room
+less ruined than the rest, partook of a slight collation,
+and set out on a visit to a relative of my Sciote friend.</p>
+
+<p>On our way my companion pointed out a convent on
+the side of a hill, where six thousand Greeks, who had
+been prevailed upon to come down from the mountains
+to ransom themselves, were treacherously murdered to
+a man; their unburied bones still whiten the ground
+within the walls of the convent. Arriving at the house
+of his relative, we entered through a large gateway into
+a handsome courtyard, with reservoir, garden, &amp;c., ruinous,
+though in better condition than those we had
+seen before. This relative was a widow, of the noble
+house of Mavrocordato, one of the first families in
+Greece, and perhaps the most distinguished name in
+the Greek revolution. She had availed herself of the
+sultan's amnesty to return; had repaired two or three
+rooms, and sat down to end her days among the scenes
+of her childhood, among the ruins of her father's house.
+She was now not more than thirty; her countenance
+was remarkably pensive, and she had seen enough to
+drive a smile for ever from her face. The meeting between
+her and my friend was exceedingly affecting, particularly
+on her part. She wept bitterly, though, with
+the elasticity peculiar to the Greek character, the smile
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">150</a></span>soon chased away the tear. She invited us to spend
+the night there, pointing to the divan, and promising us
+cushions and coverlets. We accepted her invitation,
+and again set forth to ramble among the ruins.</p>
+
+<p>I had heard that an American missionary had lately
+come into the island, and was living somewhere in the
+neighbourhood. I found out his abode, and went to see
+him. He was a young man from Virginia, by the name
+of ****; had married a lady from Connecticut, who was
+unfortunately sick in bed. He was living in one room in
+the corner of a ruined building, but was then engaged
+in repairing a house into which he expected to remove
+soon. As an American, the first whom they had seen
+in that distant island, they invited me into the sickroom.
+In a strange land, and among a people whose language
+they did not understand, they seemed to be all in all to
+each other; and I left them, probably for ever, in the
+earnest hope that the wife might soon be restored to
+health, that hand in hand they might sustain each other
+in the rough path before them.</p>
+
+<p>Toward evening we returned to the house of my
+friend's relative. We found there a nephew, a young
+man about twenty-two, and a cousin, a man about thirty-five,
+both accidentally on a visit to the island. As I
+looked at the little party before me, sitting around a
+brazier of charcoal, and talking earnestly in Greek, I
+could hardly persuade myself that what I had seen and
+heard that day was real. All that I had ever read in
+history of the ferocity of the Turkish character; all the
+wild stories of corsairs, of murdering, capturing, and
+carrying into captivity, that I had ever read in romances,
+crowded upon me, and I saw living witnesses that the
+bloodiest records of history and the wildest creations of
+romance were not overcharged. They could all testify
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">151</a></span>in their own persons that these things were true. They
+had all been stripped of their property, and had their
+houses burned over their heads; had all narrowly escaped
+being murdered; and had all suffered in their
+nearest and dearest connexions. The nephew, then a
+boy nine years old, had been saved by a maidservant,
+his father had been murdered; a brother, a sister, and
+many of his cousins, were at that moment, and had been
+for years, in slavery among the Turks; my friend, with
+his sister, had found refuge in the house of the Austrian
+consul, and from thence had escaped into Italy; the
+cousin was the son of one of the forty hostages who were
+hung, and was the only member of his father's family
+that escaped death; while our pensive and amiable hostess,
+a bride of seventeen, had seen her young husband
+murdered before her eyes; had herself been sold into
+slavery, and, after two years' servitude, redeemed by her
+friends.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning I rose early and walked out upon the
+terrace. Nature had put on a different garb. The wind
+had fallen, and the sun was shining warmly upon a scene
+of softness and luxuriance surpassing all that I had ever
+heard or dreamed of the beauty of the islands of Greece.
+Away with all that I said about Syra; skip the page.
+The terrace overlooked the garden filled with orange,
+lemon, almond, and fig trees; with plants, roses, and
+flowers of every description, growing in luxuriant wildness.
+But the view was not confined to the garden.
+Looking back to the harbour of Scio, was a bold range
+of rugged mountains bounding the view on that side;
+on the right was the sea, then calm as a lake; on both
+the other sides were ranges of mountains, irregular and
+picturesque in their appearance, verdant and blooming
+to their very summits; and within these limits, for an
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">152</a></span>extent of perhaps five miles, were continued gardens
+like that at my feet, filled with the choicest fruit-trees,
+with roses and the greatest variety of rare plants and
+flowers that ever unfolded their beauties before the eyes
+of man; above all, the orange-trees, the peculiar favourite
+of the island, then almost in full bloom, covered with
+blossoms, from my elevated position on the terrace made
+the whole valley appear an immense bed of flowers.
+All, too, felt the freshening influence of the rain; and a
+gentle breeze brought to me from this wilderness of
+sweets the most delicious perfume that ever greeted the
+senses. Do not think me extravagant when I say that,
+in your wildest dreams, you could never fancy so rich
+and beautiful a scene. Even among ruins, that almost
+made the heart break, I could hardly tear my eyes from
+it. It is one of the loveliest spots on earth. It is emphatically
+a Paradise lost, for the hand of the Turks is
+upon it; a hand that withers all that it touches. In
+vain does the sultan invite the survivers, and the children
+made orphans by his bloody massacre, to return;
+in vain do the fruits and the flowers, the sun and the
+soil, invite them to return; their wounds are still bleeding;
+they cannot forget that the wild beast's paw might
+again be upon them, and that their own blood might one
+day moisten the flowers which grow over the graves of
+their fathers. But I must leave this place. I could
+hardly tear myself away then, and I love to linger about
+it now. While I was enjoying the luxury of the terrace
+a messenger came from the captain to call us on
+board. With a feeling of the deepest interest I bade
+farewell, probably for ever, to my sorrowing hostess and
+to the beautiful gardens of Scio.</p>
+
+<p>We mounted our mules, and in an hour were at the
+port. My feelings were so wrought upon that I felt
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">153</a></span>my blood boil at the first Turk I met in the streets.
+I felt that I should like to sacrifice him to the shades of
+the murdered Greeks. I wondered that the Greeks
+did not kill every one on the island. I wondered that
+they could endure the sight of the turban. We found
+that the captain had hurried us away unnecessarily.
+We could not get out of the harbour, and were obliged
+to lounge about the town all day. We again made a
+circuit among the ruins; examined particularly those
+of the library, where we found an old woman who had
+once been an attendant there, living in a little room in
+the cellar, completely buried under the stones of the
+fallen building; and returning, sat down with a chibouk
+before the door of an old Turkish coffee-house
+fronting the harbour. Here I met an original in the
+person of the Dutch consul. He was an old Italian,
+and had been in America during the revolutionary war
+as <i>dragoman</i>, as he called it, to the Count de Grasse,
+though, from his afterward incidentally speaking of the
+count as "my master," I am inclined to think that the
+word dragoman, which here means a person of great
+character and trust, may be interpreted as "valet de
+chambre." The old consul was in Scio during the
+whole of the massacre, and gave me many interesting
+particulars respecting it. He hates the Greeks, and
+spoke with great indignation about the manner in
+which their dead bodies lay strewed about the streets
+for months after the massacre. "D&mdash;n them," he said,
+"he could not go anywhere without stumbling over
+them." As I began to have some apprehensions about
+being obliged to stay here another night, I thought I
+could not employ my time better than in trying to work
+out of the consul an invitation to spend it with him.
+But the old fellow was too much for me. When I began
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">154</a></span>to talk about the unpleasantness of being obliged
+to spend the night on board, and the impossibility of
+spending it on shore, <i>having no acquaintance</i> there, he
+began to talk poverty in the most up and down terms.
+I was a little discouraged, but I looked at his military
+coat, his cocked hat and cane, and considering his talk
+merely a sort of apology for the inferior style of housekeeping
+I would find, was ingeniously working things
+to a point, when he sent me to the right about by enumerating
+the little instances of kindness he had received
+from strangers who happened to visit the island;
+among others, from one&mdash;he had his name in his pocketbook;
+he should never forget him; perhaps I had
+heard of him&mdash;who, at parting, shook him affectionately
+by the hand, and gave him a doubloon and a Spanish
+dollar. I hauled off from the representative of the majesty
+of Holland, and perhaps, before this, have been
+served up to some new visitor as the "mean, stingy
+American."</p>
+
+<p>In the evening we again got under weigh; before
+morning the wind was again blowing dead ahead; and
+about midday we put into the harbour of Foggi, a port
+in Asia Minor, and came to anchor under the walls of
+the castle, under the blood-red Mussulman flag. We
+immediately got into the boat to go ashore. This was
+my first port in Turkey. A huge ugly African, marked
+with the smallpox, with two pistols and a yataghan in his
+belt, stood on a little dock, waited till we were in the act
+of landing, and then rushed forward, ferocious as a tiger
+from his native sands, throwing up both his hands, and
+roaring out "Quarantino." This was a new thing in Turkey.
+Heretofore the Turks, with their fatalist notions,
+had never taken any precautions against the plague; but
+they had become frightened by the terrible ravages the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">155</a></span>disease was then making in Egypt, and imposed a quarantine
+upon vessels coming from thence. We were,
+however, suffered to land, and our first movement was
+to the coffee-house directly in front of the dock. The
+coffee-house was a low wooden building, covering considerable
+ground, with a large piazza, or, rather, projecting
+roof all around it. Inside and out there was a
+raised platform against the wall. This platform was
+one step from the floor, and on this step every one left
+his shoes before taking his seat on the matting. There
+were, perhaps, fifty Turks inside and out; sitting
+cross-legged, smoking the chibouk, and drinking coffee
+out of cups not larger than the shell of a Madeira-nut.</p>
+
+<p>We kicked our shoes off on the steps, seated ourselves
+on a mat outside, and took our chibouk and coffee
+with an air of savoir faire that would not have disgraced
+the worthiest Moslem of them all. Verily, said
+I, as I looked at the dozing, smoking, coffee-sipping
+congregation around me, there are some good points
+about the Turks, after all. They never think&mdash;that
+hurts digestion; and they love chibouks and coffee&mdash;that
+shows taste and feeling. I fell into their humour,
+and for a while exchanged nods with my neighbours
+all around. Suddenly the bitterness of thought came
+upon me; I found that my pipe was exhausted. I replenished
+it, and took a sip of coffee. Verily, said I,
+there are few better things in this world than chibouks
+and coffee; they even make men forget there is blood
+upon their hands. The thought started me; I shrank
+from contact with my neighbours, cut my way through
+the volumes of smoke, and got out into the open air.</p>
+
+<p>My companion joined me. We entered the walls
+and made a circuit of the town. It was a dirty little
+place, having one principal street lined with shops or
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">156</a></span>bazars; every third shop, almost, being a cafteria, where
+a parcel of huge turbaned fellows were at their daily
+labours of smoking pipes and drinking coffee. The
+first thing I remarked as being strikingly different from
+a European city was the total absence of women. The
+streets were thronged with men, and not a woman was
+to be seen, except occasionally I caught a glimpse of a
+white veil or a pair of black eyes sparkling through the
+latticed bars of a window. Afterward, however, in
+walking outside the walls into the country, we met a
+large party of women. When we first saw them they
+had their faces uncovered; but, as soon as they saw us
+coming toward them, they stopped and arranged their
+long white shawls, winding them around their faces so
+as to leave barely space enough uncovered to allow them
+to see and breathe, but so that it was utterly impossible
+for us to distinguish a single one of their features.</p>
+
+<p>Going on in the direction from which they came,
+and attracted by the mourning cypress, we came to a
+large burying-ground. It is situated on the side of a
+hill almost washed by the waves, and shaded by a
+thick grove of the funereal tree. There is, indeed,
+something peculiarly touching in the appearance of this
+tree; it seems to be endowed with feelings, and to mourn
+over the dead it shades. The monuments were generally
+a single upright slab of marble, with a turban on
+the top. There were many, too, in form like one of
+our oblong tombstones; and, instead of a slab of marble
+over the top, the interior was filled with earth, and
+the surface overrun with roses, evergreens, and flowers.
+The burying-grounds in the East are always favourite
+places for walking in; and it is a favourite occupation
+of the Turkish women to watch and water the flowers
+growing over the graves of their friends.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">157</a></span>Toward evening we returned to the harbour. I withdrew
+from my companion, and, leaning against one of the
+gates of the city, fixed my eyes upon the door of a minaret,
+watching till the muezzin should appear, and, for the
+last time before the setting of the sun, call all good Mussulmans
+to prayer. The door opens toward Mecca, and
+a little before dark the muezzin came out, and, leaning
+over the railing with his face toward the tomb of the
+Prophet, in a voice, every tone of which fell distinctly
+upon my ear, made that solemn call which, from the
+time of Mohammed, has been addressed five times a day
+from the tops of the minarets to the sons of the faithful.
+"Allah! Allah! God is God, and Mohammed is his
+prophet. To prayer! to prayer!" Immediately an old
+Turk by my side fell upon his knees, with his face to
+the tomb of the Prophet; ten times, in quick succession,
+he bowed his forehead till it touched the earth; then
+clasped his hands and prayed. I never saw more rapt
+devotion than in this pious old Mussulman. I have often
+marked in Italy the severe observance of religious ceremonies;
+I have seen, for instance, at Rome, fifty penitents
+at a time mounting on their knees, and kissing,
+as they mounted, the steps of the Scala Santa, or holy
+staircase, by which, as the priests tell them, our Saviour
+ascended into the presence of Pontius Pilate. I
+have seen the Greek prostrate himself before a picture
+until he was physically exhausted; and I have seen the
+humble and pious Christian at his prayers, beneath the
+simple fanes and before the peaceful altars of my own
+land; but I never saw that perfect abandonment with
+which a Turk gives himself up to his God in prayer.
+He is perfectly abstracted from the things of this world;
+he does not regard time or place; in his closet or in
+the street, alone or in a crowd, he sees nothing, he hears
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">158</a></span>nothing; the world is a blank; his God is everything.
+He is lost in the intensity of his devotion. It is a spectacle
+almost sublime, and for the moment you forget
+the polluted fountain of his religion, and the thousand
+crimes it sanctions, in your admiration of his sincerity
+and faith.</p>
+
+<p>Not being able to find any place where we could sleep
+ashore, except on one of the mats of the coffee-house,
+head and heels with a dozen Turks, we went on board,
+and toward morning again got under weigh. We beat
+up to the mouth of the Gulf of Smyrna, but, with the sirocco
+blowing directly in our teeth, it was impossible to
+go farther. We made two or three attempts to enter, but
+in tacking the last time our old brig, which had hardly
+ballast enough to keep her keel under water, received
+such a rough shaking that we got her away before the
+wind, and at three o'clock P.M. were again anchored
+in the harbour of Foggi. I now began to think that
+there was a spell upon my movements, and that Smyrna,
+which was becoming to me a sort of land of promise,
+would never greet my longing eyes.</p>
+
+<p>I was somewhat comforted, however, by remembering
+that I had never yet reached any port in the Mediterranean
+for which I had sailed, without touching at one
+or two intermediate ports; and that, so far, I had always
+worked right at last. I was still farther comforted by
+our having the good fortune to be able to procure lodging
+ashore, at the house of a Greek, the son of a priest.
+It was the Saturday before Easter Sunday, and the resurrection
+of our Saviour was to be celebrated at midnight,
+or, rather, the beginning of the next day, according
+to the rites and ceremonies of the Greek church.
+It was also the last of the forty days' fasting, and the
+next day commenced feasting. Supper was prepared
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">159</a></span>for us, at which meat was put on the table for me only;
+my Greek friend being supposed not to eat meat during
+the days of fasting. He had been, however, two years
+out of Greece; and though he did not like to offend the
+prejudices of his countrymen, he did not like fasting. I
+felt for my fellow-traveller; and, cutting up some meat
+in small parcels, kept my eye upon the door while he
+whipped them into his mouth. After supper we lay
+down upon the divan, with large quilts over us, my friend
+having promised to rise at twelve o'clock and accompany
+me to the Greek church.</p>
+
+<p>At midnight we were roused by the chant of the
+Greeks in the streets, on their way to the church. We
+turned out, and fell into a procession of five hundred
+people, making the streets as light as day with their
+torches. At the door of the church we found our host,
+sitting at a table with a parcel of wax tapers on one
+side and a box to receive money on the other. We each
+bought a taper and went in. After remaining there at
+least two hours, listening to a monotonous and unintelligible
+routine of prayers and chants, the priests came
+out of the holy doors, bearing aloft an image of our Saviour
+on the cross, ornamented with gold leaf, tassels,
+and festoons of artificial flowers; passed through the
+church, and out of the opposite door. The Greeks lighted
+their tapers and formed into a procession behind
+them, and we did the same. Immediately outside the
+door, up the staircase, and on each side of the corridor,
+allowing merely room enough for the procession to pass,
+were arranged the women, dressed in white, with long
+white veils, thrown back from their faces however, laid
+smooth over the tops of their heads, and hanging down
+to their feet. Nearly every woman, old or young, had
+a child in her arms. In fact, there seemed to be as
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">160</a></span>great a mustering of children as of men and women,
+and, for aught that I could see, as much to the edification
+of the former as the latter. A continued chant
+was kept up during the movements of the procession,
+and perhaps for half an hour after the arrival of the
+priests at the courtyard, when it rose to a tremendous
+burst. The torches were waved in the air; a wild, unmeaning,
+and discordant scream or yell rang through
+the hollow cloisters, and half a dozen pistols, two or
+three muskets, and twenty or thirty crackers were fired.
+This was intended as a feu-de-joie, and was supposed to
+mark the precise moment of our Saviour's resurrection.
+In a few moments the phrensy seemed to pass away;
+the noise fell from a wild clamour to a slow chant, and
+the procession returned to the church. The scene was
+striking, particularly the part outside the church; the
+dead of night; the waving of torches; the women with
+their long white dresses, and the children in their arms,
+&amp;c.; but, from beginning to end, there was nothing solemn
+in it.</p>
+
+<p>Returned to the church, a priest came round with a
+picture of the Saviour risen; and, as far as I could
+make it out, holding in his hand the Greek flag, followed
+by another priest with a plate to receive contributions.
+He held out the picture to be kissed, then
+turned his hand to receive the same act of devotion,
+keeping his eye all the time upon the plate which followed
+to receive the offerings of the pious, as a sort of
+payment for the privilege of the kiss. His manner
+reminded me of the Dutch parson, who, immediately
+after pronouncing a couple man and wife, touching
+the bridegroom with his elbow, said, "And now where
+ish mine dollar?" I kissed the picture, dodged his
+knuckles, paid my money, and left the church. I had
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">161</a></span>been there four hours, during which time, perhaps,
+more than a thousand persons had been completely absorbed
+in their religious ceremonies; and though beginning
+in the middle of the night, I have seen more
+yawning at the theatre or at an Italian opera than I
+saw there. They now began to disperse, though I remember
+I left a crowd of regular amateurs, at the head
+of whom were our sailors, still hanging round the desk
+of an exhorting priest, with an earnestness that showed
+a still craving appetite.</p>
+
+<p>I do not wonder that the Turks look with contempt
+upon Christians, for they have constantly under their
+eyes the disgusting mummeries of the Greek church,
+and see nothing of the pure and sublime principles our
+religion inculcates. Still, however, there was something
+striking and interesting in the manner in which
+the Greeks in this Turkish town had kept themselves,
+as it were, a peculiar people, and, in spite of the brands
+of "dog" and "infidel," held fast to the religion they
+received from their fathers. There was nothing interesting
+about them as Greeks; they had taken no part
+with their countrymen in their glorious struggle for liberty;
+they were engaged in petty business, and bartered
+the precious chance of freedom once before them
+for base profits and ignoble ease; and even now were
+content to live in chains, and kiss the rod that smote
+them.</p>
+
+<p>We returned to the house where we had slept; and,
+after coffee, in company with our host and his father,
+the priest, sat down to a meal, in which, for the first
+time in forty days, they ate meat. I had often remarked
+the religious observance of fast days among
+the common people in Greece. In travelling there I
+had more than once offered an egg to my guide on a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">162</a></span>fast day, but never could get one to accept anything
+that came so near to animal food, though, by a strange
+confusion of the principles of religious obligation, perhaps
+the same man would not have hesitated to commit
+murder if he had any inducement to do so. Mrs. Hill,
+at Athens, told me that, upon one occasion, a little girl
+in her school refused to eat a piece of cake because it
+was made with eggs.</p>
+
+<p>At daylight I was lying on the floor looking through
+a crevice of the window-shutter at the door of the minaret,
+waiting for the muezzin's morning cry to prayer.
+At six o'clock I went out, and finding the wind still in
+the same quarter, without any apparent prospect of
+change, determined, at all hazards, to leave the vessel
+and go on by land. My friend and fellow-passenger
+was also very anxious to get to Smyrna, but would not
+accompany me, from an indefinite apprehension of
+plague, robbers, &amp;c. I had heard so many of these
+rumours, all of which had proved to be unfounded, that
+I put no faith in any of them. I found a Turk who
+engaged to take me through in fourteen hours; and at
+seven o'clock I was in my saddle, charged with a dozen
+letters from captains, supercargoes, and passengers,
+whom I left behind waiting for a change of wind.</p>
+
+<p>My Tartar was a big swarthy fellow, with an extent
+of beard and mustaches unusual even among his bearded
+countrymen. He was armed with a pair of enormous
+pistols and a yataghan, and was, altogether, a formidable
+fellow to look upon. But there was a something
+about him that I liked. There was a doggedness,
+a downright stubbornness that seemed honest. I knew
+nothing about him. I picked him up in the street, and
+took him in preference to others who offered, because
+he would not be beaten down in his price. When he
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">163</a></span>saw me seated on my horse he stood by my side a little
+distance off, and looking at me without opening his
+lips, drew his belt tight around him, and adjusted his
+pistols and yataghan. His manner seemed to say that
+he took charge of me as a bale of goods, to be paid for
+on safe delivery, and that he would carry me through
+with fire and sword, if necessary. And now, said I,
+"Let fate do her worst;" I have a good horse under me,
+and in fourteen hours I shall be in Smyrna. "Blow
+winds and crack your cheeks;" I defy you.</p>
+
+<p>My Tartar led off at a brisk trot, never opening his
+lips nor turning his head except occasionally to see
+how I followed him across a stream. At about ten
+o'clock he turned off from the horse-path into a piece of
+fine pasture, and, slipping the bridle off his horse, turned
+him loose to feed. He then did the same with mine,
+and, spreading my cloak on the ground for me to sit
+upon, sat down by my side and opened his wallet. His
+manner seemed to intimate a disposition to throw provisions
+into a common stock, no doubt expecting the
+gain to be on his side; but as I could only contribute a
+couple of rolls of bread which I bought as we rode
+through the town, I am inclined to think that he considered
+me rather a sponge.</p>
+
+<p>While we were sitting there a travelling party came
+up, consisting of five Turks and three women. The
+women were on horseback, riding crosswise, though
+there were so many quilts, cushions, &amp;c., piled on the
+backs of their horses that they sat rather on seats than
+on saddles. After a few words of parley with my Tartar,
+the men lifted the women from the horses, taking
+them in their arms, and, as it were, hauling them off,
+not very gracefully, but very kindly; and, spreading
+their quilts on the ground a short distance from us, turned
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">164</a></span>their horses loose to feed, and sat down to make their
+morning meal. An unusual and happy thing for me
+the women had their faces uncovered nearly all the
+time, though they could not well have carried on the
+process of eating with them muffled up in the usual
+style. One of the women was old, the other two were
+exceedingly young; neither of them more than sixteen;
+each had a child in her arms, and, without any allowance
+for time and place, both were exceedingly beautiful.
+I do not say so under the influence of the particular
+circumstances of our meeting, nor with the view of
+making an incident of it, but I would have singled them
+out as such if I had met them in a ballroom at home.
+I was particularly struck with their delicacy of figure
+and complexion. Notwithstanding their laughing faces,
+their mirth, and the kind treatment of the men, I could
+not divest myself of the idea that they were caged birds
+longing to be free. I could not believe that a woman
+belonging to a Turk could be otherwise than unhappy.
+Unfortunately, I could not understand a word of
+their language; and as they looked from their turbaned
+lords to my stiff hat and frockcoat, they seemed to regard
+me as something the Tartar had just caught and
+was taking up to Constantinople as a present to the
+sultan. I endeavoured to show, however, that I was not
+the wild thing they took me to be; that I had an eye
+to admire their beauty, and a heart to feel for their
+servitude. I tried to procure from them some signal
+of distress; I did all that I could to get some sign to
+come to their rescue, and to make myself generally
+agreeable. I looked sentimentally. This they did not
+seem to understand at all. I smiled; this seemed to
+please them better; and there is no knowing to what a
+point I might have arrived, but my Tartar hurried me
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">165</a></span>away; and I parted on the wild plains of Turkey with
+two young and beautiful women, leading almost a savage
+life, whose personal graces would have made them
+ornaments in polished and refined society. Verily, said
+I, the Turks are not so bad, after all; they have handsome
+wives, and a handsome wife comes next after chibouks
+and coffee.</p>
+
+<p>I was now reminded at every step of my being in an
+oriental country by the caravans I was constantly meeting.
+Caravans and camels are more or less associated
+with all the fairy scenes and glowing pictures of the
+East. They have always presented themselves to my
+mind with a sort of poetical imagery, and they certainly
+have a fine effect in a description or in a picture; but,
+after all, they are ugly-looking things to meet on the
+road. I would rather see the two young Turk-<i>esses</i> again
+than all the caravans in the East. The caravan is conducted
+by a guide on a donkey, with a halter attached
+to the first camel, and so on from camel to camel
+through the whole caravan. The camel is an exceedingly
+ugly animal in his proportions, and there is a dead
+uniformity in his movement; with a dead, vacant expression
+in his face, that is really distressing. If a man
+were dying of thirst in the desert, it would be enough
+to drive him to distraction to look in the cool, unconcerned,
+and imperturbable face of his camel. But their
+value is inestimable in a country like this, where there
+are no carriage roads, and where deserts and drought
+present themselves in every direction.</p>
+
+<p>One of the camel scenes, the encampment, is very
+picturesque, the camels arranged around on their knees
+in a circle, with their heads to the centre, and the camel-drivers with their bales piled up within; and I was
+struck with another scene; we came to the borders of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">166</a></span>a stream, which it was necessary to cross in a boat.
+The boat was then on the other side, and the boatman
+and camel driver were trying to get on board some
+camels. When we came up they had got three on
+board, down on their knees in the bottom of the boat,
+and were then in the act of coercing the fourth. The
+poor brute was frightened terribly; resisted with all his
+might, and put forth most piteous cries; I do not know
+a more distressing noise than the cry of a brute suffering
+from fear; it seems to partake of the feeling that
+causes it, and carries with it something fearful; but
+the cries of the poor brute were vain; they got him on
+board, and in the same way urged on board three others.
+They then threw in the donkey, and seven camels and
+the donkey were so stowed in the bottom of the boat,
+that they did not take up much more room than calves
+on board of our country boats.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon I met another travelling party of an
+entirely different description. If before I had occasionally
+any doubts or misgivings as to the reality of
+my situation; if sometimes it seemed to be merely a
+dream, that it could not be that I was so far from home,
+wandering alone on the plains of Asia, with a guide
+whom I never saw till that morning, whose language I
+could not understand, and upon whose faith I could not rely;
+if the scenes of turbaned Turks, of veiled women,
+of caravans and camels, of graveyards with their mourning
+cypress and thousands of tombstones, where every
+trace of the cities which supplied them with their dead
+had entirely disappeared; if these and the other strange
+scenes around me would seem to be the mere creations
+of a roving imagination, the party which I met now
+was so marked in its character, so peculiar to an oriental
+country, and to an oriental country only, that it
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">167</a></span>roused me from my waking dreams, fixed my wandering
+thoughts, and convinced me, beyond all peradventure,
+that I was indeed far from home, among a people
+"whose thoughts are not as our thoughts, and whose
+ways are not as our ways;" in short, in a land where
+ladies are not the omnipotent creatures that they are
+with us.</p>
+
+<p>This party was no other than the ladies of a harem.
+They were all dressed in white, with their white shawls
+wrapped around their faces, so that they effectually
+concealed every feature, and could bring to bear only
+the artillery of their eyes. I found this, however, to
+be very potent, as it left so much room for the imagination;
+and it was a very easy matter to make a Fatima
+of every one of them. They were all on horseback,
+not riding sidewise, but <i>otherwise</i>; though I observed,
+as before, that their saddles were so prepared that their
+delicate limbs were not subject to that extreme expansion
+required by the saddle of the rougher sex. They
+were escorted by a party of armed Turks, and followed
+by a man in Frank dress, who, as I after understood,
+was the physician of the harem. They were thirteen
+in number, just a baker's dozen, and belonged to a
+pacha who was making his annual tour of the different
+posts under his government, and had sent them on before
+to have the household matters all arranged upon
+his arrival. And no doubt, also, they were to be in
+readiness to receive him with their smiles; and if they
+continued in the same humour in which I saw them,
+he must have been a happy man who could call them
+all his own. I had not fairly recovered from the cries
+of the poor camel when I heard their merry voices:
+verily, thought I, stopping to catch the last musical
+notes, there are exceedingly good points about the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">168</a></span>Turks: chibouks, coffee, and as many wives as they
+please. It made me whistle to think of it. Oh, thought
+I, that some of our ladies could see these things; that
+some haughty beauty, at whose feet dozens of worthy
+and amiable young gentlemen are sighing themselves
+into premature wrinkles and ugliness, might see these
+things.</p>
+
+<p>I am no rash innovator. I would not sweep away
+the established customs of our state of society. I would
+not lay my meddling fingers upon the admitted prerogatives
+of our ladies; but I cannot help asking myself
+if, in the rapid changes of this turning world, changes
+which completely alter rocks and the hardest substances
+of nature, it may not by possibility happen that the tenour
+of a lady's humour will change. What a goodly
+spectacle to see those who are never content without a
+dozen admirers in their train, following by dozens in the
+train of one man! But I fear me much that this will
+never be, at least in our day. Our system of education
+is radically wrong. The human mind, says some philosopher,
+and the gentleman is right, is like the sand
+upon the shore of the sea. You may write upon it
+what character you please. <i>We</i> begin by writing upon
+their innocent unformed minds, that, "Born for their
+use, we live but to oblige them." The consequence is,
+I will not say what; for I hope to return among them
+and kiss the rod in some fair hand; but this I do know,
+that here the "twig is so bent" that they become as
+gentle, as docile, and as tractable as any domestic animal.
+I say again, there are many exceeding good
+points about the Turks.</p>
+
+<p>At about six o'clock we came in sight of Smyrna, on
+the opposite side of the gulf, and still a long way off.
+At dusk we were directly opposite the city; and although
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">169</a></span>we had yet to make a long circuit round the
+head of the gulf, I was revelling in the bright prospect
+before me. Dreams of pulling off my pantaloons; delightful
+visions of clean sheets and a Christian bed flitted
+before my eyes. Yes, said I to my pantaloons and
+shirt, ye worthy and faithful servants, this night ye
+shall have rest. While other garments have fallen
+from me by the way, ye have stuck to me. And thou,
+my gray pantaloons, little did the neat Parisian tailor
+who made thee think that the strength of his stitching
+would ever be tested by three weeks' uninterrupted
+wear; but to-morrow thou shalt go into the hands of a
+master, who shall sew on thy buttons and sew up thy
+rents; and thou, my&mdash;I was going on with words of
+the same affectionate import to my shirt, stockings, and
+drawers, which, however, did not deserve so well of
+me, for they had in a measure <i>dropped off</i> on the way,
+when my Tartar came to a dead stop before the door
+of a cabin, dismounted, and made signs to me to do
+the same. But I began now to have some notions of
+my own; heretofore I had been perfectly passive; I
+had always done as I was told, but in sight of Smyrna
+I became restiff. I talked and shouted to him, pointed
+to the city, and turned my horse as though I was going
+on alone. My Tartar, however, paid no attention to
+me; he very coolly took off my carpet-bag and carried
+it into the cabin, lighted his pipe, and sat down by the
+door, looking at me with the most imperturbable gravity.
+I had hardly had time to admire his impudence, and
+to calculate the chances of my being able, alone at
+night, to cross the many streams which emptied into
+the gulf, when the wind, which had been rising for
+some time, became very violent, and the rain began to
+fall in torrents. With a sigh I bade farewell to the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">170</a></span>bright visions that had deluded me, gave another sigh
+to the uncertainty of all human calculations, the cup
+and the lip, &amp;c., and took refuge in the cabin.</p>
+
+<p>What a substitute for the pretty little picture I had
+drawn! Three Turks were sitting round a brazier of
+charcoal frying doughballs. Three rugs were spread in
+three corners of the cabin, and over each of them were
+the eternal pistols and yataghan. There was nothing
+there to defend; their miserable lives were not worth
+taking; why were these weapons there? The Turks
+at first took no notice of me, and I had now to make
+amends for my backwardness in entering. I resolved
+to go to work boldly, and at once elbowed among them
+for a seat around the brazier. The one next me on my
+right seemed a little struck by my easy ways; he put
+his hand on his ribs to feel how far my elbow had penetrated,
+and then took his pipe from his mouth and offered
+it to me. The ice broken, I smoked the pipe to
+the last whiff, and handed it to him to be refilled; with
+all the horrors of dyspepsy before my eyes, I scrambled
+with them for the last doughball, and, when the attention
+of all of them was particularly directed toward me,
+took out my watch, held it over the lamp, and wound it
+up. I addressed myself particularly to the one who had
+first taken notice of me, and made myself extremely
+agreeable by always smoking his pipe. After coffee
+and half a dozen pipes, he gave me to understand that
+I was to sleep with him upon his mat, at which I slapped
+him on the back and cried out, "Bono," having heard
+him use that word apparently with a knowledge of its
+meaning.</p>
+
+<p>I was surprised in the course of the evening to see
+one of them begin to undress, knowing that such was
+not the custom of the country, but found that it was
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">171</a></span>only a temporary disrobing for sporting purposes, to
+hunt fleas and bedbugs; by which I had an opportunity
+of comparing the Turkish with some I had brought
+with me from Greece; and though the Turk had great
+reason to be proud of his, I had no reason to be ashamed
+of mine. I now began to be drowsy, and should soon
+have fallen asleep; but the youngest of the party, a sickly
+and sentimental young man, melancholy and musical,
+and, no doubt, in love, brought out the common Turkish
+instrument, a sort of guitar, on which he worked with
+untiring vivacity, keeping time with his head and heels.
+My friend accompanied him with his voice, and this
+brought out my Tartar, who joined in with groans and
+grunts which might have waked the dead. But my
+cup was not yet full. During the musical festival my
+friend and intended bedfellow took down from a shelf
+above me a large plaster, which he warmed over the
+brazier. He then unrolled his turban, took off a plaster
+from the back of his head, and disclosed a wound,
+raw, gory, and ghastly, that made my heart sink within
+me: I knew that the plague was about Smyrna; I had
+heard that it was on this road; I involuntarily recurred
+to the Italian prayer, "Save me from the three miseries
+of the Levant: plague, fire, and the dragoman." I shut
+my eyes; I had slept but two hours the night before;
+had ridden twelve hours that day on horseback; I drew
+my cloak around me; my head sank upon my carpet-bag,
+and I fell asleep, leaving the four Turks playing
+cards on the bottom of a pewter plate. Once during the
+night I was awakened by my bedfellow's mustaches
+tickling my lips. I turned my back and slept on.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning my Tartar, with one jerk, stood me
+upright on the floor, and holding me in that position
+until I got awake, kicked open the door, and pointed to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">172</a></span>my horse standing before it ready saddled and bridled.
+In three hours I was crossing the caravan bridge, a
+bridge over the beautiful Melissus, on the banks of
+which Homer was born; and picking my way among
+caravans, which for ages have continued to cross this
+bridge laden with all the riches of the East, I entered
+the long-looked-for city of Smyrna, a city that has
+braved the reiterated efforts of conflagrations, plagues,
+and earthquakes; ten times destroyed, and ten times
+risen from her ruins; the queen of the cities of Anatolia;
+extolled by the ancients as Smyrna the lovely, the
+crown of Ionia, the pride of Asia. But old things have
+passed away, and the ancient city now figures only
+under the head of arrivals in a newspaper, in the words
+and figures following, that is to say, "Brig Betsy, Baker
+master, 57 days from Smyrna, with figs and raisins to
+order. Mastic dull, opium rising."</p>
+
+<p>In half an hour I was in the full enjoyment of a
+Turkish bath; lolled half an hour on a divan, with
+chibouk and coffee, and came out fresh as if I had
+spent the last three weeks training for the ring. Oh,
+these Turks are luxurious dogs. Chibouks, coffee, hot
+baths, and as many wives as they please. What a catalogue
+of human enjoyments! But I intend Smyrna
+as a place of rest, and, in charity, give you the benefit,
+of it.</p>
+<p class="right">****</p></div>
+
+<hr class="l65" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">173</a></span></h2>
+
+<div class="chapblock"><p>First Sight of Smyrna.&mdash;Unveiled Women.&mdash;Ruins of Ephesus.&mdash;Ruin, all
+Ruin.&mdash;Temple of Diana.&mdash;Encounter with a Wolf.&mdash;Love at first Sight.&mdash;Gatherings
+on the Road.</p></div>
+
+<p class="center">(<i>Another letter.</i>)</p>
+<div class="letter">
+<p class="salutation">
+<span class="smcap">My dear</span> ****,
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">After</span> my bath I returned to my hotel, breakfasted,
+and sallied out for a walk. It was now about twelve
+o'clock, Sunday&mdash;the first Sunday after Easter&mdash;and all
+the Frank population was in the streets. My hotel was
+in an out-of-the-way quarter, and when, turning a corner,
+I suddenly found myself in the main street, I was
+not prepared for the sight that met my eye. Paris on
+a fęte day does not present so gay and animated a
+scene. It was gay, animated, striking, and beautiful,
+and entirely different from anything I had ever seen in
+any European city. Franks, Jews, Greeks, Turks, and
+Armenians, in their various and striking costumes, were
+mingled together in agreeable confusion; and making
+all due allowance for the circumstance that I had for
+some time been debarred the sight of an unveiled woman,
+I certainly never saw so much beauty, and I never
+saw a costume so admirably calculated to set off
+beauty. At the same time the costume is exceedingly
+trying to a lady's pretensions. Being no better than
+one of the uninitiated, I shall not venture upon such
+dangerous ground as a lady's toilet. I will merely refer
+to that part which particularly struck me, and that
+is the headdress; no odious broad-brimmed hat; no
+enormous veils enveloping nose, mouth, and eyes; but
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">174</a></span>simply a large gauze turban, sitting lightly and gracefully
+on the head, rolled back over the forehead, leaving the
+whole face completely exposed, and exhibiting clear dark
+complexions, rosy lips closing over teeth of dazzling
+whiteness; and then such eyes, large, dark, and rolling.
+It is matter of history, and it is confirmed by poetry,
+<span class="err" title="original: hat">that</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The angelic youths of old,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Burning for maids of mortal mould,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bewildered, left the glorious skies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And lost their heaven for woman's eyes."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>My dear friend, this is the country where such things
+happened; the throne of the Thunderer, high Olympus,
+is almost in sight, and these are the daughters of the women
+who worked such miracles. If the age of passion,
+like the age of chivalry, were not over and for ever gone,
+if this were not emphatically a bank-note world, I would
+say of the Smyrniotes, above all others, that they are
+that description of women who could</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Raise a mortal to the skies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or bring an angel down."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And they walk, too, as if conscious of their high pretensions,
+as if conscious that the reign of beauty is not
+yet ended; and, under that enchanting turban, charge
+with the whole artillery of their charms. It is a perfect
+unmasked battery; nothing can stand before it. I
+wonder the sultan allows it. The Turks are as touchy
+as tinder; they take fire as quick as any of the old
+demigods, and a pair of black eyes is at any time
+enough to put mischief in them. But the Turks are a
+considerate people. They consider that the Franks, or
+rather the Greeks, to whom I particularly refer, have
+periodical fits of insanity that they go mad twice a year
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">175</a></span>during carnival and after Lent; and if at such a time a follower
+of the Prophet, accidentally straggling in the Frank
+quarter, should find the current of his blood disturbed,
+he would sooner die, nay, he would sooner cut off his
+beard, than hurt a hair of any one of the light heads
+that he sees flitting before him. There is something
+remarkable, by-the-way, in the tenacity with which the
+Grecian women have sustained the rights and prerogatives
+of beauty in defiance of Turkish customs and
+prejudices; while the men have fallen into the habits of
+their quondam masters, have taken to pipes and coffee,
+and in many instances to turbans and big trousers, the
+women have ever gone with their faces uncovered, and
+to this day one and all eschew the veil of the Turkish
+women.</p>
+
+<p>Pleased and amused with myself and everything I
+saw, I moved along unnoticed and unknown, staring,
+observing, and admiring; among other things, I observed
+that one of the amiable customs of our own city
+was in full force here, viz., that of the young gentlemen,
+with light sticks in their hands, gathering around the
+door of the fashionable church to stare at the ladies as
+they came out. I was pleased to find such a mark of
+civilization in a land of barbarians, and immediately fell
+into a thing which seemed so much like home; but, in
+justice to the Smyrniote ladies, I must say I cannot
+flatter myself that I stared a single one out of countenance.</p>
+
+<p>But I need not attempt to interest you in Smyrna; it
+is too every-day a place; every Cape Cod sailor knows
+it better than I do. I have done all that I could; I
+have waived the musty reminiscences of its history; I
+have waived ruins which are said to exist here, and have
+endeavoured to give you a faint but true picture of its
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">176</a></span>living and existing beauties, of the bright and beautiful
+scene that broke upon me the first morning of my arrival;
+and now, if I have not touched you with the
+beauty of its women, I should despair of doing so by
+any description of its beautiful climate, its charming
+environs, and its hospitable society.</p>
+
+<p>Leave, then, what is, after all, but the city of figs and
+raisins, and go with me where, by comparison, the foot of
+civilized man seldom treads; go with me into the desert
+and solitary places; go with me among the cities of the
+seven churches of Asia; and, first, to the ruins of Ephesus.
+I had been several days expecting a companion
+to make this tour with me, but, being disappointed, was
+obliged to set out alone. I was not exactly alone, for
+I had with me a Turk as guide and a Greek as cicerone
+and interpreter, both well mounted and armed to the
+teeth. We started at two o'clock in the morning, under
+the light of thousands of stars; and the day broke upon
+us in a country wild and desolate, as if it were removed
+thousands of miles from the habitations of men. There
+was little variety and little incident in our ride. During
+the whole day it lay through a country decidedly handsome,
+the soil rich and fertile, but showing with appalling
+force the fatal effects of misgovernment, wholly uncultivated,
+and almost wholly uninhabited. Indeed, the
+only habitations were the little Turkish coffee-houses
+and the black tents of the Turcomans. These are a
+wandering tribe, who come out from the desert, and approach
+comparatively near the abodes of civilization.
+They are a pastoral people; their riches are their flocks
+and herds; they lead a wandering life, free as the air
+they breathe; they have no local attachments; to-day
+they pitch their tents on the hillside, to-morrow on the
+plain; and wherever they sit themselves down, all that
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">177</a></span>they have on earth, wife, children, and friends, are immediately
+around them. There is something primitive,
+almost patriarchal, in their appearance; indeed, it carries
+one back to a simple and perhaps a purer age, and
+you can almost realize that state of society when the
+patriarch sat in the door of his tent and called in and fed
+the passing traveller.</p>
+
+<p>The general character of the road is such as to prepare
+one for the scene that awaits him at Ephesus;
+enormous burying-grounds, with thousands of headstones
+shaded by the mourning cypress, in the midst of
+a desolate country, where not a vestige of a human
+habitation is to be seen. They stand on the roadside
+as melancholy telltales that large towns or cities once
+existed in their immediate neighbourhood, and that the
+generations who occupied them have passed away, furnishing
+fearful evidence of the decrease of the Turkish
+population, and perhaps that the gigantic empire of the
+Ottoman is tottering to its fall.</p>
+
+<p>For about three hours before reaching Ephesus, the
+road, crossing a rich and beautiful plain watered by the
+Cayster, lies between two mountains; that on the right
+leads to the sea, and on the left are the ruins of Ephesus.
+Near, and in the immediate vicinity, storks were calmly
+marching over the plain and building among the ruins;
+they moved as if seldom disturbed by human footsteps,
+and seemed to look upon us as intruders upon a spot
+for a long time abandoned to birds and beasts of prey.
+About a mile this side are the remains of the Turkish
+city of Aysalook, or Temple of the Moon, a city of comparatively
+modern date, reared into a brief magnificence
+out of the ruins of its fallen neighbour. A sharp hill,
+almost a mountain, rises abruptly from the plain, on the
+top of which is a ruined fortress, with many ruins of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">178</a></span>Turkish magnificence at the base; broken columns, baths
+overgrown with ivy, and the remains of a grand mosque,
+the roof sustained by four granite columns from the
+Temple of Diana; the minaret fallen, the mosque deserted;
+the Mussulman no more goes there to pray; bats
+and owls were building in its lofty roof, and snakes and
+lizards were crawling over its marble floor.</p>
+
+<p>It was late in the afternoon when I arrived at the little
+coffee-house at Aysalook; a caravan had already
+encamped under some fine old sycamores before the
+door, preparatory to passing the night. I was somewhat
+fatigued, and my Greek, who had me in charge, was
+disposed to stop and wait for the morrow; but the fallen
+city was on the opposite hill at but a short distance,
+and the shades of evening seemed well calculated to
+heighten the effect of a ramble among its ruins. In
+a right line it was not more than half a mile, but we
+soon found that we could not go directly to it; a piece
+of low swampy ground lay between, and we had not
+gone far before our horses sank up to their saddle-girths.
+We were obliged to retrace our steps, and work our
+way around by a circuitous route of more than two miles.
+This, too, added to the effect of our approach. It was
+a dreary reflection, that a city, whose ports and whose
+gates had been open to the commerce of the then known
+world; whose wealth had invited the traveller and sojourner
+within its walls should lie a ruin upon a hillside,
+with swamps and morasses extending around it, in sight
+but out of reach, near but unapproachable. A warning
+voice seemed to issue from the ruins, "<i>Procul, procul,
+este profani</i>," my day is past, my sun is set, I have gone
+to my grave; pass on, stranger, and disturb not the ashes
+of the dead.</p>
+
+<p>But my Turk did not understand Latin, and we continued
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">179</a></span>to advance. We moved along in perfect silence,
+for besides that my Turk never spoke, and my Greek,
+who was generally loquacious enough, was out of humour
+at being obliged to go on, we had enough to do in
+picking our lonely way. But silence best suited the
+scene; the sound of the human voice seemed almost a
+mockery of fallen greatness. We entered by a large and
+ruined gateway into a place distinctly marked as having
+been a street, and, from the broken columns strewed on
+each side, probably having been lined with a colonnade.
+I let my reins fall upon my horse's neck; he moved about
+in the slow and desultory way that suited my humour;
+now sinking to his knees in heaps of rubbish, now stumbling
+over a Corinthian capital, and now sliding over a
+marble pavement. The whole hillside is covered with
+ruins to an extent far greater than I expected to find, and
+they are all of a kind that tends to give a high idea of the
+ancient magnificence of the city. To me, these ruins
+appeared to be a confused and shapeless mass; but they
+have been examined by antiquaries with great care, and
+the character of many of them identified with great certainty.
+I had, however, no time for details; and, indeed,
+the interest of these ruins in my eyes was not in
+the details. It mattered little to me that this was the
+stadium and that a fountain; that this was a gymnasium
+and that a market-place; it was enough to know
+that the broken columns, the mouldering walls, the grass-grown
+streets, and the wide-extended scene of desolation
+and ruin around me were all that remained of one
+of the greatest cities of Asia, one of the earliest Christian
+cities in the world. But what do I say? Who
+does not remember the tumults and confusion raised by
+Demetrius the silversmith, "lest the temple of the great
+goddess Diana should be despised, and her magnificence
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">180</a></span>be destroyed;" and how the people, having caught
+"Caius and Aristarchus, Paul's companions in travel,"
+rushed with one accord into the theatre, crying out,
+"great is Diana of the Ephesians." My dear friend, I
+sat among the ruins of that theatre; the stillness of death
+was around me; far as the eye could reach, not a living
+soul was to be seen save my two companions and a
+group of lazy Turks smoking at the coffee-house in
+Aysalook. A man of strong imagination might almost
+go wild with the intensity of his own reflections; and do
+not let it surprise you, that even one like me, brought up
+among the technicalities of declarations and replications,
+rebutters and surrebutters, and in nowise given to the illusions
+of the senses, should find himself roused, and irresistibly
+hurried back to the time when the shapeless
+and confused mass around him formed one of the most
+magnificent cities in the world; when a large and busy
+population was hurrying through its streets, intent upon
+the same pleasures and the same business that engage
+men now; that he should, in imagination, see before him
+St. Paul preaching to the Ephesians, shaking their faith
+in the gods of their fathers, gods made with their own
+hands; and the noise and confusion, and the people
+rushing tumultuously up the very steps where he sat;
+that he should almost hear their cry ringing in his ears,
+"Great is Diana of the Ephesians;" and then that he
+should turn from this scene of former glory and eternal
+ruin to his own far-distant land; a land that the wisest
+of the Ephesians never dreamed of; where the wild man
+was striving with the wild beast when the whole world
+rang with the greatness of the Ephesian name; and
+which bids fair to be growing greater and greater when
+the last vestige of Ephesus shall be gone and its very
+site unknown.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">181</a></span>But where is the temple of the great Diana, the temple
+two hundred and twenty years in building; the temple
+of one hundred and twenty-seven columns, each column
+the gift of a king? Can it be that the temple of
+the "Great goddess Diana," that the ornament of Asia,
+the pride of Ephesus, and one of the seven wonders of
+the world, has gone, disappeared, and left not a trace
+behind? As a traveller, I would fain be able to say
+that I have seen the ruins of this temple; but, unfortunately,
+I am obliged to limit myself by facts. Its site
+has of course engaged the attention of antiquaries. I
+am no skeptic in these matters, and am disposed to believe
+all that my cicerone tells me. You remember the
+countryman who complained to his minister that he
+never gave him any Latin in his sermons; and when the
+minister answered that he would not understand it, the
+countryman replied that he paid for the best, and ought
+to have it. I am like that honest countryman; but my
+cicerone understood himself better than the minister;
+he knew that I paid him for the best; he knew what
+was expected from him, and that his reputation was
+gone for ever if, in such a place as Ephesus, he could
+not point out the ruins of the great temple of Diana.
+He accordingly had <i>his</i> temple, which he stuck to with
+as much pertinacity as if he had built it himself; but I
+am sorry to be obliged to say, in spite of his authority
+and my own wish to believe him, that the better opinion
+is, that now not a single stone is to be seen.</p>
+
+<p>Topographers have fixed the site on the plain, near
+the gate of the city which opened to the sea. The sea,
+which once almost washed the walls, has receded or been
+driven back for several miles. For many years a new
+soil has been accumulating, and all that stood on the
+plain, including so much of the remains of the temple
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">182</a></span>as had not been plundered and carried away by different
+conquerors, is probably now buried many feet under its
+surface.</p>
+
+<p>It was dark when I returned to Aysalook. I had remarked,
+in passing, that several caravans had encamped
+there, and on my return found the camel-drivers assembled
+in the little coffee-house in which I was to pass the
+night. I soon saw that there were so many of us that
+we should make a tight fit in the sleeping part of the
+khan, and immediately measured off space enough to fit
+my body, allowing turning and kicking room. I looked
+with great complacency upon the light slippers of the
+Turks, which they always throw off, too, when they go
+to sleep, and made an ostentatious display of a pair of
+heavy iron-nailed boots, and, in lying down, gave one or
+two preliminary thumps to show them that I was restless
+in my movements, and, if they came too near me
+these iron-nailed boots would be uncomfortable neighbours.</p>
+
+<p>And here I ought to have spent half the night in
+musing upon the strange concatenation of circumstances
+which had broken up a quiet practising attorney, and
+sent him a straggler from a busy, money-getting land, to
+meditate among the ruins of ancient cities, and sleep
+pellmell with turbaned Turks. But I had no time for
+musing; I was amazingly tired; I looked at the group
+of Turks in one corner, and regretted that I could not
+talk with them; thought of the Tower of Babel and the
+wickedness of man, which brought about a confusion of
+tongues; of camel-drivers, and Arabian Nights' Entertainments;
+of home, and my own comfortable room in
+the third story; brought my boot down with a thump
+that made them all start, and in five minutes was asleep.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning I again went over to the ruins. Daylight,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">183</a></span>if possible, added to their effect; and a little thing
+occurred, not much in itself, but which, under the circumstances,
+fastened itself upon my mind in such a
+way that I shall never forget it. I had read that here,
+in the stillness of the night, the <span class="err" title="original: jackall's">jackal's</span> cry was heard;
+that, if a stone was rolled, a scorpion or lizard slipped
+from under it; and, while picking our way slowly
+along the lower part of the city, a wolf of the largest
+size came out above, as if indignant at being disturbed
+in his possessions. He moved a few paces toward us
+with such a resolute air that my companions both drew
+their pistols; then stopped, and gazed at us deliberately
+as we were receding from him, until, as if satisfied that
+we intended to leave his dominions, he turned and disappeared
+among the ruins. It would have made a fine
+picture; the Turk first, then the Greek, each with a
+pistol in his hand, then myself, all on horseback, the
+wolf above us, the valley, and the ruined city. I feel
+my inability to give you a true picture of these ruins.
+Indeed, if I could lay before you every particular, block
+for block, fragment for fragment, here a column and
+there a column, I could not convey a full idea of the
+desolation that marks the scene.</p>
+
+<p>To the Christian, the ruins of Ephesus carry with
+them a peculiar interest; for here, upon the wreck of
+heathen temples, was established one of the earliest
+Christian churches; but the Christian church has followed
+the heathen temple, and the worshippers of the
+true God have followed the worshippers of the great
+goddess Diana; and in the city where Paul preached,
+and where, in the words of the apostle, "much people
+were gathered unto the Lord," now not a solitary Christian
+dwells. Verily, in the prophetic language of inspiration,
+the "candlestick is removed from its place;"
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">184</a></span>a curse seems to have fallen upon it, men shun it, not
+a human being is to be seen among its ruins; and
+Ephesus, in faded glory and fallen grandeur, is given
+up to birds and beasts of prey, a monument and a warning
+to nations.</p>
+
+<p>From Ephesus I went to Scala Nova, handsomely
+situated on the shore of the sea, and commanding a
+fine view of the beautiful Island of Samos, distant not
+more than four miles. I had a letter to a Greek merchant
+there, who received me kindly, and introduced
+me to the Turkish governor. The governor, as usual,
+was seated upon a divan, and asked us to take seats
+beside him. We were served with coffee and pipes by
+two handsome Greek slaves, boys about fourteen, with
+long hair hanging down their necks, and handsomely
+dressed; who, after serving us, descended from the
+platform, and waited with folded arms until we had
+finished. Soon after a third guest came, and a third
+lad, equally handsome and equally well dressed, served
+him in the same manner. This is the style of the
+Turkish grandees, a slave to every guest. I do not
+know to what extent it is carried, but am inclined to
+think that, in the present instance, if one or two more
+guests had happened to come in, my friend's retinue of
+slaves would have fallen short. The governor asked
+me from what country I came, and who was my king;
+and when I told him that we had no king, but a president,
+he said, very graciously, that our president and
+the grand seignior were very good friends; a compliment
+which I acknowledged with all becoming humility.
+Wanting to show off a little, I told him that we
+were going to fight the French, and he said we should
+<span class="err" title="original: cartainly">certainly</span> whip them if we could get the grand seignior
+to help us.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">185</a></span>I afterward called on my own account upon the English
+consul. The consuls in these little places are originals.
+They have nothing to do, but they have the
+government arms blazoned over their doors, and strut
+about in cocked hats and regimentals, and shake their
+heads, and look knowing, and talk about their government;
+they do not know what the government will
+think, &amp;c., when half the time their government hardly
+knows of the existence of its worthy representatives.
+This was an old Maltese, who spoke French and Italian.
+He received me very kindly, and pressed me to stay all
+night. I told him that I was not an Englishman, and
+had no claim upon his hospitality; but he said that
+made no difference; that he was consul for all civilized
+nations, among which he did me the honour to include
+mine.</p>
+
+<p>At three o'clock I took leave of the consul. My Greek
+friend accompanied me outside the gate, where my horses
+were waiting for me; and, at parting, begged me to remember
+that I had a friend, who hardly knew what
+pleasure was except in serving me. I told him that
+the happiness of my life was not complete before I met
+him; we threw ourselves into each other's arms, and,
+after a two hours' acquaintance, could hardly tear away
+from each other's embraces. Such is the force of
+sympathy between congenial spirits. My friend was a
+man about fifty, square built, broad shouldered, and
+big mustached; and the beauty of it was, that neither
+could understand a word the other said; and all this
+touching interchange of sentiment had to pass through
+my mustached, big-whiskered, double-fisted, six-feet interpreter.</p>
+
+<p>At four o'clock we set out on our return; at seven
+we stopped in a beautiful valley surrounded by mountains,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">186</a></span>and on the sides of the mountains were a number
+of Turcomans tents. The khan was worse than any I
+had yet seen. It had no floor and no mat. The proprietor
+of the khan, if such a thing, consisting merely
+of four mud walls with a roof of branches, which seemed
+to have been laid there by the winds, could be said to
+have a proprietor, was uncommonly sociable; he set
+before me my supper, consisting of bread and yort&mdash;a
+preparation of milk&mdash;and appeared to be much amused
+at seeing me eat. He asked my guide many questions
+about me; examined my pistols, took off his turban,
+and put my hat upon his shaved head, which transformed
+him from a decidedly bold, slashing-looking fellow,
+into a decidedly sneaking-looking one. I had certainly
+got over all fastidiousness in regard to eating, drinking,
+and sleeping; but I could not stand the vermin at this
+khan. In the middle of the night I rose and went out of
+doors; it was a brilliant starlight night, and, as the
+bare earth was in any case to be my bed, I exchanged
+the mud floor of my khan for the greensward and the
+broad canopy of heaven. My Turk was sleeping on
+the ground, about a hundred yards from the house, with
+his horse grazing around him. I nestled close to him,
+and slept perhaps two hours. Toward morning I was
+awakened by the cold, and, with the selfishness of misery,
+I began punching my Turk under the ribs to wake
+him. This was no easy matter; but, after a while, I
+succeeded, got him to saddle the horses, and in a few
+minutes we were off, my Greek not at all pleased with
+having his slumbers so prematurely disturbed.</p>
+
+<p>At about two o'clock we passed some of the sultan's
+<i>volunteers</i>. These were about fifty men chained together
+by the wrists and ankles, who had been chased,
+run down, and caught in some of the villages, and were
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">187</a></span>now on their way to Constantinople, under a guard, to
+be trained as soldiers. I could but smile as I saw them,
+not at them, for, in truth, there was nothing in their condition
+to excite a smile, but at the recollection of an article
+I had seen a few days before in a European paper,
+which referred to the new levies making by the
+sultan, and the spirit with which his subjects entered
+into the service. They were a speaking comment upon
+European insight into Turkish politics. But, without
+more ado, suffice it to say, that at about four o'clock I
+found myself at the door of my hotel, my outer garments
+so covered with creeping things that my landlord,
+a prudent Swiss, with many apologies, begged
+me to shake myself before going into the house; and
+my nether garments so stained with blood, that I looked
+as if a corps of the sultan's regulars had pricked me
+with their bayonets. My enthusiasm on the subject of
+the seven churches was in no small degree abated,
+and just at that moment I was willing to take upon
+trust the condition of the others, that all that was foretold
+of them in the Scriptures had come to pass. I
+again betook me to the bath, and, in thinking of the
+luxury of my repose, I feel for you, and come to a full
+stop.</p>
+<p class="right">****</p></div>
+
+<hr class="l65" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">188</a></span></h2>
+
+<div class="chapblock"><p>Position of Smyrna.&mdash;Consular Privileges.&mdash;The Case of the Lover.&mdash;End
+of the Love Affair.&mdash;The Missionary's Wife.&mdash;The Casino.&mdash;Only
+a Greek Row.&mdash;Rambles in Smyrna.&mdash;The Armenians.&mdash;Domestic Enjoyments.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">But</span> I must go back a little, and make the amende
+honourable, for, in truth, Ghiaour Ismir, or Infidel
+Smyrna, with its wild admixture of European and
+Asiatic population, deserves better than the rather cavalier
+notice contained in my letter.</p>
+
+<p>Before reaching it I had remarked its exceeding
+beauty of position, chosen as it is with that happy
+taste which distinguished the Greeks in selecting the
+sites of their ancient cities, on the declivity of a mountain
+running down to the shore of the bay, with houses
+rising in terraces on its sides; its domes and minarets,
+interspersed with cypresses, rising above the tiers of
+houses, and the summit of the hill crowned with a large
+solitary castle. It was the first large Turkish city I had
+seen, and it differed, too, from all other Turkish cities in
+the strong foothold obtained there by Europeans. Indeed,
+remembering it as a place where often, and within
+a very few years, upon a sudden outbreaking of popular
+fury, the streets were deluged with Christian blood,
+I was particularly struck, not only with the air of confidence
+and security, but, in fact, with the bearing of superiority
+assumed by the "Christian dog!" among the
+followers of the Prophet.</p>
+
+<p>Directly on the bay is a row of large houses running
+along the whole front of the city, among which are seen
+emblazoned over the doors the arms of most of the foreign
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">189</a></span>consuls, including the American. By the treaties
+of the Porte with Christian powers, the Turkish tribunals
+have no jurisdiction of matters touching the rights
+of foreign residents; and all disputes between these, and
+even criminal offences, fall under the cognizance of their
+respective consuls. This gives the consuls in all the
+maritime ports of Turkey great power and position;
+and all over the Levant they are great people; but at
+Smyrna they are far more important than ambassadors
+and ministers at the European capitals; and, with their
+janisaries and their appearance on all public occasions
+in uniform, are looked up to by the Levantines somewhat
+like the consuls sent abroad under the Roman empire,
+and by the Turks as almost sultans.</p>
+
+<p>The morning after my arrival I delivered letters of
+introduction to Mr. Offley, the American consul, a native
+of Philadelphia, thirty years resident in Smyrna,
+and married to an Armenian lady, Mr. Langdon, a merchant
+of Boston, and Mr. Styth, of Baltimore, of the firm
+of Issaverdens, Styth, and Company; one to Mr. Jetter,
+a German missionary, whose lady told me, while her
+husband was reading it, that she had met me in the
+street the day before, and on her return home told him
+that an American had just arrived. I was curious to
+know the mark by which she recognised me as an
+American, being rather dubious whether it was by reason
+of anything praiseworthy or the reverse; but she
+could not tell.</p>
+
+<p>I trust the reader has not forgotten the victim of
+the tender passion who, in the moment of my leaving
+Athens, had reposed in my sympathizing bosom the
+burden of his hopes and fears. At the very first house
+in which I was introduced to the female members of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">190</a></span>the family, I found making a morning call the lady who
+had made such inroads upon his affections. I had already
+heard her spoken of as being the largest fortune,
+and, par consequence, the greatest belle in Smyrna,
+and I hailed it as a favourable omen that I accidentally
+made her acquaintance so soon after my arrival. I
+made my observations, and could not help remarking
+that she was by no means pining away on account of
+the absence of my friend. I was almost indignant at
+her heartless happiness, and, taking advantage of an
+opportunity, introduced his name, hoping to see a shade
+come over her, and, perhaps, to strike her pensive for
+two or three minutes; but her comment was a deathblow
+to my friend's prospects and my mediation:
+"Poor M.!" and all present repeated "Poor M.!" with
+a portentous smile, and the next moment had forgotten
+his existence. I went away in the full conviction that
+it was all over with "Poor M.!" and murmuring to
+myself, Put not your trust in woman, I dined, and in
+the afternoon called with my letter of introduction upon
+his friend the Rev. Mr. Brewer, and Mr. Brewer's comment
+on reading it was about equal to the lady's "Poor
+M.!" He asked me in what condition I left our unfortunate
+friend. I told him his <i>leg</i> was pretty bad, though
+he continued to hobble about; but Mr. Brewer interrupted
+me; he did not mean his leg, but, he hesitated
+and with reluctance, as if he wished to avoid speaking
+of it outright, added, <i>his mind</i>. I did not comprehend
+him, and, from his hesitation and delicacy, imagined
+that he was alluding to the lover's heart; but he cleared
+the matter up, and to my no small surprise, by telling
+me that, some time before he left Smyrna, "Poor M."
+had shown such strong marks of aberration of intellect,
+that his friends had deemed it advisable to put him under
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">191</a></span>the charge of a brother missionary and send him home,
+and that they hoped great benefit from travel and change
+of scene. I was surprised, and by no means elevated
+in my own conceit, when I found that I had been made
+the confidant of a crazy man. Mr. Hill, not knowing
+of any particular intimacy between us, and probably
+not wishing to publish his misfortune unnecessarily, had
+not given me the slightest intimation of it, and I had
+not discovered it. I had considered his communication
+to me strange, and his general conduct not less so, but
+I had no idea that it was anything more than the ordinary
+derangement which every man is said to labour
+under when in love. I then told Mr. Brewer my story,
+and the commission with which I was intrusted, which
+he said was perfectly characteristic, his malady being
+a sort of monomania on the subject of the tender passion;
+and every particle of interest which I might nevertheless
+have taken in the affair, in connecting his derangement
+in some way with the lady in question, was
+destroyed by the volatile direction of his passion, sometimes
+to one object and sometimes with another; and
+in regard to the lady to whom I was accredited, he had
+never shown any penchant toward her in particular, and
+must have given me her name because it happened to
+be the first that suggested itself at the moment of his
+unburdening himself to me. Fortunately, I had not exposed
+myself by any demonstrations in behalf of my
+friend, so I quietly dropped him. On leaving Mr.
+Brewer I suggested a doubt whether I could be regarded
+as an acquaintance upon the introduction of a crazy
+man; but we had gone so far that it was decided, for
+that specific purpose, to admit his sanity. I should not
+mention these particulars if there was any possibility of
+their ever wounding the feelings of him to whom they
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">192</a></span>refer; but he is now beyond the reach either of calumny
+or praise, for about a year after I heard, with great
+regret, that his malady had increased, accompanied with
+a general derangement of health; and, shortly after his
+return home, he died.</p>
+
+<p>My intercourse with the Franks was confined principally
+to my own countrymen, whose houses were open
+to me at all times; and I cannot help mentioning the
+name of Mr. Van Lennup, the Dutch consul, the great
+friend of the missionaries in the Levant, who had been
+two years resident in the United States, and was intimately
+acquainted with many of my friends at home.
+Society in Smyrna is purely mercantile; and having
+been so long out of the way of it, it was actually grateful
+to me once more to hear men talking with all their
+souls about cotton, stocks, exchanges, and other topics
+of <i>interest</i>, in the literal meaning of the word. Sometimes
+lounging in a merchant's counting-room, I took
+up an American paper, and heard Boston, and New-York,
+and Baltimore, and cotton, and opium, and freight,
+and quarter per cent. less bandied about, until I almost
+fancied myself at home; and when this became too
+severe I had a resource with the missionaries, gentlemanly
+and well-educated men, well acquainted with
+the countries and the places worth visiting, with just
+the books I wanted, and, I had almost said, the wives;
+I mean with wives always glad to see a countryman,
+and to talk about home. There is something exceedingly
+interesting in a missionary's wife. A soldier's
+is more so, for she follows him to danger and, perhaps,
+to death; but glory waits him if he falls, and while she
+weeps she is proud. Before I went abroad the only
+missionary I ever knew I despised, for I believed him
+to be a canting hypocrite; but I saw much of them
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">193</a></span>abroad, and made many warm friends among them;
+and, I repeat it, there is something exceedingly interesting
+in a missionary's wife. She who had been cherished
+as a plant that the winds must not breathe on too
+rudely, recovers from the shock of a separation from
+her friends to find herself in a land of barbarians, where
+her loud cry of distress can never reach their ears.
+New ties twine round her heart, and the tender and
+helpless girl changes her very nature, and becomes the
+staff and support of the man. In his hours of despondency
+she raises his drooping spirits; she bathes his
+aching head; she smooths his pillow of sickness; and,
+after months of wearisome silence, I have entered her
+dwelling, and her heart instinctively told her that I was
+from the same land. I have been welcomed as a
+brother; answered her hurried, and anxious, and eager
+questions; and sometimes, when I have known any of
+her friends at home, I have been for a moment more
+than recompensed for all the toils and privations of a
+traveller in the East. I have left her dwelling burdened
+with remembrances to friends whom she will
+perhaps never see again. I bore a letter to a father,
+which was opened by a widowed mother. Where I
+could, I have discharged every promise to a missionary's
+wife; but I have some yet undischarged which I
+rank among the sacred obligations of my life. It is
+true, the path of the missionary is not strewed with
+roses; but often, in leaving his house at night, and following
+my guide with a lantern through the narrow
+streets of a Turkish city, I have run over the troubles
+incident to every condition of life, not forgetting those
+of a traveller, and have taken to whistling, and, as I
+stumbled into the gate of an old convent, have murmured
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">194</a></span>involuntarily, "After all, these missionaries are
+happy fellows."</p>
+
+<p>Every stranger, upon his arrival in Smyrna, is introduced
+at the casino. I went there the first time to a
+concert. It is a large building, erected by a club of
+merchants, with a suite of rooms on the lower floor,
+billiards, cards, reading and sitting room, and a ball
+room above covering the whole. The concert was
+given in the ballroom, and, from what I had seen in the
+streets, I expected an extraordinary display of beauty;
+but I was much disappointed. The company consisted
+only of the aristocracy or higher mercantile classes, the
+families of the gentlemen composing the club, and excluded
+the Greek and Smyrniote women, among whom
+is found a great portion of the beauty of the place. A
+patent of nobility in Smyrna, as in our own city, is
+founded upon the time since the possessor gave up
+selling goods, or the number of consignments he receives
+in the course of a year. The casino, by-the-way,
+is a very aristocratic institution, and sometimes knotty
+questions occur in its management. Captains of merchant
+vessels are not admitted. A man came out as
+owner of a vessel and cargo, and also master: <i>quere</i>,
+could he be admitted? His consignee said yes; but
+the majority, not being interested in the sales of his
+cargo, went for a strict construction, and excluded him.</p>
+
+<p>The population of Smyrna, professing three distinct
+religions, observe three different Sabbaths; the Mohammedans
+Friday, the Jews Saturday, and the Christians
+Sunday, so that there are only four days in the
+week in which all the shops and bazars are open together,
+and there are so many fęte days that these are
+much broken in upon. The most perfect toleration prevails,
+and the religious festivals of the Greeks often terminate
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">195</a></span>in midnight orgies which debase and degrade
+the Christian in the eyes of the pious Mussulman.</p>
+
+<p>On Saturday morning I was roused from my bed by
+a loud cry and the tramp of a crowd through the street.
+I ran to my window, and saw a Greek tearing down
+the street at full speed, and another after him with a
+drawn yataghan in his hand; the latter gained ground
+at every step, and, just as he turned the corner, stabbed
+the first in the back. He returned with the bloody
+poniard in his hand, followed by the crowd, and rushed
+into a little Greek drinking-shop next door to my hotel.
+There was a loud noise and scuffling inside, and presently
+I saw him pitched out headlong into the street,
+and the door closed upon him. In a phrensy of passion
+he rushed back, and drove his yataghan with all his
+force into the door, stamped against it with his feet, and
+battered it with stones; unable to force it open, he sat
+down on the opposite side of the street, occasionally renewing
+his attack upon the door, talking violently with
+those inside, and sometimes the whole crowd laughing
+loud at the answers from within. Nobody attempted
+to interfere. Giusseppi, my host, said it was only a
+row among the Greeks. The Greek kept the street in
+an uproar for more than an hour, when he was secured
+and taken into custody.</p>
+
+<p>After dinner, under the escort of a merchant, a Jew
+from Trieste residing at the same hotel, I visited the
+Jews' quarter. The Jews of Smyrna are the descendants
+of that unhappy people who were driven out from
+Spain by the bloody persecutions of Ferdinand and
+Isabel; they still talk Spanish in their families; and
+though comparatively secure, now, as ever, they live
+the victims of tyranny and oppression, ever toiling and
+accumulating, and ever fearing to exhibit the fruits of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">196</a></span>their industry, lest they should excite the cupidity of a
+rapacious master. Their quarter is by far the most miserable
+in Smyrna, and within its narrow limits are congregated
+more than ten thousand of "the accursed people."
+It was with great difficulty that I avoided wounding
+the feelings of my companion by remarking its filthy
+and disgusting appearance; and wishing to remove
+my unfavourable impression by introducing me to some
+of the best families first, he was obliged to drag me
+through the whole range of its narrow and dirty streets.
+From the external appearance of the tottering houses,
+I did not expect anything better within; and, out of regard
+to his feelings, was really sorry that I had accepted
+his offer to visit his people; but with the first house I
+entered I was most agreeably disappointed. Ascending
+outside by a tottering staircase to the second story,
+within was not only neatness and comfort, but positive
+luxury. At one end of a spacious room was a raised
+platform opening upon a large latticed window, covered
+with rich rugs and divans along the wall. The master
+of the house was taking his afternoon siesta, and while
+we were waiting for him I expressed to my gratified
+companion my surprise and pleasure at the unexpected
+appearance of the interior. In a few minutes the master
+entered, and received us with the greatest hospitality
+and kindness. He was about thirty, with the high
+square cap of black felt, without any rim or border,
+long silk gown tied with a sash around the waist, a
+strongly-marked Jewish face, and amiable expression.
+In the house of the Israelite the welcome is the same
+as in that of the Turk; and seating himself, our host
+clapped his hands together, and a boy entered with coffee
+and pipes. After a little conversation he clapped
+his hands again; and hearing a clatter of wooden shoes,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">197</a></span>I turned my head and saw a little girl coming across
+the room, mounted on high wooden sabots almost like
+stilts, who stepped up the platform, and with quite a
+womanly air took her seat on the divan. I looked at
+her, and thought her a pert, forward little miss, and was
+about asking her how old she was, when my companion
+told me she was our host's wife. I checked myself,
+but in a moment felt more than ever tempted to ask
+the same question; and, upon inquiring, learned that
+she had attained the respectable age of thirteen, and
+had been then two years a wife. Our host told us that
+she had cost him a great deal of money, and the expense
+consisted in the outlay necessary for procuring a divorce
+from another wife. He did not like the other one at
+all; his father had married him to her, and he had great
+difficulty in prevailing on his father to go to the expense
+of getting him freed. This wife was also provided by
+his father, and he did not like her much at first; he had
+never seen her till the day of marriage, but now he began
+to like her very well, though she cost him a great
+deal for ornaments. All this time we were looking at
+her, and she, with a perfectly composed expression, was
+listening to the conversation as my companion interpreted
+it, and following with her eyes the different speakers.
+I was particularly struck with the cool, imperturbable
+expression of her face, and could not help thinking
+that, on the subject of likings and dislikings, young as
+she was, she might have some curious notions of her
+own; and since we had fallen into this little disquisition
+on family matters, and thinking that he had gone so far
+himself that I might waive delicacy, I asked him whether
+she liked him; he answered in that easy tone of
+confidence of which no idea can be given in words, "oh
+yes;" and when I intimated a doubt, he told me I might
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">198</a></span>ask herself. But I forbore, and did not ask her, and
+so lost the opportunity of learning from both sides the
+practical operation of matches made by parents. Our
+host sustained them; the plan saved a great deal of
+trouble, and wear and tear of spirit; prudent parents always
+selected such as were likely to suit each other;
+and being thrown together very young, they insensibly
+assimilated in tastes and habits; he admitted that he
+had missed it the first time, but he had hit it the second,
+and allowed that the system would work much better if
+the cost of procuring a divorce was not so great. With
+the highest respect, and a pressing invitation to come
+again, seconded by his wife, I took my leave of the self-satisfied
+Israelite.</p>
+
+<p>From this we went into several other houses, in all of
+which the interior belied, in the same manner, their external
+appearance. I do not say that they were gorgeous
+or magnificent, but they were clean, comfortable,
+and striking by their oriental style of architecture and
+furniture; and being their Sabbath, the women were in
+their best attire, with their heads, necks, and wrists
+adorned with a profusion of gold and silver ornaments.
+Several of the houses had libraries, with old Hebrew
+books, in which an old rabbi was reading or sometimes
+instructing children. In the last house a son was going
+through his days of mourning on the death of his father.
+He was lying in the middle of the floor, with his black
+cap on, and covered with a long black cloak. Twenty
+or thirty friends were sitting on the floor around him,
+who had come in to condole with him. When we entered,
+neither he nor any of his friends took any notice
+of us, except to make room on the floor. We sat down
+with them. It was growing dark, and the light broke
+dimly through the latticed windows upon the dusky
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">199</a></span>figures of the mourning Israelites; and there they sat,
+with stern visages and long beards, the feeble remnant
+of a fallen people, under scorn and contumely, and persecution
+and oppression, holding on to the traditions received
+from their fathers, practising in the privacy of
+their houses the same rites as when the priests bore
+aloft the ark of the covenant, and out of the very dust
+in which they lie still looking for the restoration of their
+temporal kingdom. In a room adjoining sat the widow
+of the deceased, with a group of women around her, all
+perfectly silent; and they too took no notice of us either
+when we entered or when we went away.</p>
+
+<p>The next day the shops were shut, and the streets
+again thronged as on the day of my arrival. I went to
+church at the English chapel attached to the residence
+of the British consul, and heard a sermon from a German
+missionary. I dined at one o'clock, and, in company
+with mine host of the Pension Suisse, and a merchant
+of Smyrna resident there, worked my way up
+the hill through the heart of the Turks' quarter to the
+old castle standing alone and in ruins on its summit.
+We rested a little while at the foot of the castle, and
+looked over the city and the tops of the minarets upon
+the beautiful bay, and descending in the rear of the
+castle, we came to the river Meles winding through a
+deep valley at the foot of the hill. This stream was
+celebrated in Grecian poetry three thousand years ago.
+It was the pride of the ancient Smyrneans, once washed
+the walls of the ancient city, and tradition says that on
+its banks the nymph Critheis gave birth to Homer.
+We followed it in its winding course down the valley,
+murmuring among evergreens. Over it in two places
+were the ruins of aqueducts which carried water to the
+old city, and in one or two places it turns an overshot
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">200</a></span>mill. On each side, at intervals along its banks, were
+oriental summer-houses, with verandahs, and balconies,
+and latticed windows. Approaching the caravan bridge
+we met straggling parties, and by degrees fell into a
+crowd of people, Franks, Europeans of every nation,
+Greeks, Turks, and Armenians, in all their striking
+costumes, sitting on benches under the shade of noble
+old sycamores, or on the grass, or on the river's brink,
+and moving among them were Turks cleanly dressed,
+with trays of refreshments, ices, and sherbet. There
+was an unusual collection of Greek and Smyrniote
+women, and an extraordinary display of beauty; none
+of them wore hats, but the Greek women a light gauze
+turban, and the Smyrniotes a small piece of red cloth,
+worked with gold, secured on the top of the head by the
+folds of the hair, with a long tassel hanging down from
+it. Opposite, and in striking contrast, the great Turkish
+burying-ground, with its thick grove of gloomy cypress,
+approached the bank of the river. I crossed over
+and entered the burying-ground, and penetrated the
+grove of funereal trees; all around were the graves of
+the dead; thousands and tens of thousands who but
+yesterday were like the gay crowd I saw flitting through
+the trees, were sleeping under my feet. Over some of
+the graves the earth was still fresh, and they who lay in
+them were already forgotten; but no, they were not
+forgotten; woman's love still remembered them, for
+Turkish women, with long white shawls wrapped around
+their faces, were planting over them myrtle and flowers,
+believing that they were paying an acceptable tribute to
+the souls of the dead. I left the burying-ground and
+plunged once more among the crowd. It may be that
+memory paints these scenes brighter than they were;
+but, if that does not deceive me, I never saw at Paris or
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">201</a></span>Vienna so gay and beautiful a scene, so rich in landscape
+and scenery, in variety of costume, and in beauty of
+female form and feature.</p>
+
+<p>We left the caravan bridge early to visit the Armenian
+quarter, this being the best day for seeing them
+collectively at home; and I had not passed through the
+first street of their beautiful quarter before I was forcibly
+struck with the appearance of a people different from
+any I had yet seen in the East. The Armenians are one
+of the oldest nations of the civilized world, and, amid all
+the revolutions of barbarian war and despotism, have
+maintained themselves as a cultivated people. From the
+time when their first chieftain fled from Babylon, his native
+place, to escape from the tyranny of Belus, king of
+Assyria, this warlike people, occupying a mountainous
+country near the sources of the Tigris and Euphrates,
+battled the Assyrians, Medes, the Persians, Macedonians,
+and Arabians, until their country was depopulated
+by the shah of Persia. Less than two millions are all
+that now remain of that once powerful people. Commerce
+has scattered them, like the Israelites, among all
+the principal nations of Europe and Asia, and everywhere
+they have preserved their stern integrity and uprightness
+of character. The Armenian merchant is now
+known in every quarter of the globe, and everywhere
+distinguished by superior cultivation, honesty, and manners.
+As early as the fourth century the Armenians
+embraced Christianity; they never had any sympathy
+with, and always disliked and avoided, the Greek Christians,
+and constantly resisted the endeavours of the
+popes to bring them within the Catholic pale. Their
+doctrine differs from that of the orthodox chiefly in their
+admitting only one nature in Christ, and believing the
+Holy Spirit to issue from the Father alone. Their first
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">202</a></span>abode, Mount Ararat, is even at the present day the centre
+of their religious and political union. They are distinguished
+by a patriarchal simplicity in their domestic
+manners; and it was the beautiful exhibition of this trait
+in their character that struck me on entering their quarter
+at Smyrna. In style and appearance their quarter is superior
+to any in Smyrna; their streets are broad and
+clean; their houses large, in good order, and well
+painted; oriental in their style of architecture, with
+large balconies and latticed windows, and spacious
+halls running through the centre, floored with small
+black and white stones laid in the form of stars and
+other fanciful devices, and leading to large gardens in
+the rear, ornamented with trees, vines, shrubs, and
+flowers, then in full bloom and beauty. All along the
+streets the doors of the houses were thrown wide open,
+and the old Armenian "Knickerbockers" were sitting
+outside or in the doorway, in their flowing robes, grave
+and sedate, with long pipes and large amber mouth
+pieces, talking with their neighbours, while the younger
+members were distributed along the hall or strolling
+through the garden, and children climbing the trees and
+arbours. It was a fęte day for the whole neighbourhood.
+All was social, and cheerful, and beautiful, without
+being gay or noisy, and all was open to the observation
+of every passer-by. My companion, an old resident
+of Smyrna, stopped with me at the house of a large
+banker, whose whole family, with several neighbours
+young and old, were assembled in the hall.</p>
+
+<p>In the street the Armenian ladies observe the Turkish
+custom of wearing the shawl tied around the face
+so that it is difficult to see their features, though I had
+often admired the dignity and grace of their walk, and
+their propriety of manners; but in the house there was
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">203</a></span>a perfect absence of all concealment; and I have seldom
+seen more interesting persons than the whole group of
+Armenian ladies, and particularly the young Armenian
+girls. They were not so dark, and wanted the bold,
+daring beauty of the Greek, but altogether were far
+more attractive. The great charm of their appearance
+was an exceeding modesty, united with affability and
+elegance of manner; in fact, there was a calm and
+quiet loveliness about them that would have made any
+one of them dangerous to be shut up alone with, i.e.,
+if a man could talk with her without an interpreter.
+This was one of the occasions when I numbered among
+the pains of life the confusion of tongues. But, notwithstanding
+this, the whole scene was beautiful; and, with
+all the simplicity of a Dutchman's fireside, the style of
+the house, the pebbled hall, the garden, the foliage, and
+the oriental costumes, threw a charm around it which
+now, while I write, comes over me again.</p>
+
+<hr class="l65" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+
+<div class="chapblock"><p>An American Original.&mdash;Moral Changes in Turkey.&mdash;Wonders of Steam
+Navigation.&mdash;The March of Mind.&mdash;Classic Localities.&mdash;Sestos and Abydos.&mdash;Seeds
+of Pestilence.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">On</span> my return from Ephesus I heard of the arrival in
+Smyrna of two American travellers, father and son,
+from Egypt; and the same day, at Mr. Langdon's, I
+met the father, Dr. N. of Mississippi. The doctor had
+made a long and interesting tour in Egypt and the Holy
+Land, interrupted, however, by a severe attack of ophthalmia
+on the Nile, from which he had not yet recovered,
+and a narrow escape from the plague at Cairo. He
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">204</a></span>was about fifty-five, of a strong, active, and inquiring mind;
+and the circumstances which had brought him to that
+distant country were so peculiar, that I cannot help mentioning
+them. He had passed all his life on the banks of
+the Mississippi, and for many years had busied himself
+with speculations in regard to the creation of the world.
+Year after year he had watched the deposites and the formation
+of soil on the banks of the Mississippi, had visited
+every mound and mountain indicating any peculiar geological
+formation, and, unable to find any data to satisfy
+him, he started from his plantation directly for the banks
+of the Nile. He possessed all the warm, high-toned
+feelings of the Southerner, but a thorough contempt for
+the usages of society and everything like polish of manners.
+He came to New-York and embarked for Havre.
+He had never been even to New-York before; was utterly
+ignorant of any language but his own; despised all
+foreigners, and detested their "jabber." He worked his
+way to Marseilles with the intention of embarking for
+Alexandria, but was taken sick, and retraced his steps
+directly to his plantation on the Mississippi. Recovering,
+he again set out for the Nile the next year, accompanied
+by his son, a young man of about twenty-three,
+acquainted with foreign languages, and competent to
+profit by foreign travel. This time he was more successful,
+and, when I saw him, he had rambled over the
+Pyramids and explored the ruined temples of Egypt.
+The result of his observations had been to fortify his preconceived
+notions, that the age of this world far exceeds
+six thousand years. Indeed, he was firmly persuaded
+that some of the temples of the Nile were built more
+than six thousand years ago. He had sent on to Smyrna
+enormous boxes of earth and stones, to be shipped to
+America, and was particularly curious on the subject of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">205</a></span>trees, having examined and satisfied himself as to the
+age of the olive-trees in the Garden of Gethsemane and
+the cedars of Lebanon. I accompanied him to his hotel,
+where I was introduced to his son; and I must not
+forget another member of this party, who is, perhaps,
+already known to some of my readers by the name of
+Paolo Nuozzo, or, more familiarly, Paul. This worthy
+individual had been travelling on the Nile with two Hungarian
+counts, who discharged him, or whom he discharged
+(for they differed as to the fact), at Cairo. Dr.
+N. and his son were in want, and Paul entered their
+service as dragoman and superintendent of another man,
+who, they said, was worth a dozen of Paul. I have a
+very imperfect recollection of my first interview with
+this original. Indeed, I hardly remember him at all until
+my arrival at Constantinople, and have only an indistinct
+impression of a dark, surly-looking, mustached man following
+at the heels of Dr. N., and giving crusty answers
+in horrible English.</p>
+
+<p>Before my visit to Ephesus I had talked with a Prussian
+baron of going up by land to Constantinople; but
+on my return I found myself attacked with a recurrence
+of an old malady, and determined to wait for the
+steamboat. The day before I left Smyrna, accompanied
+by Mr. O. Langdon, I went out to Boujac to dine
+with Mr. Styth. The great beauty of Smyrna is its
+surrounding country. Within a few miles there are
+three villages, Bournabat, Boujac, and Sediguey, occupied
+by Franks, of which Boujac is the favourite.
+The Franks are always looking to the time of going
+out to their country houses, and consider their residences
+in their villages the most agreeable part of their
+year; and, from what I saw of it, nothing can be more
+agreeable. Not more than half of them had yet moved
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">206</a></span>out, but after dinner we went round and visited all who
+were there. They are all well acquainted, and, living
+in a strange and barbarous country, are drawn closer
+together than they would be in their own. Every evening
+there is a reunion at some of their houses, and
+there is among them an absence of all unnecessary form
+and ceremony, without which there can be no perfect
+enjoyment of the true pleasures of social intercourse.
+These villages, too, are endeared to them as places
+of refuge during the repeated and prolonged visitations
+of the plague, the merchant going into the city every
+morning and returning at night, and during the whole
+continuance of the disease avoiding to touch any member
+of his family. The whole region of country around
+their villages is beautiful in landscape and scenery, producing
+the choicest flowers and fruits; the fig tree particularly
+growing with a luxuriance unknown in any
+other part of the world. But the whole of this beautiful
+region lies waste and uncultivated, although, if the
+government could be relied on, holding out, by reason
+of its fertility, its climate, and its facility of access,
+particularly now by means of steamboats, far greater
+inducements to European emigration than any portion
+of our own country. I will not impose upon the reader
+my speculations on this subject; my notes are burdened
+with them; but, in my opinion, the Old World
+is in process of regeneration, and at this moment offers
+greater opportunities for enterprise than the New.</p>
+
+<p>On Monday, accompanied by Dr. N. and his son and
+Paolo Nuozzo, I embarked on board the steamboat Maria
+Dorothea for Constantinople; and here follows another
+letter, and the last, dated from the capital of the Eastern
+empire.</p>
+
+<div class="letter">
+<p class="right">
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">207</a></span>Constantinople, May &mdash;&mdash;, 1835.
+</p>
+<p class="salutation">
+<span class="smcap">My dear</span> ****,
+</p>
+
+<p>Oh you who hope one day to roam in Eastern lands,
+to bend your curious eyes upon the people warmed by
+the rising sun, come quickly, for all things are changing.
+You who have pored over the story of the Turk;
+who have dreamed of him as a gloomy enthusiast, hating,
+spurning, and slaying all who do not believe and
+call upon the Prophet;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"One of that saintly, murderous brood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To carnage and the Koran given,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who think through unbelievers' blood<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lies their directest path to Heaven;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noi">come quickly, for that description of Turk is passing
+away. The day has gone by when the haughty Mussulman
+spurned and persecuted the "Christian dog."
+A few years since it would have been at peril of a
+man's life to appear in many parts of Turkey in a
+European dress; but now the European is looked upon,
+not only as a creature fit to live, but as a man to be respected.
+The sultan himself, the great head of the nation
+and the religion, the vicegerent of God upon earth,
+has taken off the turban, and all the officers of government
+have followed his example. The army wears a
+bastard European uniform, and the great study of the
+sultan is to introduce European customs. Thanks to
+the infirmities of human nature, many of these customs
+have begun to insinuate themselves. The pious follower
+of the Prophet has dared to raise the winecup
+to his lips; and in many instances, at the peril of losing
+his paradise of houris, has given himself up to strong
+drink. Time was when the word of a Turk was sacred
+as a precept of the Koran; now he can no more be relied
+upon than a Jew or a Christian. He has fallen with
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">208</a></span>great facility into lying, cheating, and drinking, and if
+the earnest efforts to change him are attended with success,
+perhaps we may soon add stealing and having but
+one wife. And all this change, this mighty fall, is ascribed
+by the Europeans here to the destruction of the
+janisaries, a band of men dangerous to government,
+brave, turbulent, and bloody, but of indomitable pride;
+who were above doing little things, and who gave a high
+tone to the character of the whole people. If I was not
+bent upon a gallop, and could stop for the jogtrot of an
+argument, I would say that the destruction of the janisaries
+is a mere incidental circumstance, and that the
+true cause is&mdash;<i>steam navigation</i>. Do not laugh, but
+listen. The Turks have ever been a proud people,
+possessing a sort of peacock pride, an extravagantly
+good opinion of themselves, and a superlative contempt
+for all the rest of the world. Heretofore they have had
+comparatively little intercourse with Europeans, consequently
+but little opportunity of making comparisons,
+and consequently, again, but little means of discovering
+their own inferiority. But lately things have
+changed; the universal peace in Europe and the introduction
+of steamboats into the Mediterranean have
+brought the Europeans and the Turks comparatively
+close together. It seems to me that the effect of steamboats
+here has as yet hardly begun to be felt. There
+are but few of them, indifferent boats, constantly getting
+out of order, and running so irregularly that no reliance
+can be placed upon them. But still their effects are
+felt, their convenience is acknowledged; and, so far as
+my knowledge extends, they have never been introduced
+anywhere yet without multiplying in numbers,
+and driving all other vessels off the water. Now the
+Mediterranean is admirably suited to the use of steamboats;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">209</a></span>indeed, the whole of these inland waters, the
+Mediterranean, the Adriatic, the Archipelago, the Dardanelles,
+the Sea of Marmora, the Bosphorus, and the
+Black Sea, from the Straits of Gibraltar to the Sea of
+Azoff, offer every facility that can be desired for steam
+navigation; and when we consider that the most interesting
+cities in the world are on the shores of these waters,
+I cannot but believe that in a very few years they
+will be, to a certain extent, covered with steamboats.
+At all events, I have no doubt that in two or three years
+you will be able to go from Paris to Constantinople in
+fifteen or twenty days; and, when that time comes, it
+will throw such numbers of Europeans into the East as
+will have a sensible effect upon the manners and customs
+of the people. These eastern countries will be
+invaded by all classes of people, travellers, merchants,
+and mechanics, gentlemen of elegant leisure, and blacksmiths,
+shoemakers, tinkers, and tailors, nay, even mantuamakers,
+milliners, and bandboxes, the last being an
+incident to civilized life as yet unknown in Turkey. Indeed,
+wonderful as the effects of steamboats have been
+under our own eyes, we are yet to see them far more
+wonderful in bringing into close alliance, commercial
+and social, people from distant countries, of different
+languages and habits; in removing national prejudices,
+and in breaking down the great characteristic distinctions
+of nations. Nous verrons, twenty years hence,
+what steamboats will have done in this part of the
+world!</p>
+
+<p>But, in standing up for steamboats, I must not fail in
+doing justice to the grand seignior. His highness has
+not always slept upon a bed of roses. He had to thank
+the petticoats of a female slave for saving his life when
+a boy, and he had hardly got upon his throne before he
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">210</a></span>found that he should have a hard task to keep it. It lay
+between him and the janisaries. In spite of them and of
+the general prejudices of the people, he determined to
+organize an army according to European tactics. He
+staked his throne and his head upon the issue; and it
+was not until he had been pushed to the desperate expedient
+of unfurling the sacred standard of the Prophet,
+parading it through the streets of Constantinople, and
+calling upon all good Mussulmans to rally round it; in
+short, it was not until the dead bodies of thirty thousand
+janisaries were floating down the Bosphorus, that he
+found himself the master in his own dominions. Since
+that time, either because he is fond of new things, or
+because he really sees farther than those around him,
+he is constantly endeavouring to introduce European
+improvements. For this purpose he invites talent, particularly
+mechanical and military, from every country,
+and has now around him Europeans among his most
+prominent men, and directing nearly all his public works.</p>
+
+<p>The Turks are a sufficiently intelligent people, and
+cannot help feeling the superiority of strangers. Probably
+the immediate effect may be to make them prone
+rather to catch the faults and vices than the virtues of
+Europeans; but afterward better things will come; they
+will fall into our better ways; and perhaps, though that
+is almost more than we dare hope for, they will embrace
+a better religion.</p>
+
+<p>But, however this may be, or whatever may be the
+cause, all ye who would see the Turk of Mohammed; the
+Turk who swept the plains of Asia, who leaned upon
+his bloody sword before the walls of Vienna, and threatened
+the destruction of Christendom in Europe; the
+Turk of the turban, and the pipe, and the seraglio, come
+quickly, for he is becoming another man. A little longer,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">211</a></span>and the great characteristic distinctions will be broken
+down; the long pipe, the handsome pipe-bearer, and
+the amber mouthpiece are gone, and oh, death to all
+that is beautiful in Eastern romance, the walls of the
+seraglio are prostrated, the doors of the harem thrown
+open, the black eunuch and the veiled woman are no
+more seen, while the honest Turk trudges home from a
+quiet tea-party stripped of his retinue of fair ones, with
+his one and only wife tucked under his arm, his head
+drooping between his shoulders, taking a lecture from
+his better half for an involuntary sigh to the good old
+days that are gone. And oh you who turn up your
+aristocratic noses at such parvenues as Mohammed and
+the Turks; who would go back to those distant ages
+which time covers with its dim and twilight glories,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"When the world was fresh and young,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the great deluge still had left it green;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noi">you who come piping-hot from college, your brains
+teeming with recollections of the heroic ages; who
+would climb Mount Ida, to sit in council with the gods,
+come quickly, also, for all things are changing. A
+steamboat&mdash;shade of Hector, Ajax, and Agamemnon,
+forgive the sins of the day&mdash;an Austrian steamboat is
+now splashing the island-studded Ćgean, and paddling
+the classic waters of the Hellespont. Oh ye princes and
+heroes who armed for the Trojan war, and covered these
+waters with your thousand ships, with what pious horror
+must you look down from your blessed abodes upon the
+impious modern monster of the deep, which strips the
+tall mast of its flowing canvass, renders unnecessary the
+propitiation of the gods, and flounders on its way in spite
+of wind and weather!</p>
+
+<p>A new and unaccountable respect for the classics
+almost made me scorn the newfangled conveyance,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">212</a></span>though much to the comfort of wayfaring men; but sundry
+recollections of Greek caiques, and also an apprehension
+that there might be those yet living who had
+heard me in early days speak anything but respectfully
+of Homer, suggested to me that one man could not
+stem the current of the times, and that it was better for
+a humble individual like myself to float with the tide.
+This idea, too, of currents and tides made me think
+better of Prince Metternich and his steamboat; and
+smothering, as well as I could, my sense of shame, I
+sneaked on board the Maria Dorothea for a race to Constantinople.
+Join me, now, in this race; and if your
+heart does not break at going by at the rate of eight or
+ten miles an hour, I will whip you over a piece of the
+most classic ground consecrated in history, mythology,
+or poetry, and in less time than ever the swiftfooted
+Achilles could have travelled it. At eleven o'clock on
+a bright sunny day the Maria Dorothea turned her back
+upon the city and beautiful bay of Smyrna; in about two
+hours passed the harbour of Vourla, then used as a quarantine
+station, the yellow plague flag floating in the city
+and among the shipping; and toward dark, turning the
+point of the gulf, came upon my old acquaintance Foggi,
+the little harbour into which I had been twice driven by
+adverse winds. My Greek friend happened to be on
+board, and, in the honesty of his heart, congratulated
+me upon being this time independent of the elements,
+without seeming to care a fig whether he profaned the
+memory of his ancestors in travelling by so unclassical
+a conveyance. If he takes it so coolly, thought I, what
+is it to me? they are his relations, not mine. In the
+evening we were moving close to the Island of Mytilene,
+the ancient Lesbos, the country of Sappho, Alcćus, and
+Terpander, famed for the excellence of its wine and the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">213</a></span>beauty of its women, and pre-eminently distinguished
+for dissipation and debauchery, the fatal plague flag now
+floating mournfully over its walls, marking it as the
+abode of pestilence and death.</p>
+
+<p>Early in the morning I found myself opposite the
+promontory of Lectum, now Cape Baba, separating the
+ancient Troas from Ćolia; a little to the right, but
+hardly visible, were the ruins of Assos, where the apostles
+stopped to take in Paul; a little farther the ruins of
+Alexandria Troas, one of the many cities founded by
+Alexander during his conquests in Asia; to the left, at
+some distance in the sea, is the Island of Lemnos, in
+the songs of the poets overshadowed by the lofty Olympus,
+the island that received Vulcan after he was kicked
+out of heaven by Jupiter. A little farther, nearer the
+land, is the Island of Tenedos, the ancient Leucophrys,
+where Paris first landed after carrying off Helen, and
+behind which the Greeks withdrew their fleet when
+they pretended to have abandoned the siege of Troy.
+Still farther, on the mainland, is the promontory of Sigćum,
+where the Scamander empties into the sea, and
+near which were fought the principal of Homer's battles.
+A little farther&mdash;but hold, stop the engine! If there be
+a spot of classic ground on earth in which the historical,
+and the poetical, and the fabulous are so beautifully
+blended together that we would not separate them even
+to discover the truth, it is before us now. Extending
+for a great distance along the shore, and back as far as
+the eye can reach, under the purest sky that ever overshadowed
+the earth, lies a rich and beautiful plain, and
+it is the plain of Troy, the battle-ground of heroes.
+Oh field of glory and of blood, little does he know, that
+surly Turk who is now lazily following his plough over
+thy surface, that every blade of thy grass could tell of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">214</a></span>heroic deeds, the shock of armies, the meeting of war
+chariots, the crashing of armour, the swift flight, the
+hot pursuit, the shouts of victors, and the groans of the
+dying. Beyond it, towering to the heavens, is a lofty
+mountain, and it is Mount Ida, on whose top Paris adjudged
+the golden apple to the goddess of beauty, and
+paved the way for those calamities which brought on
+the ten years' siege, and laid in ruins the ancient city
+of Priam. Two small streams, taking their rise from
+the mountain of the gods, join each other in the middle
+of the plain; Scamander and Simois, whose waters
+once washed the walls of the ancient city of Dardanus;
+and that small, confused, and shapeless mass of ruins,
+that beautiful sky and the songs of Homer, are all that
+remain to tell us that "Troy was." Close to the sea,
+and rising like mountains above the plain, are two immense
+mounds of earth; they are the tombs of Ajax
+and Achilles. Shades of departed heroes, fain would
+we stop and pay the tribute which we justly owe, but
+we are hurried past by an engine of a hundred horse
+power.</p>
+
+<p>Onward, still onward! We have reached the ancient
+Hellespont, the Dardanelles of the Turks, famed as the
+narrow water that divides Europe from Asia, for the
+beauties that adorn its banks, and for its great Turkish
+fortifications. Three miles wide at the mouth, it becomes
+gradually narrower, until, in the narrowest part, the natives
+of Europe and Asia can talk together from the
+opposite sides. For sixty miles (its whole length) it
+presents a continued succession of new beauties, and in
+the hands of Europeans, particularly English, improved
+as country seats, would make one of the loveliest countries
+in the world. I had just time to reflect that it was
+melancholy, and seemed inexplicable that this and other
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">215</a></span>of the fairest portions of the earth should be in the hands
+of the Turks, who neither improve it themselves nor
+allow others to do so. At three o'clock we arrived at the
+Dardanelles, a little Turkish town in the narrowest and
+most beautiful part of the straits; a strong fort with enormous
+cannon stands frowning on each side. These are
+the terrible fortifications of Mohammed II., the keys of
+Constantinople. The guns are enormous; of one in particular,
+the muzzle is two feet three inches in diameter;
+but, with Turkish ingenuity, they are so placed as to be
+discharged when a ship is directly opposite. If the ship
+is not disabled by the first fire, and does not choose to
+go back and take another, she is safe. At every moment
+a new picture presents itself; a new fort, a new
+villa, or the ruins of an ancient city. A naked point
+on the European side, so ugly compared with all around
+it as to attract particular attention, projects into the
+strait, and here are the ruins of Sestos; here Xerxes
+built his bridge of boats to carry over his millions to the
+conquest of Greece; and here, when he returned with
+the wreck of his army, defeated and disgraced, found
+his bridge destroyed by a tempest, and, in his rage, ordered
+the chains to be thrown into the sea and the
+waves to be lashed with rods. From this point, too,
+Leander swam the Hellespont for love of Hero, and
+Lord Byron and Mr. Ekenhead for fun. Nearly opposite,
+close to a Turkish fort, are the ruins of Abydos.
+Here Xerxes, and Leander, and Lord Byron, and Mr.
+Ekenhead landed.</p>
+
+<p>Our voyage is drawing to a close. At Gallipoli, a large
+Turkish town handsomely situated at the mouth of the
+Dardanelles, we took on board the Turkish governor,
+with his pipe-bearer and train of attendants, escorted by
+thirty or forty boats, containing three or four hundred
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">216</a></span>people, his mightiness taking a deck passage. Toward
+evening we were entering the Sea of Marmora, the ancient
+Propontis, like one of our small lakes, and I again
+went to sleep lulled by the music of a high-pressure engine.
+At daylight we were approaching Constantinople;
+twelve miles this side, on the bank of the Sea of Marmora,
+is the village of St. Stephano, the residence of Commodore
+Porter. Here the domes and minarets of the ancient
+city, with their golden points and glittering crescents,
+began to appear in sight. High above the rest
+towered the mosque of Sultan Achmet and the beautiful
+dome of St. Sophia, the ancient Christian church, but
+now, for nearly four hundred years, closed against the
+Christians' feet. We approach the walls and pass a
+range of gloomy turrets; there are the Seven Towers,
+prisons, portals of the grave, whose mysteries few live to
+publish: the bowstring and the sea reveal no secrets.
+That palace, with its blinded windows and its superb
+garden, surrounded by a triple range of walls, is the
+far-famed seraglio; there beauty lingers in a splendid
+cage, and, lolling on her rich divan, sighs for the humblest
+lot and freedom. In front, that narrow water, a
+thousand caiques shooting through it like arrows, and
+its beautiful banks covered with high palaces and gardens
+in the oriental style, is the Thracian Bosphorus.
+We float around the walls of the seraglio, enter the
+Golden Horn, and before us, with its thousand mosques
+and its myriad of minarets, their golden points glittering
+in the sun, is the Roman city of Constantinople, the
+Thracian Byzantium, the Stamboul of the Turks; the
+city which, more than all others, excites the imagination
+and interests the feelings; once dividing with Rome
+the empire of the world; built by a Christian emperor
+and consecrated as a Christian city, a "burning and a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">217</a></span>shining light" in a season of universal darkness, all at
+once lost to the civilized world; falling into the hands
+of a strange and fanatic people, the gloomy followers
+of a successful soldier; a city which, for nearly four
+centuries, has sat with its gates closed in sullen distrust
+and haughty defiance of strangers; which once
+sent forth large and terrible armies, burning, slaying,
+and destroying, shaking the hearts of princes and
+people, now lying like a fallen giant, huge, unwieldy,
+and helpless, ready to fall into the hands of the first invader,
+and dragging out a precarious and ignoble existence
+but by the mercy or policy of the great Christian
+powers. The morning sun, now striking upon its
+domes and minarets, covers it, as it were, with burnished
+gold; a beautiful verdure surrounds it, and pure waters
+wash it on every side. Can this beautiful city, rich with
+the choicest gifts of Heaven, be pre-eminently the abode
+of pestilence and death? where a man carries about with
+him the seeds of disease to all whom he holds dear? if he
+extend the hand of welcome to a friend, if he embrace his
+child or rub against a stranger, the friend, and the child,
+and the stranger follow him to the grave? where, year
+after year, the angel of death stalks through the streets,
+and thousands and tens of thousands look him calmly in
+the face, and murmuring "Allah, Allah, God is merciful,"
+with a fatal trust in the Prophet, lie down and die?
+We enter the city, and these questions are quickly answered.
+A lazy, lounging, and filthy population; beggars
+basking in the sun, and dogs licking their sores;
+streets never cleaned but by the winds and rains; immense
+burying-grounds all over the city; tombstones at
+the corners of the streets; graves gaping ready to throw
+out their half-buried dead, the whole approaching to one
+vast charnel-house, dispel all illusions and remove all
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">218</a></span>doubts, and we are ready to ask ourselves if it be possible
+that, in such a place, health can ever dwell. We
+wonder that it should ever, for the briefest moment, be
+free from that dreadful scourge which comes with every
+summer's sun and strews its streets with dead.</p>
+<p class="right">****</p></div>
+
+<hr class="l65" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+
+<div class="chapblock"><p>Mr. Churchill.&mdash;Commodore Porter.&mdash;Castle of the Seven Towers.&mdash;The
+Sultan's Naval Architect.&mdash;Launch of the Great Ship.&mdash;Sultan Mahmoud.&mdash;Jubilate.&mdash;A
+National Grievance.&mdash;Visit to a Mosque.&mdash;The
+Burial-grounds.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">There</span> is a good chance for an enterprising Connecticut
+man to set up a hotel in Constantinople. The
+reader will see that I have travelled with my eyes open,
+and I trust this shrewd observation on entering the city of
+the Cćsars will be considered characteristic and American.
+Paul was at home in Pera, and conducted us to
+the Hotel d'Italia, which was so full that we could not
+get admission, and so vile a place that we were not sorry
+for it. We then went to Madame Josephine's, a sort of
+private boarding-house, but excellent of its kind. We
+found there a collection of travellers, English, French,
+German, and Russian, and the dinner was particularly
+social; but Dr. N. was so disgusted with the clatter of
+foreign tongues, that he left the table with the first
+course, and swore he would not stay there another day.
+We tried to persuade him. I reminded him that there
+was an Englishman among them, but this only made
+him worse; he hated an Englishman, and wondered
+how I, as an American, could talk with one as I had
+with him. In short, he was resolved, and had Paul
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">219</a></span>running about every street in Pera looking for rooms.
+Notwithstanding his impracticabilities as a traveller, I
+liked the doctor, and determined to follow him, and before
+breakfast the next morning we were installed in a
+suite of rooms in the third story of a house opposite the
+old palace of the British ambassador.</p>
+
+<p>For two or three days I was <i>hors du combat</i>, and
+put myself under the hands of Dr. Zohrab, an Armenian,
+educated at Edinburgh, whom I cordially recommend
+both for his kindness and medical skill. On going out,
+one of my first visits was to my banker, Mr. Churchill,
+a gentleman whose name has since rung throughout
+Europe, and who at one time seemed likely to be the
+cause of plunging the whole civilized world into a war.
+He was then living in Sedikuey, on the site of the ancient
+Chalcedon, in Asia; and I have seldom been more
+shocked than by reading in a newspaper, while in the
+lazaretto at Malta, that, having accidentally shot a
+Turkish boy with a fowling-piece, he had been seized
+by the Turks, and, in defiance of treaties, <i>bastinadoed</i>
+till he was almost dead. I had seen the infliction of
+that horrible punishment; and, besides the physical
+pain, there was a sense of the indignity that roused
+every feeling. I could well imagine the ferocious
+spirit with which the Turks would stand around and
+see a Christian scourged. The civilized world owes a
+deep debt of gratitude to the English government for
+the uncompromising stand taken in this matter with the
+sultan, and the firmness with which it insisted on, and
+obtained, the most ample redress for Mr. Churchill, and
+atonement for the insult offered to all Christendom in
+his person.</p>
+
+<p>My companions and myself had received several invitations
+from Commodore Porter, and, accompanied by
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">220</a></span>Mr. Dwight, one of our American missionaries, to whom
+I am under particular obligations for his kindness, early
+in the morning we took a caique with three athletic
+Turks, and, after a beautiful row, part of it from the seraglio
+point to the Seven Towers, a distance of five
+miles, being close under the walls of the city, in two
+hours reached the commodore's residence at St. Stephano,
+twelve miles from Constantinople, on the borders
+of the Sea of Marmora. The situation is beautiful,
+abounding in fruit-trees, among which are some fig trees
+of the largest size; and the commodore was then
+engaged in building a large addition to his house. It
+will be remembered that Commodore Porter was the
+first envoy ever sent by the United States' government
+to the Sublime Porte. He had formerly lived at Buyukdere,
+on the Bosphorus, with the other members of
+the diplomatic corps; but his salary as chargé being
+inadequate to sustain a becoming style, he had withdrawn
+to this place. I had never seen Commodore
+Porter before. I afterward passed a month with him
+in the lazaretto at Malta, and I trust he will not consider
+me presuming when I say that our acquaintance
+ripened into friendship. He is entirely different from
+the idea I had formed of him; small, dark, weather-beaten,
+much broken in health, and remarkably mild
+and quiet in his manners. His eye is his best feature,
+though even that does not indicate the desperate
+hardihood of character which he has exhibited on so
+many occasions. Perhaps I ought not to say so, but
+he seemed ill at ease in his position, and I could not
+but think that he ought still to be standing in the front
+rank of that service he so highly honoured. He spoke
+with great bitterness of the Foxardo affair, and gave
+me an account of an interesting interview between
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">221</a></span>General Jackson and himself on his recall from South
+America. General Jackson wished him to resume his
+rank in the navy, but he answered that he would never
+accept service with men who had suspended him for
+doing what, they said in their sentence of condemnation,
+was done "to sustain the honour of the American flag."</p>
+
+<p>At the primitive hour of one we sat down to a regular
+family dinner. We were all Americans. The commodore's
+sister, who was living with him, presided, and we
+looked out on the Sea of Marmora and talked of home.
+I cannot describe the satisfaction of these meetings of
+Americans so far from their own country. I have often
+experienced it most powerfully in the houses of the
+missionaries in the East. Besides having, in many instances,
+the same acquaintances, we had all the same
+habits and ways of thinking; their articles of furniture
+were familiar to me, and there was scarcely a house in
+which I did not find an article unknown except among
+Americans, a Boston rocking-chair.</p>
+
+<p>We talked over the subject of our difficulties with
+France, then under discussion in the Chamber of Deputies,
+and I remember that Commodore Porter was
+strong in the opinion that the bill paying the debt would
+pass. Before rising from table, the commodore's janisary
+came down from Constantinople, with papers and
+letters just arrived by the courier from Paris. He told
+me that I should have the honour of breaking the seals,
+and I took out the paper so well known all over Europe,
+"Galignani's Messenger," and had the satisfaction
+of reading aloud, in confirmation of the commodore's
+opinion, that the bill for paying the American claims
+had passed the Chamber of Deputies by a large majority.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" >
+<img src="images/i_v1_p222.jpg" width="60%" alt="Castle of the Seven Towers." title="Castle of the seven Towers" />
+<p class="caption">Castle of the Seven Towers.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>About four o'clock we embarked in our caique to return
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">222</a></span>to Constantinople. In an hour Mr. D. and I landed
+at the foot of the Seven Towers, and few things in
+this ancient city interested me more than my walk
+around its walls. We followed them the whole extent
+on the land side, from the Sea of Marmora to the Golden
+Horn. They consist of a triple range, with five gates,
+the principal of which is the Cannon Gate, through
+which Mohammed II. made his triumphal entry into the
+Christian city. They have not been repaired since the
+city fell into the hands of the Turks, and are the same
+walls which procured for it the proud name of the "well-defended
+city;" to a great extent, they are the same
+walls which the first Constantine built and the last Constantine
+died in defending. Time has laid his ruining
+hand upon them, and they are everywhere weak and
+decaying, and would fall at once before the thunder of
+modern war. The moat and fossé have alike lost their
+warlike character, and bloom and blossom with the vine
+and fig tree. Beyond, hardly less interesting than the
+venerable walls, and extending as far as the eye can
+reach, is one continued burying-ground, with thousands
+and tens of thousands of turbaned headstones, shaded by
+thick groves of the mourning cypress. Opposite the
+Damascus Gate is an elevated enclosure, disconnected
+from all around, containing five headstones in a row,
+over the bodies of Ali Pacha, the rebel chief of Yanina,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">223</a></span>and his four sons. The fatal mark of death by the
+bowstring is conspicuous on the tombs, as a warning to
+rebels that they cannot escape the sure vengeance of
+the Porte. It was toward the sunset of a beautiful
+evening, and all Stamboul was out among the tombs.
+At dark we reached the Golden Horn, crossed over in
+a caique, and in a few minutes were in Pera.</p>
+
+<p>The next day I took a caique at Tophana, and went
+up to the shipyards at the head of the Golden Horn to
+visit Mr. Rhodes, to whom I had a letter from a friend in
+Smyrna. Mr. Rhodes is a native of Long Island, but
+from his boyhood a resident of this city, and I take great
+pleasure in saying that he is an honour to our state and
+country. The reader will remember that, some years
+ago, Mr. Eckford, one of our most prominent citizens,
+under a pressure of public and domestic calamities, left
+his native city. He sailed from New-York in a beautiful
+corvette, its destination unknown, and came to anchor
+under the walls of the seraglio in the harbour of
+Constantinople. The sultan saw her, admired her, and
+bought her; and I saw her "riding like a thing of life"
+on the waters of the Golden Horn, a model of beauty.</p>
+
+<p>The fame of his skill, and the beautiful specimen he
+carried out with him, recommended Mr. Eckford to the
+sultan as a fit instrument to build up the character of
+the Ottoman navy; and afterward, when his full value
+became known, the sultan remarked of him that America
+must be a great nation if she could spare from her
+service such a man. Had he lived, even in the decline
+of life he would have made for himself a reputation in
+that distant quarter of the globe equal to that he had left
+behind him, and doubtless would have reaped the attendant
+pecuniary reward. Mr. Rhodes went out as
+Mr. Eckford's foreman, and on his death the task of completing
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">224</a></span>his employer's work devolved on him. It could
+not have fallen upon a better man. From a journeyman
+shipbuilder, all at once Mr. Rhodes found himself
+brought into close relations with the seraskier pacha,
+the reis effendi, the grand vizier, and the sultan himself;
+but his good sense never deserted him. He was then
+preparing for the launch of the great ship; the longest,
+as he said, and he knew the dimensions of every ship
+that floated, in the world. I accompanied him over the
+ship and through the yards, and it was with no small
+degree of interest that I viewed a townsman, an entire
+stranger in the country, by his skill alone standing at
+the head of the great naval establishment of the sultan.
+He was dressed in a blue roundabout jacket, without
+whiskers or mustache, and, except that he wore the
+tarbouch, was thorough American in his appearance
+and manners, while his dragoman was constantly by
+his side, communicating his orders to hundreds of mustached
+Turks, and in the same breath he was talking
+with me of shipbuilders in New-York, and people and
+things most familiar in our native city. Mr. Rhodes
+knows and cares but little for things that do not immediately
+concern him; his whole thoughts are of his business,
+and in that he possesses an ambition and industry
+worthy of all praise. As an instance of his discretion,
+particularly proper in the service of that suspicious and
+despotic government, I may mention that, while standing
+near the ship and remarking a piece of cloth stretched
+across her stern, I asked him her name, and he told
+me he did not know; that it was painted on her stern,
+and his dragoman knew, but he had never looked under,
+that he might not be able to answer when asked.
+I have seldom met a countryman abroad with whom I
+was more pleased, and at parting he put himself on a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">225</a></span>pinnacle in my estimation by telling me that, if I came
+to the yard the next day at one, I would see the sultan!
+There was no man living whom I had a greater curiosity
+to see. At twelve o'clock I was at the yard, but
+the sultan did not come. I went again, and his highness
+had come two hours before the time; had accompanied
+Mr. Rhodes over the ship, and left the yard less than
+five minutes before my arrival; his caique was still lying
+at the little dock, his attendants were carrying trays
+of refreshments to a shooting-ground in the rear, and
+two black eunuchs belonging to the seraglio, handsomely
+dressed in long black cloaks of fine pelisse
+cloth, with gold-headed canes and rings on their fingers,
+were still lingering about the ship, their effeminate
+faces and musical voices at once betraying their
+neutral character.</p>
+
+<p>The next was the day of the launch; and early in the
+morning, in the suite of Commodore Porter, I went on
+board an old steamer provided by the sultan expressly for
+the use of Mr. Rhodes's American friends. The waters
+of the Golden Horn were already covered; thousands
+of caiques, with their high sharp points, were cutting
+through it, or resting like gulls upon its surface; and
+there were ships with the still proud banner of the
+crescent, and strangers with the flags of every nation in
+Christendom, and sailboats, longboats, and rowboats, ambassadors'
+barges, and caiques of effendis, beys, and
+pachas, with red silk flags streaming in the wind, while
+countless thousands were assembled on the banks to
+behold the extraordinary spectacle of an American ship,
+the largest in the world, launched in the harbour of old
+Stamboul. The sultan was then living at his beautiful
+palace at Sweet Waters, and was obliged to pass by
+our boat; he had made a great affair of the launch;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">226</a></span>had invited all the diplomatic corps, and, through the
+reis effendi, particularly requested the presence of Commodore
+Porter; had stationed his harem on the opposite
+side of the river; and as I saw prepared for himself
+near the ship a tent of scarlet cloth trimmed with gold,
+I expected to see him appear in all the pomp and splendour
+of the greatest potentate on earth. I had already
+seen enough to convince me that the days of Eastern
+magnificence had gone by, or that the gorgeous scenes
+which my imagination had always connected with the
+East had never existed; but still I could not divest
+myself of the lingering idea of the power and splendour
+of the sultan. His commanding style to his own subjects:
+"I command you, &mdash;&mdash;, my slave, that you bring
+the head of &mdash;&mdash;, my slave, and lay it at my feet;" and
+then his lofty tone with foreign powers: "I, who am,
+by the infinite grace of the great, just, and all-powerful
+Creator, and the abundance of the miracles of the
+chief of his prophets, emperor of powerful emperors;
+refuge of sovereigns; distributor of crowns to the kings
+of the earth; keeper of the two very holy cities (Mecca
+and Medina); governor of the holy city of Jerusalem;
+master of Europe, Asia, and Africa, conquered with
+our victorious sword and our terrible lance; lord of two
+seas (Black and White); of Damascus, the odour of
+Paradise; of Bagdad, the seat of the califs; of the fortresses
+of Belgrade, Agra, and a multitude of countries,
+isles, straits, people, generations, and of so many
+victorious armies who repose under the shade of our
+Sublime Porte; I, in short, who am the shadow of God
+upon earth;" I was rolling these things through my
+mind when a murmur, "the sultan is coming," turned
+me to the side of the boat, and one view dispelled all
+my gorgeous fancies. There was no style, no state,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">227</a></span>a citizen king, a republican president, or a democratic
+governor, could not have made a more unpretending appearance
+than did this "shadow of God upon earth."
+He was seated in the bottom of a large caique, dressed
+in the military frockcoat and red tarbouch, with his long
+black beard, the only mark of a Turk about him, and he
+moved slowly along the vacant space cleared for his
+passage, boats with the flags of every nation, and thousands
+of caiques falling back, and the eyes of the immense
+multitude earnestly fixed upon him, but without
+any shouts or acclamations; and when he landed at the
+little dock, and his great officers bowed to the dust before
+him, he looked the plainest, mildest, kindest man
+among them. I had wished to see him as a wholesale
+murderer, who had more blood upon his hands than
+any man living; who had slaughtered the janisaries,
+drenched the plains of Greece, to say nothing of bastinadoes,
+impalements, cutting off heads, and tying up in
+sacks, which are taking place every moment; but I will
+not believe that Sultan Mahmoud finds any pleasure
+in shedding blood. Dire necessity, or, as he himself
+would say, fate, has ever been driving him on. I look
+upon him as one of the most interesting characters upon
+earth; as the creature of circumstances, made bloody
+and cruel by the necessities of his position. I look at
+his past life and at that which is yet in store for him,
+through all the stormy scenes he is to pass until he
+completes his unhappy destiny, the last of a powerful
+and once-dreaded race, bearded by those who once
+crouched at the footstool of his ancestors, goaded by
+rebellious vassals, conscious that he is going a downward
+road, and yet unable to resist the impulse that
+drives him on. Like the strong man encompassed with
+a net, he finds no avenue of escape, and cannot break
+through it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">228</a></span>The seraskier pacha and other principal officers escorted
+him to his tent, and now all the interest which
+I had taken in the sultan was transferred to Mr. Rhodes.
+He had great anxiety about the launch, and many difficulties
+to contend with: first, in the Turks' jealousy of a
+stranger, which obliged him to keep constantly on the
+watch lest some of his ropes should be cut or fastenings
+knocked away; and he had another Turkish prejudice
+to struggle against: the day had been fixed twice
+before, but the astronomers found an unfortunate conjunction
+of the stars, and it was postponed, and even then
+the stars were unpropitious; but Mr. Rhodes had insisted
+that the work had gone so far that it could not be
+stopped. And, besides these, he had another great difficulty
+in his ignorance of their language. With more
+than a thousand men under him, all his orders had to
+pass through interpreters, and often, too, the most
+prompt action was necessary, and the least mistake
+might prove fatal. Fortunately, he was protected from
+treachery by the kindness of Mr. Churchill and Dr.
+Zohrab, one of whom stood on the bow and the other in
+the stern of the ship, and through whom every order
+was transmitted in Turkish. Probably none there felt
+the same interest that we did; for the flags of the barbarian
+and every nation in Christendom were waving
+around us, and at that distance from home the enterprise
+of a single citizen enlisted the warmest feelings
+of every American. We watched the ship with as keen
+an interest as if our own honour and success in life depended
+upon her movements. For a long time she
+remained perfectly quiet. At length she moved, slowly
+and almost imperceptibly; and then, as if conscious
+that the eyes of an immense multitude were on her, and
+that the honour of a distant nation was in some measure
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">229</a></span>at stake, she marched proudly to the water, plunged in
+with a force that almost buried her, and, rising like a
+huge leviathan, parted the foaming waves with her bow,
+and rode triumphantly upon them. Even Mussulman
+indifference was disturbed; all petty jealousies were
+hushed; the whole immense mass was roused into admiration;
+loud and long-continued shouts of applause
+rose with one accord from Turks and Christians, and
+the sultan was so transported that he jumped up and
+clapped his hands like a schoolboy.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Rhodes's triumph was complete; the sultan called
+him to his tent, and with his own hands fixed on the
+lappel of his coat a gold medal set in diamonds, representing
+the launching of a ship. Mr. Rhodes has attained
+among strangers the mark of every honourable
+man's ambition, the head of his profession. He has
+put upon the water what Commodore Porter calls the
+finest ship that ever floated, and has a right to be proud
+of his position and prospects under the "shade of the
+Sublime Porte." The sultan wishes to confer upon
+him the title of chief naval constructor, and to furnish
+him with a house and a caique with four oars. In compliment
+to his highness, who detests a hat, Mr. Rhodes
+wears the tarbouch; but he declines all offices and
+honours, and anything that may tend to fix him as a
+Turkish subject, and looks to return and enjoy in his
+own country and among his own people the fruits of
+his honourable labours. If the good wishes of a friend
+can avail him, he will soon return to our city rich with
+the profits of untiring industry, and an honourable testimony
+to his countrymen of the success of American
+skill and enterprise abroad.</p>
+
+<p>To go back a moment. All day the great ship lay in
+the middle of the Golden Horn, while perhaps more
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">230</a></span>than a hundred thousand Turks shot round her in their
+little caiques, looking up from the surface of the water
+to her lofty deck: and in Pera, wherever I went, perhaps
+because I was an American, the only thing I heard
+of was the American ship. Proud of the admiration excited
+so far from home by this noble specimen of the
+skill of an American citizen, I unburden myself of a
+long-smothered subject of complaint against my country.
+I cry out with a loud voice for <i>reform</i>, not in the hackneyed
+sense of petty politicians, but by a liberal and enlarged
+expenditure of public money; by increasing the
+outfits and salaries of our foreign ambassadors and ministers.
+We claim to be rich, free from debt, and abundant
+in resources, and yet every American abroad is struck
+with a feeling of mortification at the inability of his representative
+to take that position in social life to which
+the character of his country entitles him. We may talk
+of republican simplicity as we will, but there are certain
+usages of society and certain appendages of rank which,
+though they may be unmeaning and worthless, are sanctioned,
+if not by the wisdom, at least by the practice of
+all civilized countries. We have committed a fatal error
+since the time when Franklin appeared at the court
+of France in a plain citizen's dress; everywhere our
+representative conforms to the etiquette of the court to
+which he is accredited, and it is too late to go back and
+begin anew; and now, unless our representative is rich
+and willing to expend his own fortune for the honour
+of the nation, he is obliged to withdraw from the circles
+and position in which he has a right and ought to move,
+or to move in them on an inferior footing, under an acknowledgment
+of inability to appear as an equal.</p>
+
+<p>And again: our whole consular system is radically
+wrong, disreputable, and injurious to our character and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">231</a></span>interests. While other nations consider the support of
+their consuls a part of the expenses of their government,
+we suffer ourselves to be represented by merchants,
+whose pecuniary interests are mixed up with
+all the local and political questions that affect the place
+and who are under a strong inducement to make their
+office subservient to their commercial relations. I make
+no imputations against any of them. I could not if I
+would, for I do not know an American merchant holding
+the office who is not a respectable man; but the representative
+of our country ought to be the representative
+of our country only; removed from any distracting or
+conflicting interests, standing like a watchman to protect
+the honour of his nation and the rights of her citizens.
+And more than this, all over the Mediterranean there are
+ports where commerce presents no inducements to the
+American merchant, and there the office falls into the
+hands of the natives; and at this day the American arms
+are blazoned on the doors, and the American flag is waving
+over the houses, of Greeks, Italians, Jews, and
+Arabs, and all the mongrel population of that inland sea;
+and in the ports under the dominion of Turkey particularly,
+the office is coveted as a means of protecting the holder
+against the liabilities to his own government, and of
+revenue by selling that protection to others. I will not
+mention them by name, for I bear them no ill will personally,
+and I have received kindness from most of the
+petty vagabonds who live under the folds of the American
+flag; but the consuls at Gendoa and Algiers are a
+disgrace to the American name. Congress has lately
+turned its attention to this subject, and will, before long,
+I hope, effect a complete change in the character of our
+consular department, and give it the respectability which
+it wants; the only remedy is by following the example
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">232</a></span>of other nations, in fixing salaries to the office,
+and forbidding the holders to engage in trade. Besides the leading
+inducements to this change, there is a secondary consideration,
+which, in my eyes, is not without its value,
+in that it would furnish a valuable school of instruction
+for our young men. The offices would be sought by
+such. A thousand or fifteen hundred dollars a year
+would maintain them respectably, in most of the ports of
+the Mediterranean, and young men resident in those
+places, living upon salaries, and not obliged to engage
+in commerce, would employ their leisure hours in acquiring
+the language of the country, in communicating
+with the interior, and among them would return upon
+us an accumulation of knowledge far more than repaying
+us for all the expense of supporting them abroad.</p>
+
+<p>Doubtless the reader expects other things in Constantinople;
+but all things are changing. The day has
+gone by when the Christian could not cross the threshold
+of a mosque and live. Even the sacred mosque of St.
+Sophia, the ancient Christian church, so long closed
+against the Christians' feet, now, upon great occasions,
+again opens its doors to the descendants of its Christian
+builders. One of these great occasions happened while
+I was there. The sultan gave a firman to the French
+ambassador, under which all the European residents
+and travellers visited it. Unfortunately, I was unwell,
+and could not go out that day, and was obliged afterward
+to content myself with walking around its walls,
+with uplifted eyes and a heavy heart, admiring the glittering
+crescent and thinking of the prostrate cross.</p>
+
+<p>But no traveller can leave Constantinople without
+having seen the interior of a mosque; and accordingly,
+under the guidance of Mustapha, the janisary of the
+British consul, I visited the mosque of Sultan Suliman,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">233</a></span>next in point of beauty to that of St. Sophia, though
+far inferior in historical interest. At an early hour we
+crossed the Golden Horn to old Stamboul; <span class="err" title="original: threade">threaded</span> our
+way through its narrow and intricate streets to an eminence
+near the seraskier pacha's tower; entered by a
+fine gateway into a large courtyard, more than a thousand
+feet square, handsomely paved and ornamented
+with noble trees, and enclosed by a high wall; passed
+a marble fountain of clear and abundant water, where,
+one after another, the faithful stopped to make their
+ablutions; entered a large colonnade, consisting of granite
+and marble pillars of every form and style, the plunder
+of ancient temples, worked in without much regard
+to architectural fitness, yet, on the whole, producing a
+fine effect; pulled off our shoes at the door, and, with
+naked feet and noiseless step, crossed the sacred threshold
+of the mosque. Silently we moved among the kneeling
+figures of the faithful scattered about in different
+parts of the mosque and engaged in prayer; paused
+for a moment under the beautiful dome sustained by
+four columns from the Temple of Diana at Ephesus;
+leaned against a marble pillar which may have supported,
+two thousand years ago, the praying figure of a
+worshipper of the great goddess; gazed at the thousand
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">234</a></span>small lamps suspended from the lofty ceiling, each by a
+separate cord, and with a devout feeling left the mosque.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" >
+<img src="images/i_v1_p233.jpg" width="60%" alt="Mosque of Sultan Suliman." title="Mosque of Sultan Suliman." />
+<p class="caption">Mosque of Sultan Suliman.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>In the rear, almost concealed from view by a thick
+grove of trees, shrubs, and flowers, is a circular building
+about forty feet in diameter, containing the tomb of Suliman,
+the founder of the mosque, his brother, his favourite
+wife Roxala, and two other wives. The monuments
+are in the form of sarcophagi, with pyramidal
+tops, covered with rich <span class="err" title="original: Cachmere">Cashmere</span> shawls, having each
+at the head a large white turban, and enclosed by a railing
+covered with mother-of-pearl. The great beauty of
+the sepulchral chamber is its dome, which is highly ornamented,
+and sparkles with brilliants. In one corner
+is a plan of Mecca, the holy temple, and tomb of the
+Prophet.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon I went for the last time to the Armenian
+burying-ground. In the East the graveyards are
+the general promenades, the places of rendezvous, and
+the lounging-places; and in Constantinople the Armenian
+burying-ground is the most beautiful, and the favourite.
+Situated in the suburbs of Pera, overlooking
+the Bosphorus, shaded by noble palm-trees, almost regularly
+toward evening I found myself sitting upon the
+same tombstone, looking upon the silvery water at my
+feet, studded with palaces, flashing and glittering with
+caiques from the golden palace of the sultan to the seraglio
+point, and then turned to the animated groups
+thronging the burying-ground; the Armenian in his
+flowing robes, the dashing Greek, the stiff and out-of-place-looking
+Frank; Turks in their gay and bright
+costume, glittering arms, and solemn beards, enjoying the
+superlative of existence in dozing over their pipe; and
+women in long white veils, apart under some delightful
+shade, in little picnic parties, eating ices and confectionary.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">235</a></span>Here and there, toward the outskirts, was the
+araba, the only wheeled carriage known among the
+Turks, with a long low body, highly carved and gilded,
+drawn by oxen fancifully trimmed with ribands, and
+filled with soft cushions, on which the Turkish and Armenian
+ladies almost buried themselves. Instead of
+the cypress, the burying-ground is shaded by noble
+plane-trees; and the tombstones, instead of being upright,
+are all flat, having at the head a couple of little
+niches scooped out to hold water, with the beautiful
+idea to induce birds to come there and drink and sing
+among the trees. Their tombstones, too, have another
+mark, which, in a country where men are apt to forget
+who their fathers were, would exclude them even from
+that place where all mortal distinctions are laid low, viz.,
+a mark indicating the profession or occupation of the
+deceased; as, a pair of shears to mark the grave of a
+tailor; a razor that of a barber; and on many of them
+was another mark indicating the manner of death, the
+bowstring, or some other mark, showing that the stone
+covered a victim of Turkish cruelty. But all these
+things are well known; nothing has escaped the prying
+eyes of curious travellers; and I merely state, for my
+own credit's sake, that I followed the steps of those who
+had gone before me, visited the Sweet Waters, Scutary,
+and Belgrade, the reservoirs, aqueducts, and ruins of
+the palace of Constantine, and saw the dancing dervishes;
+rowed up the Bosphorus to Buyukdere, lunched
+under the tree where Godfrey encamped with his gallant
+crusaders, and looked out upon the Black Sea from
+the top of the Giant's Mountain.</p>
+
+<hr class="l65" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">236</a></span></h2>
+
+<div class="chapblock"><p>Visit to the Slave-market.&mdash;Horrors of Slavery.&mdash;Departure from Stamboul.&mdash;The
+stormy Euxine.&mdash;Odessa.&mdash;The Lazaretto.&mdash;Russian Civility.&mdash;Returning
+Good for Evil.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> day before I left Constantinople I went, in
+company with Dr. N. and his son, and attended by
+Paul, to visit the slave-market; crossing over to Stamboul,
+we picked up a Jew in the bazars, who conducted
+us through a perfect labyrinth of narrow streets to a
+quarter of the city from which it would have been
+utterly impossible for me to extricate myself alone. I
+only know that it was situated on high ground, and
+that we passed through a gateway into a hollow square
+of about a hundred and fifty or two hundred feet on
+each side. It was with no small degree of emotion
+that I entered this celebrated place, where so many
+Christian hearts have trembled; and, before crossing
+the threshold, I ran over in my mind all the romantic
+stories and all the horrible realities that I could remember
+connected with its history: the tears of beauty,
+the pangs of brave men, and so down to the unsentimental
+exclamation of Johnson to his new friend Don
+Juan:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">"Yon black eunuch seems to eye us;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I wish to God that somebody would buy us."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The bazar forms a hollow square, with little chambers
+about fifteen feet each way around it, in which the
+slaves belonging to the different dealers are kept. A
+large shed or portico projects in front, under which,
+and in front of each chamber, is a raised platform, with
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">237</a></span>a low railing around it, where the slave-merchant sits
+and gossips, and dozes over his coffee and pipes. I had
+heard so little of this place, and it was so little known
+among Europeans, taking into consideration, moreover,
+that in a season of universal peace the market must be
+without a supply of captives gained in war, that I expected
+to see but a remnant of the ancient traffic, supposing
+that I should find but few slaves, and those only
+black; but, to my surprise, I found there twenty or thirty
+white women. Bad, horrible as this traffic is under
+any circumstances, to my habits and feelings it loses a
+shade of its horrors when confined to blacks; but here
+whites and blacks were exposed together in the same
+bazar. The women were from Circassia and the regions
+of the Caucasus, that country so renowned for
+beauty; they were dressed in the Turkish costume,
+with the white shawl wrapped around the mouth and
+chin, and over the forehead, shading the eyes, so that it
+was difficult to judge with certainty as to their personal
+appearance. Europeans are not permitted to
+purchase, and their visits to this bazar are looked upon
+with suspicion. If we stopped long opposite a door, it
+was closed upon us; but I was not easily shaken off,
+and returned so often at odd times, that I succeeded in
+seeing pretty distinctly all that was to be seen. In
+general, the best slaves are not exposed in the bazars,
+but are kept at the houses of the dealers; but there was
+one among them not more than seventeen, with a regular
+Circassian face, a brilliantly fair complexion, a mild
+and cheerful expression; and in the slave-market, under
+the partial disguise of the Turkish shawl, it required no
+great effort of the imagination to make her decidedly
+beautiful. Paul stopped, and with a burst of enthusiasm,
+the first I had discovered in him, exclaimed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">238</a></span>"Quelle beauté!" She noticed my repeatedly stopping
+before her bazar; and, when I was myself really
+disposed to be sentimental, instead of drooping her head
+with the air of a distressed heroine, to my great surprise
+she laughed and nodded, and beckoned me to
+come to her. Paul was very much struck; and repeating
+his warm expression of admiration at her beauty,
+told me that she wanted me to buy her. Without waiting
+for a reply, he went off and inquired the price,
+which was two hundred and fifty dollars; and added
+that he could easily get some Turk to let me buy her
+in his name, and then I could put her on board a vessel,
+and carry her where I pleased. I told him it was
+hardly worth while at present; and he, thinking my
+objection was merely to the person, in all honesty and
+earnestness told me he had been there frequently, and
+never saw anything half so handsome; adding that, if I
+let slip this opportunity, I would scarcely have another
+as good, and wound up very significantly by declaring
+that, if he was a gentleman, he would not hesitate a
+moment. A gentleman, in the sense in which Paul understood
+the word, is apt to fall into irregular ways in
+the East. Removed from the restraints which operate
+upon men in civilized countries, if he once breaks
+through the trammels of education, he goes all lengths;
+and it is said to be a matter of general remark, that
+slaves are always worse treated by Europeans than by
+the Turks. The slave-dealers are principally Jews, who
+buy children when young, and, if they have beauty
+train up the girls in such accomplishments as may fascinate
+the Turks. Our guide told us that, since the
+Greek revolution, the slave-market had been comparatively
+deserted; but, during the whole of that dreadful
+struggle, every day presented new horrors; new captives
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">239</a></span>were brought in, the men raving and struggling, and
+vainly swearing eternal vengeance against the Turks,
+and the women shrieking distractedly in the agony of a
+separation. After the massacre at Scio, in particular,
+hundreds of young girls, with tears streaming down their
+cheeks, and bursting hearts, were sold to the unhallowed
+embraces of the Turks for a few dollars a head. We
+saw nothing of the horrors and atrocities of this celebrated
+slave-market. Indeed, except prisoners of war and
+persons captured by Turkish corsairs, the condition of
+those who now fill the slave-market is not the horrible
+lot that a warm imagination might suppose. They are
+mostly persons in a semibarbarous state; blacks from
+Sennaar and Abyssinia, or whites from the regions of
+the Caucasus, bought from their parents for a string of
+beads or a shawl; and, in all probability, the really
+beautiful girl whom I saw had been sold by parents who
+could not feed or clothe her, who considered themselves
+rid of an encumbrance, and whom she left without regret;
+and she, having left poverty and misery behind
+her, looked to the slave-market as the sole means of
+advancing her fortune; and, in becoming the favoured
+inmate of a harem, expected to attain a degree of happiness
+she could never have enjoyed at home.</p>
+
+<p>I intended to go from Constantinople to Egypt, but
+the plague was raging there so violently that it would
+have been foolhardy to attempt it; and while making
+arrangements with a Tartar to return to Europe on
+horseback across the Balkan, striking the Danube at
+Semlin and Belgrade, a Russian government steamer
+was advertised for Odessa; and as this mode of travelling
+at that moment suited my health better, I altered
+my whole plan, and determined to leave the ruined
+countries of the Old World for a land just emerging
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">240</a></span>from a state of barbarism, and growing into gigantic
+greatness. With great regret I took leave of Dr. N.
+and his son, who sailed the same day for Smyrna, and
+I have never seen them since. Paul was the last man
+to whom I said farewell. At the moment of starting
+my shirts were brought in dripping wet, and Paul bestowed
+a malediction upon the Greek while he wrung
+them out and tumbled them into my carpet-bag. I afterward
+found him at Malta, whence he accompanied
+me on my tour in Egypt, Arabia Petrća, and the Holy
+Land, by which he is, perhaps, already known to some
+of my readers.</p>
+
+<p>With my carpet-bag on the shoulders of a Turk, I
+walked for the last time to Tophana. A hundred
+caiquemen gathered around me, but I pushed them all
+back, and kept guard over my carpet-bag, looking out
+for one whom I had been in the habit of employing
+ever since my arrival in Constantinople. He soon
+spied me; and when he took my luggage and myself
+into his caique, manifested that he knew it was for the
+last time. Having an hour to spare, I directed him to
+row once more under the walls of the seraglio; and
+still loath to leave, I went on shore and walked around
+the point, until I was stopped by a Turkish bayonet.
+The Turk growled, and his mustache curled fiercely
+as he pointed it at me. I had been stopped by Frenchmen,
+Italians, and by a mountain Greek, but found nothing
+that brings a man to such a dead stand as the
+Turkish bayonet.</p>
+
+<p>I returned to my caique, and went on board the
+steamer. She was a Russian government vessel, more
+classically called a pyroscaphe, a miserable old thing;
+and yet as much form and circumstance were observed
+in sending her off as in fitting out an <i>exploring expedition</i>.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">241</a></span>Consuls' and ambassadors' boats were passing
+and repassing, and after an enormous fuss and preparation,
+we started under a salute of cannon, which was
+answered from one of the sultan's frigates. We had
+the usual scene of parting with friends, waving of handkerchiefs,
+and so on; and feeling a little lonely at the
+idea of leaving a city containing a million inhabitants
+without a single friend to bid me Godspeed, I took my
+place on the quarter-deck, and waved my handkerchief
+to my caiqueman, who, I have no doubt, independent of
+the loss of a few piasters per day, was very sorry to lose
+me; for we had been so long together, that, in spite of
+our ignorance of each other's language, we understood
+each other perfectly.</p>
+
+<p>I found on board two Englishmen whom I had met
+at Corfu, and a third, who had joined them at Smyrna,
+going to travel in the Crimea; our other cabin-passengers
+were Mr. Luoff, a Russian officer, an aiddecamp
+of the emperor, just returned from travels in Egypt and
+Syria, Mr. Perseani, secretary to the Russian legation
+in Greece; a Greek merchant, with a Russian protection,
+on his way to the Sea of Azoff; and a French merchant
+of Odessa. The tub of a steamboat dashed up
+the Bosphorus at the rate of three miles an hour; while
+the classic waters, as if indignant at having such a bellowing,
+blowing, blustering monster upon their surface,
+seemed to laugh at her unwieldy and ineffectual efforts.
+Slowly we mounted the beautiful strait, lined on the
+European side almost with one continued range of
+houses, exhibiting in every beautiful nook a palace of the
+sultan, and at Terapeia and Buyukdere the palaces of
+the foreign ambassadors; passed the Giant's Mountain,
+and about an hour before dark were entering a new sea,
+the dark and stormy Euxine.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">242</a></span>Advancing, the hills became more lofty and ragged,
+terminating on the Thracian side in high rocky precipices.
+The shores of this extremity of the Bosphorus
+were once covered with shrines, altars, and temples,
+monuments of the fears or gratitude of mariners who
+were about to leave, or who had escaped, the dangers
+of the inhospitable Euxine; and the remains of these
+antiquities were so great that a traveller almost in our
+own day describes the coasts as "covered by their
+ruins." The castles on the European and the Asiatic
+side of the strait are supposed to occupy the sites where
+stood, in ancient days, the great temples of Jupiter Serapis
+and Jupiter Urius. The Bosphorus opens abruptly,
+without any enlargement at its mouth, between two
+mountains. The parting view of the strait, or, rather,
+of the coast on each side, was indescribably grand, presenting
+a stupendous wall opposed to the great bed of
+waters, as if torn asunder by an earthquake, leaving a
+narrow rent for their escape. On each side, a miserable
+lantern on the top of a tower, hardly visible at the
+distance of a few miles, is the only light to guide the
+mariner at night; and as there is another opening called
+the false Bosphorus, the entrance is difficult and dangerous,
+and many vessels are lost here annually.</p>
+
+<p>As the narrow opening closed before me, I felt myself
+entering a new world; I was fairly embarked upon
+that wide expanse of water which once, according to
+ancient legends, mingled with the Caspian, and covered
+the great oriental plain of Tartary, and upon which Jason,
+with his adventurous Argonauts, having killed the
+dragon and carried off the golden fleece from Colchis,
+if those same legends be true (which some doubt), sailed
+across to the great ocean. I might and should have
+speculated upon the great changes in the face of nature
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">243</a></span>and the great deluge recorded by Grecian historians and
+poets, which burst the narrow passage of the Thracian
+Bosphorus for the outlet of the mighty waters; but who
+could philosophize in a steamboat on the Euxine? Oh
+Fulton! much as thou hast done for mechanics and the
+useful arts, thy hand has fallen rudely upon all cherished
+associations. We boast of thee; I have myself been
+proud of thee as an American; but as I sat at evening
+on the stern of the steamer, and listened to the clatter
+of the engine, and watched the sparks rushing out of
+the high pipes, and remembered that this was on the
+dark and inhospitable Euxine, I wished that thy life had
+begun after mine was ended. I trust I did his memory
+no wrong; but if I had borne him malice, I could not
+have wished him worse than to have all his dreams of
+the past disturbed by the clatter of one of his own engines.</p>
+
+<p>I turned away from storied associations to a new country
+grown up in our own day. We escaped, and, I am
+obliged to say, without noticing them, the Cyaneć, "the
+blue Symplegades," or "wandering islands," which, lying
+on the European and Asiatic side, floated about, or,
+according to Pliny, "were alive, and moved to and fro
+more swiftly than the blast," and in passing through
+which the good ship Argo had a narrow escape, and
+lost the extremity of her stern. History and poetry have
+invested this sea with extraordinary and ideal terrors;
+but my experience both of the Mediterranean and Black
+Sea was unfortunate for realizing historical and poetical
+accounts. I had known the beautiful Mediterranean
+a sea of storm and sunshine, in which the storm greatly
+predominated. I found the stormy Euxine calm as an
+untroubled lake; in fact, the Black Sea is in reality
+nothing more than a lake, not as large as many of our
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">244</a></span>own, receiving the waters of the great rivers of the north:
+the Don, the Cuban, the Phase, the <span class="err" title="original: Dneiper">Dnieper</span>, and the
+Danube, and pouring their collected streams through the
+narrow passage of the Bosphorus into the Mediterranean.
+Still, if the number of shipwrecks be any evidence
+of its character, it is indeed entitled to its ancient
+reputation of a dangerous sea, though probably these accidents
+proceed, in a great measure, from the ignorance
+and unskilfulness of mariners, and the want of proper
+charts and of suitable lighthouses at the opening of the
+Bosphorus. At all events, we outblustered the winds
+and waves with our steamboat; passed the Serpent
+Isles, the ancient Leuce, with a roaring that must have
+astonished the departed heroes whose souls, according
+to the ancient poets, were sent there to enjoy perpetual
+paradise, and scared the aquatic birds which every morning
+dipped their wings in the sea, and sprinkled the
+Temple of Achilles, and swept with their plumage its
+sacred pavement.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" >
+<img src="images/i_v1_p244.jpg" width="60%" alt="Odessa." title="Odessa" />
+<p class="caption">Odessa.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>On the third day we made the low coast of Moldavia
+or Bess Arabia, within a short distance of Odessa, the
+great seaport of Southern Russia. Here, too, there was
+nothing to realize preconceived notions; for, instead of
+finding a rugged region of eternal snows, we were suffering
+under an intensely hot sun when we cast anchor
+in the harbour of Odessa. The whole line of the coast
+is low and destitute of trees; but Odessa is situated on
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">245</a></span>a high bank; and, with its beautiful theatre, the exchange,
+the palace of the governor, &amp;c., did not look
+like a city which, thirty years ago, consisted only of a
+few fishermen's huts.</p>
+
+<p>The harbour of Odessa is very much exposed to the
+north and east winds, which often cause great damage
+to the shipping. Many hundred anchors cover the bottom,
+which cut the rope cables; and, the water being
+shallow, vessels are often injured by striking on them.
+An Austrian brig going out, having struck one, sank in
+ten minutes. There are two moles, the quarantine
+mole, in which we came to anchor, being the principal.
+Quarantine flags were flying about the harbour, the
+yellow indicating those undergoing purification, and the
+red the fatal presence of the plague. We were prepared
+to undergo a vexatious process. At Constantinople
+I had heard wretched accounts of the rude treatment
+of lazaretto subjects, and the rough, barbarous
+manners of the Russians to travellers, and we had a
+foretaste of the light in which we were to be regarded,
+in the conduct of the health-officer who came alongside.
+He offered to take charge of any letters for the town,
+purify them that night, and deliver them in the morning;
+and, according to his directions, we laid them down on
+the deck, where he took them up with a pair of long
+iron tongs, and putting them into an iron box, shut it
+up and rowed off.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning, having received notice that the proper
+officers were ready to attend us, we went ashore. We
+landed in separate boats at the end of a long pier, and,
+forgetting our supposed pestiferous influence, were walking
+up toward a crowd of men whom we saw there, when
+their retrograde movements, their gestures, and unintelligible
+shouts reminded us of our situation. One of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">246</a></span>our party, in a sort of ecstasy at being on shore, ran
+capering up the docks, putting to flight a group of idlers,
+and, single-handed, might have depopulated the city of
+Odessa, if an ugly soldier with a bayonet had not met
+him in full career and put a stop to his gambols. The
+soldier conducted us to a large building at the upper end
+of the pier; and carefully opening the door, and falling
+back so as to avoid even the wind that might blow from
+us in his direction, told us to go in. At the other end
+of a large room, divided by two parallel railings, sat officers
+and clerks to examine our passports and take a
+general account of us. We were at once struck with
+the military aspect of things, every person connected
+with the establishment wearing a military uniform; and
+now commenced a long process. The first operation
+was to examine our passports, take down our names,
+and make a memorandum of the purposes for which
+we severally entered the dominions of the emperor
+and autocrat of all the Russias. We were all called
+up, one after the other, captain, cook, and cabin-boy,
+cabin and deck passengers; and never, perhaps, did
+steamboat pour forth a more motley assemblage than
+we presented. We were Jews, Turks, and Christians;
+Russians, Poles, and Germans; English, French, and
+Italians; Austrians, Greeks, and Illyrians; Moldavians,
+Wallachians, Bulgarians, and Sclavonians; Armenians,
+Georgians, and Africans; and one American. I had
+before remarked the happy facility of the Russians in
+acquiring languages, and I saw a striking instance in
+the officer who conducted the examination, and who
+addressed every man in his own language with apparently
+as much facility as though it had been his native
+tongue. After the oral commenced a corporeal examination.
+We were ordered one by one into an adjoining
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">247</a></span>room, where, on the other side of a railing, stood a doctor,
+who directed us to open our shirt bosoms, and slap
+our hands smartly under our arms and upon our groins,
+these being the places where the fatal plague-marks
+first exhibit themselves.</p>
+
+<p>This over, we were forthwith marched to the lazaretto,
+escorted by guards and soldiers, who behaved
+very civilly and kept at a respectful distance from us.
+Among our deck passengers were forty or fifty Jews,
+dirty and disgusting objects, just returned from a pilgrimage
+to Jerusalem. An old man, who seemed to
+be, in a manner, the head of the party, and exceeded
+them all in rags and filthiness, but was said to be rich,
+in going up to the lazaretto amused us and vexed the
+officers by sitting down on the way, paying no regard
+to them when they urged him on, being perfectly assured
+that they would not dare to touch him. Once he
+resolutely refused to move; they threatened and swore
+at him, but he kept his place until one got a long pole
+and punched him on ahead.</p>
+
+<p>In this way we entered the lazaretto; but if it had
+not been called by that name, and if we had not looked
+upon it as a place where we were compelled to stay
+for a certain time, nolens volens, we should have considered
+it a beautiful spot. It is situated on high
+ground, within an enclosure of some fifteen or twenty
+acres, overlooking the Black Sea, laid out in lawn and
+gravel walks, and ornamented with rows of acacia-trees.
+Fronting the sea was a long range of buildings divided
+into separate apartments, each with a little courtyard in
+front containing two or three acacias. The director, a
+fine, military-looking man, with a decoration on his lapel,
+met us on horseback within the enclosure, and
+with great suavity of manner said that he could not bid
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">248</a></span>us welcome to a prison, but that we should have the
+privilege of walking at will over the grounds, and visiting
+each other, subject only to the attendance of a guardiano;
+and that all that could contribute to our comfort
+should be done for us.</p>
+
+<p>We then selected our rooms, and underwent another
+personal examination. This was the real touchstone;
+the first was a mere preliminary observation by a medical
+understrapper; but this was conducted by a more
+knowing doctor. We were obliged to strip naked; to
+give up the clothes we pulled off, and put on a flannel
+gown, drawers, and stockings, and a woollen cap provided
+by the government, until our own should be smoked
+and purified. In everything, however, the most scrupulous
+regard was paid to our wishes, and a disposition
+was manifested by all to make this rather vexatious proceeding
+as little annoying as possible. The bodily examination
+was as delicate as the nature of the case
+would admit; for the doctor merely opened the door,
+looked in, and went out without taking his hand from
+off the knob. It was none of my business, I know, and
+may be thought impertinent, but, as he closed the door,
+I could not help calling him back to ask him whether
+he held the same inquisition upon the fair sex; to which
+he replied with a melancholy upturning of the eyes
+that in the good old days of Russian barbarism this had
+been part of his duties, but that the march of improvement
+had invaded his rights, and given this portion of
+his professional duties to a <i>sage femme</i>.</p>
+
+<p>All our effects were then taken to another chamber,
+and arranged on lines, each person superintending the
+disposition of his own, so as to prevent all confusion,
+and left there to be fumigated with sulphuric acid for
+twenty-four hours. So particular were they in fumigating
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">249</a></span>everything susceptible of infection, that I was
+obliged to leave there a black riband which I wore
+round my neck as a guard to my watch. Toward evening
+the principal director, one of the most gentlemanly
+men I ever met, came round, and with many apologies
+and regrets for his inability to receive us better, requested
+us to call upon him freely for anything we
+might want. Not knowing any of us personally, he
+did me the honour to say that he understood there was
+an American in the party, who had been particularly
+recommended to him by a Russian officer and fellow-passenger.
+Afterward came the commissary, or chief
+of the department, and repeated the same compliments,
+and left us with an exalted opinion of Russian politeness.
+I had heard horrible accounts of the rough treatment
+of travellers in Russia, and I made a note at the
+time, lest after vexations should make me forget it, that
+I had received more politeness and civility from these
+northern barbarians, as they are called by the people of
+the south of Europe, than I ever found amid their
+boasted civilization.</p>
+
+<p>Having still an hour before dark, I strolled out, followed
+by my guardiano, to take a more particular survey
+of our prison. In a gravel walk lined with acacias,
+immediately before the door of my little courtyard, I
+came suddenly upon a lady of about eighteen, whose
+dark hair and eyes I at once recognised as Grecian,
+leading by the hand a little child. I am sure my face
+brightened at the first glimpse of this vision which
+promised to shine upon us in our solitude; and perhaps
+my satisfaction was made too manifest by my involuntarily
+moving toward her. But my presumption received
+a severe and mortifying check; for though at
+first she merely crossed to the other side of the walk,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">250</a></span>she soon forgot all ceremony, and, fairly dragging the
+child after her, ran over the grass to another walk to
+avoid me; my mortification, however, was but temporary;
+for though, in the first impulse of delight and admiration,
+I had forgotten time, place, and circumstance,
+the repulse I had received made me turn to myself, and
+I was glad to find an excuse for the lady's flight in the
+flannel gown and long cap and slippers, which marked
+me as having just entered upon my season of purification.</p>
+
+<p>I was soon initiated into the routine of lazaretto ceremonies
+and restrictions. By touching a quarantine patient,
+both parties are subjected to the longest term of
+either; so that if a person, on the last day of his term,
+should come in contact with another just entered, he
+would lose all the benefit of his days of purification, and
+be obliged to wait the full term of the latter. I have
+seen, in various situations in life, a system of operations
+called keeping people at a distance, but I never saw it
+so effectually practised as in quarantine. For this night,
+at least, I had full range. I walked where I pleased,
+and was very sure that every one would keep out of
+my way. During the whole time, however, I could
+not help treasuring up the precipitate flight of the young
+lady; and I afterward told her, and, I hope, with the
+true spirit of one ready to return good for evil, that if
+she had been in my place, and the days of my purification
+had been almost ended, in spite of plague and
+pestilence she might have rushed into my arms without
+my offering the least impediment.</p>
+
+<p>In making the tour of the grounds, I had already an
+opportunity of observing the relation in which men
+stand to each other in Russia. When an officer spoke
+to a soldier, the latter stood motionless as a statue, with
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">251</a></span>his head uncovered during the whole of the conference;
+and when a soldier on guard saw an officer, no matter
+at what distance, he presented arms, and remained in
+that position until the officer was out of sight. Returning,
+I passed a grating, through which I saw our
+deck passengers, forty or fifty in number, including the
+Jewish pilgrims, miserable, dirty-looking objects, turned
+in together for fourteen days, to eat, drink, and sleep
+as best they might, like brutes. With a high idea of
+the politeness of the Russians toward the rich and
+great, or those whom they believed to be so, and with
+a strong impression already received confirming the
+accounts of the degraded condition of the lower classes,
+I returned to my room, and, with a Frenchman and a
+Greek for my room-mates, my window opening upon
+the Black Sea, I spent my first night in quarantine.</p>
+
+<hr class="l65" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">252</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV.</h2>
+
+<div class="chapblock"><p>The Guardiano.&mdash;One too many.&mdash;An Excess of Kindness.&mdash;The last Day
+of Quarantine.&mdash;Mr. Baguet.&mdash;Rise of Odessa.&mdash;City-making.&mdash;Count
+Woronzow.&mdash;A Gentleman Farmer.&mdash;An American Russian.</p></div>
+
+<p>I <span class="smcap">shall</span> pass over briefly the whole of our <i>pratique</i>.
+The next morning I succeeded in getting a room to myself.
+A guardiano was assigned to each room, who took
+his place in the antechamber, and was always in attendance.
+These guardianos are old soldiers, entitled by
+the rules of the establishment to so much a day; but, as
+they always expect a gratuity, their attention and services
+are regulated by that expectation. I was exceedingly
+fortunate in mine; he was always in the antechamber,
+cleaning his musket, mending his clothes, or
+stretched on a mattress looking at the wall; and, whenever
+I came through with my hat on, without a word he
+put on his belt and followed me; and very soon, instead
+of regarding him as an encumbrance, I became accustomed
+to him, and it was a satisfaction to have him with
+me. Sometimes, in walking for exercise, I moved so
+briskly that it tired him to keep up with me; and then
+I selected a walk where he could sit down and keep his
+eye upon me, while I walked backward and forward before
+him. Besides this, he kept my room in order, set
+my table, carried my notes, brushed my clothes, and
+took better care of me than any servant I ever had.</p>
+
+<p>Our party consisted of eight, and being subjected to
+the same quarantine, and supposed to have the same
+quantum of infection, we were allowed to visit each
+other; and every afternoon we met in the yard, walked
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">253</a></span>an hour or two, took tea together, and returned to our
+own rooms, where our guardianos mounted guard in the
+antechamber; our gates were locked up, and a soldier
+walked outside as sentinel. I was particularly intimate
+with the Russian officer, whom I found one of the most
+gentlemanly, best educated, and most amiable men I
+ever met. He had served and been wounded in the
+campaign against Poland; had with him two soldiers, his
+own serfs, who had served under him in that campaign,
+and had accompanied him in his tour in Egypt and
+Syria. He gave me his address at St. Petersburgh
+and promised me the full benefit of his acquaintance
+there. I have before spoken of the three Englishmen.
+Two of them I had met at Corfu; the third joined them
+at Smyrna, and added another proof to the well-established
+maxim that three spoil company; for I soon found
+that they had got together by the ears; and the new-comer
+having connected himself with one of the others,
+they were anxious to get rid of the third. Many causes
+of offence existed between them; and though they continued
+to room together, they were merely waiting till
+the end of our pratique for an opportunity to separate.
+One morning the one who was about being thrown off
+came to my room, and told me that he did not care about
+going to the Crimea, and proposed accompanying me.
+This suited me very well; it was a long and expensive
+journey, and would cost a mere fraction more for two than
+for one; and when the breach was widened past all possibility
+of being healed, the cast-off and myself agreed to
+travel together. I saw much of the secretary of legation,
+and also of the Greek and Frenchman, my room-mates
+for the first night. Indeed, I think I may say that I was
+an object of special interest to all our party. I was unwell,
+and my companions overwhelmed me with prescriptions
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">254</a></span>and advice; they brought in their medicine
+chests; one assuring me that he had been cured by this,
+another by that, and each wanted me to swallow his own
+favourite medicine, interlarding their advice with anecdotes
+of whole sets of passengers who had been detained,
+some forty, some fifty, and some sixty days, by the accidental
+sickness of one. I did all I could for them, always
+having regard to the circumstance that it was not
+of such vital importance to me, at least, to hold out fourteen
+days if I broke down on the fifteenth. In a few
+days the doctor, in one of his rounds, told me he understood
+I was unwell, and I confessed to him the reason
+of my withholding the fact, and took his prescriptions
+so well, that, at parting, he gave me a letter to a friend
+in Chioff, and to his brother, a distinguished professor
+in the university at St. Petersburgh.</p>
+
+<p>We had a restaurant in the lazaretto, with a new
+bill of fare every day; not first-rate, perhaps, but good
+enough. I had sent a letter of introduction to Mr.
+Baguet, the Spanish consul, also to a German, the
+brother of a missionary at Constantinople, and a note
+to Mr. Ralli, the American consul, and had frequent
+visits from them, and long talks at the parlatoria through
+the grating. The German was a knowing one, and
+came often; he had a smattering of English, and would
+talk in that language, as I thought, in compliment to
+me; but the last time he came he thanked me kindly,
+and told me he had improved more in his English than
+by a year's study. When I got out he never came
+near me.</p>
+
+<p>Sunday, June seventh, was our last day in quarantine.
+We had counted the days anxiously; and though
+our time had passed as agreeably as, under the circumstances,
+it could pass, we were in high spirits at the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">255</a></span>prospect of our liberation. To the last, the attention
+and civility of the officers of the yard continued unremitted.
+Every morning regularly the director knocked
+at each gate to inquire how we had passed the night,
+and whether he could do anything for us; then the
+doctor, to inquire into our corporeal condition; and
+every two or three days, toward evening, the director,
+with the same decoration on the lapel of his coat, and
+at the same hour, inquired whether we had any complaints
+to make of want of attendance or improper treatment.</p>
+
+<p>Our last day in the lazaretto is not to be forgotten.
+We kept as clear of the rest of the inmates as if they
+had been pickpockets, though once I was thrown into
+a cold sweat by an act of forgetfulness. A child fell
+down before me; I sprang forward to pick him up,
+and should infallibly have been fixed for ten days longer
+if my guardiano had not caught me. Lingering for the
+last time on the walk overlooking the Black Sea, I
+saw a vessel coming up under full sail, bearing, as I
+thought, the American flag. My heart almost bounded
+at seeing the stars and stripes on the Black Sea; but I
+was deceived; and almost dejected with the disappointment,
+called my guardiano, and returned for the last
+time to my room.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning we waited in our rooms till the
+doctor paid his final visit, and soon after we all gathered
+before the door of the directory, ready to sally forth.
+Every one who has made a European voyage knows
+the metamorphosis in the appearance of the passengers
+on the day of landing. It was much the same with us;
+we had no more slipshod, long-bearded companions,
+but all were clean shirted and shaved becomingly,
+except our old Jew and his party, who probably had
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">256</a></span>not changed a garment or washed their faces since the
+first day in quarantine, nor perhaps for many years
+before. They were people from whom, under any circumstances,
+one would be apt to keep at a respectful
+distance; and to the last they carried everything before
+them.</p>
+
+<p>We had still another vexatious process in passing our
+luggage through the custom-house. We had handed
+in a list of all our effects the night before, in which I
+intentionally omitted to mention Byron's poems, these
+being prohibited in Russia. He had been my companion
+in Italy and Greece, and I was loath to part with
+him; so I put the book under my arm, threw my cloak
+over me, and walked out unmolested. Outside the gate
+there was a general shaking of hands; the director, whom
+we had seen every day at a distance, was the first to
+greet us, and Mr. Baguet, the brother of the Spanish
+consul, who was waiting to receive me, welcomed me
+to Russia. With sincere regret I bade good-by to my
+old soldier, mounted a drosky, and in ten minutes was
+deposited in a hotel, in size and appearance equal to the
+best in Paris. It was a pleasure once more to get into
+a wheel-carriage; I had not seen one since I left Italy,
+except the old hack I mentioned at Argos, and the arabas
+at Constantinople. It was a pleasure, too, to see
+hats, coats, and pantaloons. Early associations will
+cling to a man; and, in spite of a transient admiration for
+the dashing costume of the Greek and Turk, I warmed
+to the ungraceful covering of civilized man, even to the
+long surtout and bell-crowned hat of the Russian marchand;
+and, more than all, I was attracted by an appearance
+of life and energy particularly striking after
+coming from among the dead-and-alive Turks.</p>
+
+<p>While in quarantine I had received an invitation to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">257</a></span>dine with Mr. Baguet, and had barely time to make one
+tour of the city in a drosky before it was necessary to
+dress for dinner. Mr. Baguet was a bachelor of about
+forty, living in pleasant apartments, in an unpretending
+and gentlemanly style. As in all the ports of the Levant,
+except where there are ambassadors, the consuls
+are the nobility of the place. Several of them were
+present; and the European consuls in those places are
+a different class of men from ours, as they are paid by
+salaries from their respective governments, while ours,
+who receive no pay, are generally natives of the place,
+who serve for the honour or some other accidental advantage.
+We had, therefore, the best society in Odessa
+at Mr. Baguet's, the American consul not being
+present, which, by-the-way, I do not mean in a disrespectful
+sense, as Mr. Ralli seemed every way deserving
+of all the benefits that the station gives.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening the consul and myself took two or
+three turns on the boulevards, and at about eleven I returned
+to my hotel. After what I have said of this
+establishment, the reader will be surprised to learn that,
+when I went to my room, I found there a bedstead, but
+no bed or bedclothes. I supposed it was neglect, and ordered
+one to be prepared; but, to my surprise, was told
+that there were no beds in the hotel. It was kept exclusively
+for the rich seigneurs who always carry their
+own beds with them. Luckily, the bedstead was not
+corded, but contained a bottom of plain slabs of wood,
+about six or eight inches wide, and the same distance
+apart, laid crosswise, so that lengthwise there was no
+danger of falling through; and wrapping myself in my
+cloak, and putting my carpet-bag under my head, I went
+to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>Before breakfast the next morning I had learned the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">258</a></span>topography of Odessa. To an American Russia is an
+interesting country. True, it is not classic ground;
+but as for me, who had now travelled over the faded
+and wornout kingdoms of the Old World, I was quite
+ready for something new. Like our own, Russia is a
+new country, and in many respects resembles ours. It is
+true that we began life differently. Russia has worked
+her way to civilization from a state of absolute barbarism,
+while we sprang into being with the advantage of
+all the lights of the Old World. Still there are many
+subjects of comparison, and even of emulation, between
+us; and nowhere in all Russia is there a more proper
+subject to begin with than my first landing-place.</p>
+
+<p>Odessa is situated in a small bay between the mouths
+of the <span class="err" title="original: Dneiper">Dnieper</span> and <span class="err" title="original: Dneister">Dniester</span>. Forty years ago it consisted
+of a few miserable fishermen's huts on the shores
+of the Black Sea. In 1796 the Empress Catharine resolved
+to built a city there; and the Turks being driven
+from the dominion of the Black Sea, it became a place of
+resort and speculation for the English, Austrians, Neapolitans,
+Dutch, Ragusans, and Greeks of the Ionian
+republic. In eighteen hundred and two, two hundred
+and eighty vessels arrived from Constantinople and the
+Mediterranean; and the Duke de Richelieu, being appointed
+governor-general by Alexander, laid out a city
+upon a gigantic scale, which, though at first its growth
+was not commensurate with his expectations, now contains
+sixty thousand inhabitants, and bids fair to realize
+the extravagant calculations of its founder. Mr. Baguet
+and the gentlemen whom I met at his table were of
+opinion that it is destined to be the greatest commercial
+city in Russia, as the long winters and the closing of
+the Baltic with ice must ever be a great disadvantage
+to St. Petersburgh; and the interior of the country can
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">259</a></span>as well be supplied from Odessa as from the northern
+capital.</p>
+
+<p>There is no country where cities have sprung up so
+fast and increased so rapidly as in ours; and, altogether,
+perhaps nothing in the world can be compared with
+our Buffalo, Rochester, Cincinnati, &amp;c. But Odessa
+has grown faster than any of these, and has nothing of
+the appearance of one of our new cities. We are both
+young, and both marching with gigantic strides to greatness,
+but we move by different roads; and the whole
+face of the country, from the new city on the borders of
+the Black Sea to the steppes of Siberia, shows a different
+order of government and a different constitution of
+society. With us, a few individuals cut down the trees
+of the forest, or settle themselves by the banks of a
+stream, where they happen to find some local advantages,
+and build houses suited to their necessities;
+others come and join them; and, by degrees, the little
+settlement becomes a large city. But here a gigantic
+government, endowed almost with creative powers, says,
+"Let there be a city," and immediately commences the
+erection of large buildings. The rich seigneurs follow
+the lead of government, and build hotels to let out in
+apartments. The theatre, casino, and exchange at Odessa
+are perhaps superior to any buildings in the United
+States. The city is situated on an elevation about a
+hundred feet above the sea; a promenade three quarters
+of a mile long, terminated at one end by the exchange,
+and at the other by the palace of the governor, is laid
+out in front along the margin of the sea, bounded on one
+side by an abrupt precipice, and adorned with trees,
+shrubs, flowers, statues, and busts, like the garden of
+the Tuileries, the Borghese Villa, or the Villa Recali at
+Naples. On the other side is a long range of hotels
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">260</a></span>built of stone, running the whole length of the boulevards,
+some of them with façades after the best models
+in Italy. A broad street runs through the centre of the
+city, terminating with a semicircular enlargement at the
+boulevards, and in the centre of this stands a large equestrian
+statue erected to the Duke de Richelieu; and parallel
+and at right angles are wide streets lined with
+large buildings, according to the most approved plans of
+modern architecture. The custom which the people
+have of taking apartments in hotels causes the erection
+of large buildings, which add much to the general appearance
+of the city; while with us, the universal disposition
+of every man to have a house to himself, conduces
+to the building of small houses, and, consequently, detracts
+from general effect. The city, as yet, is not generally
+paved, and is, consequently, so dusty, that every
+man is obliged to wear a light cloak to save his dress.
+Paving-stone is brought from Trieste and Malta, and is
+very expensive.</p>
+
+<p>About two o'clock Mr. Ralli, our consul, called upon
+me. Mr. Ralli is a Greek of Scio. He left his native
+island when a boy; has visited every port in Europe as
+a merchant, and lived for the last eight years in Odessa.
+He has several brothers in England, Trieste, and some
+of the Greek islands, and all are connected in business.
+When Mr. Rhind, who negotiated our treaty with the
+Porte, left Odessa, he authorized Mr. Ralli to transact
+whatever consular business might be required, and on
+his recommendation Mr. Ralli afterward received a regular
+appointment as consul. Mr. Rhind, by-the-way,
+expected a great trade from opening the Black Sea to
+American bottoms; but he was wrong in his anticipations,
+and there have been but two American vessels there
+since the treaty. Mr. Ralli is rich and respected, being
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">261</a></span>vice-president of the commercial board, and very proud
+of the honour of the American consulate, as it gives him
+a position among the dignitaries of the place, enables him
+to wear a uniform and sword on public occasions, and
+yields him other privileges which are gratifying, at least,
+if not intrinsically valuable.</p>
+
+<p>No traveller can pass through Odessa without having
+to acknowledge the politeness of Count Woronzow, the
+governor of the Crimea, one of the richest seigneurs in
+Russia, and one of the pillars of the throne. At the
+suggestion of Mr. Ralli, I accompanied him to the palace
+and was presented. The palace is a magnificent
+building, and the interior exhibits a combination of
+wealth and taste. The walls are hung with Italian
+paintings, and, for interior ornaments and finish, the
+palace is far superior to those in Italy; the knobs
+of the doors are of amber, and the doors of the dining-room
+from the old imperial palace at St. Petersburgh.
+The count is a military-looking man of about
+fifty, six feet high, with sallow complexion and gray
+hair. His father married an English lady of the Sidney
+family, and his sister married the Earl of Pembroke.
+He is a soldier in bearing and appearance,
+held a high rank during the French invasion of Russia,
+and distinguished himself particularly at Borodino;
+in rank and power he is the fourth military officer in
+the empire. He possesses immense wealth in all parts
+of Russia, particularly in the Crimea; and his wife's
+mother, after Demidoff and Scheremetieff, is the richest
+subject in the whole empire. He speaks English remarkably
+well, and, after a few commonplaces, with
+his characteristic politeness to strangers, invited me to
+dine at the palace the next day. I was obliged to decline,
+and he himself suggested the reason, that probably
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">262</a></span>I was engaged with my countryman, Mr. Sontag
+(of whom more anon), whom the count referred to as
+his old friend, adding that he would not interfere with
+the pleasure of a meeting between two countrymen so
+far from home, and asked me for the day after, or any
+other day I pleased. I apologized on the ground of my
+intended departure, and took my leave.</p>
+
+<p>My proposed travelling companion had committed to
+me the whole arrangements for our journey, or, more
+properly, had given me the whole trouble of making
+them; and, accompanied by one of Mr. Ralli's clerks, I
+visited all the carriage repositories to purchase a vehicle,
+after which I accompanied Mr. Ralli to his country-house
+to dine. He occupied a pretty little place
+a few versts from Odessa, with a large fruit and ornamental
+garden. Mr. Ralli's lady is also a native of
+Greece, with much of the cleverness and <i>spirituelle</i>
+character of the educated Greeks. One of her <i>bons
+mots</i> current in Odessa is, that her husband is consul
+for the other world. A young Italian, with a very
+pretty wife, dined with us, and, after dinner and a stroll
+through the garden, we walked over to Mr. Perseani's,
+the father of our Russian secretary; another walk in the
+garden with a party of ladies, tea, and I got back to
+Odessa in time for a walk on the boulevards and the
+opera.</p>
+
+<p>Before my attention was turned to Odessa, I should
+as soon have thought of an opera-house at Chicago as
+there; but I already found, what impressed itself more
+forcibly upon me at every step, that Russia is a country
+of anomalies. The new city on the Black Sea contains
+many French and Italian residents, who are willing
+to give all that is not necessary for food and clothing
+for the opera; the Russians themselves are passionately
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">263</a></span>fond of musical and theatrical entertainments,
+and government makes up all deficiencies. The interior
+of the theatre corresponds with the beauty of its
+exterior. All the decorations are in good taste, and the
+Corinthian columns, running from the foot to the top,
+particularly beautiful. The opera was the Barber of
+Seville; the company in <i>full</i> undress, and so barbarous
+as to pay attention to the performance. I came out at
+about ten o'clock, and, after a turn or two on the boulevards,
+took an icecream at the café of the Hotel de
+Petersbourgh. This hotel is beautifully situated on
+one corner of the main street, fronting the boulevards,
+and opposite the statue of the Duke de Richelieu; and
+looking from the window of the café, furnished and
+fitted up in a style superior to most in Paris, upon the
+crowd still thronging the boulevards, I could hardly believe
+that I was really on the borders of the Black Sea.</p>
+
+<p>Having purchased a carriage and made all my arrangements
+for starting, I expected to pass this day with
+an unusual degree of satisfaction, and I was not disappointed.
+I have mentioned incidentally the name of a
+countryman resident in Odessa; and, being so far from
+home, I felt a yearning toward an American. In France
+or Italy I seldom had this feeling, for there Americans
+congregate in crowds; but in Greece and Turkey I always
+rejoiced to meet a compatriot; and when, on my
+arrival at Odessa, before going into the lazaretto, the
+captain told me that there was an American residing
+there, high in character and office, who had been twenty
+years in Russia, I requested him to present my compliments,
+and say that, if he had not forgotten his fatherland,
+a countryman languishing in the lazaretto would
+be happy to see him through the gratings of his prison-house.
+I afterward regretted having sent this message,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">264</a></span>as I heard from other sources that he was a prominent
+man, and during the whole term of my quarantine I
+never heard from him personally. I was most agreeably
+disappointed, however, when, on the first day of my
+release, I met him at dinner at the Spanish consul's.
+He had been to the Crimea with Count Woronzow;
+had only returned that morning, and had never heard of
+my being there until invited to meet me at dinner. I had
+wronged him by my distrust; for, though twenty years
+an exile, his heart beat as true as when he left our
+shores. Who can shake off the feeling that binds him
+to his native land? Not hardships nor disgrace at
+home; not favour nor success abroad; not even time,
+can drive from his mind the land of his birth or the
+friends of his youthful days.</p>
+
+<p>General Sontag was a native of Philadelphia; had
+been in our navy, and served as sailing-master on board
+the Wasp; became dissatisfied from some cause which
+he did not mention, left our navy, entered the Russian,
+and came round to the Black Sea as captain of a frigate;
+was transferred to the land service, and, in the
+campaign of 1814, entered Paris with the allied armies
+as colonel of a regiment. In this campaign he formed
+a friendship with Count Woronzow, which exists in full
+force at this day. He left the army with the rank of
+brigadier-general. By the influence of Count Woronzow,
+he was appointed inspector of the port of
+Odessa, in which office he stood next in rank to the
+Governor of the Crimea, and, in fact, on one occasion,
+during the absence of Count Woronzow, lived in the
+palace and acted as governor for eight months. He
+married a lady of rank, with an estate and several hundred
+slaves at Moscow; wears two or three ribands at
+his buttonhole, badges of different orders; has gone
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">265</a></span>through the routine of offices and honours up to the
+grade of grand counsellor of the empire; and a letter
+addressed to him under the title of "his excellency"
+will come to the right hands. He was then living at
+his country place, about eight versts from Odessa, and
+asked me to go out and pass the next day with him. I
+was strongly tempted, but, in order that I might have
+the full benefit of it, postponed the pleasure until I had
+completed my arrangements for travelling. The next
+day General Sontag called upon me, but I did not see
+him; and this morning, accompanied by Mr. Baguet
+the younger, I rode out to his place. The land about
+Odessa is a dead level, the road was excessively dry,
+and we were begrimed with dust when we arrived.
+General Sontag was waiting for us, and, in the true
+spirit of an American farmer at home, proposed taking
+us over his grounds. His farm is his hobby; it contains
+about six hundred acres, and we walked all over
+it. His crop was wheat, and, although I am no great
+judge of these matters, I think I never saw finer. He
+showed me a field of very good wheat, which had
+not been sowed in three years, but produced by the
+fallen seed of the previous crops. We compared it
+with our Genesee wheat, and to me it was an interesting
+circumstance to find an American cultivating land
+on the Black Sea, and comparing it with the products
+of our Genesee flats, with which he was perfectly familiar.</p>
+
+<p>One thing particularly struck me, though, as an
+American, perhaps I ought not to have been so sensitive.
+A large number of men were at work in the field,
+and they were all slaves. Such is the force of education
+and habit, that I have seen hundreds of black slaves
+without a sensation; but it struck rudely upon me to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">266</a></span>see white men slaves to an American, and he one whose
+father had been a soldier of the revolution, and had
+fought to sustain the great principle that "all men are
+by nature free and equal." Mr. Sontag told me that he
+valued his farm at about six thousand dollars, on which
+he could live well, have a bottle of Crimea wine, and
+another every day for a friend, and lay up one thousand
+dollars a year; but I afterward heard that he was a
+complete enthusiast on the subject of his farm; a bad
+manager, and that he really knew nothing of its expense
+or profit.</p>
+
+<p>Returning to the house, we found Madame Sontag
+ready to receive us. She is an authoress of great literary
+reputation, and of such character that, while the emperor
+was prosecuting the Turkish war in person, and the
+empress remained at Odessa, the young archduchesses
+were placed under her charge. At dinner she talked
+with much interest of America, and expressed a hope,
+though not much expectation, of one day visiting it. But
+General Sontag himself, surrounded as he is by Russian
+connexions, is all American. Pointing to the riband
+on his buttonhole, he said he was entitled to one order
+which he should value above all others; that his father
+had been a soldier of the revolution, and member of the
+Cincinnati Society, and that in Russia the decoration of
+that order would be to him the proudest badge of honour
+that an American could wear. After dining we retired
+into a little room fitted up as a library, which he calls
+America, furnished with all the standard American
+books, Irving, Paulding, Cooper, &amp;c., engravings of distinguished
+Americans, maps, charts, canal and railroad
+reports, &amp;c.; and his daughter, a lovely little girl and
+only child, has been taught to speak her father's tongue
+and love her father's land. In honour of me she played
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">267</a></span>on the piano "Hail Columbia" and "Yankee Doodle,"
+and the day wore away too soon. We took tea on the
+piazza, and at parting I received from him a letter to
+his agent on his estate near Moscow, and from Madame
+Sontag one which carried me into the imperial household,
+being directed to Monsieur l'Intendant du Prince
+héritiere, Petersbourgh. A few weeks ago I received
+from him a letter, in which he says, "the visit of one
+of my countrymen is so great a treat, that I can assure
+you, you are never forgotten by any one of my little
+family; and when my daughter wishes to make me
+smile, she is sure to succeed if she sits down to her
+piano and plays 'Hail Columbia' or 'Yankee Doodle;'
+this brings to mind Mr. &mdash;&mdash;, Mr. &mdash;&mdash;, Mr. &mdash;&mdash;,
+and Mr. &mdash;&mdash;, who have passed through this city; to me
+alone it brings to mind my country, parents, friends,
+youth, and a world of things and ideas past, never to
+return. Should any of our countrymen be coming this
+way, do not forget to inform them that in Odessa lives
+one who will be glad to see them;" and I say now to
+any of my countrymen whom chance may throw upon
+the shores of the Black Sea, that if he would receive so
+far from home the welcome of a true-hearted American,
+General Sontag will be glad to render it.</p>
+
+<p>It was still early in the evening when I returned to
+the city. It was moonlight, and I walked immediately
+to the boulevards. I have not spoken as I ought to have
+done of this beautiful promenade, on which I walked
+every evening under the light of a splendid moon. The
+boulevards are bounded on one side by the precipitous
+shore of the sea; are three quarters of a mile in length,
+with rows of trees on each side, gravel walks and statues,
+and terminated at one end by the exchange, and
+at the other by the palace of Count Woronzow. At this
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">268</a></span>season of the year it was the promenade of all the beauty
+and fashion of Odessa, from an hour or two before
+dark until midnight. This evening the moon was brighter,
+and the crowd was greater and gayer than usual.
+The great number of officers, with their dashing uniforms,
+the clashing of their swords, and rattling of their
+spurs, added to the effect; and woman never looks so
+interesting as when leaning on the arm of a soldier.
+Even in Italy or Greece I have seldom seen a finer
+moonlight scene than the columns of the exchange
+through the vista of trees lining the boulevards. I expected
+to leave the next day, and I lingered till a late
+hour. I strolled up and down the promenade, alone
+among thousands. I sat down upon a bench, and looked
+for the last time on the Black Sea, the stormy Euxine,
+quiet in the <span class="err" title="original: moonbeans">moonbeams</span>, and glittering like a lake of burnished
+silver. By degrees the gay throng disappeared;
+one after another, party after party withdrew; a few
+straggling couples, seeming all the world to each other,
+still lingered, like me, unable to tear themselves away.
+It was the hour and the place for poetry and feeling. A
+young officer and a lady were the last to leave; they
+passed by me, but did not notice me; they had lost all
+outward perceptions; and as, in passing for the last
+time, she raised her head for a moment, and the moon
+shone full upon her face, I saw there an expression
+that spoke of heaven. I followed them as they went
+out, murmured involuntarily "Happy dog," whistled
+"Heighho, says Thimble," and went to my hotel to bed.</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<p class="center">END OF VOL. I.</p>
+
+<hr class="l65" />
+<div class='tnote'>
+<h3>List of Corrections:</h3>
+<p>p. iii, <a href="#PREFACE_TO_THE_FIFTH_EDITION">Preface</a>: "Egypt, Arabia Petrć, and the Holy Land." was changed to "Egypt, Arabia Petrća, and the Holy Land."</p>
+<p>p. <a href="#Page_14">14</a>: "that we coud" changed to "that we could."</p>
+<p>p. <a href="#Page_87">87</a>: "friends in this county" was changed to "friends in this country."</p>
+<p>p. <a href="#Page_90">90</a>: "but we connot" was changed to "but we cannot."</p>
+<p>p. <a href="#Page_99">99</a>: "Gate of the Lyons" was changed to "Gate of the Lions" as in the
+ rest of the book.</p>
+
+<p>p. <a href="#Page_130"> 130</a>: "to favour such a suiter" was changed to "to favour such a
+  suitor."</p>
+<p>p. <a href="#Page_174">174</a>: "it is confirmed by poetry, hat" was changed to "it is confirmed by poetry, that."</p>
+<p>p. <a href="#Page_183">183</a>: "the jackall's cry was heard" was changed to "the jackal's cry
+  was heard."</p>
+<p>p. <a href="#Page_184">184</a>: "cartainly whip them" was changed to "certainly whip them."</p>
+
+<p>p. <a href="#Page_233">233</a>: "threade our way" was changed to "threaded our way."</p>
+
+<p>p. <a href="#Page_234">234</a>: "Cachmere shawls" was changed to "Cashmere shawls."</p>
+<p> p. <a href="#Page_244">244</a>: "the Phase, the Dneiper, and the Danube" was changed to "the
+  Phase, the Dnieper, and the Danube."</p>
+
+<p>p. <a href="#Page_258">258</a>: "the mouths of the Dneiper and Dneister" was changed to "the
+  mouths of the Dnieper and Dniester."</p>
+<p>p. <a href="#Page_268">268</a>: "quiet in the moonbeans" was changed to "quiet in the moonbeams."</p>
+
+<h3>Errata:</h3>
+
+<p>The summary in the table of contents is not always consistent with the
+summary at the beginning of each chapter. The original has been
+retained.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Incidents of Travel in Greece, Turkey,
+Russia, and Poland, Vol. I (of 2), by John Lloyd Stephens
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+</pre>
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+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,7662 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Incidents of Travel in Greece, Turkey,
+Russia, and Poland, Vol. I (of 2), by John Lloyd Stephens
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Incidents of Travel in Greece, Turkey, Russia, and Poland, Vol. I (of 2)
+
+Author: John Lloyd Stephens
+
+Release Date: October 30, 2011 [EBook #37889]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL, VOL 1 OF 2 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Julia Miller, Eleni Christofaki and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+book was produced from scanned images of public domain
+material from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's notes:
+
+Punctuation and hyphenation have been normalised. Variable, archaic or
+unusual spelling has been retained. A list of the few corrections made
+can found at the end of the book. Italics indicated by _underscores_.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: GREECE, TURKEY, _PART OF_ RUSSIA & POLAND.]
+
+
+
+
+  INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL IN GREECE, TURKEY, RUSSIA, AND POLAND.
+
+  BY THE AUTHOR OF
+
+  "INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL IN EGYPT, ARABIA PETRAEA, AND THE HOLY LAND."
+
+
+  WITH A MAP AND ENGRAVINGS.
+
+
+  IN TWO VOLUMES.
+
+  VOL. I.
+
+
+  SEVENTH EDITION.
+
+
+  NEW YORK:
+  HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS.
+  329 & 331 PEARL STREET,
+  FRANKLIN SQUARE.
+  1853.
+
+
+
+
+  Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1838, by HARPER &
+  BROTHERS, in the Clerk's Office of the Southern District of New York.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION.
+
+
+THE fourth edition of this work was published during the author's
+absence from the city. His publishers, in a preface in his behalf,
+returned his acknowledgments to the public, and he can but respond to
+the acknowledgments there made. He has made some alterations in the page
+relating to the American phil-Hellenists; and for the rest, he concludes
+as in the preface to his first edition.
+
+The author has been induced by his publishers to put forth his
+"Incidents of Travel in Greece, Turkey, Russia, and Poland." In point of
+time they precede his tour in Egypt, Arabia Petraea, and the Holy Land.
+The countries which form the subject of the following pages perhaps do
+not, in themselves, possess the same interest with those in his first
+work; but the author has reason to believe that part of his route,
+particularly from the Black Sea to the Baltic, through the interior of
+Russia, and from St. Petersburgh through the interior of Poland to
+Warsaw and Cracow, is comparatively new to most of his countrymen. As in
+his first work, his object has been to present a picture of the
+every-day scenes which occur to the traveller in the countries referred
+to, rather than any detailed description of the countries themselves.
+
+  _New York, November, 1838._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME
+
+
+    CHAPTER I.                                                      Page
+
+    A Hurricane.--An Adventure.--Missilonghi.--Siege of
+      Missilonghi.--Byron.--Marco Bozzaris.--Visit to the Widow,
+      Daughters, and Brother of Bozzaris.--Halleck's "Marco Bozzaris."
+                                                                      13
+
+    CHAPTER II.
+
+    Choice of a Servant.--A Turnout.--An Evening Chat.--Scenery of the
+      Road.--Lepanto.--A projected Visit.--Change of
+      Purpose.--Padras.--Vostitza.--Variety and Magnificence of Scenery.
+                                                                      28
+
+    CHAPTER III.
+
+    Quarrel with the Landlord.--AEgina.--Sicyon.--Corinth.--A
+      distinguished Reception.--Desolation of Corinth.--The
+      Acropolis.--View from the Acropolis.--Lechaeum and Cenchreae.--Kaka
+      Scala.--Arrival at Athens.                                      46
+
+    CHAPTER IV.
+
+    American Missionary School.--Visit to the School.--Mr. Hill and the
+      Male Department.--Mrs. Hill and the Female Department.--Maid of
+      Athens.--Letter from Mr. Hill.--Revival of Athena.--Citizens of
+      the World.                                                      61
+
+    CHAPTER V.
+
+    Ruins of Athens.--Hill of Mars.--Temple of the Winds.--Lantern of
+      Demosthenes.--Arch of Adrian.--Temple of Jupiter Olympus.--Temple
+      of Theseus.--The Acropolis.--The Parthenon.--Pentelican
+      Mountain.--Mount Hymettus.--The Piraeus.--Greek Fleas.--Napoli.  73
+
+    CHAPTER VI.
+
+    Argos.--Parting and Farewell.--Tomb of Agamemnon.--Mycenae.--Gate of
+      the Lions.--A Misfortune.--Meeting in the Mountains.--A Landlord's
+      Troubles.--A Midnight Quarrel.--One good Turn deserves
+      another.--Gratitude of a Greek Family.--Megara.--The Soldiers'
+      Revel.                                                          99
+
+    CHAPTER VII.
+
+    A Dreary Funeral.--Marathon.--Mount Pentelicus.--A Mystery.--Woes of
+      a Lover.--Reveries of Glory.--Scio's Rocky Isle.--A blood-stained
+      Page of History.--A Greek Prelate.--Desolation.--The Exile's
+      Return.                                                        118
+
+    CHAPTER VIII.
+
+    A Noble Grecian Lady.--Beauty of Scio.--An Original.--Foggi.--A
+      Turkish Coffee-house.--Mussulman at Prayers.--Easter Sunday.--A
+      Greek Priest.--A Tartar Guide.--Turkish Ladies.--Camel
+      Scenes.--Sight of a Harem.--Disappointed Hopes.--A rare
+      Concert.--Arrival at Smyrna.                                   149
+
+    CHAPTER IX.
+
+    First Sight of Smyrna.--Unveiled Women.--Ruins of Ephesus.--Ruin,
+      all Ruin.--Temple of Diana.--Encounter with a Wolf.--Love at first
+      Sight.--Gatherings on the Road.                                173
+
+    CHAPTER X.
+
+    Position of Smyrna.--Consular Privileges.--The Case of the
+      Lover.--End of the Love Affair.--The Missionary's Wife.--The
+      Casino.--Only a Greek Row.--Rambles in Smyrna.--The
+      Armenians.--Domestic Enjoyments.                               188
+
+    CHAPTER XI.
+
+    An American Original.--Moral Changes in Turkey.--Wonders of Steam
+      Navigation.--The March of Mind.--Classic Localities.--Sestos and
+      Abydos.--Seeds of Pestilence.                                  203
+
+    CHAPTER XII.
+
+    Mr. Churchill.--Commodore Porter.--Castle of the Seven Towers.--The
+      Sultan's Naval Architect.--Launch of the Great Ship.--Sultan
+      Mahmoud.--Jubilate.--A National Grievance.--Visit to a
+      Mosque.--The Burial-grounds.                                   218
+
+    CHAPTER XIII.
+
+    Visit to the Slave-market.--Horrors of Slavery.--Departure from
+      Stamboul.--The stormy Euxine.--Odessa.--The Lazaretto.--Russian
+      Civility.--Returning Good for Evil.                            236
+
+    CHAPTER XIV.
+
+    The Guardiano.--One too many.--An Excess of Kindness.--The last Day
+      of Quarantine.--Mr. Baguet.--Rise of Odessa.--City-making.--Count
+      Woronzow.--A Gentleman Farmer.--An American Russian.           258
+
+
+
+
+INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL IN GREECE, TURKEY, RUSSIA, AND POLAND.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+    A Hurricane.--An Adventure.--Missilonghi.--Siege of
+      Missilonghi.--Byron.--Marco Bozzaris.--Visit to the Widow,
+      Daughters, and Brother of Bozzaris.
+
+
+ON the evening of the ---- February, 1835, by a bright starlight, after a
+short ramble among the Ionian Islands, I sailed from Zante in a
+beautiful cutter of about forty tons for Padras. My companions were
+Doctor W., an old and valued friend from New-York, who was going to
+Greece merely to visit the Episcopal missionary school at Athens, and a
+young Scotchman, who had travelled with me through Italy, and was going
+farther, like myself, he knew not exactly why. There was hardly a breath
+of air when we left the harbour, but a breath was enough to fill our
+little sail. The wind, though of the gentlest, was fair; and as we
+crawled from under the lee of the island, in a short time it became a
+fine sailing breeze. We sat on the deck till a late hour, and turned in
+with every prospect of being at Padras in the morning. Before daylight,
+however, the wind chopped about, and set in dead ahead, and when I went
+on deck in the morning it was blowing a hurricane. We had passed the
+point of Padras; the wind was driving down the Gulf of Corinth as if old
+AEolus had determined on thwarting our purpose; and our little cutter,
+dancing like a gull upon the angry waters, was driven into the harbour
+of Missilonghi.
+
+The town was full in sight, but at such a distance, and the waves were
+running so high, that we could not reach it with our small boat. A long
+flat extends several miles into the sea, making the harbour completely
+inaccessible except to small Greek caiques built expressly for such
+navigation. We remained on board all day; and the next morning, the gale
+still continuing, made signals to a fishing boat to come off and take us
+ashore. In a short time she came alongside; we bade farewell to our
+captain--an Italian and a noble fellow, cradled, and, as he said, born
+to die on the Adriatic--and in a few minutes struck the soil of fallen
+but immortal Greece.
+
+Our manner of striking it, however, was not such as to call forth any of
+the warm emotions struggling in the breast of the scholar, for we were
+literally stuck in the mud. We were yet four or five miles from the
+shore, and the water was so low that the fishing-boat, with the
+additional weight of four men and luggage, could not swim clear. Our
+boatmen were two long, sinewy Greeks, with the red tarbouch, embroidered
+jacket, sash, and large trousers, and with their long poles set us
+through the water with prodigious force; but, as soon as the boat
+struck, they jumped out, and, putting their brawny shoulders under her
+sides, heaved her through into better water, and then resumed their
+poles. In this way they propelled her two or three miles, working
+alternately with their poles and shoulders, until they got her into a
+channel, when they hoisted the sail, laid directly for the harbour, and
+drove upon the beach with canvass all flying.
+
+During the late Greek revolution, Missilonghi was the great
+debarking-place of European adventurers; and, probably, among all the
+desperadoes who ever landed there, none were more destitute and in
+better condition to "go ahead" than I; for I had all that I was worth on
+my back. At one of the Ionian Islands I had lost my carpet-bag,
+containing my notebook and every article of wearing apparel except the
+suit in which I stood. Every condition, however, has its advantages;
+mine put me above porters and custom-house officers; and while my
+companions were busy with these plagues of travellers, I paced with
+great satisfaction the shore of Greece, though I am obliged to confess
+that this satisfaction was for reasons utterly disconnected with any
+recollections of her ancient glories. Business before pleasure: one of
+our first inquiries was for a breakfast. Perhaps, if we had seen a
+monument, or solitary column, or ruin of any kind, it would have
+inspired us to better things; but there was nothing, absolutely nothing,
+that could recall an image of the past. Besides, we did not expect to
+land at Missilonghi, and were not bound to be inspired at a place into
+which we were thrown by accident; and, more than all, a drizzling rain
+was penetrating to our very bones; we were wet and cold, and what can
+men do in the way of sentiment when their teeth are chattering?
+
+The town stands upon a flat, marshy plain, which extends several miles
+along the shore. The whole was a mass of new-made ruins--of houses
+demolished and black with smoke--the tokens of savage and desolating
+war. In front, and running directly along the shore, was a long street
+of miserable one-story shantees, run up since the destruction of the old
+town, and so near the shore that sometimes it is washed by the sea, and
+at the time of our landing it was wet and muddy from the rain. It was a
+cheerless place, and reminded me of Communipaw in bad weather. It had no
+connexion with the ancient glory of Greece, no name or place on her
+historic page, and no hotel where we could get a breakfast; but one of
+the officers of the customs conducted us to a shantee filled with
+Bavarian soldiers drinking. There was a sort of second story, accessible
+only by a ladder; and one end of this was partitioned off with boards,
+but had neither bench, table, nor any other article of housekeeping. We
+had been on and almost _in_ the water since daylight, exposed to a keen
+wind and drizzling rain, and now, at eleven o'clock, could probably have
+eaten several chickens apiece; but nothing came amiss, and, as we could
+not get chickens, we took eggs, which, for lack of any vessel to boil
+them in, were roasted. We placed a huge loaf of bread on the middle of
+the floor, and seated ourselves around it, spreading out so as to keep
+the eggs from rolling away, and each hewing off bread for himself.
+Fortunately, the Greeks have learned from their quondam Turkish masters
+the art of making coffee, and a cup of this Eastern cordial kept our dry
+bread from choking us.
+
+When we came out again the aspect of matters was more cheerful; the long
+street was swarming with Greeks, many of them armed with pistols and
+yataghan, but miserably poor in appearance, and in such numbers that not
+half of them could find the shelter of a roof at night. We were accosted
+by one dressed in a hat and frockcoat, and who, in occasional visits to
+Corfu and Trieste, had picked up some Italian and French, and a suit of
+European clothes, and was rather looked up to by his untravelled
+countrymen. As a man of the world, who had received civilities abroad,
+he seemed to consider it incumbent upon him to reciprocate at home, and,
+with the tacit consent of all around, he undertook to do the honours of
+Missilonghi.
+
+If, as a Greek, he had any national pride about him, he was imposing
+upon himself a severe task; for all that he could do was to conduct us
+among ruins, and, as he went along, tell us the story of the bloody
+siege which had reduced the place to its present woful state. For more
+than a year, under unparalleled hardships, its brave garrison resisted
+the combined strength of the Turkish and Egyptian armies, and, when all
+hope was gone, resolved to cut their way through the enemy or die in the
+attempt. Many of the aged and sick, the wounded and the women, refused
+to join in the sortie, and preferred to shut themselves up in an old
+mill, with the desperate purpose of resisting until they should bring
+around them a large crowd of Turks, when they would blow all up
+together. An old invalid soldier seated himself in a mine under the
+Bastion Bozzaris (the ruins of which we saw), the mine being charged
+with thirty kegs of gunpowder; the last sacrament was administered by
+the bishop and priests to the whole population and, at a signal, the
+besieged made their desperate sortie. One body dashed through the
+Turkish ranks, and, with many women and children, gained the mountains;
+but the rest were driven back. Many of the women ran to the sea and
+plunged in with their children; husbands stabbed their wives with their
+own hands to save them from the Turks, and the old soldier under the
+bastion set fire to the train, and the remnant of the heroic garrison
+buried themselves under the ruins of Missilonghi.
+
+Among them were thirteen foreigners, of whom only one escaped. One of
+the most distinguished was Meyer, a young Swiss, who entered as a
+volunteer at the beginning of the revolution, became attached to a
+beautiful Missilonghiote girl, married her, and, when the final sortie
+was made, his wife being sick, he remained with her, and was blown up
+with the others. A letter written a few days before his death, and
+brought away by one who escaped in the sortie, records the condition of
+the garrison.
+
+"A wound which I have received in my shoulder, while I am in daily
+expectation of one which will be my passport to eternity, has prevented
+me till now from bidding you a last adieu. We are reduced to feed upon
+the most disgusting animals. We are suffering horribly with hunger and
+thirst. Sickness adds much to the calamities which overwhelm us.
+Seventeen hundred and forty of our brothers are dead; more than a
+hundred thousand bombs and balls thrown by the enemy have destroyed our
+bastions and our homes. We have been terribly distressed by the cold,
+for we have suffered great want of food. Notwithstanding so many
+privations, it is a great and noble spectacle to behold the ardour and
+devotedness of the garrison. A few days more, and these brave men will
+be angelic spirits, who will accuse before God the indifference of
+Christendom. In the name of all our brave men, among whom are Notho
+Bozzaris, *** I announce to you the resolution sworn to before Heaven,
+to defend, foot by foot, the land of Missilonghi, and to bury ourselves,
+without listening to any capitulation, under the ruins of this city. We
+are drawing near our final hour. History will render us justice. I am
+proud to think that the blood of a Swiss, of a child of William Tell, is
+about to mingle with that of the heroes of Greece."
+
+But Missilonghi is a subject of still greater interest than this, for
+the reader will remember it as the place where Byron died. Almost the
+first questions I asked were about the poet, and it added to the dreary
+interest which the place inspired, to listen to the manner in which the
+Greeks spoke of him. It might be thought that here, on the spot where he
+breathed his last, malignity would have held her accursed tongue; but it
+was not so. He had committed the fault, unpardonable in the eyes of
+political opponents, of attaching himself to one of the great parties
+that then divided Greece; and though he had given her all that man could
+give, in his own dying words, "his time, his means, his health, and,
+lastly, his life," the Greeks spoke of him with all the rancour and
+bitterness of party spirit. Even death had not won oblivion for his
+political offences; and I heard those who saw him die in her cause
+affirm that Byron was no friend to Greece.
+
+His body, the reader will remember, was transported to England and
+interred in the family sepulchre. The church where it lay in state is a
+heap of ruins, and there is no stone or monument recording his death,
+but, wishing to see some memorial connected with his residence here, we
+followed our guide to the house in which he died. It was a large square
+building of stone, one of the walls still standing, black with smoke,
+the rest a confused and shapeless mass of ruins. After his death it was
+converted into a hospital and magazine; and, when the Turks entered the
+city, they set fire to the powder; the sick and dying were blown into
+the air, and we saw the ruins lying as they fell after the explosion. It
+was a melancholy spectacle, but it seemed to have a sort of moral
+fitness with the life and fortunes of the poet. It was as if the same
+wild destiny, the same wreck of hopes and fortunes that attended him
+through life, were hovering over his grave. Living and dead, his actions
+and his character have been the subject of obloquy and reproach, perhaps
+justly; but it would have softened the heart of his bitterest enemy to
+see the place in which he died.
+
+It was in this house that, on his last birthday, he came from his
+bedroom and produced to his friends the last notes of his dying muse,
+breathing a spirit of sad foreboding and melancholy recollections; of
+devotion to the noble cause in which he had embarked, and a prophetic
+consciousness of his approaching end.
+
+    "My days are in the yellow leaf,
+      The flowers and fruits of love are gone;
+    The worm, the canker, and the grief
+          Are mine alone.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "If thou regret'st thy youth, _why live?_
+      The land of honourable death
+    Is here: up to the field, and give
+          Away thy breath!
+
+    "Seek out--less often sought than found--
+      A soldier's grave, for thee the best;
+    Then look around, and choose thy ground,
+          And take thy rest."
+
+Moving on beyond the range of ruined houses, though still within the
+line of crumbling walls, we came to a spot perhaps as interesting as any
+that Greece in her best days could show. It was the tomb of Marco
+Bozzaris! No monumental marble emblazoned his deeds and fame; a few
+round stones piled over his head, which, but for our guide, we should
+have passed without noticing, were all that marked his grave. I would
+not disturb a proper reverence for the past; time covers with its dim
+and twilight glories both distant scenes and the men who acted in them,
+but, to my mind, Miltiades was not more of a hero at Marathon or
+Leonidas at Thermopylae than Marco Bozzaris at Missilonghi. When they
+went out against the hosts of Persia, Athens and Sparta were great and
+free, and they had the prospect of _glory_ and the praise of men, to the
+Greeks always dearer than life. But when the Suliote chief drew his
+sword, his country lay bleeding at the feet of a giant, and all Europe
+condemned the Greek revolution as foolhardy and desperate. For two
+months, with but a few hundred men, protected only by a ditch and slight
+parapet of earth, he defended the town where his body now rests against
+the whole Egyptian army. In stormy weather, living upon bad and
+unwholesome bread, with no covering but his cloak, he passed his days
+and nights in constant vigil; in every assault his sword cut down the
+foremost assailant, and his voice, rising above the din of battle,
+struck terror into the hearts of the enemy. In the struggle which ended
+with his life, with two thousand men he proposed to attack the whole
+army of Mustapha Pacha, and called upon all who were willing to die for
+their country to stand forward. The whole band advanced to a man.
+Unwilling to sacrifice so many brave men in a death-struggle, he chose
+three hundred, the sacred number of the Spartan band, his tried and
+trusty Suliotes. At midnight he placed himself at their head, directing
+that not a shot should be fired till he sounded his bugle; and his last
+command was, "If you lose sight of me, seek me in the pacha's tent." In
+the moment of victory he ordered the pacha to be seized, and received a
+ball in the loins; his voice still rose above the din of battle,
+cheering his men until he was struck by another ball in the head, and
+borne dead from the field of his glory.
+
+Not far from the grave of Bozzaris was a pyramid of sculls, of men who
+had fallen in the last attack upon the city, piled up near the blackened
+and battered wall which they had died in defending. In my after
+wanderings I learned to look more carelessly upon these things; and,
+perhaps, noticing everywhere the light estimation put upon human life in
+the East, learned to think more lightly of it myself; but, then, it was
+melancholy to see bleaching in the sun, under the eyes of their
+countrymen, the unburied bones of men who, but a little while ago, stood
+with swords in their hands, and animated by the noble resolution to free
+their country or die in the attempt. Our guide told us that they had all
+been collected in that place with a view to sepulture; and that King
+Otho, as soon as he became of age and took the government in his own
+hands, intended to erect a monument over them. In the mean time, they
+are at the mercy of every passing traveller; and the only remark that
+our guide made was a comment upon the force and unerring precision of
+the blow of the Turkish sabre, almost every scull being laid open on the
+side nearly down to the ear.
+
+But the most interesting part of our day at Missilonghi was to come.
+Returning from a ramble round the walls, we noticed a large square
+house, which, our guide told us, was the residence of Constantine, the
+brother of Marco Bozzaris. We were all interested in this intelligence,
+and our interest was in no small degree increased when he added that the
+widow and two of the children of the Suliote chief were living with his
+brother. The house was surrounded by a high stone wall, a large gate
+stood most invitingly wide open, and we turned toward it in the hope of
+catching a glimpse of the inhabitants; but, before we reached the gate,
+our interest had increased to such a point that, after consulting with
+our guide, we requested him to say that, if it would not be considered
+an intrusion, three travellers, two of them Americans, would feel
+honoured in being permitted to pay their respects to the widow and
+children of Marco Bozzaris.
+
+We were invited in, and shown into a large room on the right, where
+three Greeks were sitting cross-legged on a divan, smoking the long
+Turkish chibouk. Soon after the brother entered, a man about fifty, of
+middling height, spare built, and wearing a Bavarian uniform, as holding
+a colonel's commission in the service of King Otho. In the dress of the
+dashing Suliote he would have better looked the brother of Marco
+Bozzaris, and I might then more easily have recognised the daring
+warrior who, on the field of battle, in a moment of extremity, was
+deemed, by universal acclamation, worthy of succeeding the fallen hero.
+Now the straight military frockcoat, buttoned tight across the breast,
+the stock, tight pantaloons, boots, and straps, seemed to repress the
+free energies of the mountain warrior; and I could not but think how
+awkward it must be for one who had spent all his life in a dress which
+hardly touched him, at fifty to put on a stock, and straps to his boots.
+Our guide introduced us, with an apology for our intrusion. The colonel
+received us with great kindness, thanked us for the honour done his
+brother's widow, and, requesting us to be seated, ordered coffee and
+pipes.
+
+And here, on the very first day of our arrival in Greece, and from a
+source which made us proud, we had the first evidence of what afterward
+met me at every step, the warm feeling existing in Greece toward
+America; for almost the first thing that the brother of Marco Bozzaris
+said was to express his gratitude as a Greek for the services rendered
+his country by our own; and, after referring to the provisions sent out
+for his famishing countrymen, his eyes sparkled and his cheek flushed as
+he told us that, when the Greek revolutionary flag first sailed into the
+port of Napoli di Romania, among hundreds of vessels of all nations, an
+American captain was the first to recognise and salute it.
+
+In a few moments the widow of Marco Bozzaris entered. I have often been
+disappointed in my preconceived notions of personal appearance, but it
+was not so with the lady who now stood before me; she looked the widow
+of a hero; as one worthy of her Grecian mothers, who gave their hair for
+bowstrings, their girdle for a sword-belt, and, while their heartstrings
+were cracking, sent their young lovers from their arms to fight and
+perish for their country. Perhaps it was she that led Marco Bozzaris
+into the path of immortality; that roused him from the wild guerilla
+warfare in which he had passed his early life, and fired him with the
+high and holy ambition of freeing his country. Of one thing I am
+certain, no man could look in her face without finding his wavering
+purposes fixed, without treading more firmly in the path of high and
+honourable enterprise. She was under forty, tall and stately in person
+and habited in deep black, fit emblem of her widowed condition, with a
+white handkerchief laid flat over her head, giving the Madonna cast to
+her dark eyes and marble complexion. We all rose as she entered the
+room; and though living secluded, and seldom seeing the face of a
+stranger, she received our compliments and returned them with far less
+embarrassment than we both felt and exhibited.
+
+But our embarrassment, at least I speak for myself, was induced by an
+unexpected circumstance. Much as I was interested in her appearance, I
+was not insensible to the fact that she was accompanied by two young and
+beautiful girls, who were introduced to us as her daughters. This
+somewhat bewildered me. While waiting for their appearance, and talking
+with Constantine Bozzaris, I had in some way conceived the idea that the
+daughters were mere children, and had fully made up my mind to take them
+both on my knee and kiss them; but the appearance of the stately mother
+recalled me to the grave of Bozzaris; and the daughters would probably
+have thought that I was taking liberties upon so short an acquaintance
+if I had followed up my benevolent purpose in regard to them; so that,
+with the long pipe in my hand, which, at that time, I did not know how
+to manage well, I cannot flatter myself that I exhibited any of the
+benefit of Continental travel.
+
+The elder was about sixteen, and even in the opinion of my friend Doctor
+W., a cool judge in these matters, a beautiful girl, possessing in its
+fullest extent all the elements of Grecian beauty: a dark, clear
+complexion, dark hair, set off by a little red cap embroidered with gold
+thread, and a long blue tassel hanging down behind, and large black
+eyes, expressing a melancholy quiet, but which might be excited to shoot
+forth glances of fire more terrible than her father's sword. Happily,
+too, for us, she talked French, having learned it from a French marquis
+who had served in Greece and been domesticated with them; but young and
+modest, and unused to the company of strangers, she felt the
+embarrassment common to young ladies when attempting to speak a foreign
+language. And we could not talk to her on common themes. Our lips were
+sealed, of course, upon the subject which had brought us to her house.
+We could not sound for her the praises of her gallant father. At
+parting, however, I told them that the name of Marco Bozzaris was as
+familiar in America as that of a hero of our own revolution, and that it
+had been hallowed by the inspiration of an American poet; and I added
+that, if it would not be unacceptable, on my return to my native country
+I would send the tribute referred to, as an evidence of the feeling
+existing in America toward the memory of Marco Bozzaris. My offer was
+gratefully accepted; and afterward, while in the act of mounting my
+horse to leave Missilonghi, our guide, who had remained behind, came to
+me with a message from the widow and daughters reminding me of my
+promise.
+
+I do not see that there is any objection to my mentioning that I wrote
+to a friend, requesting him to procure Halleck's "Marco Bozzaris," and
+send it to my banker at Paris. My friend, thinking to enhance its value,
+applied to Mr. Halleck for a copy in his own handwriting. Mr. Halleck,
+with his characteristic modesty, evaded the application; and on my
+return home I told him the story of my visit, and reiterated the same
+request. He evaded me as he had done my friend, but promised me a copy
+of the new edition of his poems, which he afterward gave me, and which,
+I hope, is now in the hands of the widow and daughters of the Grecian
+hero.
+
+I make no apology for introducing in a book the widow and daughters of
+Marco Bozzaris. True, I was received by them in private, without any
+expectation, either on their part or mine, that all the particulars of
+the interview would be noted and laid before the eyes of all who choose
+to read. I hope it will not be considered invading the sanctity of
+private life; but, at all events, I make no apology; the widow and
+children of Marco Bozzaris are the property of the world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+    Choice of a Servant.--A Turnout.--An Evening Chat.--Scenery of the
+      Road.--Lepanto.--A projected Visit.--Change of
+      Purpose.--Padras.--Vostitza.--Variety and Magnificence of Scenery.
+
+
+BARREN as our prospect was on landing, our first day in Greece had
+already been full of interest. Supposing that we should not find
+anything to engage us long, before setting out on our ramble we had
+directed our servant to procure horses, and when we returned we found
+all ready for our departure.
+
+One word with regard to this same servant. We had taken him at Corfu,
+much against my inclination. We had a choice between two, one a
+full-blooded Greek in fustinellas, who in five minutes established
+himself in my good graces, so that nothing but the democratic principle
+of submitting to the will of the majority could make me give him up. He
+held at that time a very good office in the police at Corfu, but the
+eagerness which he showed to get out of regular business and go roving
+warmed me to him irresistibly. He seemed to be distracted between two
+opposing feelings; one the strong bent of his natural vagabond
+disposition to be rambling, and the other a sort of tugging at his
+heartstrings by wife and children, to keep him in a place where he had a
+regular assured living, instead of trusting to the precarious business
+of guiding travellers. He had a boldness and confidence that won me; and
+when he drew on the sand with his yataghan a map of Greece, and told us
+the route he would take us, zigzag across the Gulf of Corinth to Delphi
+and the top of Parnassus, I wondered that my companions could resist
+him.
+
+Our alternative was an Italian from somewhere on the coast of the
+Adriatic, whom I looked upon with an unfavourable eye, because he came
+between me and my Greek; and on the morning of our departure I was
+earnestly hoping that he had overslept himself, or got into some scrape
+and been picked up by the guard; but, most provokingly, he came in time,
+and with more baggage than all of us had together. Indeed, he had so
+much of his own, that, in obedience to Nature's first law, he could not
+attend to ours, and in putting ashore some British soldiers at
+Cephalonia he contrived to let my carpet-bag go with their luggage. This
+did not increase my amiable feeling toward him, and, perhaps, assisted
+in making me look upon him throughout with a jaundiced eye; in fact,
+before we had done with him, I regarded him as a slouch, a knave, and a
+fool, and had the questionable satisfaction of finding that my
+companions, though they sustained him as long as they could, had formed
+very much the same opinion.
+
+It was to him, then, that, on our return from our visit to the widow and
+daughters of Marco Bozzaris, we were indebted for a turnout that seemed
+to astonish even the people of Missilonghi. The horses were miserable
+little animals, hidden under enormous saddles made of great clumps of
+wood over an old carpet or towcloth, and covering the whole back from
+the shoulders to the tail; the luggage was perched on the tops of these
+saddles, and with desperate exertions and the help of the citizens of
+Missilonghi we were perched on the top of the luggage. The little
+animals had a knowing look as they peered from under the superincumbent
+mass, and, supported on either side by the by-standers till we got a
+little steady in our seats, we put forth from Missilonghi. The only
+gentleman of our party was our servant, who followed on a European
+saddle which he had brought for his own use, smoking his pipe with great
+complacency, perfectly satisfied with our appearance and with himself.
+
+It was four o'clock when we crossed the broken walls of Missilonghi. For
+three hours our road lay over a plain extending to the sea. I have no
+doubt, if my Greek had been there, he would have given an interest to
+the road by referring to scenes and incidents connected with the siege
+of Missilonghi; but Demetrius--as he now chose to call himself--knew
+nothing of Greece, ancient or modern; he had no sympathy of feeling with
+the Greeks; had never travelled on this side of the Gulf of Corinth
+before; and so he lagged behind and smoked his pipe.
+
+It was nearly dark when we reached the miserable little village of
+Bokara. We had barely light enough to look around for the best khan in
+which to pass the night. Any of the wretched tenants would have been
+glad to receive us for the little remuneration we might leave with them
+in the morning. The khans were all alike, one room, mud floor and walls,
+and we selected one where the chickens had already gone to roost, and
+prepared to measure off the dirt floor according to our dimensions.
+Before we were arranged a Greek of a better class, followed by half a
+dozen villagers, came over, and, with many regrets for the wretched
+state of the country, invited us to his house. Though dressed in the
+Greek costume, it was evident that he had acquired his manners in a
+school beyond the bounds of his miserable little village, in which his
+house now rose like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, higher than everything
+else, but rather rickety. In a few minutes we heard the death notes of
+some chickens, and at about nine o'clock sat down to a not unwelcome
+meal. Several Greeks dropped in during the evening, and one, a
+particular friend of our host's, supped with us. Both talked French, and
+had that perfect ease of manner and savoir faire which I always remarked
+with admiration in all Greeks who had travelled. They talked much of
+their travels; of time spent in Italy and Germany, and particularly of a
+long residence at Bucharest. They talked, too, of Greece; of her long
+and bitter servitude, her revolution, and her independence; and from
+their enthusiasm I could not but think that they had fought and bled in
+her cause. I certainly was not lying in wait to entrap them, but I
+afterward gathered from their conversation that they had taken occasion
+to be on their travels at the time when the bravest of their countrymen
+were pouring out their blood like water to emancipate their native land.
+A few years before I might have felt indignation and contempt for men
+who had left their country in her hour of utmost need, and returned to
+enjoy the privileges purchased with other men's blood; but I had already
+learned to take the world as I found it, and listened quietly while our
+host told us that, confiding in the permanency of the government secured
+by the three great powers, England, France, and Russia, he had returned
+to Greece, and taken a lease of a large tract of land for fifty years,
+paying a thousand drachms, a drachm being one sixth of a dollar, and one
+tenth of the annual fruits, at the end of which time one half of the
+land under cultivation was to belong to his heirs in fee.
+
+As our host could not conveniently accommodate us all, M. and Demetrius
+returned to the khan at which we had first stopped and where, to judge
+from the early hour at which they came over to us the next morning, they
+had not spent the night as well as we did. At daylight we took our
+coffee, and again perched our luggage on the backs of the horses, and
+ourselves on top of the luggage. Our host wished us to remain with him,
+and promised the next day to accompany us to Padras; but this was not a
+sufficient inducement; and taking leave of him, probably for ever, we
+started for Lepanto.
+
+We rode about an hour on the plain; the mountains towered on our left,
+and the rich soil was broken into rough sandy gullies running down to
+the sea. Our guides had some apprehensions that we should not be able to
+cross the torrents that were running down from the mountain; and when we
+came to the first, and had to walk up along the bank, looking out for a
+place to ford, we fully participated in their apprehensions. Bridges
+were a species of architecture entirely unknown in that part of modern
+Greece; indeed, no bridges could have stood against the mountain
+torrents. There would have been some excitement in encountering these
+rapid streams if we had been well mounted; but, from the manner in which
+we were hitched on our horses, we did not feel any great confidence in
+our seats. Still nothing could be wilder or more picturesque than our
+process in crossing them, except that it might have added somewhat to
+the effect to see one of us floating down stream, clinging to the tail
+of his horse. But we got over or through them all. A range of mountains
+then formed on our right, cutting us off from the sea, and we entered a
+valley lying between the two parallel ranges. At first the road, which
+was exceedingly difficult for a man or a sure-footed horse, lay along a
+beautiful stream, and the whole of the valley extending to the Gulf of
+Lepanto is one of the loveliest regions of country I ever saw. The
+ground was rich and verdant, and, even at that early season of the year,
+blooming with wild flowers of every hue, but wholly uncultivated, the
+olive-trees having all been cut down by the Turks, and without a single
+habitation on the whole route. My Scotch companion, who had a good eye
+for the picturesque and beautiful in natural scenery, was in raptures
+with this valley. I have since travelled in Switzerland, not, however,
+in all the districts frequented by tourists; but in what I saw,
+beautiful as it is, I do not know a place where the wildness of mountain
+scenery is so delightfully contrasted with the softness of a rich
+valley.
+
+At the end of the valley, directly opposite Padras, and on the borders
+of the gulf, is a wild road called Scala Cativa, running along the sides
+of a rocky, mountainous precipice overlooking the sea. It is a wild and
+almost fearful road; in some places I thought it like the perpendicular
+sides of the Palisades; and when the wind blows in a particular
+direction it is impossible to make headway against it. Our host told us
+that we should find difficulty that day; and there was just rudeness
+enough to make us look well to our movements. Directly at our feet was
+the Gulf of Corinth; opposite a range of mountains; and in the distance
+the island of Zante. On the other side of the valley is an extraordinary
+mountain, very high, and wanting a large piece in the middle, as if cut
+out with a chisel, leaving two straight parallel sides, and called by
+the unpoetical name of the armchair. In the wildest pan of the Scala,
+where a very slight struggle would have precipitated us several hundred
+feet into the sea, an enormous shepherd's dog came bounding and barking
+toward us; and we were much relieved when his master, who was hanging
+with his flock of goats on an almost inaccessible height, called him
+away. At the foot of the mountain we entered a rich plain, where the
+shepherds were pasturing their flocks down to the shore of the sea, and
+in about two hours arrived at Lepanto.
+
+After diligent search by Demetrius (the name by which we had taken him,
+whose true name, however, we found to be Jerolamon), and by all the
+idlers whom the arrival of strangers attracted, we procured a room near
+the farthest wall; it was reached by ascending a flight of steps
+outside, and boasted a floor, walls, and an apology for a roof. We piled
+up our baggage in one corner, or, rather, my companions did theirs, and
+went prowling about in search of something to eat. Our servant had not
+fully apprized us of the extreme poverty of the country, the entire
+absence of all accommodations for travellers, and the absolute necessity
+of carrying with us everything requisite for comfort. He was a man of
+few words, and probably thought that, as between servant and master,
+example was better than precept, and that the abundant provision he had
+made for himself might serve as a lesson for us; but, in our case, the
+objection to this mode of teaching was, that it came too late to be
+profitable. At the foot of the hill fronting the sea was an open place,
+in one side of which was a little cafteria, where all the good-for-nothing
+loungers of Lepanto were assembled. We bought a loaf of bread and some
+eggs, and, with a cup of Turkish coffee, made our evening meal.
+
+We had an hour before dark, and strolled along the shore. Though in a
+ruinous condition, Lepanto is in itself interesting, as giving an exact
+idea of an ancient Greek city, being situated in a commanding position
+on the side of a mountain running down to the sea, with its citadel on
+the top, and enclosed by walls and turrets. The port is shut within the
+walls, which run into the sea, and are erected on the foundations of the
+ancient Naupactus. At a distance was the promontory of Actium, where
+Cleopatra, with her fifty ships, abandoned Antony, and left to Augustus
+the empire of the world; and directly before us, its surface dotted with
+a few straggling Greek caiques, was the scene of a battle which has rung
+throughout the world, the great battle of the Cross against the
+Crescent, where the allied forces of Spain, Venice, and the pope,
+amounting to nearly three hundred sail, under the command of Don John of
+Austria, humbled for ever the naval pride of the Turks. One hundred and
+thirty Turkish galleys were taken and fifty-five sunk; thirty thousand
+Turks were killed, ten thousand taken prisoners, fifteen thousand
+Christian slaves delivered; and Pope Pius VI., with holy fervour,
+exclaimed, "There was a man sent from God, and his name was John."
+Cervantes lost his left hand in this battle; and it is to wounds he
+received here that he makes a touching allusion when reproached by a
+rival: "What I cannot help feeling deeply is, that I am stigmatized with
+being old and maimed, as though it belonged to me to stay the course of
+time; or as though my wounds had been received in some tavern broil,
+instead of the most lofty occasion which past ages have yet seen, or
+which shall ever be seen by those to come. The scars which the soldier
+wears on his person, instead of badges of infamy, are stars to guide the
+daring in the path of glory. As for mine, though they may not shine in
+the eyes of the envious, they are at least esteemed by those who know
+where they were received; and, even was it not yet too late to choose, I
+would rather remain as I am, maimed and mutilated, than be now whole of
+my wounds, without having taken part in so glorious an achievement."
+
+I shall, perhaps, be reproached for mingling with the immortal names of
+Don John of Austria and Cervantes those of George Wilson, of Providence,
+Rhode Island, and James Williams, a black of Baltimore, cook on board
+Lord Cochrane's flagship in the great battle between the Greek and
+Turkish fleets. George Wilson was a gunner on board one of the Greek
+ships, and conducted himself with so much gallantry, that Lord Cochrane,
+at a dinner in commemoration of the event, publicly drank his health. In
+the same battle James Williams, who had lost a finger in the United
+States service under Decatur at Algiers, and had conducted himself with
+great coolness and intrepidity in several engagements, when no Greek
+could be found to take the helm, volunteered his services, and was
+struck down by a splinter, which broke his legs and arms. The historian
+will probably never mention these gallant fellows in his quarto volumes;
+but I hope the American traveller, as he stands at sunset by the shore
+of the Gulf of Lepanto, and recalls to mind the great achievements of
+Don John and Cervantes, will not forget _George Wilson_ and _James
+Williams_.
+
+At evening we returned to our room, built a fire in the middle, and,
+with as much dignity as we could muster, sitting on the floor, received
+a number of Greek visiters. When they left us we wrapped ourselves in
+our cloaks and lay down to sleep. Sleep, however, is not always won when
+wooed. Sometimes it takes the perverse humour of the wild Irish boy:
+"The more you call me, the more I won't come." Our room had no chimney;
+and though, as I lay all night looking up at the roof, there appeared to
+be apertures enough to let out the smoke, it seemed to have a loving
+feeling toward us in our lowly position, and clung to us so closely that
+we were obliged to let the fire go out, and lie shivering till morning.
+
+Every schoolboy knows how hard it is to write poetry, but few know the
+physical difficulties of climbing the poetical mountain itself. We had
+made arrangements to sleep the next night at Castri, by the side of the
+sacred oracle of Delphi, a mile up Parnassus. Our servant wanted to
+cross over and go up on the other side of the gulf, and entertained us
+with several stories of robberies committed on this road, to which we
+paid no attention. The Greeks who visited us in the evening related,
+with much detail, a story of a celebrated captain of brigands having
+lately returned to his haunt on Parnassus, and attacked nine Greek
+merchants, of whom he killed three; the recital of which interesting
+incident we ascribed to Demetrius, and disregarded.
+
+Early in the morning we mounted our horses and started for Parnassus. At
+the gate of the town we were informed that it was necessary, before
+leaving, to have a passport from the eparchos, and I returned to procure
+it. The eparchos was a man about forty-five, tall and stout, with a
+clear olive complexion and a sharp black eye, dressed in a rich Greek
+costume, and, fortunately, able to speak French. He was sitting
+cross-legged on a divan, smoking a pipe, and looking out upon the sea;
+and when I told him my business, he laid down his pipe, repeated the
+story of the robbery and murder that we had heard the night before, and
+added that we must abandon the idea of travelling that road. He said,
+farther, that the country was in a distracted state; that poverty was
+driving men to desperation; and that, though they had driven out the
+Turks, the Greeks were not masters of their own country. Hearing that I
+was an American, and as if in want of a bosom in which to unburden
+himself, and as one assured of sympathy, he told me the whole story of
+their long and bloody struggle for independence, and the causes that now
+made the friends of Greece tremble for her future destiny. I knew that
+the seat of the muses bore a rather suspicious character, and, in fact,
+that the rocks and caves about Parnassus were celebrated as the abodes
+of robbers, but I was unwilling to be driven from our purpose of
+ascending it. I went to the military commandant, a Bavarian officer, and
+told him what I had just heard from the eparchos. He said frankly that
+he did not know much of the state of the country, as he had but lately
+arrived in it; but, with the true Bavarian spirit, advised me, as a
+general rule, not to believe anything a Greek should tell me. I returned
+to the gate, and made my double report to my companions. Dr. W. returned
+with me to the eparchos, where the latter repeated, with great
+earnestness, all he had told me; and when I persisted in combating his
+objections, shrugged his shoulders in a manner that seemed to say, "your
+blood be on your own heads;" that he had done his duty, and washed his
+hands of the consequences. As we were going out he called me back, and,
+recurring to our previous conversation, said that he had spoken to me as
+an American more freely than he would have done to a stranger, and
+begged that, as I was going to Athens, I would not repeat his words
+where they could do him injury. I would not mention the circumstance
+now, but that the political clouds which then hung over the horizon of
+Greece have passed away; King Otho has taken his seat on the throne, and
+my friend has probably long since been driven or retired from public
+life. I was at that time a stranger to the internal politics of Greece,
+but I afterward found that the eparchos was one of a then powerful body
+of Greeks opposed to the Bavarian influence, and interested in
+representing the state of the country as more unsettled than it really
+was. I took leave of him, however, as one who had intended me a
+kindness, and, returning to the gate, found our companion sitting on his
+horse, waiting the result of our farther inquiries. Both he and my
+fellow envoy were comparatively indifferent upon the subject, while I
+was rather bent on drinking from the Castalian fount, and sleeping on
+the top of Parnassus. Besides, I was in a beautiful condition to be
+robbed. I had nothing but what I had on my back, and I felt sure that a
+Greek mountain robber would scorn my stiff coat and pantaloons and black
+hat. My companions, however were not so well situated, particularly M.,
+who had drawn money at Corfu, and had no idea of trusting it to the
+tender mercies of a Greek bandit. In the teeth of the advice we had
+received, it would, perhaps, have been foolhardy to proceed; and, to my
+great subsequent regret, for the first and the last time in my
+ramblings, I was turned aside from my path by fear of perils on the
+road. Perhaps, after all, I had a lucky escape; for, if the Greek
+tradition be true, whoever sleeps on the mountain becomes an inspired
+poet or a madman, either of which, for a professional man, is a
+catastrophe to be avoided.
+
+Our change of plan suited Demetrius exactly; he had never travelled on
+this side of the Gulf of Corinth; and, besides that, he considered it a
+great triumph that his stories of robbers were confirmed by others,
+showing his superior knowledge of the state of the country; he was glad
+to get on a road which he had travelled before, and on which he had a
+chance of meeting some of his old travelling acquaintance. In half an
+hour he had us on board a caique. We put out from the harbour of Lepanto
+with a strong and favourable wind; our little boat danced lightly over
+the waters of the Gulf of Corinth; and in three hours, passing between
+the frowning castles of Romelia and Morea, under the shadow of the walls
+of which were buried the bodies of the Christians who fell in the great
+naval battle, we arrived at Padras.
+
+The first thing we recognised was the beautiful little cutter which we
+had left at Missilonghi, riding gracefully at anchor in the harbour, and
+the first man we spoke to on landing was our old friend the captain. We
+exchanged a cordial greeting, and he conducted us to Mr. Robertson, the
+British vice-consul, who, at the moment of our entering, was in the act
+of directing a letter to me at Athens. The subject was my interesting
+carpet-bag. There being no American consul at Padras, I had taken the
+liberty of writing to Mr. Robertson, requesting him, if my estate should
+find its way into his hands, to forward it to me at Athens, and the
+letter was to assure me of his attention to my wishes. It may be
+considered treason against classical taste, but it consoled me somewhat
+for the loss of Parnassus to find a stranger taking so warm an interest
+in my fugitive habiliments.
+
+There was something, too, in the appearance of Padras, that addressed
+itself to other feelings than those connected with the indulgence of a
+classical humour. Our bones were still aching with the last night's
+rest, or, rather, the want of it, at Lepanto; and when we found
+ourselves in a neat little locanda, and a complaisant Greek asked us
+what we would have for dinner, and showed us our beds for the night, we
+almost agreed that climbing Parnassus and such things were fit only for
+boys just out of college.
+
+Padras is beautifully situated at the mouth of the Gulf of Corinth, and
+the windows of our locanda commanded a fine view of the bold mountains
+on the opposite side of the gulf, and the parallel range forming the
+valley which leads to Missilonghi. It stands on the site of the ancient
+Patrae, enumerated by Herodotus among the twelve cities of Achaia. During
+the intervals of peace in the Peloponnesian war, Alcibiades, about four
+hundred and fifty years before Christ, persuaded its inhabitants to
+build long walls down to the sea. Philip of Macedon frequently landed
+there in his expeditions to Peloponnesus. Augustus Caesar, after the
+battle of Actium, made it a Roman colony, and sent thither a large body
+of his veteran soldiers; and, in the time of Cicero, Roman merchants
+were settled there just as French and Italians are now. The modern town
+has grown up since the revolution, or rather since the accession of
+Otho, and bears no marks of the desolation at Missilonghi and Lepanto.
+It contains a long street of shops well supplied with European goods;
+the English steamers from Corfu to Malta touch here; and, besides the
+little Greek caiques trading in the Gulf of Corinth, vessels from all
+parts of the Adriatic are constantly in the harbour.
+
+Among others, there was an Austrian man-of-war from Trieste, on her way
+to Alexandria. By a singular fortune, the commandant had been in one of
+the Austrian vessels that carried to New-York the unfortunate Poles; the
+only Austrian man-of-war which had ever been to the United States. A day
+or two after their arrival at New-York I had taken a boat at the Battery
+and gone on board this vessel, and had met the officers at some parties
+given to them at which he had been present; and though we had no actual
+acquaintance with each other, these circumstances were enough to form an
+immediate link between us, particularly as he was enthusiastic in his
+praises of the hospitality of our citizens and the beauty of our women.
+Lest, however, any of the latter should be vainglorious at hearing that
+their praises were sounded so far from home, I consider it my duty to
+say that the commandant was almost blind, very slovenly, always smoking
+a pipe, and generally a little tipsy.
+
+Early in the morning we started for Athens. Our turnout was rather
+better than at Missilonghi, but not much. The day, however, was fine;
+the cold wind which, for several days, had been blowing down the Gulf
+of Corinth, had ceased, and the air was warm, and balmy, and
+invigorating. We had already found that Greece had something to attract
+the stranger besides the recollections of her ancient glories, and often
+forgot that the ground we were travelling was consecrated by historians
+and poets, in admiration of its own wild and picturesque beauty. Our
+road for about three hours lay across a plain, and then close along the
+gulf, sometimes winding by the foot of a wild precipitous mountain, and
+then again over a plain, with the mountains rising at some distance on
+our right. Sometimes we rose and crossed their rugged summits, and again
+descended to the seashore. On our left we had constantly the gulf,
+bordered on the opposite side by a range of mountains sometimes receding
+and then rising almost out of the water, while high above the rest rose
+the towering summits of Parnassus covered with snow.
+
+It was after dark when we arrived at Vostitza, beautifully situated on
+the banks of the Gulf of Corinth. This is the representative of the
+ancient AEgium, one of the most celebrated cities in Greece, mentioned by
+Homer as having supplied vessels for the Trojan war, and in the second
+century containing sixteen sacred edifices, a theatre, a portico, and an
+agora. For many ages it was the seat of the Achaian Congress. Probably
+the worthy delegates who met here to deliberate upon the affairs of
+Greece had better accommodations than we obtained, or they would be
+likely, I should imagine, to hold but short sessions.
+
+We stopped at a vile locanda, the only one in the place, where we found
+a crowd of men in a small room, gathered around a dirty table, eating,
+one of whom sprang up and claimed me as an old acquaintance. He had on
+a Greek capote and a large foraging cap slouched over his eyes, so that
+I had some difficulty in recognising him as an Italian who, at Padras,
+had tried to persuade me to go by water up to the head of the gulf. He
+had started that morning, about the same time we did, with a crowd of
+passengers, half of whom were already by the ears. Fortunately, they
+were obliged to return to their boats, and left all the house to us;
+which, however, contained little besides a strapping Greek, who called
+himself its proprietor.
+
+Before daylight we were again in the saddle. During the whole day's ride
+the scenery was magnificent. Sometimes we were hemmed in as if for ever
+enclosed in an amphitheatre of wild and gigantic rocks; then from some
+lofty summit we looked out upon lesser mountains, broken, and torn, and
+thrown into every wild and picturesque form, as if by an earthquake; and
+after riding among deep dells and craggy steeps, yawning ravines and
+cloud-capped precipices, we descended to a quiet valley and the
+seashore.
+
+At about four o'clock we came down, for the last time, to the shore, and
+before us, at some distance, espied a single khan, standing almost on
+the edge of the water. It was a beautiful resting-place for a traveller;
+the afternoon was mild, and we walked on the shore till the sun set. The
+khan was sixty or seventy feet long, and contained an upper room running
+the whole length of the building. This room was our bedchamber. We built
+a fire at one end, made tea, and roasted some eggs, the smoke ascending
+and curling around the rafters, and finally passing out of the openings
+in the roof; we stretched ourselves in our cloaks and, with the murmur
+of the waves in our ears, looked through the apertures in the roof upon
+the stars, and fell asleep.
+
+About the middle of the night the door opened with a rude noise, and a
+tall Greek, almost filling the doorway, stood on the threshold. After
+pausing a moment he walked in, followed by half a dozen gigantic
+companions, their tall figures, full dresses, and the shining of their
+pistols and yataghans wearing a very ugly look to a man just roused from
+slumber. But they were merely Greek pedlers or travelling merchants,
+and, without any more noise, kindled the fire anew, drew their capotes
+around them, stretched themselves upon the floor, and were soon asleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+    Quarrel with the Landlord.--AEgina.--Sicyon.--Corinth.--A
+      distinguished Reception.--Desolation of Corinth.--The
+      Acropolis.--View from the Acropolis.--Lechaeum and Cenchreae.--Kaka
+      Scala.--Arrival at Athens.
+
+
+IN the morning Demetrius had a roaring quarrel with the keeper of the
+locanda, in which he tried to keep back part of the money we gave him to
+pay for us. He did this, however, on principle, for we had given twice
+as much as our lodging was worth, and no man ought to have more. His
+character was at stake in preventing any one from cheating us too much;
+and, in order to do this, he stopped our funds in transitu.
+
+We started early, and for some time our road lay along the shore. It was
+not necessary, surrounded by such magnificent scenery, to draw upon
+historical recollections for the sake of giving interest to the road;
+still it did not diminish that interest to know that, many centuries
+ago, great cities stood here, whose sites are now desolate or occupied
+as the miserable gathering-places of a starving population. Directly
+opposite Parnassus, and at the foot of a hill crowned with the ruins of
+an acropolis, in perfect desolation now, stood the ancient AEgira; once
+numbering a population of ten thousand inhabitants, and in the second
+century containing three hiera, a temple, and another sacred edifice.
+Farther on, and toward the head of the Gulf of Corinth, the miserable
+village of Basilico stands on the site of the ancient Sicyon, boasting
+as high an antiquity as any city in Greece, and long celebrated as the
+first of her schools of painting. In five hours we came in sight of the
+Acropolis of Corinth, and, shortly after, of Corinth itself.
+
+The reader need not fear my plunging him deeply into antiquities. Greece
+has been explored, and examined, and written upon, till the subject is
+almost threadbare; and I do not flatter myself that I discovered in it
+anything new. Still no man from such a distant country as mine can find
+himself crossing the plain of Corinth, and ascending to the ancient
+city, without a strange and indescribable feeling. We have no old
+monuments, no classical associations; and our history hardly goes beyond
+the memory of that venerable personage, "the oldest inhabitant." Corinth
+is so old that its early records are blended with the history of the
+heathen gods. The Corinthians say that it was called after the son of
+Jupiter, and its early sovereigns were heroes of the Grecian mythology.
+It was the friend of Sparta and the rival of Athens; the first city to
+build war-galleys and send forth colonies, which became great empires.
+It was the assembling-place of their delegates, who elected Philip, and
+afterward Alexander the Great, to conduct the war against the Persians.
+In painting, sculpture, and architecture surpassing all the achievements
+of Greece, or which the genius of man has ever since accomplished.
+Conquered by the then barbarous Romans, her walls were razed to the
+ground, her men put to the sword, her women and children sold into
+captivity, and the historian who records her fall writes that he saw the
+finest pictures thrown wantonly on the ground, and Roman soldiers
+playing on them at draughts and dice. For many years deserted, Corinth
+was again peopled; rose rapidly from its ruins; and, when St. Paul
+abode there "a year and six months"--to the Christian the most
+interesting period in her history--she was again a populous city, and
+the Corinthians a luxurious people.
+
+Its situation in the early ages of the world could not fail to make it a
+great commercial emporium. In the inexperienced navigation of early
+times it was considered difficult and dangerous to go around the point
+of the Peloponnesus, and there was a proverb, "Before the mariner
+doubles Cape Malea, he should forget all he holds dearest in the world."
+Standing on the isthmus commanding the Adriatic and AEgean Seas;
+receiving in one hand the riches of Asia and in the other those of
+Europe; distributing them to every quarter of the then known world,
+wealth followed commerce, and then came luxury and extravagance to such
+an extent that it became a proverb, "It is not for every man to go to
+Corinth."
+
+As travellers having regard to supper and lodging, we should have been
+glad to see some vestige of its ancient luxury; but times are changed;
+the ruined city stands where stood Corinth of old, but it has fallen
+once more; the sailor no longer hugs the well-known coasts, but launches
+fearlessly into the trackless ocean, and Corinth can never again be what
+she has been.
+
+Our servant had talked so much of the hotel at Corinth, that perhaps the
+idea of bed and lodging was rather too prominent in our reveries as we
+approached the fallen city. He rode on before to announce our coming,
+and, working our way up the hill through narrow streets, stared at by
+all the men, followed by a large representation from the juvenile
+portion of the modern Corinthians, and barked at by the dogs, we turned
+into a large enclosure, something like a barnyard, on which opened a
+ruined balcony forming the entrance to the hotel. Demetrius was standing
+before it with our host, as unpromising a looking scoundrel as ever took
+a traveller in. He had been a notorious captain of brigands, and when
+his lawless band was broken up and half of its number hanged, he could
+not overcome his disposition to prey upon travellers, but got a couple
+of mattresses and bedsteads, and set up a hotel at Corinth. Demetrius
+had made a bargain for us at a price that made him hang his head when he
+told it, and we were so indignant at the extortion that we at first
+refused to dismount. Our host stood aloof, being used to such scenes,
+and perfectly sure that, after storming a little, we should be glad to
+take the only beds between Padras and Athens. In the end, however, we
+got the better both of him and Demetrius; for, as he had fixed separate
+prices for dinner, beds, and breakfast, we went to a little Greek
+coffee-house, and raised half Corinth to get us something to eat, and
+paid him only for our lodging.
+
+We had a fine afternoon before us, and our first movement was to the
+ruins of a temple, the only monument of antiquity in Corinth. The city
+has been so often sacked and plundered, that not a column of the
+Corinthian order exists in the place from which it derives its name.
+Seven columns of the old temple are still standing, fluted and of the
+Doric order, though wanting in height the usual proportion to the
+diameter; built probably before that order had attained its perfection,
+and long before the Corinthian order was invented; though when it was
+built, by whom, or to what god it was consecrated, antiquaries cannot
+agree in deciding. Contrasted with these solitary columns of an unknown
+antiquity are ruins of yesterday. Houses fallen, burned, and black with
+smoke, as if the wretched inmates had fled before the blaze of their
+dwellings; and high above the ruined city, now as in the days when the
+Persian and Roman invaded it, still towers the Acropolis, a sharp and
+naked rock, rising abruptly a thousand feet from the earth, inaccessible
+and impregnable under the science of ancient war; and in all times of
+invasion and public distress, from her earliest history down to the
+bloody days of the late revolution, the refuge of the inhabitants.
+
+[Illustration: Corinth.]
+
+It was late in the afternoon when we set out for the Acropolis. About a
+mile from the city we came to the foot of the hill, and ascended by a
+steep and difficult path, with many turnings and windings, to the first
+gate. Having been in the saddle since early in the morning, we stopped
+several times to rest, and each time lingered and looked out with
+admiration upon the wild and beautiful scenery around us; and we thought
+of the frequently recurring times when hostile armies had drawn up
+before the city at our feet, and the inhabitants, in terror and
+confusion, had hurried up this path and taken refuge within the gate
+before us.
+
+Inside the gate were the ruins of a city, and here, too, we saw the
+tokens of ruthless war; the fire-brand was hardly yet extinguished, and
+the houses were in ruins. Within a few years it has been the stronghold
+and refuge of infidels and Christians, taken and retaken, destroyed,
+rebuilt, and destroyed again, and the ruins of Turkish mosques and
+Christian churches are mingled together in undistinguishable confusion.
+This enclosure is abundantly supplied with water, issuing from the rock,
+and is capable of containing several thousand people. The fountain of
+Pyrene, which supplies the Acropolis, called the most salubrious in
+Greece, is celebrated as that at which Pegasus was drinking when taken
+by Bellerophon. Ascending among ruined and deserted habitations, we came
+to a second gate flanked by towers. A wall about two miles in
+circumference encloses the whole summit of the rock, including two
+principal points which still rise above the rest. One is crowned with a
+tower and the other with a mosque, now in ruins; probably erected where
+once stood a heathen temple. Some have mistaken it for a Christian
+church, but all agree that it is a place built and consecrated to divine
+use, and that, for unknown ages men have gone up to this cloud-capped
+point to worship their Creator. It was a sublime idea to erect on this
+lofty pinnacle an altar to the Almighty. Above us were only the
+unclouded heavens; the sun was setting with that brilliancy which
+attends his departing glory nowhere but in the East; and the sky was
+glowing with a lurid red, as of some great conflagration. The scene
+around and below was wondrously beautiful. Mountains and rivers, seas
+and islands, rocks, forests, and plains, thrown together in perfect
+wantonness, and yet in the most perfect harmony, and every feature in
+the expanded landscape consecrated by the richest associations. On one
+side the Saronic Gulf, with its little islands, and AEgina and Salamis,
+stretching off to "Sunium's marble height," with the ruins of its temple
+looking out mournfully upon the sea; on the other, the Gulf of Corinth
+or Lepanto, bounded by the dark and dreary mountains of Cytheron, where
+Acteon, gazing at the goddess, was changed into a stag, and hunted to
+death by his own hounds; and where Bacchus, with his train of satyrs and
+frantic bacchantes, celebrated his orgies. Beyond were Helicon, sacred
+to Apollo and the Muses, and Parnassus, covered with snow. Behind us
+towered a range of mountains stretching away to Argos and the ancient
+Sparta, and in front was the dim outline of the temple of the Acropolis
+at Athens. The shades of evening gathered thick around us while we
+remained on the top of the Acropolis, and it was dark long before we
+reached our locanda.
+
+The next morning we breakfasted at the coffee-house, and left Corinth
+wonderfully pleased at having outwitted Demetrius and our brigand host,
+who gazed after us with a surly scowl as we rode away, and probably
+longed for the good old days when, at the head of his hanged companions,
+he could have stopped us at the first mountain-pass and levied
+contributions at his own rate. I probably condemn myself when I say that
+we left this ancient city with such a trifle uppermost in our thoughts,
+but so it was; we bought a loaf of bread as we passed through the
+market-place, and descended to the plain of Corinth. We had still the
+same horses which we rode from Padras; they were miserable animals, and
+I did not mount mine the whole day. Indeed, this is the true way to
+travel in Greece; the country is mountainous, and the road or narrow
+horse-path so rough and precipitous that the traveller is often obliged
+to dismount and walk. The exercise of clambering up the mountains and
+the purity of the air brace every nerve in the body, and not a single
+feature of the scenery escapes the eye.
+
+But, as yet, there are other things beside scenery; on each side of the
+road and within site of each other are the ruins of the ancient cities
+of Lechaeum and Cenchreae, the ports of Corinth on the Corinthian and
+Saronic Gulfs; the former once connected with it by two long walls, and
+the road to the latter once lined with temples and sepulchres, the ruins
+of which may still be seen. The isthmus connecting the Peloponnesus with
+the continent is about six miles wide, and Corinth owed her commercial
+greatness to the profits of her merchants in transporting merchandise
+across it. Entire vessels were sometimes carried from one sea and
+launched into the other. The project of a canal across suggested itself
+both to the Greeks and Romans, and there yet exist traces of a ditch
+commenced for that purpose.
+
+On the death of Leonidas, and in apprehension of a Persian invasion, the
+Peloponnesians built a wall across the isthmus from Lechaeum to Cenchreae.
+This wall was at one time fortified with a hundred and fifty towers; it
+was often destroyed and as often rebuilt; and in one place, about three
+miles from Corinth, vestiges of it may still be seen. Here were
+celebrated those Isthmian games so familiar to every tyro in Grecian
+literature and history; toward Mount Oneus stands on an eminence an
+ancient mound, supposed to be the tomb of Melicertes, their founder, and
+near it is at this day a grove of the sacred pine, with garlands of the
+leaves of which the victors were crowned.
+
+In about three hours from Corinth we crossed the isthmus, and came to
+the village of Kalamaki on the shore of the Saronic Gulf, containing a
+few miserable buildings, fit only for the miserable people who occupied
+them. Directly on the shore was a large coffee-house enclosed by mud
+walls, and having branches of trees for a roof; and in front was a
+little flotilla of Greek caiques.
+
+Next to the Greek's love for his native mountains is his passion for the
+waters that roll at their feet; and many of the proprietors of the
+rakish little boats in the harbour talked to us of the superior
+advantage of the sea over a mountainous road, and tried to make us
+abandon our horses and go by water to Athens; but we clung to the land,
+and have reason to congratulate ourselves upon having done so, for our
+road was one of the most beautiful it was ever my fortune to travel
+over. For some distance I walked along the shore, on the edge of a plain
+running from the foot of Mount Geranion. The plain was intersected by
+mountain torrents, the channel-beds of which were at that time dry. We
+passed the little village of Caridi, supposed to be the Sidus of
+antiquity, while a ruined church and a few old blocks of marble mark the
+site of ancient Crommyon, celebrated as the haunt of a wild boar
+destroyed by Theseus.
+
+At the other end of the plain we came to the foot of Mount Geranion,
+stretching out boldly to the edge of the gulf, and followed the road
+along its southern side close to and sometimes overhanging the sea. From
+time immemorial this has been called the Kaka Scala, or bad way. It is
+narrow, steep, and rugged, and wild to sublimity. Sometimes we were
+completely hemmed in by impending mountains, and then rose upon a lofty
+eminence commanding an almost boundless view. On the summit of the range
+the road runs directly along the mountain's brink, overhanging the sea,
+and so narrow that two horsemen can scarcely pass abreast; where a
+stumble would plunge the traveller several hundred yards into the waters
+beneath. Indeed, the horse of one of my companions stumbled and fell,
+and put him in such peril that both dismounted and accompanied me on
+foot. In the olden time this wild and rugged road was famous as the
+haunt of the robber Sciron, who plundered the luckless travellers, and
+then threw them from this precipice. The fabulous account is, that
+Theseus, three thousand years before, on his first visit to Athens,
+encountered the famous robber, and tossed him from the same precipice
+whence he had thrown so many better men. According to Ovid, the earth
+and the sea refused to receive the bones of Sciron, which continued for
+some time suspended in the open air, until they were changed into large
+rocks, whose points still appear at the foot of the precipice; and to
+this day, say the sailors, knock the bottoms out of the Greek vessels.
+In later days this road was so infested by corsairs and pirates, that
+even the Turks feared to travel on it; at one place, that looks as
+though it might be intended as a jumping-off point into another world,
+Ino, with her son Melicertes in her arms (so say the Greek poets), threw
+herself into the sea to escape the fury of her husband; and we know
+that in later days St. Paul travelled on this road to preach the gospel
+to the Corinthians.
+
+But, independently of all associations, and in spite of its difficulties
+and dangers, if a man were by accident placed on the lofty height
+without knowing where he was, he would be struck with the view which it
+commands, as one of the most beautiful that mortal eyes ever beheld. It
+was my fortune to pass over it a second time on foot, and I often seated
+myself on some wild point, and waited the coming up of my muleteers,
+looking out upon the sea, calm and glistening as if plated with silver,
+and studded with islands in continuous clusters stretching away into the
+AEgean.
+
+During the greater part of the passage of the Kaka Scala my companions
+walked with me; and, as we always kept in advance, when we seated
+ourselves on some rude rock overhanging the sea to wait for our beasts
+and attendants, few things could be more picturesque than their
+approach.
+
+On the summit of the pass we fell into the ancient paved way that leads
+from Attica into the Peloponnesus, and walked over the same pavement
+which the Greeks travelled, perhaps, three thousand years ago. A ruined
+wall and gate mark the ancient boundary; and near this an early
+traveller observed a large block of white marble projecting over the
+precipice, and almost ready to fall into the sea, which bore an
+inscription, now illegible. Here it is supposed stood the Stele erected
+by Theseus, bearing on one side the inscription, "Here is Peloponnesus,
+not Ionia;" and on the other the equally pithy notification, "Here is
+not Peloponnesus, but Ionia." It would be a pretty place of residence
+for a man in misfortune; for, besides the extraordinary beauty of the
+scenery, by a single step he might avoid the service of civil process,
+and set the sheriff of Attica or the Peloponnesus at defiance.
+Descending, we saw before us a beautiful plain, extending from the foot
+of the mountain to the sea, and afar off, on an eminence commanding the
+plain, was the little town of Megara.
+
+It is unfortunate for the reader that every ruined village on the road
+stands on the site of an ancient city. The ruined town before us was the
+birthplace of Euclid, and the representative of that Megara which is
+distinguished in history more than two thousand years ago; which sent
+forth its armies in the Persian and Peloponnesian wars; alternately the
+ally and enemy of Corinth and Athens; containing numerous temples, and
+the largest public houses in Greece; and though exposed, with her other
+cities, to the violence of a fierce democracy, as is recorded by the
+historian, "the Megareans retained their independence and lived in
+peace." As a high compliment, the people offered to Alexander the Great
+the freedom of their city. When we approached it its appearance was a
+speaking comment upon human pride.
+
+It had been demolished and burned by Greeks and Turks, and now presented
+little more than a mass of blackened ruins. A few apartments had been
+cleared out and patched up, and occasionally I saw a solitary figure
+stalking amid the desolation.
+
+I had not mounted my horse all day; had kicked out a pair of Greek shoes
+on my walk, and was almost barefoot when I entered the city. A little
+below the town was a large building enclosed by a high wall, with a
+Bavarian soldier lounging at the gate. We entered, and found a good
+coffee-room below, and a comfortable bed chamber above, where we found
+good quilts and mattresses, and slept like princes.
+
+Early in the morning we set out for Athens, our road for some time lying
+along the sea. About half way to the Piraeus, a ruined village, with a
+starving population, stands on the site of the ancient Eleusis, famed
+throughout all Greece for the celebration of the mysterious rites of
+Ceres. The magnificent temple of the goddess has disappeared, and the
+colossal statue made by the immortal Phidias now adorns the vestibule of
+the University at Cambridge. We lingered a little while in the village,
+and soon after entered the Via Sacra, by which, centuries ago, the
+priests and people moved in solemn religious processions from Athens to
+the great temple of Ceres. At first we passed underneath the cliff along
+the shore, then rose by a steep ascent among the mountains, barren and
+stony, and wearing an aspect of desolation equal to that of the Roman
+Campagna; then we passed through a long defile, upon the side of which,
+deeply cut in the rock, are seen the marks of chariot-wheels; perhaps of
+those used in the sacred processions. We passed the ruined monastery of
+Daphne, in a beautifully picturesque situation, and in a few minutes saw
+the rich plain of Attica; and our muleteers and Demetrius, with a burst
+of enthusiasm, perhaps because the journey was ended, clapped their
+hands and cried out, "Atinae! Atinae!"
+
+The reader, perhaps, trembles at the name of Athens, but let him take
+courage. I promise to let him off easily. A single remark, however,
+before reaching it. The plain of Attica lies between two parallel ranges
+of mountains, and extends from the sea many miles back into the
+interior. On the border of the sea stands the Piraeus, now, as in former
+times, the harbour of the city, and toward the east, on a little
+eminence, Athens itself, like the other cities in Greece, presenting a
+miserable appearance, the effects of protracted and relentless wars. But
+high above the ruins of the modern city towers the Acropolis, holding up
+to the skies the ruined temples of other days, and proclaiming what
+Athens was. We wound around the temple of Theseus, the most beautiful
+and perfect specimen of architecture that time has spared; and in
+striking contrast with this monument of the magnificence of past days,
+here, in the entrance to the city, our horses were struggling and
+sinking up to their saddle-girths in the mud.
+
+We did in Athens what we should have done in Boston or Philadelphia;
+rode up to the best hotel, and, not being able to obtain accommodations
+there, rode to another; where, being again refused admittance, we were
+obliged to distribute ourselves into three parcels. Dr. Willet went to
+Mr. Hill's (of whom more anon). M. found entrance at a new hotel in the
+suburbs, and I betook myself to the Hotel de France. The garcon was
+rather bothered when I threw him a pair of old boots which I had hanging
+at my saddle-bow, and told him to take care of my baggage; he asked me
+when the rest would come up; and hardly knew what to make of me when I
+told him that was all I travelled with.
+
+I was still standing in the court of the hotel, almost barefoot, and
+thinking of the prosperous condition of the owner of a dozen shirts, and
+other things conforming, when Mr. Hill came over and introduced himself;
+and telling me that his house was the house of every American, asked me
+to waive ceremony and bring my luggage over at once. This was again
+hitting my sore point; everybody seemed to take a special interest in
+my luggage, and I was obliged to tell my story more than once. I
+declined Mr. Hill's kind invitation, but called upon him early the next
+day, dined with him, and, during the whole of my stay in Athens, was in
+the habit, to a great extent, of making his house my home; and this, I
+believe, is the case with all the Americans who go there; besides which,
+some borrow his money, and others his clothes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+    American Missionary School.--Visit to the School.--Mr. Hill and the
+      Male Department.--Mrs. Hill and the Female Department.--Maid of
+      Athens.--Letter from Mr. Hill.--Revival of Athens.--Citizens of
+      the World.
+
+
+THE first thing we did in Athens was to visit the American missionary
+school. Among the extraordinary changes of an ever-changing world, it is
+not the least that the young America is at this moment paying back the
+debt which the world owes to the mother of science, and the citizen of a
+country which the wisest of the Greeks never dreamed of, is teaching the
+descendants of Plato and Aristotle the elements of their own tongue. I
+did not expect among the ruins of Athens to find anything that would
+particularly touch my national feelings, but it was a subject of deep
+and interesting reflection that, in the city which surpassed all the
+world in learning, where Socrates, and Plato, and Aristotle taught, and
+Cicero went to study, the only door of instruction was that opened by
+the hands of American citizens, and an American missionary was the only
+schoolmaster; and I am ashamed to say that I was not aware of the
+existence of such an institution until advised of it by my friend Dr. W.
+
+In eighteen hundred and thirty the Rev. Messrs. Hill and Robinson, with
+their families, sailed from this city (New-York) as the agents of the
+Episcopal missionary society, to found schools in Greece. They first
+established themselves in the Island of Tenos; but, finding that it was
+not the right field for their labours, employed themselves in acquiring
+a knowledge of the language, and of the character and habits of the
+modern Greeks. Their attention was directed to Athens, and in the spring
+of eighteen hundred and thirty-one they made a visit to that city, and
+were so confirmed in their impressions, that they purchased a lot of
+ground on which to erect edifices for a permanent establishment, and, in
+the mean time, rented a house for the immediate commencement of a
+school. They returned to Tenos for their families and effects, and again
+arrived at Athens about the end of June following. From the deep
+interest taken in their struggle for liberty, and the timely help
+furnished them in their hour of need, the Greeks were warmly
+prepossessed in favour of our countrymen; and the conduct of the
+missionaries themselves was so judicious, that they were received with
+the greatest respect and the warmest welcome by the public authorities
+and the whole population of Athens. Their furniture, printing-presses,
+and other effects were admitted free of duties; and it is but justice to
+them to say that, since that time, they have moved with such discretion
+among an excitable and suspicious people, that, while they have advanced
+in the great objects of their mission, they have grown in the esteem and
+good-will of the best and most influential inhabitants of Greece; and so
+great was Mr. Hill's confidence in their affections, that, though there
+was at that time a great political agitation, and it was apprehended
+that Athens might again become the scene of violence and bloodshed, he
+told me he had no fears, and felt perfectly sure that, in any
+outbreaking of popular fury, himself and family, and the property of the
+mission, would be respected.[1]
+
+In the middle of the summer of their arrival at Athens, Mrs. Hill
+opened a school for girls in the magazine or cellar of the house in
+which they resided; the first day she had twenty pupils, and in two
+months one hundred and sixty-seven. Of the first ninety-six, not more
+than six could read at all, and that very imperfectly; and not more than
+ten or twelve knew a letter. At the time of our visit the school
+numbered nearly five hundred; and when we entered the large room, and
+the scholars all rose in a body to greet us as Americans, I felt a deep
+sense of regret that, personally, I had no hand in such a work, and
+almost envied the feelings of my companion, one of its patrons and
+founders. Besides teaching them gratitude to those from whose country
+they derived the privileges they enjoyed, Mr. Hill had wisely
+endeavoured to impress upon their minds a respect for the constituted
+authorities, particularly important in that agitated and unsettled
+community; and on one end of the wall, directly fronting the seats of
+the scholars, was printed, in large Greek characters, the text of
+Scripture, "Fear God, honour the king."
+
+It was all important for the missionaries not to offend the strong
+prejudices of the Greeks by any attempt to withdraw the children from
+the religion of their fathers; and the school purports to be, and is
+intended for, the diffusion of elementary education only; but it is
+opened in the morning with prayer, concluding with the Lord's Prayer as
+read in our churches, which is repeated by the whole school aloud; and
+on Sundays, besides the prayers, the creed, and sometimes the Ten
+Commandments, are recited, and a chapter from the Gospels is read aloud
+by one of the scholars, the missionaries deeming this more expedient
+than to conduct the exercises themselves. The lesson for the day is
+always the portion appointed for the gospel of the day in their own
+church; and they close by singing a hymn. The room is thrown open to the
+public, and is frequently resorted to by the parents of the children and
+strangers; some coming, perhaps, says Mr. Hill, to "hear what these
+babblers will say," and "other some" from a suspicion that "we are
+setters forth of strange gods."
+
+The boys' school is divided into three departments, the lowest under
+charge of a Greek qualified on the Lancasterian system. They were of all
+ages, from three to eighteen; and, as Mr. Hill told me, most of them had
+been half-clad, dirty, ragged little urchins, who, before they were put
+to their A, B, C, or, rather, their Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, had to be
+thoroughly washed, rubbed, scrubbed, doctored, and dressed, and, but for
+the school, would now, perhaps, be prowling vagabonds in the streets of
+Athens, or training for robbery in the mountains. They were a body of
+fine-looking boys, possessing, as Mr. Hill told me, in an extraordinary
+degree, all that liveliness of imagination, that curiosity and eagerness
+after knowledge, which distinguished the Greeks of old, retaining, under
+centuries of dreadful oppression, the recollection of the greatness of
+their fathers, and, what was particularly interesting, many of them
+bearing the great names so familiar in Grecian history; I shook hands
+with a little Miltiades, Leonidas, Aristides, &c., in features and
+apparent intelligence worthy descendants of the immortal men whose names
+they bear. And there was one who startled me, he was the son of the
+Maid of Athens! To me the Maid of Athens was almost an imaginary being,
+something fanciful, a creation of the brain, and not a corporeal
+substance, to have a little urchin of a boy. But so it was. The Maid of
+Athens is married. She had a right to marry, no doubt; and it is said
+that there is poetry in married life, and, doubtless, she is a much more
+interesting person now than the Maid of Athens at thirty-six could be;
+but the Maid of Athens is married to a Scotchman! the Maid of Athens is
+now Mrs. Black! wife of George Black. Comment is unnecessary.
+
+But the principal and most interesting part of this missionary school
+was the female department, under the direction of Mrs. Hill, the first,
+and, except at Syra, the only school for females in all Greece, and
+particularly interesting to me from the fact that it owed its existence
+to the active benevolence of my own country-women. At the close of the
+Greek revolution, female education was a thing entirely unknown in
+Greece, and the women of all classes were in a most deplorable state of
+ignorance. When the strong feeling that ran through our country in
+favour of this struggling people had subsided, and Greece was freed from
+the yoke of the Mussulman, an association of ladies in the little town
+of Troy, perhaps instigated somewhat by an inherent love of power and
+extended rule, and knowing the influence of their sex in a cultivated
+state of society, formed the project of establishing at Athens a school
+exclusively for the education of females; and, humble and unpretending
+as was its commencement, it is becoming a more powerful instrument in
+the civilization and moral and religious improvement of Greece, than all
+that European diplomacy has ever done for her. The girls were
+distributed in different classes, according to their age and
+advancement; they had clean faces and hands, a rare thing with Greek
+children, and were neatly dressed, many of them wearing frocks made by
+ladies at home (probably at some of our sewing societies); and some of
+them had attained such an age, and had such fine, dark, rolling eyes as
+to make even a northern temperament feel the powerful influence they
+would soon exercise over the rising, excitable generation of Greeks and
+almost make him bless the hands that were directing that influence
+aright.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Hill accompanied us through the whole establishment, and,
+being Americans, we were everywhere looked upon and received by the
+girls as patrons and fathers of the school, both which characters I
+waived in favour of my friend; the one because he was really entitled to
+it, and the other because some of the girls were so well grown that I
+did not care to be regarded as standing in that venerable relationship.
+The didaskalissas, or teachers, were of this description, and they spoke
+English. Occasionally Mr. Hill called a little girl up to us, and told
+us her history, generally a melancholy one, as, being reduced to the
+extremity of want by the revolution; or an orphan, whose parents had
+been murdered by the Turks; and I had a conversation with a little
+Penelope, who, however, did not look as if she would play the faithful
+wife of Ulysses, and, if I am a judge of physiognomy, would never endure
+widowhood twenty years for any man.
+
+Before we went away the whole school rose at once, and gave us a
+glorious finale with a Greek hymn. In a short time these girls will grow
+up into women and return to their several families; others will succeed
+them, and again go out, and every year hundreds will distribute
+themselves in the cities and among the fastnesses of the mountains, to
+exercise over their fathers, and brothers, and lovers, the influence of
+the education acquired here; instructed in all the arts of woman in
+civilized domestic life, firmly grounded in the principles of morality,
+and of religion purified from the follies, absurdities, and abominations
+of the Greek faith. I have seen much of the missionary labours in the
+East, but I do not know an institution which promises so surely the
+happiest results. If the women are educated, the men cannot remain
+ignorant; if the women are enlightened in religion, the men cannot
+remain debased and degraded Christians.
+
+The ex-secretary Rigos was greatly affected at the appearance of this
+female school; and, after surveying it attentively for some moments,
+pointed to the Parthenon on the summit of the Acropolis, and said to
+Mrs. Hill, with deep emotion, "Lady, you are erecting in Athens a
+monument more enduring and more noble than yonder temple;" and the king
+was so deeply impressed with its value, that, a short time before my
+arrival, he proposed to Mr. Hill to take into his house girls from
+different districts and educate them as teachers, with the view of
+sending them back to their districts, there to organize new schools, and
+carry out the great work of female education. Mr. Hill acceded to the
+proposal, and the American missionary school now stands as the nucleus
+of a large and growing system of education in Greece; and, very
+opportunely for my purpose, within a few days I have received a letter
+from Mr. Hill, in which, in relation to the school, he says, "Our
+missionary establishment is much increased since you saw it; our labours
+are greatly increased, and I think I may say we have now reached the
+summit of what we had proposed to ourselves. We do not think it possible
+that it can be extended farther without much larger means and more
+personal aid. We do not wish or intend to ask for either. We have now
+nearly forty persons residing with us, of whom thirty-five are Greeks,
+all of whom are brought within the influence of the gospel; the greater
+part of them are young girls from different parts of Greece, and even
+from Egypt and Turkey (Greeks, however), whom we are preparing to become
+instructresses of youth hereafter in their various districts. We have
+five hundred, besides, under daily instruction in the different schools
+under our care, and we employ under us in the schools twelve native
+teachers, who have themselves been instructed by us. We have provided
+for three of our dear pupils (all of whom were living with us when you
+were here), who are honourably and usefully settled in life. One is
+married to a person every way suited to her, and both husband and wife
+are in our missionary service. One has charge of the government female
+school at the Piraeus, and supports her father and mother and a large
+family by her salary; and the third has gone with our missionaries to
+Crete, to take charge of the female schools there. We have removed into
+our new house" (of which the foundation was just laid at the time of my
+visit), "and, large as it is, it is not half large enough. We are trying
+to raise ways and means to enlarge it considerably, that we may take
+more boarders under our own roof, which we look up to as the most
+important means of making sure of our labour; for every one who comes to
+reside with us is taken away from the corrupt example exhibited at home,
+and brought within a wholesome influence. Lady Byron has just sent us
+one hundred pounds toward enlarging our house with this view, and we
+have commenced the erection of three additional dormitories with the
+money."
+
+Athens is again the capital of a kingdom. Enthusiasts see in her present
+condition the promise of a restoration to her ancient greatness; but
+reason and observation assure us that the world is too much changed for
+her ever to be what she has been. In one respect, her condition
+resembles that of her best days; for, as her fame then attracted
+strangers from every quarter of the world to study in her schools, so
+now the capital of King Otho has become a great gathering-place of
+wandering spirits from many near and distant regions. For ages difficult
+and dangerous of access, the ancient capital of the arts lay shrouded in
+darkness, and almost cut off from the civilized world. At long
+intervals, a few solitary travellers only found their way to it; but,
+since the revolution, it has again become a place of frequent resort and
+intercourse. It is true that the ancient halls of learning are still
+solitary and deserted, but strangers from every nation now turn hither;
+the scholar to roam over her classic soil, the artist to study her
+ancient monuments, and the adventurer to carve his way to fortune.
+
+The first day I dined at the hotel I had an opportunity of seeing the
+variety of material congregated in the reviving city. We had a long
+table, capable of accommodating about twenty persons. The manner of
+living was a la carte, each guest dining when he pleased; but, by tacit
+consent, at about six o'clock all assembled at the table. We presented a
+curious medley. No two were from the same country. Our discourse was in
+English, French, Italian, German, Greek, Russian, Polish, and I know not
+what else, as if we were the very people stricken with confusion of
+tongues at the Tower of Babel. Dinner over, all fell into French, and
+the conversation became general. Every man present was, in the fullest
+sense of the term, a citizen of the world. It had been the fortune of
+each, whether good or bad, to break the little circle in which so many
+are born, revolve, and die; and the habitual mingling with people of
+various nations had broken down all narrow prejudices, and given to
+every one freedom of mind and force of character. All had seen much, had
+much to communicate, and felt that they had much yet to learn. By some
+accident, moreover, all seemed to have become particularly interested in
+the East. They travelled over the whole range of Eastern politics, and,
+to a certain extent, considered themselves identified with Eastern
+interests. Most of the company were or had been soldiers, and several
+wore uniforms and stars, or decorations of some description. They spoke
+of the different campaigns in Greece in which some of them had served;
+of the science of war; of Marlborough, Eugene, and more modern captains;
+and I remember that they startled my feelings of classical reverence by
+talking of Leonidas at Thermopylae and Miltiades at Marathon in the same
+tone as of Napoleon at Leipsic and Wellington at Waterloo. One of them
+constructed on the table, with the knives and forks and spoons, a map of
+Marathon, and with a sheathed yataghan pointed out the position of the
+Greeks and Persians, and showed where Miltiades, as a general, was
+wrong. They were not blinded by the dust of antiquity. They had been
+knocked about till all enthusiasm and all reverence for the past were
+shaken out of them, and they had learned to give things their right
+names. A French engineer showed us the skeleton of a map of Greece,
+which was then preparing under the direction of the French Geographical
+Society, exhibiting an excess of mountains and deficiency of plain which
+surprised even those who had travelled over every part of the kingdom.
+One had just come from Constantinople, where he had seen the sultan
+going to mosque; another had escaped from an attack of the plague in
+Egypt; a third gave the dimensions of the Temple of the Sun at Baalbeck;
+and a fourth had been at Babylon, and seen the ruins of the Tower of
+Babel. In short, every man had seen something which the others had not
+seen, and all their knowledge was thrown into a common stock. I found
+myself at once among a new class of men; and I turned from him who
+sneered at Miltiades to him who had seen the sultan, or to him who had
+been at Bagdad, and listened with interest, somewhat qualified by
+consciousness of my own inferiority. I was lying in wait, however, and
+took advantage of an opportunity to throw in something about America;
+and, at the sound, all turned to me with an eagerness of curiosity that
+I had not anticipated.
+
+In Europe, and even in England, I had often found extreme ignorance of
+my own country; but here I was astonished to find, among men so familiar
+with all parts of the Old World, such total lack of information about
+the New. A gentleman opposite me, wearing the uniform of the King of
+Bavaria, asked me if I had ever been in America. I told him that I was
+born, and, as they say in Kentucky, raised there. He begged my pardon,
+but doubtfully _suggested_, "You are not black?" and I was obliged to
+explain to him that in our section of America the Indian had almost
+entirely disappeared, and that his place was occupied by the descendants
+of the Gaul and the Briton. I was forthwith received into the
+fraternity, for my home was farther away than any of them had ever been;
+my friend opposite considered me a bijou, asked me innumerable
+questions, and seemed to be constantly watching for the breaking out of
+the cannibal spirit, as if expecting to see me bite my neighbour. At
+first I had felt myself rather a small affair but, before separating,
+_l'Americain_, or _le sauvage_, or finally, _le cannibal_ found himself
+something of a lion.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[1] Since my return home I have seen in a newspaper an account of a
+popular commotion at Syra, in which the printing-presses and books at
+the missionaries were destroyed, and Mr. Robinson was threatened with
+personal violence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+    Ruins of Athens.--Hill of Mars.--Temple of the Winds.--Lantern of
+      Demosthenes.--Arch of Adrian.--Temple of Jupiter Olympus.--Temple
+      of Theseus.--The Acropolis.--The Parthenon.--Pentelican
+      Mountain.--Mount Hymettus.--The Piraeus.--Greek Fleas.--Napoli.
+
+
+THE next morning I began my survey of the ruins of Athens. It was my
+intention to avoid any description of these localities and monuments,
+because so many have preceded me, stored with all necessary knowledge,
+ripe in taste and sound in judgment, who have devoted to them all the
+time and research they so richly merit; but as, in our community,
+through the hurry and multiplicity of business occupations, few are able
+to bestow upon these things much time or attention, and, farthermore, as
+the books which treat of them are not accessible to all, I should be
+doing injustice to my readers if I were to omit them altogether.
+Besides, I should be doing violence to my own feelings, and cannot get
+fairly started in Athens, without recurring to scenes which I regarded
+at the time with extraordinary interest. I have since visited most of
+the principal cities in Europe, existing as well as ruined and I hardly
+know any to which I recur with more satisfaction than Athens. If the
+reader tire in the brief reference I shall make, he must not impute it
+to any want of interest in the subject; and as I am not in the habit of
+going into heroics, he will believe me when I say that, if he have any
+reverence for the men or things consecrated by the respect and
+admiration of ages, he will find it called out at Athens. In the hope
+that I may be the means of inducing some of my countrymen to visit that
+famous city, I will add another inducement by saying that he may have,
+as I had, Mr. Hill for a cicerone. This gentleman is familiar with every
+locality and monument around or in the city, and, which I afterward
+found to be an unusual thing with those living in places consecrated in
+the minds of strangers, he retains for them all that freshness of
+feeling which we possess who only know them from books and pictures.
+
+By an arrangement made the evening before, early in the morning of my
+second day in Athens Mr. Hill was at the door of my hotel to attend us.
+As we descended the steps a Greek stopped him, and, bowing with his hand
+on his heart, addressed him in a tone of earnestness which we could not
+understand; but we were struck with the sonorous tones of his voice and
+the musical cadence of his sentences; and when he had finished, Mr. Hill
+told us that he had spoken in a strain which, in the original, was
+poetry itself, beginning, "Americanos, I am a Stagyrite. I come from the
+land of Aristotle, the disciple of Plato," &c., &c.; telling him the
+whole story of his journey from the ancient Stagyra and his arrival in
+Athens; and that, having understood that Mr. Hill was distributing books
+among his countrymen, he begged for one to take home with him. Mr. Hill
+said that this was an instance of every-day occurrence, showing the
+spirit of inquiry and thirst for knowledge among the modern Greeks. This
+little scene with a countryman of Aristotle was a fit prelude to our
+morning ramble.
+
+The house occupied by the American missionary as a school stands on the
+site of the ancient Agora or market-place, where St. Paul "disputed
+daily with the Athenians." A few columns still remain; and near them is
+an inscription mentioning the price of oil. The schoolhouse is built
+partly from the ruins of the Agora; and to us it was an interesting
+circumstance, that a missionary from a newly-discovered world was
+teaching to the modern Greeks the same saving religion which, eighteen
+hundred years ago, St. Paul, on the same spot, preached to their
+ancestors.
+
+Winding around the foot of the Acropolis, within the ancient and outside
+the modern wall, we came to the Areopagus or Hill of Mars, where, in the
+early days of Athens, her judges sat in the open air; and, for many
+ages, decided with such wisdom and impartiality, that to this day the
+decisions of the court of Areopagites are regarded as models of judicial
+purity. We ascended this celebrated hill, and stood on the precise spot
+where St. Paul, pointing to the temples which rose from every section of
+the city and towered proudly on the Acropolis, made his celebrated
+address: "Ye men of Athens, I see that in all things ye are too
+superstitious." The ruins of the very temples to which he pointed were
+before our eyes.
+
+Descending, and rising toward the summit of another hill, we came to the
+Pnyx, where Demosthenes, in the most stirring words that ever fell from
+human lips, roused his countrymen against the Macedonian invader. Above,
+on the very summit of the hill, is the old Pnyx, commanding a view of
+the sea of Salamis, and of the hill where Xerxes sat to behold the great
+naval battle. During the reign of the thirty tyrants the Pnyx was
+removed beneath the brow of the hill, excluding the view of the sea,
+that the orator might not inflame the passions of the people by
+directing their eyes to Salamis, the scene of their naval glory. But,
+without this, the orator had material enough; for, when he stood on the
+platform facing the audience, he had before him the city which the
+Athenians loved and the temples in which they worshipped, and I could
+well imagine the irresistible force of an appeal to these objects of
+their enthusiastic devotion, their firesides and altars. The place is
+admirably adapted for public speaking. The side of the hill has been
+worked into a gently inclined plane, semicircular in form, and supported
+in some places by a wall of immense stones. This plain is bounded above
+by the brow of the hill, cut down perpendicularly. In the centre the
+rock projects into a platform about eight or ten feet square, which
+forms the Pnyx or pulpit for the orator. The ascent is by three steps
+cut out of the rock, and in front is a place for the scribe or clerk. We
+stood on this Pnyx, beyond doubt on the same spot where Demosthenes
+thundered his philippics in the ears of the Athenians. On the road
+leading to the Museum hill we entered a chamber excavated in the rock,
+which tradition hallows as the prison of Socrates; and though the
+authority for this is doubtful, it is not uninteresting to enter the
+damp and gloomy cavern wherein, according to the belief of the modern
+Athenians, the wisest of the Greeks drew his last breath. Farther to the
+south is the hill of Philopappus, so called after a Roman governor of
+that name. On the very summit, near the extreme angle of the old wall,
+and one of the most conspicuous objects around Athens, is a monument
+erected by the Roman governor in honour of the Emperor Trajan. The
+marble is covered with the names of travellers, most of whom, like
+Philopappus himself, would never have been heard of but for that
+monument.
+
+Descending toward the Acropolis, and entering the city among streets
+encumbered with ruined houses, we came to the Temple of the Winds, a
+marble octagonal tower, built by Andronicus. On each side is a
+sculptured figure, clothed in drapery adapted to the wind he represents;
+and on the top was formerly a Triton with a rod in his hand, pointing to
+the figure marking the wind. The Triton is gone, and great part of the
+temple buried under ruins. Part of the interior, however, has been
+excavated, and probably, before long, the whole will be restored.
+
+East of the foot of the Acropolis, and on the way to Adrian's Gate, we
+came to the Lantern of Demosthenes (I eschew its new name of the
+Choragic Monument of Lysichus), where, according to an absurd tradition,
+the orator shut himself up to study the rhetorical art. It is considered
+one of the most beautiful monuments of antiquity, and the capitals are
+most elegant specimens of the Corinthian order refined by Attic taste.
+It is now in a mutilated condition, and its many repairs make its
+dilapidation more perceptible. Whether Demosthenes ever lived here or
+not, it derives an interest from the fact that Lord Byron made it his
+residence during his visit to Athens. Farther on, and forming part of
+the modern wall, is the Arch of Adrian, bearing on one side an
+inscription in Greek, "This is the city of Theseus;" and on the other,
+"But this is the city of Adrian." On the arrival of Otho a placard was
+erected, on which was inscribed, "These were the cities of Theseus and
+Adrian, but now of Otho." Many of the most ancient buildings in Athens
+have totally disappeared. The Turks destroyed many of them to construct
+the wall around the city, and even the modern Greeks have not scrupled
+to build their miserable houses with the plunder of the temples in which
+their ancestors worshipped.
+
+Passing under the Arch of Adrian, outside the gate, on the plain toward
+the Ilissus, we came to the ruined Temple of Jupiter Olympus, perhaps
+once the most magnificent in the world. It was built of the purest white
+marble, having a front of nearly two hundred feet, and more than three
+hundred and fifty in length, and contained one hundred and twenty
+columns, sixteen of which are all that now remain; and these, fluted and
+having rich Corinthian capitals, tower more than sixty feet above the
+plain, perfect as when they were reared. I visited these ruins often,
+particularly in the afternoon; they are at all times mournfully
+beautiful, but I have seldom known anything more touching than, when the
+sun was setting, to walk over the marble floor, and look up at the
+lonely columns of this ruined temple. I cannot imagine anything more
+imposing than it must have been when, with its lofty roof supported by
+all its columns, it stood at the gate of the city, its doors wide open,
+inviting the Greeks to worship. That such an edifice should be erected
+for the worship of a heathen god! On the architrave connecting three of
+the columns a hermit built his lonely cell, and passed his life in that
+elevated solitude, accessible only to the crane and the eagle. The
+hermit is long since dead, but his little habitation still resists the
+whistling of the wind, and awakens the curiosity of the wondering
+traveller.
+
+The Temple of Theseus is the last of the principal monuments, but the
+first which the traveller sees on entering Athens. It was built after
+the battle of Marathon, and in commemoration of the victory which drove
+the Persians from the shores of Greece. It is a small but beautiful
+specimen of the pure Doric, built of Pentelican marble, centuries of
+exposure to the open air giving it a yellowish tint, which softens the
+brilliancy of the white. Three Englishmen have been buried within this
+temple. The first time I visited it a company of Greek recruits, with
+some negroes among them, was drawn up in front, going through the manual
+under the direction of a German corporal; and, at the same time, workmen
+were engaged in fitting it up for the coronation of King Otho!
+
+[Illustration: Temple of Jupiter Olympus and Acropolis at Athena.]
+
+These are the principal monuments around the city, and, except the
+temples at Paestum, they are more worthy of admiration than all the ruins
+in Italy; but towering above them in position, and far exceeding them in
+interest, are the ruins of the Acropolis. I have since wandered among
+the ruined monuments of Egypt and the desolate city of Petra, but I
+look back with unabated reverence to the Athenian Acropolis. Every day I
+had gazed at it from the balcony of my hotel, and from every part of the
+city and suburbs. Early on my arrival I had obtained the necessary
+permit, paid a hurried visit, and resolved not to go again until I had
+examined all the other interesting objects. On the fourth day, with my
+friend M., I went again. We ascended by a broad road paved with stone.
+The summit is enclosed by a wall, of which some of the foundation
+stones, very large, and bearing an appearance of great antiquity, are
+pointed out as part of the wall built by Themistocles after the battle
+of Salamis, four hundred and eighty years before Christ. The rest is
+Venetian and Turkish, falling to decay, and marring the picturesque
+effect of the ruins from below. The guard examined our permit, and we
+passed under the gate. A magnificent propylon of the finest white
+marble, the blocks of the largest size ever laid by human hands, and
+having a wing of the same material on each side, stands at the entrance.
+Though broken and ruined, the world contains nothing like it even now.
+If my first impressions do not deceive me, the proudest portals of
+Egyptian temples suffer in comparison. Passing this magnificent
+propylon, and ascending several steps, we reached the Parthenon or
+ruined Temple of Minerva; an immense white marble skeleton, the noblest
+monument of architectural genius which the world ever saw. Standing on
+the steps of this temple, we had around us all that is interesting in
+association and all that is beautiful in art. We might well forget the
+capital of King Otho, and go back in imagination to the golden age of
+Athens. Pericles, with the illustrious throng of Grecian heroes,
+orators, and sages, had ascended there to worship, and Cicero and the
+noblest of the Romans had gone there to admire; and probably, if the
+fashion of modern tourists had existed in their days, we should see
+their names inscribed with their own hands on its walls. The great
+temple stands on the very summit of the Acropolis, elevated far above
+the Propylaea and the surrounding edifices. Its length is two hundred and
+eight feet, and breadth one hundred and two. At each end were two rows
+of eight Doric columns, thirty-four feet high and six feet in diameter,
+and on each side were thirteen more. The whole temple within and without
+was adorned with the most splendid works of art, by the first sculptors
+in Greece, and Phidias himself wrought the statue of the goddess, of
+ivory and gold, twenty-six cubits high, having on the top of her helmet
+a sphinx, with griffins on each of the sides; on the breast a head of
+Medusa wrought in ivory, and a figure of Victory about four cubits high,
+holding a spear in her hand and a shield lying at her feet. Until the
+latter part of the seventeenth century, this magnificent temple, with
+all its ornaments, existed entire. During the siege of Athens by the
+Venetians, the central part was used by the Turks as a magazine; and a
+bomb, aimed with fatal precision or by a not less fatal chance, reached
+the magazine, and, with a tremendous explosion, destroyed a great part
+of the buildings. Subsequently the Turks used it as a quarry, and
+antiquaries and travellers, foremost among whom is Lord Elgin, have
+contributed to destroy "what Goth, and Turk, and Time had spared."
+
+Around the Parthenon, and covering the whole summit of the Acropolis,
+are strewed columns and blocks of polished white marble, the ruins of
+ancient temples. The remains of the Temples of Erectheus and Minerva
+Polias are pre-eminent in beauty; the pillars of the latter are the most
+perfect specimens of the Ionic in existence, and its light and graceful
+proportions are in elegant contrast with the severe and simple majesty
+of the Parthenon. The capitals of the columns are wrought and ornamented
+with a delicacy surpassing anything of which I could have believed
+marble susceptible. Once I was tempted to knock off a corner and bring
+it home, as a specimen of the exquisite skill of the Grecian artist,
+which it would have illustrated better than a volume of description; but
+I could not do it; it seemed nothing less than sacrilege.
+
+Afar off, and almost lost in the distance, rises the Pentelican
+Mountain, from the body of which were hewed the rough rude blocks which,
+wrought and perfected by the sculptor's art, now stand the lofty and
+stately columns of the ruined temple. What labour was expended upon each
+single column! how many were employed in hewing it from its rocky bed,
+in bearing it to the foot of the mountain, transporting it across the
+plain of Attica, and raising it to the summit of the Acropolis! and then
+what time, and skill, and labour, in reducing it from a rough block to a
+polished shaft, in adjusting its proportions, in carving its rich
+capitals, and rearing it where it now stands, a model of majestic grace
+and beauty! Once, under the direction of Mr. Hill, I clambered up to the
+very apex of the pediment, and, lying down at full length, leaned over
+and saw under the frieze the acanthus leaf delicately and beautifully
+painted on the marble, and, being protected from exposure, still
+retaining its freshness of colouring. It was entirely out of sight from
+below, and had been discovered, almost at the peril of his life, by the
+enthusiasm of an English artist. The wind was whistling around me as I
+leaned over to examine it, and, until that moment, I never appreciated
+fully the immense labour employed and the exquisite finish displayed in
+every portion of the temple.
+
+The sentimental traveller must already mourn that Athens has been
+selected as the capital of Greece. Already have speculators and the
+whole tribe of "improvers" invaded the glorious city; and while I was
+lingering on the steps of the Parthenon, a German, who was quietly
+smoking among the ruins, a sort of superintendent whom I had met before,
+came up, and offering me a segar, and leaning against one of the lofty
+columns of the temple, opened upon me with "his plans of city
+improvements;" with new streets, and projected railroads, and the rise
+of lots. At first I almost thought it personal, and that he was making a
+fling at me in allusion to one of the greatest hobbies of my native
+city; but I soon found that he was as deeply bitten as if he had been in
+Chicago or Dunkirk; and the way in which he talked of moneyed
+facilities, the wants of the community, and a great French bank then
+contemplated at the Piraeus, would have been no discredit to some of my
+friends at home. The removal of the court has created a new era in
+Athens; but, in my mind, it is deeply to be regretted that it has been
+snatched from the ruin to which it was tending. Even I, deeply imbued
+with the utilitarian spirit of my country, and myself a quondam
+speculator in "up-town lots," would fain save Athens from the ruthless
+hand of renovation; from the building mania of modern speculators. I
+would have her go on till there was not a habitation among her ruins;
+till she stood, like Pompeii, alone in the wilderness, a sacred desert,
+where the traveller might sit down and meditate alone and undisturbed
+among the relics of the past. But already Athens has become a
+heterogeneous anomaly; the Greeks in their wild costume are jostled in
+the streets by Englishmen, Frenchmen, Italians, Dutchmen, Spaniards, and
+Bavarians, Russians, Danes, and sometimes Americans. European shops
+invite purchasers by the side of Eastern bazars, coffee-houses, and
+billiard-rooms, and French and German restaurants are opened all over
+the city. Sir Pultney Malcolm has erected a house to hire near the site
+of Plato's Academy. Lady Franklin has bought land near the foot of Mount
+Hymettus for a country-seat. Several English gentlemen have done the
+same. Mr. Richmond, an American clergyman, has purchased a farm in the
+neighbourhood; and in a few years, if the "march of improvement"
+continues, the Temple of Theseus will be enclosed in the garden of the
+palace of King Otho; the Temple of the Winds will be concealed by a
+German opera-house, and the Lantern of Demosthenes by a row of
+"three-story houses."
+
+I was not a sentimental traveller, but I visited all the localities
+around Athens, and, therefore, briefly mention that several times I
+jumped over the poetic and perennial Ilissus, trotted my horse over the
+ground where Aristotle walked with his peripatetics, and got muddied up
+to my knees in the garden of Plato.
+
+One morning my Scotch friend and I set out early to ascend Mount
+Hymettus. The mountain is neither high nor picturesque, but a long flat
+ridge of bare rock, the sides cut up into ravines, fissures, and
+gullies. There is an easy path to the summit, but we had no guide, and
+about midday, after a wild scramble, were worn out, and descended
+without reaching the top, which is exceedingly fortunate for the reader,
+as otherwise he would be obliged to go through a description of the view
+therefrom.
+
+Returning, we met the king taking his daily walk, attended by two aids,
+one of whom was young Marco Bozzaris. Otho is tall and thin, and, when I
+saw him, was dressed in a German military frockcoat and cap, and
+altogether, for a king, seemed to be an amiable young man enough. All
+the world speaks well of him, and so do I. We touched our hats to him,
+and he returned the civility; and what could he do more without inviting
+us to dinner? In old times there was a divinity about a king; but now,
+if a king is a gentleman, it is as much as we can expect. He has spent
+his money like a gentleman, that is, he cannot tell what has become of
+it. Two of the three-millions loan are gone, and there is no
+colonization, no agricultural prosperity, no opening of roads, no
+security in the mountains; not a town in Greece but is in ruins, and no
+money to improve them. Athens, however, is to be embellished. With ten
+thousand pounds in the treasury, he is building a palace of white
+Pentelican marble, to cost three hundred thousand pounds.
+
+Otho was very popular, because, not being of age, all the errors of his
+administration were visited upon Count Armansbergh and the regency, who,
+from all accounts, richly deserved it; and it was hoped that, on
+receiving the crown, he would shake off the Bavarians who were preying
+upon the vitals of Greece, and gather around him his native-born
+subjects. In private life he bore a most exemplary character. He had no
+circle of young companions, and passed much of his time in study, being
+engaged, among other things, in acquiring the Greek and English
+languages. His position is interesting, though not enviable; and if, as
+the first king of emancipated Greece, he entertains recollections of her
+ancient greatness, and the ambition of restoring her to her position
+among the nations of the earth, he is doomed to disappointment. Otho is
+since crowned and married. The pride of the Greeks was considerably
+humbled by a report that their king's proposals to several daughters of
+German princes had been rejected; but the king had great reason to
+congratulate himself upon the spirit which induced the daughter of the
+Duke of Oldenburgh to accept his hand. From her childhood she had taken
+an enthusiastic interest in Greek history, and it had been her constant
+wish to visit Greece; and when she heard that Otho had been called to
+the throne, she naively expressed an ardent wish to share it with him.
+Several years afterward, by the merest accident, she met Otho at a
+German watering-place, travelling with his mother, the Queen of Bavaria,
+as the Count de Missilonghi; and in February last she accompanied him to
+Athens, to share the throne which had been the object of her youthful
+wish.
+
+M. dined at my hotel, and, returning to his own, he was picked up and
+carried to the guardhouse. He started for his hotel without a lantern,
+the requisition to carry one being imperative in all the Greek and
+Turkish cities; the guard could not understand a word he said until he
+showed them some money, which made his English perfectly intelligible;
+and they then carried him to a Bavarian corporal, who, after two hours'
+detention, escorted him to his hotel. After that we were rather careful
+about staying out late at night.
+
+"Thursday. I don't know the day of the month." I find this in my notes,
+the caption of a day of business, and at this distance of time will not
+undertake to correct the entry. Indeed, I am inclined to think that my
+notes in those days are rather uncertain and imperfect; certainly not
+taken with the precision of one who expected to publish them.
+Nevertheless, the residence of the court, the diplomatic corps, and
+strangers form an agreeable society at Athens. I had letters to some of
+the foreign ministers, but did not present them, as I was hardly
+presentable myself without my carpet-bag. On "Thursday," however, in
+company with Dr. W., I called upon Mr. Dawkins, the British minister.
+Mr. Dawkins went to Greece on a special mission, which he supposed would
+detain him six months from home, and had remained there ten years. He is
+a high tory, but retained under a whig administration, because his
+services could not well be dispensed with. He gave us much interesting
+information in regard to the present condition and future prospects of
+Greece; and, in answer to my suggestion that the United States were not
+represented at all in Greece, not even by a consul, he said, with
+emphasis, "You are better represented than any power in Europe. Mr. Hill
+has more influence here than any minister plenipotentiary among us." A
+few days after, when confined to my room by indisposition, Mr. Dawkins
+returned my visit, and again spoke in the same terms of high
+commendation of Mr. Hill. It was pleasing to me, and I have no doubt it
+will be so to Mr. Hill's numerous friends in this country, to know that
+a private American citizen, in a position that keeps him aloof from
+politics, was spoken of in such terms by the representative of one of
+the great powers of Europe. I had heard it intimated that there was a
+prospect of Mr. Dawkins being transferred to this country, and parted
+with him in the hope at some future day of seeing him the representative
+of his government here.
+
+I might have been presented to the king, but my carpet-bag--Dr. W.
+borrowed a hat, and was presented; the doctor had an old white hat,
+which he had worn all the way from New-York. The tide is rolling
+backward; Athens is borrowing her customs from the barbarous nations of
+the north; and it is part of the etiquette to enter a drawing-room with
+a hat (a black one) under the arm. The doctor, in his republican
+simplicity, thought that a hat, good enough to put on his own head, was
+good enough to go into the king's presence; but he was advised to the
+contrary, and took one of Mr. Hill's, not very much too large for him.
+He was presented by Dr. ----, a German, the king's physician, with whom
+he had discoursed much of the different medical systems in Germany and
+America. Dr. W. was much pleased with the king. Did ever a man talk with
+a king who was not pleased with him? But the doctor was particularly
+pleased with King Otho, as the latter entered largely into discourse on
+the doctor's favourite theme, Mr. Hill's school, and the cause of
+education in Greece. Indeed, it speaks volumes in favour of the young
+king, that education is one of the things in which he takes the deepest
+interest. The day the doctor was to be presented we dined at Mr. Hill's,
+having made arrangements for leaving Athens that night; the doctor and
+M. to return to Europe. In the afternoon, while the doctor remained to
+be presented, M. and I walked down to the Piraeus, now, as in the days of
+her glory, the harbour of Athens. The ancient harbour is about five
+miles from Athens, and was formerly joined to it by _long walls_ built
+of stone of enormous size, sixty feet high, and broad enough on the top
+for two wagons to pass abreast. These have long since disappeared, and
+the road is now over a plain shaded a great part of the way by groves of
+olives. As usual at this time of day, we met many parties on horseback,
+sometimes with ladies; and I remember particularly the beautiful and
+accomplished daughters of Count Armansbergh, both of whom are since
+married and dead.[2] It is a beautiful ride, in the afternoon
+particularly, as then the dark outline of the mountains beyond, and the
+reflections of light and shade, give a peculiarly interesting effect to
+the ruins of the Acropolis. Toward the other end we paced between the
+ruins of the old walls, and entered upon a scene which reminded me of
+home. Eight months before there was only one house at the Piraeus; but,
+as soon as the court removed to Athens, the old harbour revived; and
+already we saw long ranges of stores and warehouses, and all the hurry
+and bustle of one of our rising western towns. A railroad was in
+contemplation, and many other improvements, which have since failed; but
+an _omnibus!_ that most modern and commonplace of inventions, is now
+running regularly between the Piraeus and Athens. A friend who visited
+Greece six months after me brought home with him an advertisement
+printed in Greek, English, French, and German, the English being in the
+words and figures following, to wit:
+
+    "ADVERTISEMENT.
+
+    "The public are hereby informed, that on the nineteenth instant an
+    omnibus will commence running between Athena and the Piraeus, and
+    will continue to do so every day at the undermentioned hours until
+    farther notice.
+
+      _Hours of Departure._
+
+         From Athens.                              From Piraeus.
+
+    Half past seven o'clock A.M.            Half past eight o'clock A.M.
+    Ten o'clock A.M.                        Eleven o'clock A.M.
+    Two o'clock P.M.                        Three o'clock P.M.
+    Half past four P.M.                     Half past five P.M.
+
+    "The price of a seat in the omnibus is one drachme.
+
+    "Baggage, if not too bulky and heavy, can be taken on the roof.
+
+    "Smoking cannot be allowed in the omnibus, nor can dogs be admitted.
+
+    "Small parcels and packages may be sent by this conveyance at a
+    moderate charge, and given to the care of the conducteur.
+
+    "The omnibus starts from the corner of the Hermes and AEolus streets
+    at Athens and from the bazar at the Piraeus, and will wait five
+    minutes at each place, during which period the conducteur will sound
+    his horn.
+
+    "Athens, 17th, 29th September, 1836."
+
+Old things are passing away, and all things are becoming new. For a
+little while yet we may cling to the illusions connected with the past,
+but the mystery is fast dissolving, the darkness is breaking away, and
+Greece, and Rome, and even Egypt herself, henceforward claim our
+attention with objects and events of the present hour. Already they have
+lost much of the deep and absorbing interest with which men turned to
+them a generation ago. All the hallowed associations of these ancient
+regions are fading away. We may regret it, we may mourn over it, but we
+cannot help it. The world is marching onward; I have met parties of my
+own townsmen while walking in the silent galleries of the Coliseum; I
+have seen Americans drinking Champagne in an excavated dwelling of the
+ancient Pompeii, and I have dined with Englishmen among the ruins of
+Thebes, but, blessed be my fortune, I never rode in an omnibus from the
+Piraeus to Athens.
+
+We put our baggage on board the caique, and lounged among the little
+shops till dark, when we betook ourselves to a dirty little coffee-house
+filled with Greeks dozing and smoking pipes. We met there a boat's crew
+of a French man-of-war, waiting for some of the officers, who were
+dining with the French ambassador at Athens. One of them had been born
+to a better condition than that of a common sailor. One juvenile
+indiscretion after another had brought him down, and, without a single
+vice, he was fairly on the road to ruin. Once he brushed a tear from his
+eyes as he told us of prospects blighted by his own follies; but,
+rousing himself, hurried away, and his reckless laugh soon rose above
+the noise and clamour of his wild companions.
+
+About ten o'clock the doctor came in, drenched with rain and up to his
+knees in mud. We wanted to embark immediately, but the appearance of the
+weather was so unfavourable that the captain preferred waiting till
+after midnight. The Greeks went away from the coffee-house, the
+proprietor fell asleep in his seat, and we extended ourselves on the
+tables and chairs; and now the fleas, which had been distributed about
+among all the loungers, made a combined onset upon us. Life has its
+cares and troubles, but few know that of being given up to the tender
+mercies of Greek fleas. We bore the infliction till human nature could
+endure no longer; and, at about three in the morning, in the midst of
+violent wind and rain, broke out of the coffee-house and went in search
+of our boat. It was very dark, but we found her and got on board. She
+was a caique, having an open deck with a small covering over the stern.
+Under this we crept, and with our cloaks and a sailcloth spread over us,
+our heated blood cooled, and we fell asleep. When we woke we were on the
+way to Epidaurus. The weather was raw and cold. We passed within a
+stone's throw of Salamis and AEgina, and at about three o'clock, turning
+a point which completely hid it from view, entered a beautiful little
+bay, on which stands the town of Epidaurus. The old city, the birthplace
+of Esculapius, stands upon a hill projecting into the bay, and almost
+forming an island. In the middle of the village is a wooden building
+containing a large chamber, where the Greek delegates, a band of
+mountain warriors, with arms in their hands, "in the name of the Greek
+nation, proclaimed before gods and men its independence."
+
+At the locanda there was by chance one bed, which not being large enough
+for three, I slept on the floor. At seven o'clock, after a quarrel with
+our host and paying him about half his demand, we set out for Napoli di
+Romania. For about an hour we moved in the valley running off from the
+beautiful shore of Epidaurus; soon the valley deepened into a glen, and
+in an hour we turned off on a path that led into the mountains, and,
+riding through wild and rugged ravines, fell into the dry bed of a
+torrent; following which, we came to the Hieron Elios, or Sacred Grove
+of Esculapius. This was the great watering-place for the invalids of
+ancient Greece, the prototype of the Cheltenham and Saratoga of modern
+days. It is situated in a valley surrounded by high mountains, and was
+formerly enclosed by walls, within which, that the credit of the God
+might not be impeached, _no man was allowed to die, and no woman to be
+delivered_. Within this enclosure were temples, porticoes and fountains,
+now lying in ruins hardly distinguishable. The theatre is the most
+beautiful and best preserved. It is scooped out of the side of the
+mountain, rather more than semicircular in form, and containing
+fifty-four seats. These seats are of pink marble, about fifteen inches
+high and nearly three feet wide. In the middle of each seat is a groove,
+in which, probably, woodwork was constructed, to prevent the feet of
+those above from incommoding them who sat below, and also to support the
+backs of an invalid audience. The theatre faces the north, and is so
+arranged that, with the mountain towering behind it, the audience was
+shaded nearly all the day. It speaks volumes in favour of the
+intellectual character of the Greeks, that it was their favourite
+recreation to listen to the recitation of their poets and players. And
+their superiority in refinement over the Romans is in no way manifested
+more clearly than by the fact, that in the ruined cities of the former
+are found the remains of theatres, and in the latter of amphitheatres,
+showing the barbarous taste of the Romans for combats of gladiators and
+wild beasts. It was in beautiful keeping with this intellectual taste of
+the Greeks, that their places of assembling were in the open air, amid
+scenery calculated to elevate the mind; and, as I sat on the marble
+steps of the theatre, I could well imagine the high satisfaction with
+which the Greek, under the shade of the impending mountain, himself all
+enthusiasm and passion, rapt in the interest of some deep tragedy, would
+hang upon the strains of Euripides or Sophocles. What deep-drawn
+exclamations, what shouts of applause had rung through that solitude,
+what bursts of joy and grief had echoed from those silent benches! And
+then, too, what flirting and coqueting, the state of society at the
+springs in the Grove of Esculapius being probably much the same as at
+Saratoga in our own days. The whole grove is now a scene of desolation.
+The lentisculus is growing between the crevices of the broken marble;
+birds sing undisturbed among the bushes; the timid hare steals among the
+ruined fragments; and sometimes the snake is seen gliding over the
+marble steps.
+
+We had expected to increase the interest of our visit by taking our
+noonday refection on the steps of the theatre, but it was too cold for a
+picnic _al fresco_; and, mounting our horses, about two o'clock we came
+in sight of Argos, on the opposite side of the great plain; and in half
+an hour more, turning the mountain, saw Napoli di Romania beautifully
+situated on a gentle elevation on the shore of the gulf. The scenery in
+every direction around Napoli is exceedingly beautiful; and, when we
+approached it, bore no marks of the sanguinary scenes of the late
+revolution. The plain was better cultivated than any part of the
+adjacent country; and the city contained long ranges of houses and
+streets, with German names, such as Heidecker, Maurer-street, &c., and
+was seemingly better regulated than any other city in Greece. We drove
+up to the Hotel des Quatre Nations, the best we had found in Greece,
+dined at a restaurant with a crowd of Bavarian officers and adventurers,
+and passed the evening in the streets and coffee-houses.
+
+The appearance of Otho-street, which is the principal, is very
+respectable; it runs from what was the palace to the grand square or
+esplanade, on one side of which are the barracks of the Bavarian
+soldiers, with a park of artillery posted so as to sweep the square and
+principal streets; a speaking comment upon the liberty of the Greeks,
+and the confidence reposed in them by the government.
+
+Everything in Napoli recalls the memory of the brief and unfortunate
+career of Capo d'Istria. Its recovery from the horrors of barbarian war,
+and the thriving appearance of the country around, are ascribed to the
+impulse given by his administration. A Greek by birth, while his country
+lay groaning under the Ottoman yoke he entered the Russian service,
+distinguished himself in all the diplomatic correspondence during the
+French invasion, was invested with various high offices and honours, and
+subscribed the treaty of Paris in 1815 as imperial Russian
+plenipotentiary. He withdrew from her service because Russia disapproved
+the efforts of his countrymen to free themselves from the Turkish yoke;
+and, after passing five years in Germany and Switzerland, chiefly at
+Geneva, in 1827 he was called to the presidency of Greece. On his
+arrival at Napoli amid the miseries of war and anarchy, he was received
+by the whole people as the only man capable of saving their country.
+Civil war ceased on the very day of his arrival, and the traitor Grievas
+placed in his hands the key of the Palimethe. I shall not enter into any
+speculations upon the character of his administration. The rank he had
+attained in a foreign service is conclusive evidence of his talents, and
+his withdrawal from that service for the reason stated is as conclusive
+of his patriotism; but from the moment he took into his hands the reins
+of government, he was assailed by every so-called liberal press in
+Europe with the party cry of Russian influence. The Greeks were induced
+to believe that he intended to sell them to a stranger; and Capo
+d'Istria, strong in his own integrity, and confidently relying on the
+fidelity and gratitude of his countrymen, was assassinated in the
+streets on his way to mass. Young Mauromichalis, the son of the old Bey
+of Maina, struck the fatal blow, and fled for refuge to the house of
+the French ambassador. A gentleman attached to the French legation told
+me that he himself opened the door when the murderer rushed in with the
+bloody dagger in his hand, exclaiming, "I have killed the tyrant." He
+was not more than twenty-one, tall and noble in his appearance, and
+animated by the enthusiastic belief that he had delivered his country.
+My informant told me that he barred all the doors and windows, and went
+up stairs to inform the minister, who had not yet risen. The latter was
+embarrassed and in doubt what he should do. A large crowd gathered round
+the house; but, as yet, they were all Mauromichalis's friends. The young
+enthusiast spoke of what he had done with a high feeling of patriotism
+and pride; and while the clamour out of doors was becoming outrageous,
+he ate his breakfast and smoked his pipe with the utmost composure. He
+remained at the embassy more than two hours, and until the regular
+troops drew up before the house. The French ambassador, though he at
+first refused, was obliged to deliver him up; and my informant saw him
+shot under a tree outside the gate of Napoli, dying gallantly in the
+firm conviction that he had played the Brutus and freed his country from
+a Caesar.
+
+The fate of Capo d'Istria again darkened the prospects of Greece, and
+the throne went begging for an occupant until it was accepted by the
+King of Bavaria for his second son Otho. The young monarch arrived at
+Napoli in February, eighteen hundred and thirty-three. The whole
+population came out to meet him, and the Grecian youth ran breast deep
+in the water to touch his barge as it approached the shore. In February,
+eighteen hundred and thirty-four, it was decided to establish Athens as
+the capital. The propriety of this removal has been seriously
+questioned, for Napoli possessed advantages in her location, harbour,
+fortress and a town already built; but the King of Bavaria, a scholar
+and an antiquary, was influenced more, perhaps, by classical feeling
+than by regard for the best interests of Greece. Napoli has received a
+severe blow from the removal of the seat of government; still it was by
+far the most European in its appearance of any city I had seen in
+Greece. It had several restaurants and coffee-houses, which were
+thronged all the evening with Bavarian officers and broken-down European
+adventurers, discussing the internal affairs of that unfortunate
+country, which men of every nation seemed to think they had a right to
+assist in governing. Napoli had always been the great gathering-place of
+the phil-Hellenists, and many appropriating to themselves that sacred
+name were hanging round it still. All over Europe thousands of men are
+trained up to be shot at for so much per day; the soldier's is as
+regular a business as that of the lawyer or merchant, and there is
+always a large class of turbulent spirits constantly on the look-out for
+opportunities, and ever ready with their swords to carve their way to
+fortune. I believe that there were men who embarked in the cause of
+Greece with as high and noble purposes as ever animated the warrior; but
+of many, there is no lack of charity in saying that, however good they
+might be as fighters, they were not much as men; and I am sorry to add
+that, from the accounts I heard in Greece, some of the American
+phil-Hellenists were rather shabby fellows. Mr. M., then resident in
+Napoli, was accosted one day in the streets by a young man, who asked
+him where he could find General Jarvis. "What do you want with him?"
+said Mr. M. "I hope to obtain a commission in his army." "Do you see
+that dirty fellow yonder?" said Mr. M., pointing to a ragged patriot
+passing at the moment; "well, twenty such fellows compose Jarvis's army,
+and Jarvis himself is no better off." "Well, then," said the young
+_American_, "I believe I'll join the Turks!" Allen, another American
+patriot, was hung at Constantinople. One bore the sacred name of
+Washington; a brave but unprincipled man. Mr. M. had heard him say, that
+if the devil himself should raise a regiment and would give him a good
+commission, he would willingly march under him. He was struck by a shot
+from the fortress of Napoli while directing a battery against it; was
+taken on board his Britannic majesty's ship Asia, and breathed his last
+uttering curses on his country.
+
+There were others, however, who redeemed the American character. The
+agents sent out by the Greek committee (among them our townsmen, Messrs.
+Post and Stuyvesant), under circumstances of extraordinary difficulty
+fulfilled the charitable purposes of their mission with such zeal and
+discretion as to relieve the wants of a famishing people, and secure the
+undying gratitude of the Greeks. Dr. Russ, another of the agents,
+established an American hospital at Poros, and, under the most severe
+privations, devoted himself gratuitously to attendance upon the sick and
+wounded. Dr. Howe, one of the earliest American phil-Hellenists, in the
+darkest hour of the revolution, and at a time when the Greeks were
+entirely destitute of all medical aid, with an honourable enthusiasm,
+and without any hope of pecuniary reward, entered the service as
+surgeon, was the fellow-labourer of Dr. Russ in establishing the
+American hospital, and, at the peril of his life, remained with them
+during almost the whole of their dreadful struggle. Colonel Miller, the
+principal agent, now resident in Vermont, besides faithfully performing
+the duties of his trust, entered the army, and conducted himself with
+such distinguished gallantry that he was called by the Greek braves the
+American Delhi, or Daredevil.[3]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[2] They married two brothers, the young princes Cantacuzenes. Some
+scruples being raised against this double alliance on the score of
+consanguinity, the difficulty was removed by each couple going to
+separate churches with separate priests to pronounce the mystic words at
+precisely the same moment; so that neither could be said to espouse his
+sister-in-law.
+
+[3] In the previous editions of his work, the author's remarks were so
+general as to reflect upon the character of individuals who stand in our
+community above reproach. The author regrets that the carelessness of
+his expressions should have wounded where he never intended, and hopes
+the gentlemen affected will do him the justice to believe that he would
+not wantonly injure any man's character or feelings.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+    Argos.--Tomb of Agamemnon.--Mycenae.--Gate of the Lions.--A
+      Misfortune.--A Midnight Quarrel.--Gratitude of a Greek
+      Family.--Megara.
+
+
+IN the morning, finding a difficulty in procuring horses, some of the
+loungers about the hotel told us there was a carriage in Napoli, and we
+ordered it to be brought out, and soon after saw moving majestically
+down the principal street a bella carozza, imported by its enterprising
+proprietor from the Strada Toledo at Naples. It was painted a bright
+flaring yellow, and had a big breeched Albanian for coachman. While
+preparing to embark, a Greek came up with two horses, and we discharged
+the bella carozza. My companion hired the horses for Padras, and I threw
+my cloak on one of them and followed on foot.
+
+The plain of Argos is one of the most beautiful I ever saw. On every
+side except toward the sea it is bounded by mountains, and the contrast
+between these mountains, the plain, and the sea is strikingly beautiful.
+The sun was beating upon it with intense heat; the labourers were almost
+naked, or in several places lying asleep on the ground, while the tops
+of the mountains were covered with snow. I walked across the whole
+plain, being only six miles, to Argos. This ancient city is long since
+in ruins; her thirty temples, her costly sepulchres, her gymnasium, and
+her numerous and magnificent monuments and statues have disappeared,
+and the only traces of her former greatness are some remains of her
+Cyclopean walls, and a ruined theatre cut in the rock and of magnificent
+proportions. Modern Argos is nothing more than a straggling village. Mr.
+Riggs, an American missionary, was stationed there, but was at that time
+at Athens with an invalid wife. I was still on foot, and wandered up and
+down the principal street looking for a horse. Every Greek in Argos soon
+knew my business, and all kinds of four-legged animals were brought to
+me at exorbitant prices. When I was poring over the Iliad I little
+thought that I should ever visit Argos; still less that I should create
+a sensation in the ancient city of the Danai; but man little knows for
+what he is reserved.
+
+Argos has been so often visited that Homer is out of date. Every middy
+from a Mediterranean cruiser has danced on the steps of her desolate
+theatre, and, instead of busying myself with her ancient glories, I
+roused half the population in hiring a horse. In fact, in this ancient
+city I soon became the centre of a regular horsemarket. Every rascally
+jockey swore that his horse was the best, and, according to the
+descendants of the respectable sons of Atreus, blindness, lameness,
+spavin, and staggers were a recommendation. A Bavarian officer, whom I
+had met in the bazars, came to my assistance, and stood by me while I
+made my bargain. I had more regard to the guide than the horse; and
+picking out one who had been particularly noisy, hired him to conduct me
+to Corinth and Athens. He was a lad of about twenty, with a bright
+sparkling eye, who, laughing roguishly at his unsuccessful competitors,
+wanted to pitch me at once on the horse and be off. I joined my
+companions, and in a few minutes we left Argos.
+
+The plain of Argos has been immortalized by poetic genius as the great
+gathering-place of the kings and armies that assembled for the siege of
+Troy. To the scholar and poet few plains in the world are more
+interesting. It carries him back to the heroic ages, to the history of
+times bordering on the fabulous, when fact and fiction are so
+beautifully blended that we would not separate them if we could. I had
+but a little while longer to remain with my friends, for we were
+approaching the point where our roads separated, and about eleven
+o'clock we halted and exchanged our farewell greetings. We parted in the
+middle of the plain, they to return to Padras and Europe, and I for the
+tomb of Agamemnon, and back to Athens, and I hardly know where besides.
+Dr. W. I did not meet again until my return home. About a year afterward
+I arrived in Antwerp in the evening from Rotterdam. The city was filled
+with strangers, and I was denied admission at a third hotel, when a
+young man brushed by me in the doorway, and I recognised Maxwell. I
+hailed him, but in cap and cloak, and with a large red shawl around my
+neck, he did not know me. I unrolled and discovered myself, and it is
+needless to say that I did not leave the hotel that night. It was his
+very last day of two years' travel on the Continent; he had taken his
+passage in the steamer for London, and one day later I should have
+missed him altogether. I can give but a faint idea of the pleasure of
+this meeting. He gave me the first information of the whereabout of Dr.
+W.; we talked nearly all night, and about noon the next day I again bade
+him farewell on board the steamer.
+
+I have for some time neglected our servant. When we separated, the
+question was who should _not_ keep him. We were all heartily tired of
+him, and I would not have had him with me on any account. Still, at the
+moment of parting in that wild and distant region, never expecting to
+see him again, I felt some slight leaning toward him. Touching the
+matter of shirts, it will not be surprising to a man of the world that,
+at the moment of parting, I had one of M.'s on my back; and, in justice
+to him, I must say it was a very good one, and lasted a long time. A
+friend once wrote to me on a like occasion not to wear his out of its
+turn, but M. laid no such restriction upon me. But this trifling gain
+did not indemnify me for the loss of my friends. I had broken the only
+link that connected me with home, and was setting out alone for I knew
+not where. I felt at once the great loss I had sustained, for my young
+muleteer could speak only his own language, and, as Queen Elizabeth said
+to Sir Walter Raleigh of her Hebrew, we had "forgotten our" Greek.
+
+But on that classical soil I ought not to have been lonely. I should
+have conjured up the ghosts of the departed Atridae, and held converse on
+their own ground with Homer's heroes. Nevertheless, I was not in the
+mood; and, entirely forgetting the glories of the past, I started my
+horse into a gallop. My companion followed on a full run, close at my
+heels, belabouring my horse with a stick, which when he broke, he pelted
+him with stones; indeed, this mode of scampering over the ground seemed
+to hit his humour, for he shouted, hurraed, and whipped, and sometimes
+laying hold of the tail of the beast, was dragged along several paces
+with little effort of his own. I soon tired of this, and made signs to
+him to stop; but it was his turn now, and I was obliged to lean back
+till I reached him with my cane before I could make him let go his hold,
+and then he commenced shouting and pelting again with stones.
+
+In this way we approached the village of Krabata, about a mile below
+the ruins of Mycenae, and the most miserable place I had seen in Greece.
+With the fertile plain of Argos uncultivated before them, the
+inhabitants exhibited a melancholy picture of the most abject poverty.
+As I rode through, crowds beset me with outstretched arms imploring
+charity; and a miserable old woman, darting out of a wretched hovel,
+laid her gaunt and bony hand upon my leg, and attempted to stop me. I
+shrunk from her grasp, and, under the effect of a sudden impulse, threw
+myself off on the other side, and left my horse in her hands.
+
+Hurrying through the village, a group of boys ran before me, crying out
+"Agamemnon," "Agamemnon." I followed, and they conducted me to the tomb
+of "the king of kings," a gigantic structure, still in good
+preservation, of a conical form, covered with turf; the stone over the
+door is twenty-seven feet long and seventeen wide, larger than any hewn
+stone in the world except Pompey's Pillar. I entered, my young guides
+going before with torches, and walked within and around this ancient
+sepulchre. A worthy Dutchman, Herman Van Creutzer, has broached a theory
+that the Trojan war is a mere allegory, and that no such person as
+Agamemnon ever existed. Shame upon the cold-blooded heretic. I have my
+own sins to answer for in that way, for I have laid my destroying hand
+upon many cherished illusions; but I would not, if I could, destroy the
+mystery that overhangs the heroic ages. The royal sepulchre was forsaken
+and empty; the shepherd drives within it his flock for shelter; the
+traveller sits under its shade to his noonday meal; and, at the moment,
+a goat was dozing quietly in one corner. He started as I entered, and
+seemed to regard me as an intruder; and when I flared before him the
+light of my torch, he rose up to butt me. I turned away and left him in
+quiet possession. The boys were waiting outside, and crying "Mycenae,"
+"Mycenae," led me away. All was solitude, and I saw no marks of a city
+until I reached the relics of her Cyclopean walls. I never felt a
+greater degree of reverence than when I approached the lonely ruins of
+Mycenae. At Argos I spent most of my time in the horsemarket, and I had
+galloped over the great plain as carelessly as if it had been the road
+to Harlem; but all the associations connected with this most interesting
+ground here pressed upon me at once. Its extraordinary antiquity, its
+gigantic remains, and its utter and long-continued desolation, came home
+to my heart. I moved on to the Gate of the Lions, and stood before it a
+long time without entering. A broad street led to it between two immense
+parallel walls; and this street may, perhaps, have been a market-place.
+Over the gate are two lions rampant, like the supporters of a modern
+coat-of-arms, rudely carved, and supposed to be the oldest sculptured
+stone in Greece. Under this very gate Agamemnon led out his forces for
+the siege of Troy; three thousand years ago he saw them filing before
+him, glittering in brass, in all the pomp and panoply of war; and I held
+in my hand a book which told me that this city was so old that, more
+than seventeen hundred years ago, travellers came as I did to visit its
+ruins; and that Pausanias had found the Gate of the Lions in the same
+state in which I beheld it now. A great part is buried by the rubbish of
+the fallen city. I crawled under, and found myself within the walls, and
+then mounted to the height on which the city stood. It was covered with
+a thick soil and a rich carpet of grass. My boys left me, and I was
+alone. I walked all over it, following the line of the walls. I paused
+at the great blocks of stone, the remnants of Cyclopic masonry, the work
+of wandering giants. The heavens were unclouded, and the sun was beaming
+upon it with genial warmth. Nothing could exceed the quiet beauty of the
+scene. I became entangled in the long grass, and picked up wild flowers
+growing over long-buried dwellings. Under it are immense caverns, their
+uses now unknown; and the earth sounded hollow under my feet, as if I
+were treading on the sepulchre of a buried city. I looked across the
+plain to Argos; all was as beautiful as when Homer sang its praises; the
+plain, and the mountains, and the sea were the same, but the once
+magnificent city, her numerous statues and gigantic temples, were gone
+for ever; and but a few remains were left to tell the passing traveller
+the story of her fallen greatness. I could have remained there for
+hours; I could have gone again and again, for I had not found a more
+interesting spot in Greece; but my reveries were disturbed by the
+appearance of my muleteer and my juvenile escort. They pointed to the
+sun as an intimation that the day was passing; and crying "Cavallo,"
+"Cavallo," hurried me away. To them the ruined city was a playground;
+they followed capering behind; and, in descending, three or four of them
+rolled down upon me; they hurried me through the Gate of the Lions, and
+I came out with my pantaloons, my only pantaloons, rent across the knee
+almost irreparably. In an instant I was another man; I railed at the
+ruins for their strain upon wearing apparel, and bemoaned my unhappy lot
+in not having with me a needle and thread. I looked up to the old gate
+with a sneer. This was the city that Homer had made such a noise about;
+a man could stand on the citadel and almost throw a stone beyond the
+boundary-line of Agamemnon's kingdom. In full sight, and just at the
+other side of the plain, was the kingdom of Argos. The little state of
+Rhode Island would make a bigger kingdom than both of them together.
+
+But I had no time for deep meditation, having a long journey to Corinth
+before me. Fortunately, my young Greek had no tire in him; he started me
+off on a gallop, whipping and pelting my horse with stones, and would
+have hurried me on, over rough and smooth, till either he, or I, or the
+horse broke down, if I had not jumped off and walked. As soon as I
+dismounted he mounted, and then he moved so leisurely that I had to
+hurry him on in turn. In this way we approached the range of mountains
+separating the plain of Argos from the Isthmus of Corinth. Entering the
+pass, we rode along a mountain torrent, of which the channel-bed was
+then dry, and ascended to the summit of the first range. Looking back,
+the scene was magnificent. On my right and left were the ruined heights
+of Argos and Mycenae; before me, the towering Acropolis of Napoli di
+Romania; at my feet, the rich plain of Argos, extending to the shore of
+the sea; and beyond, the island-studded AEgean. I turned away with a
+feeling of regret that, in all probability, I should never see it more.
+
+I moved on, and in a narrow pass, not wide enough to turn my horse if I
+had been disposed to take to my heels, three men rose up from behind a
+rock, armed to the teeth with long guns, pistols, yataghans, and
+sheepskin cloaks--the dress of the klept or mountain robber--and
+altogether presenting a most diabolically cutthroat appearance. If they
+had asked me for my purse I should have considered it all regular, and
+given up the remnant of my stock of borrowed money without a murmur;
+but I was relieved from immediate apprehension by the cry of passe
+porta. King Otho has begun the benefits of civilized government in
+Greece by introducing passports, and mountain warriors were stationed in
+the different passes to examine strangers. They acted, however, as if
+they were more used to demanding purses than passports, for they sprang
+into the road and rattled the butts of their guns on the rock with a
+violence that was somewhat startling. Unluckily, my passport had been
+made out with those of my companions, and was in their possession, and
+when we parted neither thought of it; and this demand to me, who had
+nothing to lose, was worse than that of my purse. A few words of
+explanation might have relieved me from all difficulty, but my friends
+could not understand a word I said. I was vexed at the idea of being
+sent back, and thought I would try the effect of a little impudence; so,
+crying out "Americanos," I attempted to pass on; but they answered me
+"Nix," and turned my horse's head toward Argos. The scene, which a few
+moments before had seemed so beautiful, was now perfectly detestable.
+Finding that bravado had not the desired effect, I lowered my tone and
+tried a bribe; this was touching the right chord; half a dollar removed
+all suspicions from the minds of these trusty guardians of the pass;
+and, released from their attentions, I hurried on.
+
+The whole road across the mountain is one of the wildest in Greece. It
+is cut up by numerous ravines, sufficiently deep and dangerous, which at
+every step threaten destruction to the incautious traveller. During the
+late revolution the soil of Greece had been drenched with blood; and my
+whole journey had been through cities and over battle-fields memorable
+for scenes of slaughter unparalleled in the annals of modern war. In
+the narrowest pass of the mountains my guide made gestures indicating
+that it had been the scene of a desperate battle. When the Turks, having
+penetrated to the plain of Argos, were compelled to fall back again upon
+Corinth, a small band of Greeks, under Niketas and Demetrius Ypsilanti,
+waylaid them in this pass. Concealing themselves behind the rocks, and
+waiting till the pass was filled, all at once they opened a tremendous
+fire upon the solid column below, and the pass was instantly filled with
+slain. Six thousand were cut down in a few hours. The terrified
+survivers recoiled for a moment; but, as if impelled by an invisible
+power, rushed on to meet their fate. "The Mussulman rode into the passes
+with his sabre in his sheath and his hands before his eyes, the victim
+of destiny." The Greeks again poured upon them a shower of lead, and
+several thousand more were cut down before the Moslem army accomplished
+the passage of this terrible defile.
+
+It was nearly dark when we rose to the summit of the last range of
+mountains, and saw, under the rich lustre of the setting sun, the
+Acropolis of Corinth, with its walls and turrets, towering to the sky,
+the plain forming the Isthmus of Corinth; the dark, quiet waters of the
+Gulf of Lepanto; and the gloomy mountains of Cithaeron, and Helicon, and
+Parnassus covered with snow. It was after dark when we passed the region
+of the Nemean Grove, celebrated as the haunt of the lion and the scene
+of the first of the twelve labours of Hercules. We were yet three hours
+from Corinth; and, if the old lion had still been prowling in the grove,
+we could not have made more haste to escape its gloomy solitude.
+Reaching the plain, we heard behind us the clattering of horses' hoofs,
+at first sounding in the stillness of evening as if a regiment of
+cavalry or a troop of banditti was at our heels, but it proved to be
+only a single traveller, belated like ourselves, and hurrying on to
+Corinth. I could see through the darkness the shining butts of his
+pistols and hilt of his yataghan, and took his dimensions with more
+anxiety, perhaps, than exactitude. He recognised my Frank dress; and
+accosted me in bad Italian, which he had picked up at Padras (being just
+the Italian in which I could meet him on equal ground), and told me that
+he had met a party of Franks on the road to Padras, whom, from his
+description, I recognised as my friends.
+
+It was nearly midnight when we rattled up to the gate of the old
+locanda. The yard was thronged with horses and baggage, and Greek and
+Bavarian soldiers. On the balcony stood my old brigand host, completely
+crestfallen, and literally turned out of doors in his own house; a
+detachment of Bavarian soldiers had arrived that afternoon from Padras,
+and taken entire possession, giving him and his wife the freedom of the
+outside. He did not recognise me, and, taking me for an Englishman,
+began, "Sono Inglesi Signor" (he had lived at Corfu under the British
+dominion); and, telling me the whole particulars of his unceremonious
+ouster, claimed, through me, the arm of the British government to resent
+the injury to a British subject; his wife was walking about in no very
+gentle mood, but, in truth, very much the contrary. I did not speak to
+her, and she did not trust herself to speak to me; but, addressing
+myself to the husband, introduced the subject of my own immediate wants,
+a supper and night's lodging. The landlord told me, however, that the
+Bavarians had eaten everything in the house, and he had not a room, bed,
+blanket, or coverlet to give me; that I might lie down in the hall or
+the piazza, but there was no other place.
+
+I was outrageous at the hard treatment he had received from the
+Bavarians. It was too bad to turn an honest innkeeper out of his house,
+and deny him the pleasure of accommodating a traveller who had toiled
+hard all day, with the perfect assurance of finding a bed at night. I
+saw, however, that there was no help for it; and noticing an opening at
+one end of the hall, went into a sort of storeroom filled with all kinds
+of rubbish, particularly old barrels. An unhinged door was leaning
+against the wall, and this I laid across two of the barrels, pulled off
+my coat and waistcoat, and on this extemporaneous couch went to sleep.
+
+I was roused from my first nap by a terrible fall against my door. I
+sprang up; the moon was shining through the broken casement, and,
+seizing a billet of wood, I waited another attack. In the mean time I
+heard the noise of a violent scuffling on the floor of the hall, and,
+high above all, the voices of husband and wife, his evidently coming
+from the floor in a deprecating tone, and hers in a high towering
+passion, and enforced with severe blows of a stick. As soon as I was
+fairly awake I saw through the thing at once. It was only a little
+matrimonial _tete-a-tete_. The unamiable humour in which I had left them
+against the Bavarians had ripened into a private quarrel between
+themselves, and she had got him down, and was pummelling him with a
+broomstick or something of that kind. It seemed natural and right
+enough, and was, moreover, no business of mine; and remembering that
+whoever interferes between man and wife is sure to have both against
+him, I kept quiet. Others, however, were not so considerate, and the
+occupants of the different rooms tumbled into the hall in every variety
+of fancy night-gear, among whom was one whose only clothing was a
+military coat and cap, with a sword in his hand. When the hubbub was at
+its highest I looked out, and found, as I expected, the husband and wife
+standing side by side, she still brandishing the stick, and both
+apparently outrageous at everything and everybody around them. I
+congratulated myself upon my superior knowledge of human nature, and
+went back to my bed on the door.
+
+In the morning I was greatly surprised to find that, instead of whipping
+her husband, she had been taking his part. Two German soldiers, already
+half intoxicated, had come into the hall, and insisted upon having more
+wine; the host refused, and when they moved toward my sleeping place,
+where the wine was kept, he interposed, and all came down together with
+the noise which had woke me. His wife came to his aid, and the blows
+which, in my simplicity, I had supposed to be falling upon him, were
+bestowed on the two Bavarians. She told me the story herself; and when
+she complained to the officers, they had capped the climax of her
+passion by telling her that her husband deserved more than he got. She
+was still in a perfect fury; and as she looked at them in the yard
+arranging for their departure, she added, in broken English, with deep
+and, as I thought, ominous passion, "'Twas better to be under the
+Turks."
+
+I learned all this while I was making my toilet on the piazza, that is,
+while she was pouring water on my hands for me to wash; and, just as I
+had finished, my eye fell upon my muleteer assisting the soldiers in
+loading their horses. At first I did not notice the subdued expression
+of his usually bright face, nor that he was loading my horse with some
+of their camp equipage; but all at once it struck me that they were
+pressing him into their service. I was already roused by what the woman
+had told me, and, resolving that they should not serve me as they did
+the Greeks, I sprang off the piazza, cleared my way through the crowd,
+and going up to my horse, already staggering under a burden poised on
+his back, but not yet fastened, put my hand under one side and tumbled
+it over with a crash on the other. The soldiers cried out furiously;
+and, while they were sputtering German at me, I sprang into the saddle.
+I was in admirable pugilistic condition, with nothing on but pantaloons,
+boots, and shirt, and just in a humour to get a whipping, if nothing
+worse; but I detested the manner in which the Bavarians lorded it in
+Greece; and riding up to a group of officers who were staring at me,
+told them that I had just tumbled their luggage off my horse, and they
+must bear in mind that they could not deal with strangers quite so
+arbitrarily as they did with the Greeks. The commandant was disposed to
+be indignant and very magnificent; but some of the others making
+suggestions to him, he said he understood I had only hired my horse as
+far as Corinth; but, if I had taken him for Athens, he would not
+interfere; and, apologizing on the ground of the necessities of
+government, ordered him to be released. I apologized back again,
+returned the horse to my guide, whose eyes sparkled with pleasure, and
+went in for my hat and coat.
+
+I dressed myself, and, telling him to be ready when I had finished my
+breakfast, went out expecting to start forthwith; but, to my surprise,
+my host told me that the lad refused to go any farther without an
+increase of pay; and, sure enough, there he stood, making no preparation
+for moving. The cavalcade of soldiers had gone, and taken with them
+every horse in Corinth, and the young rascal intended to take advantage
+of my necessity. I told him that I had hired him to Athens for such a
+price, and that I had saved him from impressment, and consequent loss of
+wages, by the soldiers, which he admitted. I added that he was a young
+rascal, which he neither admitted nor denied, but answered with a
+roguish laugh. The extra price was no object compared with the vexation
+of a day's detention; but a traveller is apt to think that all the world
+is conspiring to impose upon him, and, at times, to be very resolute in
+resisting. I was peculiarly so then, and, after a few words, set off to
+complain to the head of the police. Without any ado he trotted along
+with me, and we proceeded together, followed by a troup of idlers, I in
+something of a passion, he perfectly cool, good-natured, and
+considerate, merely keeping out of the way of my stick. Hurrying along
+near the columns of the old temple, I stumbled, and he sprang forward to
+assist me, his face expressing great interest, and a fear that I had
+hurt myself; and when I walked toward a house which I had mistaken for
+the bureau of the police department, he ran after me to direct me right.
+All this mollified me considerably; and, before we reached the door, the
+affair began to strike me as rather ludicrous.
+
+I stated my case, however, to the eparchos, a Greek in Frank dress, who
+spoke French with great facility, and treated me with the greatest
+consideration. He was so full of professions that I felt quite sure of a
+decision in my favour; but, assuming my story to be true, and without
+asking the lad for his excuse, he shrugged his shoulders, and said it
+would take time to examine the matter, and, if I was in a hurry, I had
+better submit. To be sure, he said, the fellow was a great rogue, and he
+gave his countrymen in general a character that would not tell well in
+print; but added, in their justification, that they were imposed upon
+and oppressed by everybody, and therefore considered that they had a
+right to take their advantage whenever an opportunity offered. The young
+man sat down on the floor, and looked at me with the most frank, honest,
+and open expression, as if perfectly unconscious that he was doing
+anything wrong. I could not but acknowledge that some excuse for him was
+to be drawn from the nature of the school in which he had been brought
+up, and, after a little parley, agreed to pay him the additional price,
+if, at the end of the journey, I was satisfied with his conduct. This
+was enough; his face brightened, he sprang up and took my hand, and we
+left the house the best friends in the world. He seemed to be hurt as
+well as surprised at my finding fault with him, for to him all seemed
+perfectly natural; and, to seal the reconciliation, he hurried on ahead,
+and had the horse ready when I reached the locanda. I took leave of my
+host with a better feeling than before, and set out a second time on the
+road to Athens.
+
+At Kalamaki, while walking along the shore, a Greek who spoke the lingua
+Franca came from on board one of the little caiques, and, when he
+learned that I was an American, described to me the scene that had taken
+place on that beach upon the arrival of provisions from America; when
+thousands of miserable beings who had fled from the blaze of their
+dwellings, and lived for months upon plants and roots; grayheaded men,
+mothers with infants at their breasts, emaciated with hunger and almost
+frantic with despair, came down from their mountain retreats to receive
+the welcome relief. He might well remember the scene, for he had been
+one of that starving people; and he took me to his house, and showed me
+his wife and four children, now nearly all grown, telling me that they
+had all been rescued from death by the generosity of my countrymen. I do
+not know why, but in those countries it did not seem unmanly for a
+bearded and whiskered man to weep; I felt anything but contempt for him
+when, with his heart overflowing and his eyes filled with tears, he told
+me, when I returned home, to say to my countrymen that I had seen and
+talked with a recipient of their bounty; and though the Greeks might
+never repay us, they could never forget what we had done for them. I
+remembered the excitement in our country in their behalf, in colleges
+and schools, from the graybearded senator to the prattling schoolboy,
+and reflected that, perhaps, my mite, cast carelessly upon the waters,
+had saved from the extremity of misery this grateful family. I wish that
+the cold-blooded prudence which would have checked our honest enthusiasm
+in favour of a people, under calamities and horrors worse than ever fell
+to the lot of man struggling to be free, could have listened to the
+gratitude of this Greek family. With deep interest I bade them farewell,
+and, telling my guide to follow with my horse, walked over to the foot
+of the mountain.
+
+Ascending, I saw in one of the openings of the road a packhorse and a
+soldier in the Bavarian uniform, and, hoping to find some one to talk
+with, I hailed him. He was on the top of the mountain, so far off that
+he did not hear me; and when, with the help of my Greek, I had succeeded
+in gaining his attention, he looked for some time without being able to
+see me. When he did, however, he waited; but, to my no small
+disappointment, he answered my first question with the odious "Nix." We
+tried each other in two or three dialects; but, finding it of no use, I
+sat down to rest, and he, for courtesy, joined me; my young Greek, in
+the spirit of good-fellowship, doing the same. He was a tall,
+noble-looking fellow, and, like myself, a stranger in Greece; and,
+though we could not say so, it was understood that we were glad to meet
+and travel together as comrades. The tongue causes more evils than the
+sword; and, as we were debarred the use of this mischievous member, and
+walked all day side by side, seldom three paces apart, before night we
+were sworn friends.
+
+About five o'clock in the afternoon we arrived at Megara. A group of
+Bavarian soldiers was lounging round the door of the khan, who welcomed
+their expected comrade and me as his companion. My friend left me, and
+soon returned with the compliments of the commandant, and an invitation
+to visit him in the evening. I had, however, accepted a prior invitation
+from the soldiers for a rendezvous in the locanda. I wandered till dark
+among the ruined houses of the town, thought of Euclid and Alexander the
+Great, and returning, went up to the same room in which I had slept with
+my friends, pored over an old map of Greece hanging on the wall, made a
+few notes, and throwing myself back on a sort of divan, while thinking
+what I should do fell asleep.
+
+About ten o'clock I was roused by the loud roar of a chorus, not like a
+sudden burst, but a thing that seemed to have swelled up to that point
+by degrees; and rubbing my eyes, and stumbling down stairs, I entered
+the banqueting hall; a long, rough wooden table extended the whole
+length of the room, supplied with only two articles, wine-flagons and
+tobacco-pouches; forty or fifty soldiers were sitting round it, smoking
+pipes and singing with all their souls, and, at the moment I entered,
+waving their pipes to the dying cadence of a hunting chorus. Then
+followed a long thump on the table, and they all rose; my long
+travelling friend, with a young soldier who spoke a little French, came
+up, and, escorting me to the head of the table, gave me a seat by the
+side of the chairman. One of them attempted to administer a cup of wine,
+and the other thrust at me the end of a pipe, and I should have been
+obliged to kick and abscond but for the relief afforded me by the
+entrance of another new-comer. This was no other than the corporal's
+wife; and if I had been received warmly, she was greeted with
+enthusiasm. Half the table sprang forward to escort her, two of them
+collared the president and hauled him off his seat, and the whole
+company, by acclamation, installed her in his place. She accepted it
+without any hesitation, while two of them, with clumsy courtesy, took
+off her bonnet, which I, sitting at her right hand, took charge of. All
+then resumed their places, and the revel went on more gayly than ever.
+The lady president was about thirty, plainly but neatly dressed, and,
+though not handsome, had a frank, amiable, and good-tempered expression,
+indicating that greatest of woman's attributes, a good heart. In fact,
+she looked what the young man at my side told me she was, the peacemaker
+of the regiment; and he added, that they always tried to have her at
+their convivial meetings, for when she was among them the brawling
+spirits were kept down, and every man would be ashamed to quarrel in her
+presence. There was no chivalry, no heroic devotion about them, but
+their manner toward her was as speaking a tribute as was ever paid to
+the influence of woman; and I question whether beauty in her bower,
+surrounded by belted knights and barons bold, ever exercised in her
+more exalted sphere a more happy influence. I talked with her, and with
+the utmost simplicity she told me that the soldiers all loved her; that
+they were all kind to her, and she looked upon them all as brothers. We
+broke up at about twelve o'clock with a song, requiring each person to
+take the hand of his neighbour; one of her hands fell to me, and I took
+it with a respect seldom surpassed in touching the hand of woman; for I
+felt that she was cheering the rough path of a soldier's life, and,
+among scenes calculated to harden the heart, reminding them of mothers,
+and sisters, and sweethearts at home.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+    A Dreary Funeral.--Marathon.--Mount Pentelicus.--A Mystery.--Woes of
+      a Lover.--Reveries of Glory.--Scio's Rocky Isle.--A blood-stained
+      Page of History.--A Greek Prelate.--Desolation.--The Exile's
+      Return.
+
+
+EARLY in the morning I again started. In a little khan at Eleusis I saw
+three or four Bavarian soldiers drinking, and ridiculing the Greek
+proprietor, calling him patrioti and capitani. The Greek bore their
+gibes and sneers without a word; but there was a deadly expression in
+his look, which seemed to say, "I bide my time;" and I remember then
+thinking that the Bavarians were running up an account which would one
+day be settled with blood. In fact, the soldiers went too far; and, as I
+thought, to show off before me, one of them slapped the Greek on the
+back, and made him spill a measure of wine which he was carrying to a
+customer, when the latter turned upon him like lightning, threw him
+down, and would have strangled him if he had not been pulled off by the
+by-standers. Indeed, the Greeks had already learned both their
+intellectual and physical superiority over the Bavarians; and, a short
+time before, a party of soldiers sent to subdue a band of Maniote
+insurgents had been captured, and, after a farce of selling them at
+auction at a dollar a head, were kicked, and whipped, and sent off.
+
+About four o'clock I arrived once more at Athens, dined at my old hotel,
+and passed the evening at Mr. Hill's.
+
+The next day I lounged about the city. I had been more than a month
+without my carpet-bag, and the way in which I managed during that time
+is a thing between my travelling companions and myself. A prudent
+Scotchman used to boast of a careful nephew, who, in travelling, instead
+of leaving some of his clothes at every hotel on the road, always
+brought home _more_ than he took away with him. I was a model of this
+kind of carefulness while my opportunities lasted; but my companions had
+left me, and this morning I went to the bazars and bought a couple of
+shirts. Dressed up in one of them, I strolled outside the walls; and,
+while sitting in the shadow of a column of the Temple of Jupiter, I saw
+coming from the city, through Hadrian's Gate, four men, carrying a
+burden by the corners of a coverlet, followed by another having in his
+hands a bottle and spade. As they approached I saw they were bearing the
+dead body of a woman, whom, on joining them, I found to be the wife of
+the man who followed. He was an Englishman or an American (for he called
+himself either, as occasion required) whom I had seen at my hotel and at
+Mr. Hill's; had been a sailor, and probably deserted from his ship, and
+many years a resident of Athens, where he married a Greek woman. He was
+a thriftless fellow, and, as he told me, had lived principally by the
+labour of his wife, who washed for European travellers. He had been so
+long in Greece, and his connexions and associations were so thoroughly
+Greek, that he had lost that sacredness of feeling so powerful both in
+Englishmen and Americans of every class in regard to the decent burial
+of the dead, though he did say that he had expected to procure a coffin,
+but the police of the city had sent officers to take her away and bury
+her. There was something so forlorn in the appearance of this rude
+funeral, that my first impulse was to turn away; but I checked myself
+and followed. Several times the Greeks laid the corpse on the ground and
+stopped to rest, chattering indifferently on various subjects. We
+crossed the Ilissus, and at some distance came to a little Greek chapel
+excavated in the rock. The door was so low that we were obliged to stoop
+on entering, and when within we could hardly stand upright. The Greeks
+laid down the body in front of the altar; the husband went for the
+priest, the Greeks to select a place for a grave, and I remained alone
+with the dead. I sat in the doorway, looking inside upon the corpse, and
+out upon the Greeks digging the grave. In a short time the husband
+returned with a priest, one of the most miserable of that class of
+"blind teachers" who swarm in Greece. He immediately commenced the
+funeral service, which continued nearly an hour, by which time the
+Greeks returned and, taking up the body, carried it to the graveside and
+laid it within. I knew the hollow sound of the first clod of earth which
+falls upon the lid of a coffin, and shrunk from its leaden fall upon the
+uncovered body. I turned away, and, when at some distance, looked back
+and saw them packing the earth over the grave. I never saw so dreary a
+burial-scene.
+
+Returning, I passed by the ancient stadium of Herodes Atticus, once
+capable of containing twenty-five thousand spectators; the whole
+structure was covered with the purest white marble. All remains of its
+magnificence are now gone; but I could still trace on the excavated side
+of the hill its ancient form of a horseshoe, and walked through the
+subterraneous passage by which the vanquished in the games retreated
+from the presence of the spectators.
+
+Returning to the city, I learned that an affray had just taken place
+between some Greeks and Bavarians, and, hurrying to the place near the
+bazars, found a crowd gathered round a soldier who had been stabbed by a
+Greek. According to the Greeks, the affair had been caused by the
+habitual insults and provocation given by the Bavarians, the soldier
+having wantonly knocked a drinking-cup out of the Greek's hand while he
+was drinking. In the crowd I met a lounging Italian (the same who wanted
+me to come up from Padras by water), a good-natured and good-for-nothing
+fellow, and skilled in tongues; and going with him into a coffee-house
+thronged with Bavarians and Europeans of various nations in the service
+of government, heard another story, by which it appeared that the
+Greeks, as usual, were in the wrong, and that the poor Bavarian had been
+stabbed without the slightest provocation, purely from the Greeks' love
+of stabbing. Tired of this, I left the scene of contention, and a few
+streets off met an Athenian, a friend of two or three days' standing,
+and, stopping under a window illuminated by a pair of bright eyes from
+above, happened to express my admiration of the lady who owned them,
+when he tested the strength of my feelings on the subject by asking me
+if I would like to marry her. I was not prepared at the moment to give
+precisely that proof, and he followed up his blow by telling me that, if
+I wished it, he would engage to secure her for me before the next
+morning. The Greeks are almost universally poor. With them every
+traveller is rich, and they are so thoroughly civilized as to think that
+a rich man is, of course, a good match.
+
+Toward evening I paid my last visit to the Acropolis. Solitude, silence,
+and sunset are the nursery of sentiment. I sat down on a broken capital
+of the Parthenon; the owl was already flitting among the ruins. I looked
+up at the majestic temple and down at the ruined and newly-regenerated
+city, and said to myself, "Lots must rise in Athens!" I traced the line
+of the ancient walls, ran a railroad to the Piraeus, and calculated the
+increase on "up-town lots" from building the king's palace near the
+Garden of Plato. Shall I or shall I not "make an operation" in Athens?
+The court has removed here, the country is beautiful, climate fine,
+government fixed, steamboats are running, all the world is coming, and
+lots must rise. I bought (in imagination) a tract of good tillable land,
+laid it out in streets, had my Plato, and Homer, and Washington Places,
+and Jackson Avenue, built a row of houses to improve the neighbourhood
+where nobody lived, got maps lithographed, and sold off at auction. I
+was in the right condition to "go in," for I had nothing to lose; but,
+unfortunately, the Greeks were very far behind the spirit of the age,
+knew nothing of the beauties of the credit system, and could not be
+brought to dispose of their consecrated soil "on the usual terms," _ten
+per cent. down, balance on bond and mortgage_, so, giving up the idea,
+at dark I bade farewell to the ruins of the Acropolis, and went to my
+hotel to dinner.
+
+Early the next morning I started for the field of Marathon. I engaged a
+servant at the hotel to accompany me, but he disappointed me, and I set
+out alone with my muleteer. Our road lay along the base of Mount
+Hymettus, on the borders of the plain of Attica, shaded by thick groves
+of olives. At noon I was on the summit of a lofty mountain, at the base
+of which, still and quiet as if it had never resounded with the shock of
+war, the great battle-ground of the Greeks and Persians extended to the
+sea. The descent was one of the finest things I met with in Greece;
+wild, rugged, and, in fact, the most magnificent kind of mountain
+scenery. At the foot of the mountain we came to a ruined convent,
+occupied by an old white-bearded monk. I stopped there and lunched, the
+old man laying before me his simple store of bread and olives, and
+looking on with pleasure at my voracious appetite.
+
+[Illustration: Mound of Marathon.]
+
+This over, I hurried to the battle-field. Toward the centre is a large
+mound of earth, erected over the Athenians who fell in the battle. I
+made directly for this mound, ascended it, and threw the reins loose
+over my horse's neck; and, sitting on the top, read the account of the
+battle in Herodotus.
+
+After all, is not our reverence misplaced, or, rather does not our
+respect for deeds hallowed by time render us comparatively unjust? The
+Greek revolution teems with instances of as desperate courage, as great
+love of country, as patriotic devotion, as animated the men of Marathon,
+and yet the actors in these scenes are not known beyond the boundaries
+of their native land. Thousands whose names were never heard of, and
+whose bones, perhaps, never received burial, were as worthy of an
+eternal monument as they upon whose grave I sat. Still that mound is a
+hallowed sepulchre; and the shepherd who looks at it from his mountain
+home, the husbandman who drives his plough to its base, and the sailor
+who hails it as a landmark from the deck of his caique, are all reminded
+of the glory of their ancestors. But away with the mouldering relics of
+the past. Give me the green grave of Marco Bozzaris. I put Herodotus in
+my pocket, gathered a few blades of grass as a memorial, descended the
+mound, betook myself to my saddle, and swept the plain on a gallop, from
+the mountain to the sea.
+
+It is about two miles in width, and bounded by rocky heights enclosing
+it at either extremity. Toward the shore the ground is marshy, and at
+the place where the Persians escaped to their ships are some unknown
+ruins; in several places the field is cultivated, and toward evening, on
+my way to the village of Marathon, I saw a Greek ploughing; and when I
+told him that I was an American, he greeted me as the friend of Greece.
+It is the last time I shall recur to this feeling; but it was music to
+my heart to hear a ploughman on immortal Marathon sound in my ears the
+praises of my country.
+
+I intended to pass the night at the village of Marathon; but every khan
+was so cluttered up with goats, chickens, and children, that I rode
+back to the monastery at the foot of the mountain. It was nearly dark
+when I reached it. The old monk was on a little eminence at the door of
+his chapel, clapping two boards together to call his flock to vespers.
+With his long white beard, his black cap and long black gown, his
+picturesque position and primitive occupation, he seemed a guardian
+spirit hovering on the borders of Marathon in memory of its ancient
+glory. He came down to the monastery to receive me, and, giving me a
+paternal welcome, and spreading a mat on the floor, returned to his
+chapel. I followed, and saw his little flock assemble. The ploughman
+came up from the plain and the shepherd came down from the mountain; the
+old monk led the way to the altar, and all kneeled down and prostrated
+themselves on the rocky floor. I looked at them with deep interest. I
+had seen much of Greek devotion in cities and villages, but it was a
+spectacle of extraordinary interest to see these wild and lawless men
+assembled on this lonely mountain to worship in all sincerity, according
+to the best light they had, the god of their fathers. I could not follow
+them in their long and repeated kneelings and prostrations; but my young
+Greek, as if to make amends for me, and, at the same time, to show how
+they did things in Athens, led the van. The service over, several of
+them descended with us to the monastery; the old monk spread his mat,
+and again brought out his frugal store of bread and olives. I
+contributed what I had brought from Athens, and we made our evening
+meal. If I had judged from appearances, I should have felt rather uneasy
+at sleeping among such companions; but the simple fact of having seen
+them at their devotions gave me confidence. Though I had read and heard
+that the Italian bandit went to the altar to pray forgiveness for the
+crimes he intended to commit, and, before washing the stains from his
+hands, hung up the bloody poniard upon a pillar of the church, and asked
+pardon for murder, I always felt a certain degree of confidence in him
+who practised the duties of his religion, whatever that religion might
+be. I leaned on my elbow, and, by the blaze of the fire, read Herodotus,
+while my muleteer, as I judged from the frequent repetition of the word
+Americanos, entertained them with long stories about me. By degrees the
+blaze of the fire died away, the Greeks stretched themselves out for
+sleep, the old monk handed me a bench about four inches high for a
+pillow, and, wrapping myself in my cloak, in a few moments I was
+wandering in the land of dreams.
+
+Before daylight my companions were in motion. I intended to return by
+the marble quarries on the Pentelican Mountain; and crying "Cavallo" in
+the ear of my still sleeping muleteer, in a few minutes I bade farewell
+for ever to the good old monk of Marathon. Almost from the door of the
+monastery we commenced ascending the mountain. It was just peep of day,
+the weather raw and cold, the top of the mountain covered with clouds,
+and in an hour I found myself in the midst of them. The road was so
+steep and dangerous that I could not ride; a false step of my horse
+might have thrown me over a precipice several hundred feet deep; and the
+air was so keen and penetrating, that, notwithstanding the violent
+exercise of walking, I was perfectly chilled. The mist was so dense,
+too, that, when my guide was a few paces in advance, I could not see
+him, and I was literally groping my way through the clouds. I had no
+idea where I was nor of the scene around me, but I felt that I was in a
+measure lifted above the earth. The cold blasts drove furiously along
+the sides of the mountain, whistled against the precipices, and
+bellowed in the hollows of the rocks, sometimes driving so furiously
+that my horse staggered and fell back. I was almost bewildered in
+struggling blindly against them; but, just before reaching the top of
+the mountain, the thick clouds were lifted as if by an invisible hand,
+and I saw once more the glorious sun pouring his morning beams upon a
+rich valley extending a great distance to the foot of the Pentelican
+Mountain. About half way down we came to a beautiful stream, on the
+banks of which we took out our bread and olives. Our appetites were
+stimulated by the mountain air, and we divided till our last morsel was
+gone.
+
+At the foot of the mountain, lying between it and Mount Pentelicus, was
+a large monastery, occupied by a fraternity of monks. We entered and
+walked through it, but found no one to receive us. In a field near by we
+saw one of the monks, from whom we obtained a direction to the quarries.
+Moving on to the foot of the mountain, which rises with a peaked summit
+into the clouds, we commenced ascending, and soon came upon the strata
+of beautiful white marble for which Mount Pentelicus has been celebrated
+thousands of years. Excavations appear to have been made along the whole
+route, and on the roadside were blocks, and marks caused by the friction
+of the heavy masses transported to Athens. The great quarries are toward
+the summit. The surface has been cut perpendicularly smooth, perhaps
+eighty or a hundred feet high, and one hundred and fifty or two hundred
+feet in width, and excavations have been made within to an unknown
+extent. Whole cities might have been built with the materials taken
+away, and yet by comparison with what is left, there is nothing gone. In
+front are entrances to a large chamber, in one corner of which, on the
+right, is a chapel with the painted figure of the Virgin to receive the
+Greeks' prayers. Within are vast humid caverns, over which the wide roof
+awfully extends, adorned with hollow tubes like icicles, while a small
+transparent petrifying stream trickles down the rock. On one side are
+small chambers communicating with subterraneous avenues, used, no doubt,
+as places of refuge during the revolution, or as the haunts of robbers.
+Bones of animals and stones blackened with smoke showed that but lately
+some part had been occupied as a habitation. The great excavations
+around, blocks of marble lying as they fell, perhaps, two thousand years
+ago, and the appearances of having been once a scene of immense industry
+and labour, stand in striking contrast with the desolation and solitude
+now existing. Probably the hammer and chisel will never be heard there
+more, great temples will no more be raised, and modern genius will
+never, like the Greeks of old, make the rude blocks of marble speak.
+
+[Illustration: Quarries of Pentelicus.]
+
+At dark I was dining at the Hotel de France, when Mr. Hill came over
+with the welcome intelligence that my carpet-bag had arrived. On it was
+pinned a large paper, with the words "Huzzah!" "Huzzah!" "Huzzah!" by my
+friend Maxwell, who had met it on horse back on the shores of the Gulf
+of Lepanto, travelling under the charge of a Greek in search of me. I
+opened it with apprehension, and, to my great satisfaction, found
+undisturbed the object of my greatest anxiety, the precious notebook
+from which I now write, saved from the peril of an anonymous publication
+or of being used up for gun-waddings.
+
+The next morning, before I was up, I heard a gentle rap at my door,
+which was followed by the entrance of a German, a missionary, whom I had
+met several times at Mr. Hill's, and who had dined with me once at my
+hotel. I apologized for being caught in bed, and told him that he must
+possess a troubled spirit to send him so early from his pillow. He
+answered that I was right; that he did indeed possess a troubled spirit;
+and closing the door carefully, came to my bedside, and said he had
+conceived a great regard for me, and intended confiding in me an
+important trust. I had several times held long conversations with him at
+Mr. Hill's, and very little to my edification, as his English was hardly
+intelligible; but I felt pleased at having, without particularly
+striving for it, gained the favourable opinion of one who bore the
+character of a very learned and a very good man. I requested him to step
+into the dining-room while I rose and dressed myself; but he put his
+hand upon my breast to keep me down, and drawing a chair, began, "You
+are going to Smyrna." He then paused, but, after some moments of
+hesitation, proceeded to say that the first name I would hear on my
+arrival there would be his own; that, unfortunately, it was in
+everybody's mouth. My friend was a short and very ugly middle-aged man,
+with a very large mouth, speaking English with the most disagreeable
+German sputter, lame from a fall, and, altogether, of a most
+uninteresting and unsentimental aspect; and he surprised me much by
+laying before me a veritable _affaire du coeur_. It was so foreign to my
+expectations, that I should as soon have expected to be made a confidant
+in a love affair by the Archbishop of York. After a few preliminaries he
+went into particulars; lavished upon the lady the usual quota of charms
+"in such case made and provided," but was uncertain, rambling, and
+discursive in regard to the position he held in her regard. At first I
+understood that it was merely the old story, a flirtation and a victim;
+then that they were very near being married, which I afterward
+understood to be only so near as this, that he was willing and she not;
+and, finally, it settled down into the every-day occurrence, the lady
+smiled, while the parents and a stout two-fisted brother frowned. I
+could but think, if such a homely expression may be introduced in
+describing these tender passages, that he had the boot on the wrong leg,
+and that the parents were much more likely than the daughter to favour
+such a suitor. However, on this point I held my peace. The precise
+business he wished to impose on me was, immediately on my arrival in
+Smyrna to form the acquaintance of the lady and her family, and use all
+my exertions in his favour. I told him I was an entire stranger in
+Smyrna, and could not possibly have any influence with the parties; but,
+being urged, promised him that, if I could interfere without intruding
+myself improperly, he should have the benefit of my mediation. At first
+he intended giving me a letter to the lady, but afterward determined to
+give me one to the Rev. Mr. Brewer, an American missionary, who, he
+said, was a particular friend of his, and intimate with the beloved and
+her family, and acquainted with the whole affair. Placing himself at my
+table, on which were pens, ink, and paper, he proceeded to write his
+letter, while I lay quietly till he turned over the first side, when,
+tired of waiting, I rose, dressed myself, packed up, and, before he had
+finished, stood by the table with my carpet-bag, waiting until he should
+have done to throw in my writing materials. He bade me good-by after I
+had mounted my horse to leave, and, when I turned back to look at him, I
+could not but feel for the crippled, limping victim of the tender
+passion, though, in honesty, and with the best wishes for his success, I
+did not think it would help his suit for the lady to see him.
+
+An account of my journey from Athens to Smyrna, given in a letter to
+friends at home, was published during my absence and without my
+knowledge, in successive numbers of the American Monthly Magazine, and
+perhaps the favourable notice taken of it had some influence in inducing
+me to write a book. I give the papers as they were then published.
+
+
+                                                  _Smyrna, April_, 1835.
+
+  MY DEAR ****,
+
+    I have just arrived at this place, and I live to tell it. I have
+    been three weeks performing a voyage usually made in three days. It
+    has been tedious beyond all things; but, as honest Dogberry would
+    say, if it had been ten times as tedious, I could find it in my
+    heart to bestow it all upon you. To begin at the beginning: on the
+    morning of the second instant, I and my long-lost carpet-bag left
+    the eternal city of Athens, without knowing exactly whither we were
+    going, and sincerely regretted by Miltiades Panajotti, the garcon of
+    the hotel. We wound round the foot of the Acropolis, and, giving a
+    last look to its ruined temples, fell into the road to the Piraeus,
+    and in an hour found ourselves at that ancient harbour, almost as
+    celebrated in the history of Greece as Athens itself. Here we took
+    counsel as to farther movements, and concluded to take passage in a
+    caique to sail that evening for Syra, being advised that that island
+    was a great place of rendezvous for vessels, and that from it we
+    could procure a passage to any place we chose. Having disposed of my
+    better half (I may truly call it so, for what is man without
+    pantaloons, vests, and shirts), I took a little sailboat to float
+    around the ancient harbour and muse upon its departed glories.
+
+    The day that I lingered there before bidding farewell, perhaps for
+    ever, to the shores of Greece, is deeply impressed upon my mind. I
+    had hardly begun to feel the magic influence of the land of poets,
+    patriots, and heroes, until the very moment of my departure. I had
+    travelled in the most interesting sections of the country, and found
+    all enthusiasm dead within me when I had expected to be carried away
+    by the remembrance of the past; but here, I know not how it was,
+    without any effort, and in the mere act of whiling away my time, all
+    that was great, and noble, and beautiful in her history rushed upon
+    me at once; the sun and the breeze, the land and the sea,
+    contributed to throw a witchery around me; and in a rich and
+    delightful frame of mind, I found myself among the monuments of her
+    better days, gliding by the remains of the immense wall erected to
+    enclose the harbour during the Peloponnesian war, and was soon
+    floating upon the classic waters of Salamis.
+
+    If I had got there by accident it would not have occurred to me to
+    dream of battles and all the fierce panoply of war upon that calm
+    and silvery surface. But I knew where I was, and my blood was up. I
+    was among the enduring witnesses of the Athenian glory. Behind me
+    was the ancient city, the Acropolis, with its ruined temples, the
+    telltale monuments of by-gone days, towering above the plain; here
+    was the harbour from which the galleys carried to the extreme parts
+    of the then known world the glories of the Athenian name; before me
+    was unconquered Salamis; here the invading fleet of Xerxes; there
+    the little navy, the last hope of the Athenians; here the island of
+    AEgina, from which Aristides, forgetting his quarrel with
+    Themistocles, embarked in a rude boat, during the hottest of the
+    battle, for the ship of the latter; and there the throne of Xerxes,
+    where the proud invader stationed himself as spectator of the battle
+    that was to lay the rich plain of Attica at his feet. There could be
+    no mistake about localities; the details have been handed down from
+    generation to generation, and are as well known to the Greeks of the
+    present day as they were to their fathers. So I went to work
+    systematically, and fought the whole battle through. I gave the
+    Persians ten to one, but I made the Greeks fight like tigers; I
+    pointed them to their city; to their wives and children; I brought
+    on long strings of little innocents, urging them as in the farce,
+    "sing out, young uns;" I carried old Themistocles among the Persians
+    like a modern Greek fireship among the Turks; I sunk ship after
+    ship, and went on demolishing them at a most furious rate, until I
+    saw old Xerxes scudding from his throne, and the remnant of the
+    Persian fleet scampering away to the tune of "devil take the
+    hindmost." By this time I had got into the spirit of the thing; and
+    moving rapidly over that water, once red with blood of thousands
+    from the fields of Asia, I steered for the shore and mounted the
+    vacant throne of Xerxes. This throne is on a hill near the shore,
+    not very high, and as pretty a place as a man could have selected
+    to see his friends whipped and keep out of harm's way himself; for
+    you will recollect that in those days there was no gunpowder nor
+    cannon balls, and, consequently, no danger from long chance shots. I
+    selected a particular stone, which I thought it probable Xerxes, as
+    a reasonable man, and with an eye to perspective, might have chosen
+    as his seat on the eventful day of the battle; and on that same
+    stone sat down to meditate upon the vanity of all earthly greatness.
+    But, most provokingly, whenever I think of Xerxes, the first thing
+    that presents itself to my mind is the couplet in the Primer,
+
+      "Xerxes the Great did die,
+      And so must you and I."
+
+    This is a very sensible stanza, no doubt, and worthy of always being
+    borne in mind; but it was not exactly what I wanted. I tried to
+    drive it away; but the more I tried, the more it stuck to me. It was
+    all in vain. I railed at early education, and resolved that acquired
+    knowledge hurts a man's natural faculties; for if I had not received
+    the first rudiments of education, I should not have been bothered
+    with the vile couplet, and should have been able to do something on
+    my own account. As it was, I lost one of the best opportunities ever
+    a man had for moralizing; and you, my dear ----, have lost at least
+    three pages. I give you, however, all the materials; put yourself on
+    the throne of Xerxes, and do what you can, and may your early
+    studies be no stumbling-block in your way. As for me, vexed and
+    disgusted with myself, I descended the hill as fast as the great
+    king did of yore, and jumping into my boat, steered for the farthest
+    point of the Piraeus; from the throne of _Xerxes_ to the tomb of
+    Themistocles.
+
+    I was prepared to do something here. This was not merely a place
+    where he had been; I was to tread upon the earth that covered his
+    bones; here were his ashes; here was all that remained of the best
+    and bravest of the Greeks, save his immortal name. As I approached I
+    saw the large square stones that enclosed his grave, and mused upon
+    his history; the deliverer of his country, banished, dying an exile,
+    his bones begged by his repenting countrymen, and buried with
+    peculiar propriety near the shore of the sea commanding a full view
+    of the scene of his naval glory. For more than two thousand years
+    the waves have almost washed over his grave, the sun has shone and
+    the winds have howled over him; while, perhaps, his spirit has
+    mingled with the sighing of the winds and the murmur of the waters,
+    in moaning over the long captivity of his countrymen; perhaps, too,
+    his spirit has been with them in their late struggle for liberty;
+    has hovered over them in the battle and the breeze, and is now
+    standing sentinel over his beloved and liberated country. I
+    approached as to the grave of one who will never die. His great
+    name, his great deeds, hallowed by the lapse of so many ages; the
+    scene--I looked over the wall with a feeling amounting to reverence,
+    when, directly before me, the first thing I saw, the only thing I
+    could see, so glaring and conspicuous that nothing else could fix my
+    eye, was a tall, stiff, wooden headboard, painted white, with black
+    letters, to the memory of an Englishman with as unclassical a name
+    as that of _John Johnson_. My eyes were blasted with the sight; I
+    was ferocious; I railed at him as if he had buried himself there
+    with his own hands. What had he to do there? I railed at his
+    friends. Did they expect to give him a name by mingling him with the
+    ashes of the immortal dead? Did they expect to steal immortality
+    like fire from the flint? I dashed back to my boat, steered directly
+    for the harbour, gave sentiment to the dogs, and in half an hour was
+    eating a most voracious and spiteful dinner.
+
+    In the evening I embarked on board my little caique. She was one of
+    the most rakish of that rakish description of vessels. I drew my
+    cloak around me and stretched myself on the deck as we glided
+    quietly out of the harbour; saw the throne of Xerxes, the island of
+    Salamis, and the shores of Greece gradually fade from view; looked
+    at the dusky forms of the Greeks in their capotes lying asleep
+    around me; at the helmsman sitting cross-legged at his post,
+    apparently without life or motion; gave one thought to home, and
+    fell asleep.
+
+    In the morning I began to examine my companions. They were, in all,
+    a captain and six sailors, probably all part owners, and two
+    passengers from one of the islands, not one of whom could speak any
+    other language than Greek. My knowledge of that language was
+    confined to a few rolling hexameters, which had stuck by me in some
+    unaccountable way as a sort of memento of college days. These,
+    however, were of no particular use, and, consequently, I was pretty
+    much tongue-tied during the whole voyage. I amused myself by making
+    my observations quietly upon my companions, as they did more openly
+    upon me, for I frequently heard the word "Americanos" pass among
+    them. I had before had occasion to see something of Greek sailors,
+    and to admire their skill and general good conduct, and I was
+    fortified in my previous opinion by what I saw of my present
+    companions. Their temperance in eating and drinking is very
+    remarkable, and all my comparisons between them and European sailors
+    were very much in their favour. Indeed, I could not help thinking,
+    as they sat collectively, Turkish fashion, around their frugal meal
+    of bread, caviari, and black olives, that I had never seen finer
+    men. Their features were regular, in that style which we to this day
+    recognise as Grecian; their figures good, and their faces wore an
+    air of marked character and intelligence; and these advantages of
+    person were set off by the island costume, the fez or red cloth cap,
+    with a long black tassel at the top, a tight vest and jacket,
+    embroidered and without collars, large Turkish trousers coming down
+    a little below the knee, legs bare, sharp-pointed slippers, and a
+    sash around the waist, tied under the left side, with long ends
+    hanging down, and a knife sticking out about six inches. There was
+    something bold and daring in their appearance; indeed, I may say,
+    rakish and piratical; and I could easily imagine that, if the
+    Mediterranean should again become infested with pirates, my friends
+    would cut no contemptible figure among them. But I must not detain
+    you as long on the voyage as I was myself. The sea was calm; we had
+    hardly any wind; our men were at the oars nearly all the time, and,
+    passing slowly by AEgina, Cape Sunium, with its magnificent ruins
+    mournfully overlooking the sea, better known in modern times as
+    Colonna's Height and the scene of Falconer's shipwreck, passing also
+    the island of Zea, the ancient Chios, Thermia, and other islands of
+    lesser note, in the afternoon of the third day we arrived at Syra.
+
+    With regard to Syra I shall say but little; I am as loath to linger
+    about it now as I was to stay there then. The fact is, I cannot
+    think of the place with any degree of satisfaction. The evening of
+    my arrival I heard, through a Greek merchant to whom I had a letter
+    from a friend in Athens, of a brig to sail the next day for Smyrna;
+    and I lay down on a miserable bed in a miserable locanda, in the
+    confident expectation of resuming my journey in the morning. Before
+    morning, however, I was roused by "blustering Boreas" rushing
+    through the broken casement of my window; and for more than a week
+    all the winds ever celebrated in the poetical history of Greece were
+    let loose upon the island. We were completely cut off from all
+    communication with the rest of the world. Not a vessel could leave
+    the port, while vessel after vessel put in there for shelter. I do
+    not mean to go into any details; indeed, for my own credit's sake I
+    dare not; for if I were to draw a true picture of things as I found
+    them; if I were to write home the truth, I should be considered as
+    utterly destitute of taste and sentiment; I should be looked upon as
+    a most unpoetical dog, who ought to have been at home poring over
+    the revised statutes instead of breathing the pure air of poetry and
+    song. And now, if I were writing what might by chance come under the
+    eyes of a sentimental young lady or a young gentleman in his teens,
+    the truth would be the last thing I would think of telling. No,
+    though my teeth chatter, though a cold sweat comes over me when I
+    think of it, I would go through the usual rhapsody, and huzzah for
+    "the land of the East and the clime of the sun." Indeed, I have a
+    scrap in my portfolio, written with my cloak and greatcoat on, and
+    my feet over a brazier, beginning in that way. But to you, my
+    dear ----, who know my touching sensibilities, and who, moreover,
+    have a tender regard for my character and will not publish me, I
+    would as soon tell the truth as not. And I therefore do not hesitate
+    to say, but do not whisper it elsewhere, that in one of the
+    beautiful islands of the AEgean; in the heart of the Cyclades, in the
+    sight of Delos, and Paros, and Antiparos, any one of which is enough
+    to throw one who has never seen them into raptures with their
+    fancied beauties, here, in this paradise of a young man's dreams, in
+    the middle of April, I would have hailed "chill November's surly
+    blast" as a zephyr; I would have exchanged all the beauties of this
+    balmy clime for the sunny side of Kamschatka; I would have given my
+    room and the whole Island of Syra for a third-rate lodging in
+    Communipaw. It was utterly impossible to walk out, and equally
+    impossible to stay in my room; the house, to suit that delightful
+    climate, being built without windows or window-shutters. If I could
+    forget the island, I could remember with pleasure the society I met
+    there. I passed my mornings in the library of Mr. R., one of our
+    worthy American missionaries; and my evenings at the house of Mr.
+    W., the British consul. This gentleman married a Greek lady of
+    Smyrna, and had three beautiful daughters, more than half Greeks in
+    their habits and feelings; one of them is married to an English
+    baronet, another to a Greek merchant of Syra, and the third--.
+
+    On the ninth day the wind fell, the sun once more shone brightly,
+    and in the evening I embarked on board a rickety brig for Smyrna. At
+    about six o'clock P.M. thirty or forty vessels were quietly crawling
+    out of the harbour like rats after a storm. It was almost a calm
+    when we started: in about two hours we had a favourable breeze; we
+    turned in, going at the rate of eight miles an hour, and rose with a
+    strong wind dead ahead. We beat about all that day; the wind
+    increased to a gale, and toward evening we took shelter in the
+    harbour of Scio.
+
+    The history of this beautiful little island forms one of the
+    bloodiest pages in the history of the world, and one glance told
+    that dreadful history. Once the most beautiful island of the
+    Archipelago, it is now a mass of ruins. Its fields, which once
+    "budded and blossomed as the rose," have become waste places; its
+    villages are deserted, its towns are in ruins, its inhabitants
+    murdered, in captivity, and in exile. Before the Greek revolution
+    the Greeks of Scio were engaged in extensive commerce, and ranked
+    among the largest merchants in the Levant. Though living under hard
+    taskmasters, subject to the exactions of a rapacious pacha, their
+    industry and enterprise, and the extraordinary fertility of their
+    island, enabled them to pay a heavy tribute to the Turks and to
+    become rich themselves. For many years they had enjoyed the
+    advantages of a college, with professors of high literary and
+    scientific attainments, and their library was celebrated throughout
+    all that country; it was, perhaps, the only spot in Greece where
+    taste and learning still held a seat. But the island was far more
+    famed for its extraordinary natural beauty and fertility. Its bold
+    mountains and its soft valleys, the mildness of its climate and the
+    richness of its productions, bound the Greeks to its soil by a tie
+    even stronger than the chain of their Turkish masters. In the early
+    part of the revolution the Sciotes took no part with their
+    countrymen in their glorious struggle for liberty. Forty of their
+    principal citizens were given up as hostages, and they were suffered
+    to remain in peace. Wrapped in the rich beauties of their island,
+    they forgot the freedom of their fathers and their own chains; and,
+    under the precarious tenure of a tyrant's will, gave themselves up
+    to the full enjoyment of all that wealth and taste could purchase.
+    We must not be too hard upon human nature; the cause seemed
+    desperate; they had a little paradise at stake; and if there is a
+    spot on earth, the risk of losing which could excuse men in
+    forgetting that they were slaves in a land where their fathers were
+    free, it is the Island of Scio. But the sword hung suspended over
+    them by a single hair. In an unexpected hour, without the least note
+    of preparation, they were startled by the thunder of the Turkish
+    cannon; fifty thousand Turks were let loose like bloodhounds upon
+    the devoted island. The affrighted Greeks lay unarmed and helpless
+    at their feet, but they lay at the feet of men who did not know
+    mercy even by name; at the feet of men who hungered and thirsted
+    after blood; of men, in comparison with whom wild beasts are as
+    lambs. The wildest beast of the forest may become gorged with blood;
+    not so with the Turks at Scio. Their appetite "grew with what it fed
+    on," and still longed for blood when there was not a victim left to
+    bleed. Women were ripped open, children dashed against the walls,
+    the heads of whole families stuck on pikes out of the windows of
+    their houses, while their murderers gave themselves up to riot and
+    plunder within. The forty hostages were hung in a row from the walls
+    of the castle; an indiscriminate and universal burning and massacre
+    took place; in a few days the ground was cumbered with the dead, and
+    one of the loveliest spots on earth was a pile of smoking ruins. Out
+    of a population of one hundred and ten thousand, sixty thousand are
+    supposed to have been murdered, twenty thousand to have escaped, and
+    thirty thousand to have been sold into slavery. Boys and young girls
+    were sold publicly in the streets of Smyrna and Constantinople at a
+    dollar a head. And all this did not arise from any irritated state
+    of feeling toward them. It originated in the cold-blooded,
+    calculating policy of the sultan, conceived in the same spirit which
+    drenched the streets of Constantinople with the blood of the
+    Janisaries; it was intended to strike terror into the hearts of the
+    Greeks, but the murderer failed in his aim. The groans of the
+    hapless Sciotes reached the ears of their countrymen, and gave a
+    headlong and irresistible impulse to the spirit then struggling to
+    be free. And this bloody tragedy was performed in our own days, and
+    in the face of the civilized world. Surely if ever Heaven visits in
+    judgment a nation for a nation's crimes, the burning and massacre at
+    Scio will be deeply visited upon the accursed Turks.
+
+    It was late in the afternoon when I landed, and my landing was under
+    peculiarly interesting circumstances. One of my fellow-passengers
+    was a native of the island, who had escaped during the massacre, and
+    now revisited it for the first time. He asked me to accompany him
+    ashore, promising to find some friends at whose house we might
+    sleep; but he soon found himself a stranger in his native island:
+    where he had once known everybody, he now knew nobody. The town was
+    a complete mass of ruins; the walls of many fine buildings were
+    still standing, crumbling to pieces, and still black with the fire
+    of the incendiary Turks. The town that had grown up upon the ruins
+    consisted of a row of miserable shantees, occupied as shops for the
+    sale of the mere necessaries of life, where the shopman slept on his
+    window-shutter in front. All my companion's efforts to find an
+    acquaintance who would give us a night's lodging were fruitless. We
+    were determined not to go on board the vessel, if possible to avoid
+    it; her last cargo had been oil, the odour of which still remained
+    about her. The weather would not permit us to sleep on deck, and the
+    cabin was intolerably disagreeable. To add to our unpleasant
+    position, and, at the same time, to heighten the cheerlessness of
+    the scene around us, the rain began to fall violently. Under the
+    guidance of a Greek we searched among the ruins for an apartment
+    where we might build a fire and shelter ourselves for the night, but
+    we searched in vain; the work of destruction was too complete.
+
+    Cold, and thoroughly drenched with rain, we were retracing our way
+    to our boat, when our guide told my companion that a Greek
+    archbishop had lately taken up his abode among the ruins. We
+    immediately went there, and found him occupying apartments,
+    partially repaired, in what had once been one of the finest houses
+    in Scio. The entrance through a large stone gateway was imposing;
+    the house was cracked from top to bottom by fire, nearly one half
+    had fallen down, and the stones lay scattered as they fell; but
+    enough remained to show that in its better days it had been almost a
+    palace. We ascended a flight of stone steps to a terrace, from which
+    we entered into a large hall perhaps thirty feet wide and fifty feet
+    long. On one side of this hall the wall had fallen down the whole
+    length, and we looked out upon the mass of ruins beneath. On the
+    other side, in a small room in one corner, we found the archbishop.
+    He was sick, and in bed with all his clothes on, according to the
+    universal custom here, but received us kindly. The furniture
+    consisted of an iron bedstead with a mattress, on which he lay with
+    a quilt spread over him, a wooden sofa, three wooden chairs, about
+    twenty books, and two large leather cases containing clothes,
+    napkins, and, probably, all his worldly goods. The rain came through
+    the ceiling in several places; the bed of the poor archbishop had
+    evidently been moved from time to time to avoid it, and I was
+    obliged to change my position twice. An air of cheerless poverty
+    reigned through the apartment. I could not help comparing his lot
+    with that of more favoured and, perhaps, not more worthy servants of
+    the church. It was a style so different from that of the priests at
+    Rome, the pope and his cardinals, with their gaudy equipages and
+    multitudes of footmen rattling to the Vatican; or from the pomp and
+    state of the haughty English prelates, or even from the comforts of
+    our own missionaries in different parts of this country, that I
+    could not help feeling deeply for the poor priest before me. But he
+    seemed contented and cheerful, and even thankful that, for the
+    moment, there were others worse off than himself, and that he had it
+    in his power to befriend them.
+
+    Sweetmeats, coffee, and pipes were served; and in about an hour we
+    were conducted to supper in a large room, also opening from the
+    hall. Our supper would not have tempted an epicure, but suited very
+    well an appetite whetted by exercise and travel. It consisted of a
+    huge lump of bread and a large glass of water for each of us,
+    caviari, black olives, and two kinds of Turkish sweetmeats. We were
+    waited upon by two priests: one of them, a handsome young man, not
+    more than twenty, with long black hair hanging over his shoulders
+    like a girl's, stood by with a napkin on his arm and a pewter
+    vessel, with which he poured water on our hands, receiving it again
+    in a basin. This was done both before and after eating; then came
+    coffee and pipes. During the evening the young priest brought out an
+    edition of Homer, and I surprised _him_, and astounded _myself_, by
+    being able to translate a passage in the Iliad. I translated it in
+    French, and my companion explained it in modern Greek to the young
+    priest. Our beds were cushions laid on a raised platform or divan
+    extending around the walls, with a quilt for each of us. In the
+    morning, after sweetmeats, coffee, and pipes, we paid our respects
+    to the good old archbishop, and took our leave. When we got out of
+    doors, finding that the wind was the same, and that there was no
+    possibility of sailing, my friend proposed a ride into the country.
+    We procured a couple of mules, took a small basket of provisions for
+    a collation, and started.
+
+    Our road lay directly along the shore; on one side the sea, and on
+    the other the ruins of houses and gardens, almost washed by the
+    waves. At about three miles' distance we crossed a little stream, by
+    the side of which we saw a sarcophagus, lately disinterred,
+    containing the usual vases of a Grecian tomb, including the piece of
+    money to pay Charon his ferriage over the river Styx, and six pounds
+    of dust; being all that remained of a _man_--perhaps one who had
+    filled a large space in the world; perhaps a hero--buried probably
+    more than two thousand years ago. After a ride of about five miles
+    we came to the ruins of a large village, the style of which would
+    anywhere have fixed the attention, as having been once a favoured
+    abode of wealth and taste. The houses were of brown stone, built
+    together, strictly in the Venetian style, after the models left
+    during the occupation of the island by the Venetians, large and
+    elegant, with gardens of three or four acres, enclosed by high walls
+    of the same kind of stone, and altogether in a style far superior to
+    anything I had seen in Greece. These were the country-houses and
+    gardens of the rich merchants of Scio. The manner of living among
+    the proprietors here was somewhat peculiar, and the ties that bound
+    them to this little village were peculiarly strong. This was the
+    family home; the community was essentially mercantile, and most of
+    their business transactions were carried on elsewhere. When there
+    were three or four brothers in a family, one would be in
+    Constantinople a couple of years, another at Trieste, and so on,
+    while another remained at home; so that those who were away, while
+    toiling amid the perplexities of business, were always looking to
+    the occasional family reunion; and all trusted to spend the evening
+    of their days among the beautiful gardens of Scio. What a scene for
+    the heart to turn to now! The houses and gardens were still there,
+    some standing almost entire, others black with smoke and crumbling
+    to ruins. But where were they who once occupied them? Where were
+    they who should now be coming out to rejoice in the return of a
+    friend and to welcome a stranger? An awful solitude, a stillness
+    that struck a cold upon the heart, reigned around us. We saw nobody;
+    and our own voices, and the tramping of our horses upon the deserted
+    pavements, sounded hollow and sepulchral in our ears. It was like
+    walking among the ruins of Pompeii; it was another city of the dead;
+    but there was a freshness about the desolation that seemed of
+    to-day; it seemed as though the inhabitants should be sleeping and
+    not dead. Indeed, the high walls of the gardens, and the outside of
+    the houses too, were generally so fresh and in so perfect a state,
+    that it seemed like riding through a handsome village at an early
+    hour before the inhabitants had risen; and I sometimes could not
+    help thinking that in an hour or two the streets would be thronged
+    with a busy population. My friend continued to conduct me through
+    the solitary streets; telling me, as we went along, that this was
+    the house of such a family, this of such a family, with some of
+    whose members I had become acquainted in Greece, until, stopping
+    before a large stone gateway, he dismounted at the gate of his
+    father's house. In that house he was born; there he had spent his
+    youth; he had escaped from it during the dreadful massacre, and
+    this was the first time of his revisiting it. What a tide of
+    recollections must have rushed upon him!
+
+    We entered through the large stone gateway into a courtyard
+    beautifully paved in mosaic in the form of a star, with small black
+    and white round stones. On our left was a large stone reservoir,
+    perhaps twenty-five feet square, still so perfect as to hold water,
+    with an arbour over it supported by marble columns; a venerable
+    grapevine completely covered the arbour. The garden covered an
+    extent of about four acres, filled with orange, lemon, almond, and
+    fig trees; overrun with weeds, roses, and flowers, growing together
+    in wild confusion. On the right was the house, and a melancholy
+    spectacle it was; the wall had fallen down on one side, and the
+    whole was black with smoke. We ascended a flight of stone steps,
+    with marble balustrades, to the terrace, a platform about twenty
+    feet square, overlooking the garden. From the terrace we entered the
+    saloon, a large room with high ceilings and fresco paintings on the
+    walls; the marks of the fire kindled on the stone floor still
+    visible, all the woodwork burned to a cinder, and the whole black
+    with smoke. It was a perfect picture of wanton destruction. The day,
+    too, was in conformity with the scene; the sun was obscured, the
+    wind blew through the ruined building, it rained, was cold and
+    cheerless. What were the feelings of my friend I cannot imagine; the
+    houses of three of his uncles were immediately adjoining; one of
+    these uncles was one of the forty hostages, and was hanged; the
+    other two were murdered; his father, a venerable-looking old man,
+    who came down to the vessel when we started to see him off, had
+    escaped to the mountains, from thence in a caique to Ipsara, and
+    from thence into Italy. I repeat it, I cannot imagine what were his
+    feelings; he spoke but little; they must have been too deep for
+    utterance. I looked at everything with intense interest; I wanted to
+    ask question after question, but could not, in mercy, probe his
+    bleeding wounds. We left the house and walked out into the garden.
+    It showed that there was no master's eye to watch over it; I plucked
+    an orange which had lost its flavour; the tree was withering from
+    want of care; our feet became entangled among weeds, and roses, and
+    rare hothouse plants growing wildly together. I said that he did not
+    talk much; but the little he did say amounted to volumes. Passing a
+    large vase in which a beautiful plant was running wildly over the
+    sides, he murmured indistinctly "the same vase" (le meme vase), and
+    once he stopped opposite a tree, and, turning to me, said, "This is
+    the only tree I do not remember." These and other little incidental
+    remarks showed how deeply all the particulars were engraved upon his
+    mind, and told me, plainer than words, that the wreck and ruin he
+    saw around him harrowed his very soul. Indeed, how could it be
+    otherwise? This was his father's house, the home of his youth, the
+    scene of his earliest, dearest, and fondest recollections. Busy
+    memory, that source of all our greatest pains as well as greatest
+    pleasures, must have pressed sorely upon him, must have painted the
+    ruined and desolate scene around him in colours even brighter, far
+    brighter, than they ever existed in; it must have called up the
+    faces of well-known and well-loved friends; indeed, he must have
+    asked himself, in bitterness and in anguish of spirit, "The friends
+    of my youth where are they?" while the fatal answer fell upon his
+    heart, "Gone murdered, in captivity and in exile."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+    A Noble Grecian Lady.--Beauty of Scio.--An Original.--Foggi.--A
+      Turkish Coffee-house.--Mussulman at Prayers.--Easter Sunday.--A
+      Greek Priest.--A Tartar Guide.--Turkish Ladies.--Camel
+      Scenes.--Sight of a Harem.--Disappointed Hopes.--A rare
+      Concert.--Arrival at Smyrna.
+
+
+(_Continuation of the Letter._)
+
+    WE returned to the house, and seeking out a room less ruined than
+    the rest, partook of a slight collation, and set out on a visit to a
+    relative of my Sciote friend.
+
+    On our way my companion pointed out a convent on the side of a hill,
+    where six thousand Greeks, who had been prevailed upon to come down
+    from the mountains to ransom themselves, were treacherously murdered
+    to a man; their unburied bones still whiten the ground within the
+    walls of the convent. Arriving at the house of his relative, we
+    entered through a large gateway into a handsome courtyard, with
+    reservoir, garden, &c., ruinous, though in better condition than
+    those we had seen before. This relative was a widow, of the noble
+    house of Mavrocordato, one of the first families in Greece, and
+    perhaps the most distinguished name in the Greek revolution. She had
+    availed herself of the sultan's amnesty to return; had repaired two
+    or three rooms, and sat down to end her days among the scenes of her
+    childhood, among the ruins of her father's house. She was now not
+    more than thirty; her countenance was remarkably pensive, and she
+    had seen enough to drive a smile for ever from her face. The meeting
+    between her and my friend was exceedingly affecting, particularly on
+    her part. She wept bitterly, though, with the elasticity peculiar to
+    the Greek character, the smile soon chased away the tear. She
+    invited us to spend the night there, pointing to the divan, and
+    promising us cushions and coverlets. We accepted her invitation, and
+    again set forth to ramble among the ruins.
+
+    I had heard that an American missionary had lately come into the
+    island, and was living somewhere in the neighbourhood. I found out
+    his abode, and went to see him. He was a young man from Virginia, by
+    the name of ****; had married a lady from Connecticut, who was
+    unfortunately sick in bed. He was living in one room in the corner
+    of a ruined building, but was then engaged in repairing a house into
+    which he expected to remove soon. As an American, the first whom
+    they had seen in that distant island, they invited me into the
+    sickroom. In a strange land, and among a people whose language they
+    did not understand, they seemed to be all in all to each other; and
+    I left them, probably for ever, in the earnest hope that the wife
+    might soon be restored to health, that hand in hand they might
+    sustain each other in the rough path before them.
+
+    Toward evening we returned to the house of my friend's relative. We
+    found there a nephew, a young man about twenty-two, and a cousin, a
+    man about thirty-five, both accidentally on a visit to the island.
+    As I looked at the little party before me, sitting around a brazier
+    of charcoal, and talking earnestly in Greek, I could hardly persuade
+    myself that what I had seen and heard that day was real. All that I
+    had ever read in history of the ferocity of the Turkish character;
+    all the wild stories of corsairs, of murdering, capturing, and
+    carrying into captivity, that I had ever read in romances, crowded
+    upon me, and I saw living witnesses that the bloodiest records of
+    history and the wildest creations of romance were not overcharged.
+    They could all testify in their own persons that these things were
+    true. They had all been stripped of their property, and had their
+    houses burned over their heads; had all narrowly escaped being
+    murdered; and had all suffered in their nearest and dearest
+    connexions. The nephew, then a boy nine years old, had been saved by
+    a maidservant, his father had been murdered; a brother, a sister,
+    and many of his cousins, were at that moment, and had been for
+    years, in slavery among the Turks; my friend, with his sister, had
+    found refuge in the house of the Austrian consul, and from thence
+    had escaped into Italy; the cousin was the son of one of the forty
+    hostages who were hung, and was the only member of his father's
+    family that escaped death; while our pensive and amiable hostess, a
+    bride of seventeen, had seen her young husband murdered before her
+    eyes; had herself been sold into slavery, and, after two years'
+    servitude, redeemed by her friends.
+
+    In the morning I rose early and walked out upon the terrace. Nature
+    had put on a different garb. The wind had fallen, and the sun was
+    shining warmly upon a scene of softness and luxuriance surpassing
+    all that I had ever heard or dreamed of the beauty of the islands of
+    Greece. Away with all that I said about Syra; skip the page. The
+    terrace overlooked the garden filled with orange, lemon, almond, and
+    fig trees; with plants, roses, and flowers of every description,
+    growing in luxuriant wildness. But the view was not confined to the
+    garden. Looking back to the harbour of Scio, was a bold range of
+    rugged mountains bounding the view on that side; on the right was
+    the sea, then calm as a lake; on both the other sides were ranges of
+    mountains, irregular and picturesque in their appearance, verdant
+    and blooming to their very summits; and within these limits, for an
+    extent of perhaps five miles, were continued gardens like that at
+    my feet, filled with the choicest fruit-trees, with roses and the
+    greatest variety of rare plants and flowers that ever unfolded their
+    beauties before the eyes of man; above all, the orange-trees, the
+    peculiar favourite of the island, then almost in full bloom, covered
+    with blossoms, from my elevated position on the terrace made the
+    whole valley appear an immense bed of flowers. All, too, felt the
+    freshening influence of the rain; and a gentle breeze brought to me
+    from this wilderness of sweets the most delicious perfume that ever
+    greeted the senses. Do not think me extravagant when I say that, in
+    your wildest dreams, you could never fancy so rich and beautiful a
+    scene. Even among ruins, that almost made the heart break, I could
+    hardly tear my eyes from it. It is one of the loveliest spots on
+    earth. It is emphatically a Paradise lost, for the hand of the Turks
+    is upon it; a hand that withers all that it touches. In vain does
+    the sultan invite the survivers, and the children made orphans by
+    his bloody massacre, to return; in vain do the fruits and the
+    flowers, the sun and the soil, invite them to return; their wounds
+    are still bleeding; they cannot forget that the wild beast's paw
+    might again be upon them, and that their own blood might one day
+    moisten the flowers which grow over the graves of their fathers. But
+    I must leave this place. I could hardly tear myself away then, and I
+    love to linger about it now. While I was enjoying the luxury of the
+    terrace a messenger came from the captain to call us on board. With
+    a feeling of the deepest interest I bade farewell, probably for
+    ever, to my sorrowing hostess and to the beautiful gardens of Scio.
+
+    We mounted our mules, and in an hour were at the port. My feelings
+    were so wrought upon that I felt my blood boil at the first Turk I
+    met in the streets. I felt that I should like to sacrifice him to
+    the shades of the murdered Greeks. I wondered that the Greeks did
+    not kill every one on the island. I wondered that they could endure
+    the sight of the turban. We found that the captain had hurried us
+    away unnecessarily. We could not get out of the harbour, and were
+    obliged to lounge about the town all day. We again made a circuit
+    among the ruins; examined particularly those of the library, where
+    we found an old woman who had once been an attendant there, living
+    in a little room in the cellar, completely buried under the stones
+    of the fallen building; and returning, sat down with a chibouk
+    before the door of an old Turkish coffee-house fronting the harbour.
+    Here I met an original in the person of the Dutch consul. He was an
+    old Italian, and had been in America during the revolutionary war as
+    _dragoman_, as he called it, to the Count de Grasse, though, from
+    his afterward incidentally speaking of the count as "my master," I
+    am inclined to think that the word dragoman, which here means a
+    person of great character and trust, may be interpreted as "valet de
+    chambre." The old consul was in Scio during the whole of the
+    massacre, and gave me many interesting particulars respecting it. He
+    hates the Greeks, and spoke with great indignation about the manner
+    in which their dead bodies lay strewed about the streets for months
+    after the massacre. "D--n them," he said, "he could not go anywhere
+    without stumbling over them." As I began to have some apprehensions
+    about being obliged to stay here another night, I thought I could
+    not employ my time better than in trying to work out of the consul
+    an invitation to spend it with him. But the old fellow was too much
+    for me. When I began to talk about the unpleasantness of being
+    obliged to spend the night on board, and the impossibility of
+    spending it on shore, _having no acquaintance_ there, he began to
+    talk poverty in the most up and down terms. I was a little
+    discouraged, but I looked at his military coat, his cocked hat and
+    cane, and considering his talk merely a sort of apology for the
+    inferior style of housekeeping I would find, was ingeniously working
+    things to a point, when he sent me to the right about by enumerating
+    the little instances of kindness he had received from strangers who
+    happened to visit the island; among others, from one--he had his
+    name in his pocketbook; he should never forget him; perhaps I had
+    heard of him--who, at parting, shook him affectionately by the hand,
+    and gave him a doubloon and a Spanish dollar. I hauled off from the
+    representative of the majesty of Holland, and perhaps, before this,
+    have been served up to some new visitor as the "mean, stingy
+    American."
+
+    In the evening we again got under weigh; before morning the wind was
+    again blowing dead ahead; and about midday we put into the harbour
+    of Foggi, a port in Asia Minor, and came to anchor under the walls
+    of the castle, under the blood-red Mussulman flag. We immediately
+    got into the boat to go ashore. This was my first port in Turkey. A
+    huge ugly African, marked with the smallpox, with two pistols and a
+    yataghan in his belt, stood on a little dock, waited till we were in
+    the act of landing, and then rushed forward, ferocious as a tiger
+    from his native sands, throwing up both his hands, and roaring out
+    "Quarantino." This was a new thing in Turkey. Heretofore the Turks,
+    with their fatalist notions, had never taken any precautions against
+    the plague; but they had become frightened by the terrible ravages
+    the disease was then making in Egypt, and imposed a quarantine upon
+    vessels coming from thence. We were, however, suffered to land, and
+    our first movement was to the coffee-house directly in front of the
+    dock. The coffee-house was a low wooden building, covering
+    considerable ground, with a large piazza, or, rather, projecting
+    roof all around it. Inside and out there was a raised platform
+    against the wall. This platform was one step from the floor, and on
+    this step every one left his shoes before taking his seat on the
+    matting. There were, perhaps, fifty Turks inside and out; sitting
+    cross-legged, smoking the chibouk, and drinking coffee out of cups
+    not larger than the shell of a Madeira-nut.
+
+    We kicked our shoes off on the steps, seated ourselves on a mat
+    outside, and took our chibouk and coffee with an air of savoir faire
+    that would not have disgraced the worthiest Moslem of them all.
+    Verily, said I, as I looked at the dozing, smoking, coffee-sipping
+    congregation around me, there are some good points about the Turks,
+    after all. They never think--that hurts digestion; and they love
+    chibouks and coffee--that shows taste and feeling. I fell into their
+    humour, and for a while exchanged nods with my neighbours all
+    around. Suddenly the bitterness of thought came upon me; I found
+    that my pipe was exhausted. I replenished it, and took a sip of
+    coffee. Verily, said I, there are few better things in this world
+    than chibouks and coffee; they even make men forget there is blood
+    upon their hands. The thought started me; I shrank from contact with
+    my neighbours, cut my way through the volumes of smoke, and got out
+    into the open air.
+
+    My companion joined me. We entered the walls and made a circuit of
+    the town. It was a dirty little place, having one principal street
+    lined with shops or bazars; every third shop, almost, being a
+    cafteria, where a parcel of huge turbaned fellows were at their
+    daily labours of smoking pipes and drinking coffee. The first thing
+    I remarked as being strikingly different from a European city was
+    the total absence of women. The streets were thronged with men, and
+    not a woman was to be seen, except occasionally I caught a glimpse
+    of a white veil or a pair of black eyes sparkling through the
+    latticed bars of a window. Afterward, however, in walking outside
+    the walls into the country, we met a large party of women. When we
+    first saw them they had their faces uncovered; but, as soon as they
+    saw us coming toward them, they stopped and arranged their long
+    white shawls, winding them around their faces so as to leave barely
+    space enough uncovered to allow them to see and breathe, but so that
+    it was utterly impossible for us to distinguish a single one of
+    their features.
+
+    Going on in the direction from which they came, and attracted by the
+    mourning cypress, we came to a large burying-ground. It is situated
+    on the side of a hill almost washed by the waves, and shaded by a
+    thick grove of the funereal tree. There is, indeed, something
+    peculiarly touching in the appearance of this tree; it seems to be
+    endowed with feelings, and to mourn over the dead it shades. The
+    monuments were generally a single upright slab of marble, with a
+    turban on the top. There were many, too, in form like one of our
+    oblong tombstones; and, instead of a slab of marble over the top,
+    the interior was filled with earth, and the surface overrun with
+    roses, evergreens, and flowers. The burying-grounds in the East are
+    always favourite places for walking in; and it is a favourite
+    occupation of the Turkish women to watch and water the flowers
+    growing over the graves of their friends.
+
+    Toward evening we returned to the harbour. I withdrew from my
+    companion, and, leaning against one of the gates of the city, fixed
+    my eyes upon the door of a minaret, watching till the muezzin should
+    appear, and, for the last time before the setting of the sun, call
+    all good Mussulmans to prayer. The door opens toward Mecca, and a
+    little before dark the muezzin came out, and, leaning over the
+    railing with his face toward the tomb of the Prophet, in a voice,
+    every tone of which fell distinctly upon my ear, made that solemn
+    call which, from the time of Mohammed, has been addressed five times
+    a day from the tops of the minarets to the sons of the faithful.
+    "Allah! Allah! God is God, and Mohammed is his prophet. To prayer!
+    to prayer!" Immediately an old Turk by my side fell upon his knees,
+    with his face to the tomb of the Prophet; ten times, in quick
+    succession, he bowed his forehead till it touched the earth; then
+    clasped his hands and prayed. I never saw more rapt devotion than in
+    this pious old Mussulman. I have often marked in Italy the severe
+    observance of religious ceremonies; I have seen, for instance, at
+    Rome, fifty penitents at a time mounting on their knees, and
+    kissing, as they mounted, the steps of the Scala Santa, or holy
+    staircase, by which, as the priests tell them, our Saviour ascended
+    into the presence of Pontius Pilate. I have seen the Greek prostrate
+    himself before a picture until he was physically exhausted; and I
+    have seen the humble and pious Christian at his prayers, beneath the
+    simple fanes and before the peaceful altars of my own land; but I
+    never saw that perfect abandonment with which a Turk gives himself
+    up to his God in prayer. He is perfectly abstracted from the things
+    of this world; he does not regard time or place; in his closet or in
+    the street, alone or in a crowd, he sees nothing, he hears nothing;
+    the world is a blank; his God is everything. He is lost in the
+    intensity of his devotion. It is a spectacle almost sublime, and for
+    the moment you forget the polluted fountain of his religion, and the
+    thousand crimes it sanctions, in your admiration of his sincerity
+    and faith.
+
+    Not being able to find any place where we could sleep ashore, except
+    on one of the mats of the coffee-house, head and heels with a dozen
+    Turks, we went on board, and toward morning again got under weigh.
+    We beat up to the mouth of the Gulf of Smyrna, but, with the sirocco
+    blowing directly in our teeth, it was impossible to go farther. We
+    made two or three attempts to enter, but in tacking the last time
+    our old brig, which had hardly ballast enough to keep her keel under
+    water, received such a rough shaking that we got her away before the
+    wind, and at three o'clock P.M. were again anchored in the harbour
+    of Foggi. I now began to think that there was a spell upon my
+    movements, and that Smyrna, which was becoming to me a sort of land
+    of promise, would never greet my longing eyes.
+
+    I was somewhat comforted, however, by remembering that I had never
+    yet reached any port in the Mediterranean for which I had sailed,
+    without touching at one or two intermediate ports; and that, so far,
+    I had always worked right at last. I was still farther comforted by
+    our having the good fortune to be able to procure lodging ashore, at
+    the house of a Greek, the son of a priest. It was the Saturday
+    before Easter Sunday, and the resurrection of our Saviour was to be
+    celebrated at midnight, or, rather, the beginning of the next day,
+    according to the rites and ceremonies of the Greek church. It was
+    also the last of the forty days' fasting, and the next day commenced
+    feasting. Supper was prepared for us, at which meat was put on the
+    table for me only; my Greek friend being supposed not to eat meat
+    during the days of fasting. He had been, however, two years out of
+    Greece; and though he did not like to offend the prejudices of his
+    countrymen, he did not like fasting. I felt for my fellow-traveller;
+    and, cutting up some meat in small parcels, kept my eye upon the
+    door while he whipped them into his mouth. After supper we lay down
+    upon the divan, with large quilts over us, my friend having promised
+    to rise at twelve o'clock and accompany me to the Greek church.
+
+    At midnight we were roused by the chant of the Greeks in the
+    streets, on their way to the church. We turned out, and fell into a
+    procession of five hundred people, making the streets as light as
+    day with their torches. At the door of the church we found our host,
+    sitting at a table with a parcel of wax tapers on one side and a box
+    to receive money on the other. We each bought a taper and went in.
+    After remaining there at least two hours, listening to a monotonous
+    and unintelligible routine of prayers and chants, the priests came
+    out of the holy doors, bearing aloft an image of our Saviour on the
+    cross, ornamented with gold leaf, tassels, and festoons of
+    artificial flowers; passed through the church, and out of the
+    opposite door. The Greeks lighted their tapers and formed into a
+    procession behind them, and we did the same. Immediately outside the
+    door, up the staircase, and on each side of the corridor, allowing
+    merely room enough for the procession to pass, were arranged the
+    women, dressed in white, with long white veils, thrown back from
+    their faces however, laid smooth over the tops of their heads, and
+    hanging down to their feet. Nearly every woman, old or young, had a
+    child in her arms. In fact, there seemed to be as great a mustering
+    of children as of men and women, and, for aught that I could see, as
+    much to the edification of the former as the latter. A continued
+    chant was kept up during the movements of the procession, and
+    perhaps for half an hour after the arrival of the priests at the
+    courtyard, when it rose to a tremendous burst. The torches were
+    waved in the air; a wild, unmeaning, and discordant scream or yell
+    rang through the hollow cloisters, and half a dozen pistols, two or
+    three muskets, and twenty or thirty crackers were fired. This was
+    intended as a feu-de-joie, and was supposed to mark the precise
+    moment of our Saviour's resurrection. In a few moments the phrensy
+    seemed to pass away; the noise fell from a wild clamour to a slow
+    chant, and the procession returned to the church. The scene was
+    striking, particularly the part outside the church; the dead of
+    night; the waving of torches; the women with their long white
+    dresses, and the children in their arms, &c.; but, from beginning to
+    end, there was nothing solemn in it.
+
+    Returned to the church, a priest came round with a picture of the
+    Saviour risen; and, as far as I could make it out, holding in his
+    hand the Greek flag, followed by another priest with a plate to
+    receive contributions. He held out the picture to be kissed, then
+    turned his hand to receive the same act of devotion, keeping his eye
+    all the time upon the plate which followed to receive the offerings
+    of the pious, as a sort of payment for the privilege of the kiss.
+    His manner reminded me of the Dutch parson, who, immediately after
+    pronouncing a couple man and wife, touching the bridegroom with his
+    elbow, said, "And now where ish mine dollar?" I kissed the picture,
+    dodged his knuckles, paid my money, and left the church. I had been
+    there four hours, during which time, perhaps, more than a thousand
+    persons had been completely absorbed in their religious ceremonies;
+    and though beginning in the middle of the night, I have seen more
+    yawning at the theatre or at an Italian opera than I saw there. They
+    now began to disperse, though I remember I left a crowd of regular
+    amateurs, at the head of whom were our sailors, still hanging round
+    the desk of an exhorting priest, with an earnestness that showed a
+    still craving appetite.
+
+    I do not wonder that the Turks look with contempt upon Christians,
+    for they have constantly under their eyes the disgusting mummeries
+    of the Greek church, and see nothing of the pure and sublime
+    principles our religion inculcates. Still, however, there was
+    something striking and interesting in the manner in which the Greeks
+    in this Turkish town had kept themselves, as it were, a peculiar
+    people, and, in spite of the brands of "dog" and "infidel," held
+    fast to the religion they received from their fathers. There was
+    nothing interesting about them as Greeks; they had taken no part
+    with their countrymen in their glorious struggle for liberty; they
+    were engaged in petty business, and bartered the precious chance of
+    freedom once before them for base profits and ignoble ease; and even
+    now were content to live in chains, and kiss the rod that smote
+    them.
+
+    We returned to the house where we had slept; and, after coffee, in
+    company with our host and his father, the priest, sat down to a
+    meal, in which, for the first time in forty days, they ate meat. I
+    had often remarked the religious observance of fast days among the
+    common people in Greece. In travelling there I had more than once
+    offered an egg to my guide on a fast day, but never could get one
+    to accept anything that came so near to animal food, though, by a
+    strange confusion of the principles of religious obligation, perhaps
+    the same man would not have hesitated to commit murder if he had any
+    inducement to do so. Mrs. Hill, at Athens, told me that, upon one
+    occasion, a little girl in her school refused to eat a piece of cake
+    because it was made with eggs.
+
+    At daylight I was lying on the floor looking through a crevice of
+    the window-shutter at the door of the minaret, waiting for the
+    muezzin's morning cry to prayer. At six o'clock I went out, and
+    finding the wind still in the same quarter, without any apparent
+    prospect of change, determined, at all hazards, to leave the vessel
+    and go on by land. My friend and fellow-passenger was also very
+    anxious to get to Smyrna, but would not accompany me, from an
+    indefinite apprehension of plague, robbers, &c. I had heard so many
+    of these rumours, all of which had proved to be unfounded, that I
+    put no faith in any of them. I found a Turk who engaged to take me
+    through in fourteen hours; and at seven o'clock I was in my saddle,
+    charged with a dozen letters from captains, supercargoes, and
+    passengers, whom I left behind waiting for a change of wind.
+
+    My Tartar was a big swarthy fellow, with an extent of beard and
+    mustaches unusual even among his bearded countrymen. He was armed
+    with a pair of enormous pistols and a yataghan, and was, altogether,
+    a formidable fellow to look upon. But there was a something about
+    him that I liked. There was a doggedness, a downright stubbornness
+    that seemed honest. I knew nothing about him. I picked him up in the
+    street, and took him in preference to others who offered, because he
+    would not be beaten down in his price. When he saw me seated on my
+    horse he stood by my side a little distance off, and looking at me
+    without opening his lips, drew his belt tight around him, and
+    adjusted his pistols and yataghan. His manner seemed to say that he
+    took charge of me as a bale of goods, to be paid for on safe
+    delivery, and that he would carry me through with fire and sword, if
+    necessary. And now, said I, "Let fate do her worst;" I have a good
+    horse under me, and in fourteen hours I shall be in Smyrna. "Blow
+    winds and crack your cheeks;" I defy you.
+
+    My Tartar led off at a brisk trot, never opening his lips nor
+    turning his head except occasionally to see how I followed him
+    across a stream. At about ten o'clock he turned off from the
+    horse-path into a piece of fine pasture, and, slipping the bridle
+    off his horse, turned him loose to feed. He then did the same with
+    mine, and, spreading my cloak on the ground for me to sit upon, sat
+    down by my side and opened his wallet. His manner seemed to intimate
+    a disposition to throw provisions into a common stock, no doubt
+    expecting the gain to be on his side; but as I could only contribute
+    a couple of rolls of bread which I bought as we rode through the
+    town, I am inclined to think that he considered me rather a sponge.
+
+    While we were sitting there a travelling party came up, consisting
+    of five Turks and three women. The women were on horseback, riding
+    crosswise, though there were so many quilts, cushions, &c., piled on
+    the backs of their horses that they sat rather on seats than on
+    saddles. After a few words of parley with my Tartar, the men lifted
+    the women from the horses, taking them in their arms, and, as it
+    were, hauling them off, not very gracefully, but very kindly; and,
+    spreading their quilts on the ground a short distance from us,
+    turned their horses loose to feed, and sat down to make their
+    morning meal. An unusual and happy thing for me the women had their
+    faces uncovered nearly all the time, though they could not well have
+    carried on the process of eating with them muffled up in the usual
+    style. One of the women was old, the other two were exceedingly
+    young; neither of them more than sixteen; each had a child in her
+    arms, and, without any allowance for time and place, both were
+    exceedingly beautiful. I do not say so under the influence of the
+    particular circumstances of our meeting, nor with the view of making
+    an incident of it, but I would have singled them out as such if I
+    had met them in a ballroom at home. I was particularly struck with
+    their delicacy of figure and complexion. Notwithstanding their
+    laughing faces, their mirth, and the kind treatment of the men, I
+    could not divest myself of the idea that they were caged birds
+    longing to be free. I could not believe that a woman belonging to a
+    Turk could be otherwise than unhappy. Unfortunately, I could not
+    understand a word of their language; and as they looked from their
+    turbaned lords to my stiff hat and frockcoat, they seemed to regard
+    me as something the Tartar had just caught and was taking up to
+    Constantinople as a present to the sultan. I endeavoured to show,
+    however, that I was not the wild thing they took me to be; that I
+    had an eye to admire their beauty, and a heart to feel for their
+    servitude. I tried to procure from them some signal of distress; I
+    did all that I could to get some sign to come to their rescue, and
+    to make myself generally agreeable. I looked sentimentally. This
+    they did not seem to understand at all. I smiled; this seemed to
+    please them better; and there is no knowing to what a point I might
+    have arrived, but my Tartar hurried me away; and I parted on the
+    wild plains of Turkey with two young and beautiful women, leading
+    almost a savage life, whose personal graces would have made them
+    ornaments in polished and refined society. Verily, said I, the Turks
+    are not so bad, after all; they have handsome wives, and a handsome
+    wife comes next after chibouks and coffee.
+
+    I was now reminded at every step of my being in an oriental country
+    by the caravans I was constantly meeting. Caravans and camels are
+    more or less associated with all the fairy scenes and glowing
+    pictures of the East. They have always presented themselves to my
+    mind with a sort of poetical imagery, and they certainly have a fine
+    effect in a description or in a picture; but, after all, they are
+    ugly-looking things to meet on the road. I would rather see the two
+    young Turk-_esses_ again than all the caravans in the East. The
+    caravan is conducted by a guide on a donkey, with a halter attached
+    to the first camel, and so on from camel to camel through the whole
+    caravan. The camel is an exceedingly ugly animal in his proportions,
+    and there is a dead uniformity in his movement; with a dead, vacant
+    expression in his face, that is really distressing. If a man were
+    dying of thirst in the desert, it would be enough to drive him to
+    distraction to look in the cool, unconcerned, and imperturbable face
+    of his camel. But their value is inestimable in a country like this,
+    where there are no carriage roads, and where deserts and drought
+    present themselves in every direction.
+
+    One of the camel scenes, the encampment, is very picturesque, the
+    camels arranged around on their knees in a circle, with their heads
+    to the centre, and the camel-drivers with their bales piled up
+    within; and I was struck with another scene; we came to the borders
+    of a stream, which it was necessary to cross in a boat. The boat
+    was then on the other side, and the boatman and camel driver were
+    trying to get on board some camels. When we came up they had got
+    three on board, down on their knees in the bottom of the boat, and
+    were then in the act of coercing the fourth. The poor brute was
+    frightened terribly; resisted with all his might, and put forth most
+    piteous cries; I do not know a more distressing noise than the cry
+    of a brute suffering from fear; it seems to partake of the feeling
+    that causes it, and carries with it something fearful; but the cries
+    of the poor brute were vain; they got him on board, and in the same
+    way urged on board three others. They then threw in the donkey, and
+    seven camels and the donkey were so stowed in the bottom of the
+    boat, that they did not take up much more room than calves on board
+    of our country boats.
+
+    In the afternoon I met another travelling party of an entirely
+    different description. If before I had occasionally any doubts or
+    misgivings as to the reality of my situation; if sometimes it seemed
+    to be merely a dream, that it could not be that I was so far from
+    home, wandering alone on the plains of Asia, with a guide whom I
+    never saw till that morning, whose language I could not understand,
+    and upon whose faith I could not rely; if the scenes of turbaned
+    Turks, of veiled women, of caravans and camels, of graveyards with
+    their mourning cypress and thousands of tombstones, where every
+    trace of the cities which supplied them with their dead had entirely
+    disappeared; if these and the other strange scenes around me would
+    seem to be the mere creations of a roving imagination, the party
+    which I met now was so marked in its character, so peculiar to an
+    oriental country, and to an oriental country only, that it roused
+    me from my waking dreams, fixed my wandering thoughts, and convinced
+    me, beyond all peradventure, that I was indeed far from home, among
+    a people "whose thoughts are not as our thoughts, and whose ways are
+    not as our ways;" in short, in a land where ladies are not the
+    omnipotent creatures that they are with us.
+
+    This party was no other than the ladies of a harem. They were all
+    dressed in white, with their white shawls wrapped around their
+    faces, so that they effectually concealed every feature, and could
+    bring to bear only the artillery of their eyes. I found this,
+    however, to be very potent, as it left so much room for the
+    imagination; and it was a very easy matter to make a Fatima of every
+    one of them. They were all on horseback, not riding sidewise, but
+    _otherwise_; though I observed, as before, that their saddles were
+    so prepared that their delicate limbs were not subject to that
+    extreme expansion required by the saddle of the rougher sex. They
+    were escorted by a party of armed Turks, and followed by a man in
+    Frank dress, who, as I after understood, was the physician of the
+    harem. They were thirteen in number, just a baker's dozen, and
+    belonged to a pacha who was making his annual tour of the different
+    posts under his government, and had sent them on before to have the
+    household matters all arranged upon his arrival. And no doubt, also,
+    they were to be in readiness to receive him with their smiles; and
+    if they continued in the same humour in which I saw them, he must
+    have been a happy man who could call them all his own. I had not
+    fairly recovered from the cries of the poor camel when I heard their
+    merry voices: verily, thought I, stopping to catch the last musical
+    notes, there are exceedingly good points about the Turks: chibouks,
+    coffee, and as many wives as they please. It made me whistle to
+    think of it. Oh, thought I, that some of our ladies could see these
+    things; that some haughty beauty, at whose feet dozens of worthy and
+    amiable young gentlemen are sighing themselves into premature
+    wrinkles and ugliness, might see these things.
+
+    I am no rash innovator. I would not sweep away the established
+    customs of our state of society. I would not lay my meddling fingers
+    upon the admitted prerogatives of our ladies; but I cannot help
+    asking myself if, in the rapid changes of this turning world,
+    changes which completely alter rocks and the hardest substances of
+    nature, it may not by possibility happen that the tenour of a lady's
+    humour will change. What a goodly spectacle to see those who are
+    never content without a dozen admirers in their train, following by
+    dozens in the train of one man! But I fear me much that this will
+    never be, at least in our day. Our system of education is radically
+    wrong. The human mind, says some philosopher, and the gentleman is
+    right, is like the sand upon the shore of the sea. You may write
+    upon it what character you please. _We_ begin by writing upon their
+    innocent unformed minds, that, "Born for their use, we live but to
+    oblige them." The consequence is, I will not say what; for I hope to
+    return among them and kiss the rod in some fair hand; but this I do
+    know, that here the "twig is so bent" that they become as gentle, as
+    docile, and as tractable as any domestic animal. I say again, there
+    are many exceeding good points about the Turks.
+
+    At about six o'clock we came in sight of Smyrna, on the opposite
+    side of the gulf, and still a long way off. At dusk we were directly
+    opposite the city; and although we had yet to make a long circuit
+    round the head of the gulf, I was revelling in the bright prospect
+    before me. Dreams of pulling off my pantaloons; delightful visions
+    of clean sheets and a Christian bed flitted before my eyes. Yes,
+    said I to my pantaloons and shirt, ye worthy and faithful servants,
+    this night ye shall have rest. While other garments have fallen from
+    me by the way, ye have stuck to me. And thou, my gray pantaloons,
+    little did the neat Parisian tailor who made thee think that the
+    strength of his stitching would ever be tested by three weeks'
+    uninterrupted wear; but to-morrow thou shalt go into the hands of a
+    master, who shall sew on thy buttons and sew up thy rents; and thou,
+    my--I was going on with words of the same affectionate import to my
+    shirt, stockings, and drawers, which, however, did not deserve so
+    well of me, for they had in a measure _dropped off_ on the way, when
+    my Tartar came to a dead stop before the door of a cabin,
+    dismounted, and made signs to me to do the same. But I began now to
+    have some notions of my own; heretofore I had been perfectly
+    passive; I had always done as I was told, but in sight of Smyrna I
+    became restiff. I talked and shouted to him, pointed to the city,
+    and turned my horse as though I was going on alone. My Tartar,
+    however, paid no attention to me; he very coolly took off my
+    carpet-bag and carried it into the cabin, lighted his pipe, and sat
+    down by the door, looking at me with the most imperturbable gravity.
+    I had hardly had time to admire his impudence, and to calculate the
+    chances of my being able, alone at night, to cross the many streams
+    which emptied into the gulf, when the wind, which had been rising
+    for some time, became very violent, and the rain began to fall in
+    torrents. With a sigh I bade farewell to the bright visions that
+    had deluded me, gave another sigh to the uncertainty of all human
+    calculations, the cup and the lip, &c., and took refuge in the
+    cabin.
+
+    What a substitute for the pretty little picture I had drawn! Three
+    Turks were sitting round a brazier of charcoal frying doughballs.
+    Three rugs were spread in three corners of the cabin, and over each
+    of them were the eternal pistols and yataghan. There was nothing
+    there to defend; their miserable lives were not worth taking; why
+    were these weapons there? The Turks at first took no notice of me,
+    and I had now to make amends for my backwardness in entering. I
+    resolved to go to work boldly, and at once elbowed among them for a
+    seat around the brazier. The one next me on my right seemed a little
+    struck by my easy ways; he put his hand on his ribs to feel how far
+    my elbow had penetrated, and then took his pipe from his mouth and
+    offered it to me. The ice broken, I smoked the pipe to the last
+    whiff, and handed it to him to be refilled; with all the horrors of
+    dyspepsy before my eyes, I scrambled with them for the last
+    doughball, and, when the attention of all of them was particularly
+    directed toward me, took out my watch, held it over the lamp, and
+    wound it up. I addressed myself particularly to the one who had
+    first taken notice of me, and made myself extremely agreeable by
+    always smoking his pipe. After coffee and half a dozen pipes, he
+    gave me to understand that I was to sleep with him upon his mat, at
+    which I slapped him on the back and cried out, "Bono," having heard
+    him use that word apparently with a knowledge of its meaning.
+
+    I was surprised in the course of the evening to see one of them
+    begin to undress, knowing that such was not the custom of the
+    country, but found that it was only a temporary disrobing for
+    sporting purposes, to hunt fleas and bedbugs; by which I had an
+    opportunity of comparing the Turkish with some I had brought with me
+    from Greece; and though the Turk had great reason to be proud of
+    his, I had no reason to be ashamed of mine. I now began to be
+    drowsy, and should soon have fallen asleep; but the youngest of the
+    party, a sickly and sentimental young man, melancholy and musical,
+    and, no doubt, in love, brought out the common Turkish instrument, a
+    sort of guitar, on which he worked with untiring vivacity, keeping
+    time with his head and heels. My friend accompanied him with his
+    voice, and this brought out my Tartar, who joined in with groans and
+    grunts which might have waked the dead. But my cup was not yet full.
+    During the musical festival my friend and intended bedfellow took
+    down from a shelf above me a large plaster, which he warmed over the
+    brazier. He then unrolled his turban, took off a plaster from the
+    back of his head, and disclosed a wound, raw, gory, and ghastly,
+    that made my heart sink within me: I knew that the plague was about
+    Smyrna; I had heard that it was on this road; I involuntarily
+    recurred to the Italian prayer, "Save me from the three miseries of
+    the Levant: plague, fire, and the dragoman." I shut my eyes; I had
+    slept but two hours the night before; had ridden twelve hours that
+    day on horseback; I drew my cloak around me; my head sank upon my
+    carpet-bag, and I fell asleep, leaving the four Turks playing cards
+    on the bottom of a pewter plate. Once during the night I was
+    awakened by my bedfellow's mustaches tickling my lips. I turned my
+    back and slept on.
+
+    In the morning my Tartar, with one jerk, stood me upright on the
+    floor, and holding me in that position until I got awake, kicked
+    open the door, and pointed to my horse standing before it ready
+    saddled and bridled. In three hours I was crossing the caravan
+    bridge, a bridge over the beautiful Melissus, on the banks of which
+    Homer was born; and picking my way among caravans, which for ages
+    have continued to cross this bridge laden with all the riches of the
+    East, I entered the long-looked-for city of Smyrna, a city that has
+    braved the reiterated efforts of conflagrations, plagues, and
+    earthquakes; ten times destroyed, and ten times risen from her
+    ruins; the queen of the cities of Anatolia; extolled by the ancients
+    as Smyrna the lovely, the crown of Ionia, the pride of Asia. But old
+    things have passed away, and the ancient city now figures only under
+    the head of arrivals in a newspaper, in the words and figures
+    following, that is to say, "Brig Betsy, Baker master, 57 days from
+    Smyrna, with figs and raisins to order. Mastic dull, opium rising."
+
+    In half an hour I was in the full enjoyment of a Turkish bath;
+    lolled half an hour on a divan, with chibouk and coffee, and came
+    out fresh as if I had spent the last three weeks training for the
+    ring. Oh, these Turks are luxurious dogs. Chibouks, coffee, hot
+    baths, and as many wives as they please. What a catalogue of human
+    enjoyments! But I intend Smyrna as a place of rest, and, in charity,
+    give you the benefit, of it.
+
+                                                             ****
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+    First Sight of Smyrna.--Unveiled Women.--Ruins of Ephesus.--Ruin,
+      all Ruin.--Temple of Diana.--Encounter with a Wolf.--Love at first
+      Sight.--Gatherings on the Road.
+
+
+(_Another letter._)
+
+  MY DEAR ****,
+
+    AFTER my bath I returned to my hotel, breakfasted, and sallied out
+    for a walk. It was now about twelve o'clock, Sunday--the first
+    Sunday after Easter--and all the Frank population was in the
+    streets. My hotel was in an out-of-the-way quarter, and when,
+    turning a corner, I suddenly found myself in the main street, I was
+    not prepared for the sight that met my eye. Paris on a fete day does
+    not present so gay and animated a scene. It was gay, animated,
+    striking, and beautiful, and entirely different from anything I had
+    ever seen in any European city. Franks, Jews, Greeks, Turks, and
+    Armenians, in their various and striking costumes, were mingled
+    together in agreeable confusion; and making all due allowance for
+    the circumstance that I had for some time been debarred the sight of
+    an unveiled woman, I certainly never saw so much beauty, and I never
+    saw a costume so admirably calculated to set off beauty. At the same
+    time the costume is exceedingly trying to a lady's pretensions.
+    Being no better than one of the uninitiated, I shall not venture
+    upon such dangerous ground as a lady's toilet. I will merely refer
+    to that part which particularly struck me, and that is the
+    headdress; no odious broad-brimmed hat; no enormous veils enveloping
+    nose, mouth, and eyes; but simply a large gauze turban, sitting
+    lightly and gracefully on the head, rolled back over the forehead,
+    leaving the whole face completely exposed, and exhibiting clear dark
+    complexions, rosy lips closing over teeth of dazzling whiteness; and
+    then such eyes, large, dark, and rolling. It is matter of history,
+    and it is confirmed by poetry, that
+
+      "The angelic youths of old,
+      Burning for maids of mortal mould,
+      Bewildered, left the glorious skies,
+      And lost their heaven for woman's eyes."
+
+    My dear friend, this is the country where such things happened; the
+    throne of the Thunderer, high Olympus, is almost in sight, and these
+    are the daughters of the women who worked such miracles. If the age
+    of passion, like the age of chivalry, were not over and for ever
+    gone, if this were not emphatically a bank-note world, I would say
+    of the Smyrniotes, above all others, that they are that description
+    of women who could
+
+      "Raise a mortal to the skies,
+      Or bring an angel down."
+
+    And they walk, too, as if conscious of their high pretensions, as if
+    conscious that the reign of beauty is not yet ended; and, under that
+    enchanting turban, charge with the whole artillery of their charms.
+    It is a perfect unmasked battery; nothing can stand before it. I
+    wonder the sultan allows it. The Turks are as touchy as tinder; they
+    take fire as quick as any of the old demigods, and a pair of black
+    eyes is at any time enough to put mischief in them. But the Turks
+    are a considerate people. They consider that the Franks, or rather
+    the Greeks, to whom I particularly refer, have periodical fits of
+    insanity that they go mad twice a year during carnival and after
+    Lent; and if at such a time a follower of the Prophet, accidentally
+    straggling in the Frank quarter, should find the current of his
+    blood disturbed, he would sooner die, nay, he would sooner cut off
+    his beard, than hurt a hair of any one of the light heads that he
+    sees flitting before him. There is something remarkable, by-the-way,
+    in the tenacity with which the Grecian women have sustained the
+    rights and prerogatives of beauty in defiance of Turkish customs and
+    prejudices; while the men have fallen into the habits of their
+    quondam masters, have taken to pipes and coffee, and in many
+    instances to turbans and big trousers, the women have ever gone with
+    their faces uncovered, and to this day one and all eschew the veil
+    of the Turkish women.
+
+    Pleased and amused with myself and everything I saw, I moved along
+    unnoticed and unknown, staring, observing, and admiring; among other
+    things, I observed that one of the amiable customs of our own city
+    was in full force here, viz., that of the young gentlemen, with
+    light sticks in their hands, gathering around the door of the
+    fashionable church to stare at the ladies as they came out. I was
+    pleased to find such a mark of civilization in a land of barbarians,
+    and immediately fell into a thing which seemed so much like home;
+    but, in justice to the Smyrniote ladies, I must say I cannot flatter
+    myself that I stared a single one out of countenance.
+
+    But I need not attempt to interest you in Smyrna; it is too
+    every-day a place; every Cape Cod sailor knows it better than I do.
+    I have done all that I could; I have waived the musty reminiscences
+    of its history; I have waived ruins which are said to exist here,
+    and have endeavoured to give you a faint but true picture of its
+    living and existing beauties, of the bright and beautiful scene
+    that broke upon me the first morning of my arrival; and now, if I
+    have not touched you with the beauty of its women, I should despair
+    of doing so by any description of its beautiful climate, its
+    charming environs, and its hospitable society.
+
+    Leave, then, what is, after all, but the city of figs and raisins,
+    and go with me where, by comparison, the foot of civilized man
+    seldom treads; go with me into the desert and solitary places; go
+    with me among the cities of the seven churches of Asia; and, first,
+    to the ruins of Ephesus. I had been several days expecting a
+    companion to make this tour with me, but, being disappointed, was
+    obliged to set out alone. I was not exactly alone, for I had with me
+    a Turk as guide and a Greek as cicerone and interpreter, both well
+    mounted and armed to the teeth. We started at two o'clock in the
+    morning, under the light of thousands of stars; and the day broke
+    upon us in a country wild and desolate, as if it were removed
+    thousands of miles from the habitations of men. There was little
+    variety and little incident in our ride. During the whole day it lay
+    through a country decidedly handsome, the soil rich and fertile, but
+    showing with appalling force the fatal effects of misgovernment,
+    wholly uncultivated, and almost wholly uninhabited. Indeed, the only
+    habitations were the little Turkish coffee-houses and the black
+    tents of the Turcomans. These are a wandering tribe, who come out
+    from the desert, and approach comparatively near the abodes of
+    civilization. They are a pastoral people; their riches are their
+    flocks and herds; they lead a wandering life, free as the air they
+    breathe; they have no local attachments; to-day they pitch their
+    tents on the hillside, to-morrow on the plain; and wherever they sit
+    themselves down, all that they have on earth, wife, children, and
+    friends, are immediately around them. There is something primitive,
+    almost patriarchal, in their appearance; indeed, it carries one back
+    to a simple and perhaps a purer age, and you can almost realize that
+    state of society when the patriarch sat in the door of his tent and
+    called in and fed the passing traveller.
+
+    The general character of the road is such as to prepare one for the
+    scene that awaits him at Ephesus; enormous burying-grounds, with
+    thousands of headstones shaded by the mourning cypress, in the midst
+    of a desolate country, where not a vestige of a human habitation is
+    to be seen. They stand on the roadside as melancholy telltales that
+    large towns or cities once existed in their immediate neighbourhood,
+    and that the generations who occupied them have passed away,
+    furnishing fearful evidence of the decrease of the Turkish
+    population, and perhaps that the gigantic empire of the Ottoman is
+    tottering to its fall.
+
+    For about three hours before reaching Ephesus, the road, crossing a
+    rich and beautiful plain watered by the Cayster, lies between two
+    mountains; that on the right leads to the sea, and on the left are
+    the ruins of Ephesus. Near, and in the immediate vicinity, storks
+    were calmly marching over the plain and building among the ruins;
+    they moved as if seldom disturbed by human footsteps, and seemed to
+    look upon us as intruders upon a spot for a long time abandoned to
+    birds and beasts of prey. About a mile this side are the remains of
+    the Turkish city of Aysalook, or Temple of the Moon, a city of
+    comparatively modern date, reared into a brief magnificence out of
+    the ruins of its fallen neighbour. A sharp hill, almost a mountain,
+    rises abruptly from the plain, on the top of which is a ruined
+    fortress, with many ruins of Turkish magnificence at the base;
+    broken columns, baths overgrown with ivy, and the remains of a grand
+    mosque, the roof sustained by four granite columns from the Temple
+    of Diana; the minaret fallen, the mosque deserted; the Mussulman no
+    more goes there to pray; bats and owls were building in its lofty
+    roof, and snakes and lizards were crawling over its marble floor.
+
+    It was late in the afternoon when I arrived at the little
+    coffee-house at Aysalook; a caravan had already encamped under some
+    fine old sycamores before the door, preparatory to passing the
+    night. I was somewhat fatigued, and my Greek, who had me in charge,
+    was disposed to stop and wait for the morrow; but the fallen city
+    was on the opposite hill at but a short distance, and the shades of
+    evening seemed well calculated to heighten the effect of a ramble
+    among its ruins. In a right line it was not more than half a mile,
+    but we soon found that we could not go directly to it; a piece of
+    low swampy ground lay between, and we had not gone far before our
+    horses sank up to their saddle-girths. We were obliged to retrace
+    our steps, and work our way around by a circuitous route of more
+    than two miles. This, too, added to the effect of our approach. It
+    was a dreary reflection, that a city, whose ports and whose gates
+    had been open to the commerce of the then known world; whose wealth
+    had invited the traveller and sojourner within its walls should lie
+    a ruin upon a hillside, with swamps and morasses extending around
+    it, in sight but out of reach, near but unapproachable. A warning
+    voice seemed to issue from the ruins, "_Procul, procul, este
+    profani_," my day is past, my sun is set, I have gone to my grave;
+    pass on, stranger, and disturb not the ashes of the dead.
+
+    But my Turk did not understand Latin, and we continued to advance.
+    We moved along in perfect silence, for besides that my Turk never
+    spoke, and my Greek, who was generally loquacious enough, was out of
+    humour at being obliged to go on, we had enough to do in picking our
+    lonely way. But silence best suited the scene; the sound of the
+    human voice seemed almost a mockery of fallen greatness. We entered
+    by a large and ruined gateway into a place distinctly marked as
+    having been a street, and, from the broken columns strewed on each
+    side, probably having been lined with a colonnade. I let my reins
+    fall upon my horse's neck; he moved about in the slow and desultory
+    way that suited my humour; now sinking to his knees in heaps of
+    rubbish, now stumbling over a Corinthian capital, and now sliding
+    over a marble pavement. The whole hillside is covered with ruins to
+    an extent far greater than I expected to find, and they are all of a
+    kind that tends to give a high idea of the ancient magnificence of
+    the city. To me, these ruins appeared to be a confused and shapeless
+    mass; but they have been examined by antiquaries with great care,
+    and the character of many of them identified with great certainty. I
+    had, however, no time for details; and, indeed, the interest of
+    these ruins in my eyes was not in the details. It mattered little to
+    me that this was the stadium and that a fountain; that this was a
+    gymnasium and that a market-place; it was enough to know that the
+    broken columns, the mouldering walls, the grass-grown streets, and
+    the wide-extended scene of desolation and ruin around me were all
+    that remained of one of the greatest cities of Asia, one of the
+    earliest Christian cities in the world. But what do I say? Who does
+    not remember the tumults and confusion raised by Demetrius the
+    silversmith, "lest the temple of the great goddess Diana should be
+    despised, and her magnificence be destroyed;" and how the people,
+    having caught "Caius and Aristarchus, Paul's companions in travel,"
+    rushed with one accord into the theatre, crying out, "great is Diana
+    of the Ephesians." My dear friend, I sat among the ruins of that
+    theatre; the stillness of death was around me; far as the eye could
+    reach, not a living soul was to be seen save my two companions and a
+    group of lazy Turks smoking at the coffee-house in Aysalook. A man
+    of strong imagination might almost go wild with the intensity of his
+    own reflections; and do not let it surprise you, that even one like
+    me, brought up among the technicalities of declarations and
+    replications, rebutters and surrebutters, and in nowise given to the
+    illusions of the senses, should find himself roused, and
+    irresistibly hurried back to the time when the shapeless and
+    confused mass around him formed one of the most magnificent cities
+    in the world; when a large and busy population was hurrying through
+    its streets, intent upon the same pleasures and the same business
+    that engage men now; that he should, in imagination, see before him
+    St. Paul preaching to the Ephesians, shaking their faith in the gods
+    of their fathers, gods made with their own hands; and the noise and
+    confusion, and the people rushing tumultuously up the very steps
+    where he sat; that he should almost hear their cry ringing in his
+    ears, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians;" and then that he should
+    turn from this scene of former glory and eternal ruin to his own
+    far-distant land; a land that the wisest of the Ephesians never
+    dreamed of; where the wild man was striving with the wild beast when
+    the whole world rang with the greatness of the Ephesian name; and
+    which bids fair to be growing greater and greater when the last
+    vestige of Ephesus shall be gone and its very site unknown.
+
+    But where is the temple of the great Diana, the temple two hundred
+    and twenty years in building; the temple of one hundred and
+    twenty-seven columns, each column the gift of a king? Can it be that
+    the temple of the "Great goddess Diana," that the ornament of Asia,
+    the pride of Ephesus, and one of the seven wonders of the world, has
+    gone, disappeared, and left not a trace behind? As a traveller, I
+    would fain be able to say that I have seen the ruins of this temple;
+    but, unfortunately, I am obliged to limit myself by facts. Its site
+    has of course engaged the attention of antiquaries. I am no skeptic
+    in these matters, and am disposed to believe all that my cicerone
+    tells me. You remember the countryman who complained to his minister
+    that he never gave him any Latin in his sermons; and when the
+    minister answered that he would not understand it, the countryman
+    replied that he paid for the best, and ought to have it. I am like
+    that honest countryman; but my cicerone understood himself better
+    than the minister; he knew that I paid him for the best; he knew
+    what was expected from him, and that his reputation was gone for
+    ever if, in such a place as Ephesus, he could not point out the
+    ruins of the great temple of Diana. He accordingly had _his_ temple,
+    which he stuck to with as much pertinacity as if he had built it
+    himself; but I am sorry to be obliged to say, in spite of his
+    authority and my own wish to believe him, that the better opinion
+    is, that now not a single stone is to be seen.
+
+    Topographers have fixed the site on the plain, near the gate of the
+    city which opened to the sea. The sea, which once almost washed the
+    walls, has receded or been driven back for several miles. For many
+    years a new soil has been accumulating, and all that stood on the
+    plain, including so much of the remains of the temple as had not
+    been plundered and carried away by different conquerors, is probably
+    now buried many feet under its surface.
+
+    It was dark when I returned to Aysalook. I had remarked, in passing,
+    that several caravans had encamped there, and on my return found the
+    camel-drivers assembled in the little coffee-house in which I was to
+    pass the night. I soon saw that there were so many of us that we
+    should make a tight fit in the sleeping part of the khan, and
+    immediately measured off space enough to fit my body, allowing
+    turning and kicking room. I looked with great complacency upon the
+    light slippers of the Turks, which they always throw off, too, when
+    they go to sleep, and made an ostentatious display of a pair of
+    heavy iron-nailed boots, and, in lying down, gave one or two
+    preliminary thumps to show them that I was restless in my movements,
+    and, if they came too near me these iron-nailed boots would be
+    uncomfortable neighbours.
+
+    And here I ought to have spent half the night in musing upon the
+    strange concatenation of circumstances which had broken up a quiet
+    practising attorney, and sent him a straggler from a busy,
+    money-getting land, to meditate among the ruins of ancient cities,
+    and sleep pellmell with turbaned Turks. But I had no time for
+    musing; I was amazingly tired; I looked at the group of Turks in one
+    corner, and regretted that I could not talk with them; thought of
+    the Tower of Babel and the wickedness of man, which brought about a
+    confusion of tongues; of camel-drivers, and Arabian Nights'
+    Entertainments; of home, and my own comfortable room in the third
+    story; brought my boot down with a thump that made them all start,
+    and in five minutes was asleep.
+
+    In the morning I again went over to the ruins. Daylight, if
+    possible, added to their effect; and a little thing occurred, not
+    much in itself, but which, under the circumstances, fastened itself
+    upon my mind in such a way that I shall never forget it. I had read
+    that here, in the stillness of the night, the jackal's cry was
+    heard; that, if a stone was rolled, a scorpion or lizard slipped
+    from under it; and, while picking our way slowly along the lower
+    part of the city, a wolf of the largest size came out above, as if
+    indignant at being disturbed in his possessions. He moved a few
+    paces toward us with such a resolute air that my companions both
+    drew their pistols; then stopped, and gazed at us deliberately as we
+    were receding from him, until, as if satisfied that we intended to
+    leave his dominions, he turned and disappeared among the ruins. It
+    would have made a fine picture; the Turk first, then the Greek, each
+    with a pistol in his hand, then myself, all on horseback, the wolf
+    above us, the valley, and the ruined city. I feel my inability to
+    give you a true picture of these ruins. Indeed, if I could lay
+    before you every particular, block for block, fragment for fragment,
+    here a column and there a column, I could not convey a full idea of
+    the desolation that marks the scene.
+
+    To the Christian, the ruins of Ephesus carry with them a peculiar
+    interest; for here, upon the wreck of heathen temples, was
+    established one of the earliest Christian churches; but the
+    Christian church has followed the heathen temple, and the
+    worshippers of the true God have followed the worshippers of the
+    great goddess Diana; and in the city where Paul preached, and where,
+    in the words of the apostle, "much people were gathered unto the
+    Lord," now not a solitary Christian dwells. Verily, in the prophetic
+    language of inspiration, the "candlestick is removed from its
+    place;" a curse seems to have fallen upon it, men shun it, not a
+    human being is to be seen among its ruins; and Ephesus, in faded
+    glory and fallen grandeur, is given up to birds and beasts of prey,
+    a monument and a warning to nations.
+
+    From Ephesus I went to Scala Nova, handsomely situated on the shore
+    of the sea, and commanding a fine view of the beautiful Island of
+    Samos, distant not more than four miles. I had a letter to a Greek
+    merchant there, who received me kindly, and introduced me to the
+    Turkish governor. The governor, as usual, was seated upon a divan,
+    and asked us to take seats beside him. We were served with coffee
+    and pipes by two handsome Greek slaves, boys about fourteen, with
+    long hair hanging down their necks, and handsomely dressed; who,
+    after serving us, descended from the platform, and waited with
+    folded arms until we had finished. Soon after a third guest came,
+    and a third lad, equally handsome and equally well dressed, served
+    him in the same manner. This is the style of the Turkish grandees, a
+    slave to every guest. I do not know to what extent it is carried,
+    but am inclined to think that, in the present instance, if one or
+    two more guests had happened to come in, my friend's retinue of
+    slaves would have fallen short. The governor asked me from what
+    country I came, and who was my king; and when I told him that we had
+    no king, but a president, he said, very graciously, that our
+    president and the grand seignior were very good friends; a
+    compliment which I acknowledged with all becoming humility. Wanting
+    to show off a little, I told him that we were going to fight the
+    French, and he said we should certainly whip them if we could get
+    the grand seignior to help us.
+
+    I afterward called on my own account upon the English consul. The
+    consuls in these little places are originals. They have nothing to
+    do, but they have the government arms blazoned over their doors, and
+    strut about in cocked hats and regimentals, and shake their heads,
+    and look knowing, and talk about their government; they do not know
+    what the government will think, &c., when half the time their
+    government hardly knows of the existence of its worthy
+    representatives. This was an old Maltese, who spoke French and
+    Italian. He received me very kindly, and pressed me to stay all
+    night. I told him that I was not an Englishman, and had no claim
+    upon his hospitality; but he said that made no difference; that he
+    was consul for all civilized nations, among which he did me the
+    honour to include mine.
+
+    At three o'clock I took leave of the consul. My Greek friend
+    accompanied me outside the gate, where my horses were waiting for
+    me; and, at parting, begged me to remember that I had a friend, who
+    hardly knew what pleasure was except in serving me. I told him that
+    the happiness of my life was not complete before I met him; we threw
+    ourselves into each other's arms, and, after a two hours'
+    acquaintance, could hardly tear away from each other's embraces.
+    Such is the force of sympathy between congenial spirits. My friend
+    was a man about fifty, square built, broad shouldered, and big
+    mustached; and the beauty of it was, that neither could understand a
+    word the other said; and all this touching interchange of sentiment
+    had to pass through my mustached, big-whiskered, double-fisted,
+    six-feet interpreter.
+
+    At four o'clock we set out on our return; at seven we stopped in a
+    beautiful valley surrounded by mountains, and on the sides of the
+    mountains were a number of Turcomans tents. The khan was worse than
+    any I had yet seen. It had no floor and no mat. The proprietor of
+    the khan, if such a thing, consisting merely of four mud walls with
+    a roof of branches, which seemed to have been laid there by the
+    winds, could be said to have a proprietor, was uncommonly sociable;
+    he set before me my supper, consisting of bread and yort--a
+    preparation of milk--and appeared to be much amused at seeing me
+    eat. He asked my guide many questions about me; examined my pistols,
+    took off his turban, and put my hat upon his shaved head, which
+    transformed him from a decidedly bold, slashing-looking fellow, into
+    a decidedly sneaking-looking one. I had certainly got over all
+    fastidiousness in regard to eating, drinking, and sleeping; but I
+    could not stand the vermin at this khan. In the middle of the night
+    I rose and went out of doors; it was a brilliant starlight night,
+    and, as the bare earth was in any case to be my bed, I exchanged the
+    mud floor of my khan for the greensward and the broad canopy of
+    heaven. My Turk was sleeping on the ground, about a hundred yards
+    from the house, with his horse grazing around him. I nestled close
+    to him, and slept perhaps two hours. Toward morning I was awakened
+    by the cold, and, with the selfishness of misery, I began punching
+    my Turk under the ribs to wake him. This was no easy matter; but,
+    after a while, I succeeded, got him to saddle the horses, and in a
+    few minutes we were off, my Greek not at all pleased with having his
+    slumbers so prematurely disturbed.
+
+    At about two o'clock we passed some of the sultan's _volunteers_.
+    These were about fifty men chained together by the wrists and
+    ankles, who had been chased, run down, and caught in some of the
+    villages, and were now on their way to Constantinople, under a
+    guard, to be trained as soldiers. I could but smile as I saw them,
+    not at them, for, in truth, there was nothing in their condition to
+    excite a smile, but at the recollection of an article I had seen a
+    few days before in a European paper, which referred to the new
+    levies making by the sultan, and the spirit with which his subjects
+    entered into the service. They were a speaking comment upon European
+    insight into Turkish politics. But, without more ado, suffice it to
+    say, that at about four o'clock I found myself at the door of my
+    hotel, my outer garments so covered with creeping things that my
+    landlord, a prudent Swiss, with many apologies, begged me to shake
+    myself before going into the house; and my nether garments so
+    stained with blood, that I looked as if a corps of the sultan's
+    regulars had pricked me with their bayonets. My enthusiasm on the
+    subject of the seven churches was in no small degree abated, and
+    just at that moment I was willing to take upon trust the condition
+    of the others, that all that was foretold of them in the Scriptures
+    had come to pass. I again betook me to the bath, and, in thinking of
+    the luxury of my repose, I feel for you, and come to a full stop.
+
+                                                             ****
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+    Position of Smyrna.--Consular Privileges.--The Case of the
+      Lover.--End of the Love Affair.--The Missionary's Wife.--The
+      Casino.--Only a Greek Row.--Rambles in Smyrna.--The
+      Armenians.--Domestic Enjoyments.
+
+
+BUT I must go back a little, and make the amende honourable, for, in
+truth, Ghiaour Ismir, or Infidel Smyrna, with its wild admixture of
+European and Asiatic population, deserves better than the rather
+cavalier notice contained in my letter.
+
+Before reaching it I had remarked its exceeding beauty of position,
+chosen as it is with that happy taste which distinguished the Greeks in
+selecting the sites of their ancient cities, on the declivity of a
+mountain running down to the shore of the bay, with houses rising in
+terraces on its sides; its domes and minarets, interspersed with
+cypresses, rising above the tiers of houses, and the summit of the hill
+crowned with a large solitary castle. It was the first large Turkish
+city I had seen, and it differed, too, from all other Turkish cities in
+the strong foothold obtained there by Europeans. Indeed, remembering it
+as a place where often, and within a very few years, upon a sudden
+outbreaking of popular fury, the streets were deluged with Christian
+blood, I was particularly struck, not only with the air of confidence
+and security, but, in fact, with the bearing of superiority assumed by
+the "Christian dog!" among the followers of the Prophet.
+
+Directly on the bay is a row of large houses running along the whole
+front of the city, among which are seen emblazoned over the doors the
+arms of most of the foreign consuls, including the American. By the
+treaties of the Porte with Christian powers, the Turkish tribunals have
+no jurisdiction of matters touching the rights of foreign residents; and
+all disputes between these, and even criminal offences, fall under the
+cognizance of their respective consuls. This gives the consuls in all
+the maritime ports of Turkey great power and position; and all over the
+Levant they are great people; but at Smyrna they are far more important
+than ambassadors and ministers at the European capitals; and, with their
+janisaries and their appearance on all public occasions in uniform, are
+looked up to by the Levantines somewhat like the consuls sent abroad
+under the Roman empire, and by the Turks as almost sultans.
+
+The morning after my arrival I delivered letters of introduction to Mr.
+Offley, the American consul, a native of Philadelphia, thirty years
+resident in Smyrna, and married to an Armenian lady, Mr. Langdon, a
+merchant of Boston, and Mr. Styth, of Baltimore, of the firm of
+Issaverdens, Styth, and Company; one to Mr. Jetter, a German missionary,
+whose lady told me, while her husband was reading it, that she had met
+me in the street the day before, and on her return home told him that an
+American had just arrived. I was curious to know the mark by which she
+recognised me as an American, being rather dubious whether it was by
+reason of anything praiseworthy or the reverse; but she could not tell.
+
+I trust the reader has not forgotten the victim of the tender passion
+who, in the moment of my leaving Athens, had reposed in my sympathizing
+bosom the burden of his hopes and fears. At the very first house in
+which I was introduced to the female members of the family, I found
+making a morning call the lady who had made such inroads upon his
+affections. I had already heard her spoken of as being the largest
+fortune, and, par consequence, the greatest belle in Smyrna, and I
+hailed it as a favourable omen that I accidentally made her acquaintance
+so soon after my arrival. I made my observations, and could not help
+remarking that she was by no means pining away on account of the absence
+of my friend. I was almost indignant at her heartless happiness, and,
+taking advantage of an opportunity, introduced his name, hoping to see a
+shade come over her, and, perhaps, to strike her pensive for two or
+three minutes; but her comment was a deathblow to my friend's prospects
+and my mediation: "Poor M.!" and all present repeated "Poor M.!" with a
+portentous smile, and the next moment had forgotten his existence. I
+went away in the full conviction that it was all over with "Poor M.!"
+and murmuring to myself, Put not your trust in woman, I dined, and in
+the afternoon called with my letter of introduction upon his friend the
+Rev. Mr. Brewer, and Mr. Brewer's comment on reading it was about equal
+to the lady's "Poor M.!" He asked me in what condition I left our
+unfortunate friend. I told him his _leg_ was pretty bad, though he
+continued to hobble about; but Mr. Brewer interrupted me; he did not
+mean his leg, but, he hesitated and with reluctance, as if he wished to
+avoid speaking of it outright, added, _his mind_. I did not comprehend
+him, and, from his hesitation and delicacy, imagined that he was
+alluding to the lover's heart; but he cleared the matter up, and to my
+no small surprise, by telling me that, some time before he left Smyrna,
+"Poor M." had shown such strong marks of aberration of intellect, that
+his friends had deemed it advisable to put him under the charge of a
+brother missionary and send him home, and that they hoped great benefit
+from travel and change of scene. I was surprised, and by no means
+elevated in my own conceit, when I found that I had been made the
+confidant of a crazy man. Mr. Hill, not knowing of any particular
+intimacy between us, and probably not wishing to publish his misfortune
+unnecessarily, had not given me the slightest intimation of it, and I
+had not discovered it. I had considered his communication to me strange,
+and his general conduct not less so, but I had no idea that it was
+anything more than the ordinary derangement which every man is said to
+labour under when in love. I then told Mr. Brewer my story, and the
+commission with which I was intrusted, which he said was perfectly
+characteristic, his malady being a sort of monomania on the subject of
+the tender passion; and every particle of interest which I might
+nevertheless have taken in the affair, in connecting his derangement in
+some way with the lady in question, was destroyed by the volatile
+direction of his passion, sometimes to one object and sometimes with
+another; and in regard to the lady to whom I was accredited, he had
+never shown any penchant toward her in particular, and must have given
+me her name because it happened to be the first that suggested itself at
+the moment of his unburdening himself to me. Fortunately, I had not
+exposed myself by any demonstrations in behalf of my friend, so I
+quietly dropped him. On leaving Mr. Brewer I suggested a doubt whether I
+could be regarded as an acquaintance upon the introduction of a crazy
+man; but we had gone so far that it was decided, for that specific
+purpose, to admit his sanity. I should not mention these particulars if
+there was any possibility of their ever wounding the feelings of him to
+whom they refer; but he is now beyond the reach either of calumny or
+praise, for about a year after I heard, with great regret, that his
+malady had increased, accompanied with a general derangement of health;
+and, shortly after his return home, he died.
+
+My intercourse with the Franks was confined principally to my own
+countrymen, whose houses were open to me at all times; and I cannot help
+mentioning the name of Mr. Van Lennup, the Dutch consul, the great
+friend of the missionaries in the Levant, who had been two years
+resident in the United States, and was intimately acquainted with many
+of my friends at home. Society in Smyrna is purely mercantile; and
+having been so long out of the way of it, it was actually grateful to me
+once more to hear men talking with all their souls about cotton, stocks,
+exchanges, and other topics of _interest_, in the literal meaning of the
+word. Sometimes lounging in a merchant's counting-room, I took up an
+American paper, and heard Boston, and New-York, and Baltimore, and
+cotton, and opium, and freight, and quarter per cent. less bandied
+about, until I almost fancied myself at home; and when this became too
+severe I had a resource with the missionaries, gentlemanly and
+well-educated men, well acquainted with the countries and the places
+worth visiting, with just the books I wanted, and, I had almost said,
+the wives; I mean with wives always glad to see a countryman, and to
+talk about home. There is something exceedingly interesting in a
+missionary's wife. A soldier's is more so, for she follows him to danger
+and, perhaps, to death; but glory waits him if he falls, and while she
+weeps she is proud. Before I went abroad the only missionary I ever knew
+I despised, for I believed him to be a canting hypocrite; but I saw much
+of them abroad, and made many warm friends among them; and, I repeat
+it, there is something exceedingly interesting in a missionary's wife.
+She who had been cherished as a plant that the winds must not breathe on
+too rudely, recovers from the shock of a separation from her friends to
+find herself in a land of barbarians, where her loud cry of distress can
+never reach their ears. New ties twine round her heart, and the tender
+and helpless girl changes her very nature, and becomes the staff and
+support of the man. In his hours of despondency she raises his drooping
+spirits; she bathes his aching head; she smooths his pillow of sickness;
+and, after months of wearisome silence, I have entered her dwelling, and
+her heart instinctively told her that I was from the same land. I have
+been welcomed as a brother; answered her hurried, and anxious, and eager
+questions; and sometimes, when I have known any of her friends at home,
+I have been for a moment more than recompensed for all the toils and
+privations of a traveller in the East. I have left her dwelling burdened
+with remembrances to friends whom she will perhaps never see again. I
+bore a letter to a father, which was opened by a widowed mother. Where I
+could, I have discharged every promise to a missionary's wife; but I
+have some yet undischarged which I rank among the sacred obligations of
+my life. It is true, the path of the missionary is not strewed with
+roses; but often, in leaving his house at night, and following my guide
+with a lantern through the narrow streets of a Turkish city, I have run
+over the troubles incident to every condition of life, not forgetting
+those of a traveller, and have taken to whistling, and, as I stumbled
+into the gate of an old convent, have murmured involuntarily, "After
+all, these missionaries are happy fellows."
+
+Every stranger, upon his arrival in Smyrna, is introduced at the casino.
+I went there the first time to a concert. It is a large building,
+erected by a club of merchants, with a suite of rooms on the lower
+floor, billiards, cards, reading and sitting room, and a ball room above
+covering the whole. The concert was given in the ballroom, and, from
+what I had seen in the streets, I expected an extraordinary display of
+beauty; but I was much disappointed. The company consisted only of the
+aristocracy or higher mercantile classes, the families of the gentlemen
+composing the club, and excluded the Greek and Smyrniote women, among
+whom is found a great portion of the beauty of the place. A patent of
+nobility in Smyrna, as in our own city, is founded upon the time since
+the possessor gave up selling goods, or the number of consignments he
+receives in the course of a year. The casino, by-the-way, is a very
+aristocratic institution, and sometimes knotty questions occur in its
+management. Captains of merchant vessels are not admitted. A man came
+out as owner of a vessel and cargo, and also master: _quere_, could he
+be admitted? His consignee said yes; but the majority, not being
+interested in the sales of his cargo, went for a strict construction,
+and excluded him.
+
+The population of Smyrna, professing three distinct religions, observe
+three different Sabbaths; the Mohammedans Friday, the Jews Saturday, and
+the Christians Sunday, so that there are only four days in the week in
+which all the shops and bazars are open together, and there are so many
+fete days that these are much broken in upon. The most perfect
+toleration prevails, and the religious festivals of the Greeks often
+terminate in midnight orgies which debase and degrade the Christian in
+the eyes of the pious Mussulman.
+
+On Saturday morning I was roused from my bed by a loud cry and the tramp
+of a crowd through the street. I ran to my window, and saw a Greek
+tearing down the street at full speed, and another after him with a
+drawn yataghan in his hand; the latter gained ground at every step, and,
+just as he turned the corner, stabbed the first in the back. He returned
+with the bloody poniard in his hand, followed by the crowd, and rushed
+into a little Greek drinking-shop next door to my hotel. There was a
+loud noise and scuffling inside, and presently I saw him pitched out
+headlong into the street, and the door closed upon him. In a phrensy of
+passion he rushed back, and drove his yataghan with all his force into
+the door, stamped against it with his feet, and battered it with stones;
+unable to force it open, he sat down on the opposite side of the street,
+occasionally renewing his attack upon the door, talking violently with
+those inside, and sometimes the whole crowd laughing loud at the answers
+from within. Nobody attempted to interfere. Giusseppi, my host, said it
+was only a row among the Greeks. The Greek kept the street in an uproar
+for more than an hour, when he was secured and taken into custody.
+
+After dinner, under the escort of a merchant, a Jew from Trieste
+residing at the same hotel, I visited the Jews' quarter. The Jews of
+Smyrna are the descendants of that unhappy people who were driven out
+from Spain by the bloody persecutions of Ferdinand and Isabel; they
+still talk Spanish in their families; and though comparatively secure,
+now, as ever, they live the victims of tyranny and oppression, ever
+toiling and accumulating, and ever fearing to exhibit the fruits of
+their industry, lest they should excite the cupidity of a rapacious
+master. Their quarter is by far the most miserable in Smyrna, and within
+its narrow limits are congregated more than ten thousand of "the
+accursed people." It was with great difficulty that I avoided wounding
+the feelings of my companion by remarking its filthy and disgusting
+appearance; and wishing to remove my unfavourable impression by
+introducing me to some of the best families first, he was obliged to
+drag me through the whole range of its narrow and dirty streets. From
+the external appearance of the tottering houses, I did not expect
+anything better within; and, out of regard to his feelings, was really
+sorry that I had accepted his offer to visit his people; but with the
+first house I entered I was most agreeably disappointed. Ascending
+outside by a tottering staircase to the second story, within was not
+only neatness and comfort, but positive luxury. At one end of a spacious
+room was a raised platform opening upon a large latticed window, covered
+with rich rugs and divans along the wall. The master of the house was
+taking his afternoon siesta, and while we were waiting for him I
+expressed to my gratified companion my surprise and pleasure at the
+unexpected appearance of the interior. In a few minutes the master
+entered, and received us with the greatest hospitality and kindness. He
+was about thirty, with the high square cap of black felt, without any
+rim or border, long silk gown tied with a sash around the waist, a
+strongly-marked Jewish face, and amiable expression. In the house of the
+Israelite the welcome is the same as in that of the Turk; and seating
+himself, our host clapped his hands together, and a boy entered with
+coffee and pipes. After a little conversation he clapped his hands
+again; and hearing a clatter of wooden shoes, I turned my head and saw
+a little girl coming across the room, mounted on high wooden sabots
+almost like stilts, who stepped up the platform, and with quite a
+womanly air took her seat on the divan. I looked at her, and thought her
+a pert, forward little miss, and was about asking her how old she was,
+when my companion told me she was our host's wife. I checked myself, but
+in a moment felt more than ever tempted to ask the same question; and,
+upon inquiring, learned that she had attained the respectable age of
+thirteen, and had been then two years a wife. Our host told us that she
+had cost him a great deal of money, and the expense consisted in the
+outlay necessary for procuring a divorce from another wife. He did not
+like the other one at all; his father had married him to her, and he had
+great difficulty in prevailing on his father to go to the expense of
+getting him freed. This wife was also provided by his father, and he did
+not like her much at first; he had never seen her till the day of
+marriage, but now he began to like her very well, though she cost him a
+great deal for ornaments. All this time we were looking at her, and she,
+with a perfectly composed expression, was listening to the conversation
+as my companion interpreted it, and following with her eyes the
+different speakers. I was particularly struck with the cool,
+imperturbable expression of her face, and could not help thinking that,
+on the subject of likings and dislikings, young as she was, she might
+have some curious notions of her own; and since we had fallen into this
+little disquisition on family matters, and thinking that he had gone so
+far himself that I might waive delicacy, I asked him whether she liked
+him; he answered in that easy tone of confidence of which no idea can be
+given in words, "oh yes;" and when I intimated a doubt, he told me I
+might ask herself. But I forbore, and did not ask her, and so lost the
+opportunity of learning from both sides the practical operation of
+matches made by parents. Our host sustained them; the plan saved a great
+deal of trouble, and wear and tear of spirit; prudent parents always
+selected such as were likely to suit each other; and being thrown
+together very young, they insensibly assimilated in tastes and habits;
+he admitted that he had missed it the first time, but he had hit it the
+second, and allowed that the system would work much better if the cost
+of procuring a divorce was not so great. With the highest respect, and a
+pressing invitation to come again, seconded by his wife, I took my leave
+of the self-satisfied Israelite.
+
+From this we went into several other houses, in all of which the
+interior belied, in the same manner, their external appearance. I do not
+say that they were gorgeous or magnificent, but they were clean,
+comfortable, and striking by their oriental style of architecture and
+furniture; and being their Sabbath, the women were in their best attire,
+with their heads, necks, and wrists adorned with a profusion of gold and
+silver ornaments. Several of the houses had libraries, with old Hebrew
+books, in which an old rabbi was reading or sometimes instructing
+children. In the last house a son was going through his days of mourning
+on the death of his father. He was lying in the middle of the floor,
+with his black cap on, and covered with a long black cloak. Twenty or
+thirty friends were sitting on the floor around him, who had come in to
+condole with him. When we entered, neither he nor any of his friends
+took any notice of us, except to make room on the floor. We sat down
+with them. It was growing dark, and the light broke dimly through the
+latticed windows upon the dusky figures of the mourning Israelites; and
+there they sat, with stern visages and long beards, the feeble remnant
+of a fallen people, under scorn and contumely, and persecution and
+oppression, holding on to the traditions received from their fathers,
+practising in the privacy of their houses the same rites as when the
+priests bore aloft the ark of the covenant, and out of the very dust in
+which they lie still looking for the restoration of their temporal
+kingdom. In a room adjoining sat the widow of the deceased, with a group
+of women around her, all perfectly silent; and they too took no notice
+of us either when we entered or when we went away.
+
+The next day the shops were shut, and the streets again thronged as on
+the day of my arrival. I went to church at the English chapel attached
+to the residence of the British consul, and heard a sermon from a German
+missionary. I dined at one o'clock, and, in company with mine host of
+the Pension Suisse, and a merchant of Smyrna resident there, worked my
+way up the hill through the heart of the Turks' quarter to the old
+castle standing alone and in ruins on its summit. We rested a little
+while at the foot of the castle, and looked over the city and the tops
+of the minarets upon the beautiful bay, and descending in the rear of
+the castle, we came to the river Meles winding through a deep valley at
+the foot of the hill. This stream was celebrated in Grecian poetry three
+thousand years ago. It was the pride of the ancient Smyrneans, once
+washed the walls of the ancient city, and tradition says that on its
+banks the nymph Critheis gave birth to Homer. We followed it in its
+winding course down the valley, murmuring among evergreens. Over it in
+two places were the ruins of aqueducts which carried water to the old
+city, and in one or two places it turns an overshot mill. On each side,
+at intervals along its banks, were oriental summer-houses, with
+verandahs, and balconies, and latticed windows. Approaching the caravan
+bridge we met straggling parties, and by degrees fell into a crowd of
+people, Franks, Europeans of every nation, Greeks, Turks, and Armenians,
+in all their striking costumes, sitting on benches under the shade of
+noble old sycamores, or on the grass, or on the river's brink, and
+moving among them were Turks cleanly dressed, with trays of
+refreshments, ices, and sherbet. There was an unusual collection of
+Greek and Smyrniote women, and an extraordinary display of beauty; none
+of them wore hats, but the Greek women a light gauze turban, and the
+Smyrniotes a small piece of red cloth, worked with gold, secured on the
+top of the head by the folds of the hair, with a long tassel hanging
+down from it. Opposite, and in striking contrast, the great Turkish
+burying-ground, with its thick grove of gloomy cypress, approached the
+bank of the river. I crossed over and entered the burying-ground, and
+penetrated the grove of funereal trees; all around were the graves of
+the dead; thousands and tens of thousands who but yesterday were like
+the gay crowd I saw flitting through the trees, were sleeping under my
+feet. Over some of the graves the earth was still fresh, and they who
+lay in them were already forgotten; but no, they were not forgotten;
+woman's love still remembered them, for Turkish women, with long white
+shawls wrapped around their faces, were planting over them myrtle and
+flowers, believing that they were paying an acceptable tribute to the
+souls of the dead. I left the burying-ground and plunged once more among
+the crowd. It may be that memory paints these scenes brighter than they
+were; but, if that does not deceive me, I never saw at Paris or Vienna
+so gay and beautiful a scene, so rich in landscape and scenery, in
+variety of costume, and in beauty of female form and feature.
+
+We left the caravan bridge early to visit the Armenian quarter, this
+being the best day for seeing them collectively at home; and I had not
+passed through the first street of their beautiful quarter before I was
+forcibly struck with the appearance of a people different from any I had
+yet seen in the East. The Armenians are one of the oldest nations of the
+civilized world, and, amid all the revolutions of barbarian war and
+despotism, have maintained themselves as a cultivated people. From the
+time when their first chieftain fled from Babylon, his native place, to
+escape from the tyranny of Belus, king of Assyria, this warlike people,
+occupying a mountainous country near the sources of the Tigris and
+Euphrates, battled the Assyrians, Medes, the Persians, Macedonians, and
+Arabians, until their country was depopulated by the shah of Persia.
+Less than two millions are all that now remain of that once powerful
+people. Commerce has scattered them, like the Israelites, among all the
+principal nations of Europe and Asia, and everywhere they have preserved
+their stern integrity and uprightness of character. The Armenian
+merchant is now known in every quarter of the globe, and everywhere
+distinguished by superior cultivation, honesty, and manners. As early as
+the fourth century the Armenians embraced Christianity; they never had
+any sympathy with, and always disliked and avoided, the Greek
+Christians, and constantly resisted the endeavours of the popes to bring
+them within the Catholic pale. Their doctrine differs from that of the
+orthodox chiefly in their admitting only one nature in Christ, and
+believing the Holy Spirit to issue from the Father alone. Their first
+abode, Mount Ararat, is even at the present day the centre of their
+religious and political union. They are distinguished by a patriarchal
+simplicity in their domestic manners; and it was the beautiful
+exhibition of this trait in their character that struck me on entering
+their quarter at Smyrna. In style and appearance their quarter is
+superior to any in Smyrna; their streets are broad and clean; their
+houses large, in good order, and well painted; oriental in their style
+of architecture, with large balconies and latticed windows, and spacious
+halls running through the centre, floored with small black and white
+stones laid in the form of stars and other fanciful devices, and leading
+to large gardens in the rear, ornamented with trees, vines, shrubs, and
+flowers, then in full bloom and beauty. All along the streets the doors
+of the houses were thrown wide open, and the old Armenian
+"Knickerbockers" were sitting outside or in the doorway, in their
+flowing robes, grave and sedate, with long pipes and large amber mouth
+pieces, talking with their neighbours, while the younger members were
+distributed along the hall or strolling through the garden, and children
+climbing the trees and arbours. It was a fete day for the whole
+neighbourhood. All was social, and cheerful, and beautiful, without
+being gay or noisy, and all was open to the observation of every
+passer-by. My companion, an old resident of Smyrna, stopped with me at
+the house of a large banker, whose whole family, with several neighbours
+young and old, were assembled in the hall.
+
+In the street the Armenian ladies observe the Turkish custom of wearing
+the shawl tied around the face so that it is difficult to see their
+features, though I had often admired the dignity and grace of their
+walk, and their propriety of manners; but in the house there was a
+perfect absence of all concealment; and I have seldom seen more
+interesting persons than the whole group of Armenian ladies, and
+particularly the young Armenian girls. They were not so dark, and wanted
+the bold, daring beauty of the Greek, but altogether were far more
+attractive. The great charm of their appearance was an exceeding
+modesty, united with affability and elegance of manner; in fact, there
+was a calm and quiet loveliness about them that would have made any one
+of them dangerous to be shut up alone with, i.e., if a man could talk
+with her without an interpreter. This was one of the occasions when I
+numbered among the pains of life the confusion of tongues. But,
+notwithstanding this, the whole scene was beautiful; and, with all the
+simplicity of a Dutchman's fireside, the style of the house, the pebbled
+hall, the garden, the foliage, and the oriental costumes, threw a charm
+around it which now, while I write, comes over me again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+    An American Original.--Moral Changes in Turkey.--Wonders of Steam
+      Navigation.--The March of Mind.--Classic Localities.--Sestos and
+      Abydos.--Seeds of Pestilence.
+
+
+ON my return from Ephesus I heard of the arrival in Smyrna of two
+American travellers, father and son, from Egypt; and the same day, at
+Mr. Langdon's, I met the father, Dr. N. of Mississippi. The doctor had
+made a long and interesting tour in Egypt and the Holy Land,
+interrupted, however, by a severe attack of ophthalmia on the Nile, from
+which he had not yet recovered, and a narrow escape from the plague at
+Cairo. He was about fifty-five, of a strong, active, and inquiring
+mind; and the circumstances which had brought him to that distant
+country were so peculiar, that I cannot help mentioning them. He had
+passed all his life on the banks of the Mississippi, and for many years
+had busied himself with speculations in regard to the creation of the
+world. Year after year he had watched the deposites and the formation of
+soil on the banks of the Mississippi, had visited every mound and
+mountain indicating any peculiar geological formation, and, unable to
+find any data to satisfy him, he started from his plantation directly
+for the banks of the Nile. He possessed all the warm, high-toned
+feelings of the Southerner, but a thorough contempt for the usages of
+society and everything like polish of manners. He came to New-York and
+embarked for Havre. He had never been even to New-York before; was
+utterly ignorant of any language but his own; despised all foreigners,
+and detested their "jabber." He worked his way to Marseilles with the
+intention of embarking for Alexandria, but was taken sick, and retraced
+his steps directly to his plantation on the Mississippi. Recovering, he
+again set out for the Nile the next year, accompanied by his son, a
+young man of about twenty-three, acquainted with foreign languages, and
+competent to profit by foreign travel. This time he was more successful,
+and, when I saw him, he had rambled over the Pyramids and explored the
+ruined temples of Egypt. The result of his observations had been to
+fortify his preconceived notions, that the age of this world far exceeds
+six thousand years. Indeed, he was firmly persuaded that some of the
+temples of the Nile were built more than six thousand years ago. He had
+sent on to Smyrna enormous boxes of earth and stones, to be shipped to
+America, and was particularly curious on the subject of trees, having
+examined and satisfied himself as to the age of the olive-trees in the
+Garden of Gethsemane and the cedars of Lebanon. I accompanied him to his
+hotel, where I was introduced to his son; and I must not forget another
+member of this party, who is, perhaps, already known to some of my
+readers by the name of Paolo Nuozzo, or, more familiarly, Paul. This
+worthy individual had been travelling on the Nile with two Hungarian
+counts, who discharged him, or whom he discharged (for they differed as
+to the fact), at Cairo. Dr. N. and his son were in want, and Paul
+entered their service as dragoman and superintendent of another man,
+who, they said, was worth a dozen of Paul. I have a very imperfect
+recollection of my first interview with this original. Indeed, I hardly
+remember him at all until my arrival at Constantinople, and have only an
+indistinct impression of a dark, surly-looking, mustached man following
+at the heels of Dr. N., and giving crusty answers in horrible English.
+
+Before my visit to Ephesus I had talked with a Prussian baron of going
+up by land to Constantinople; but on my return I found myself attacked
+with a recurrence of an old malady, and determined to wait for the
+steamboat. The day before I left Smyrna, accompanied by Mr. O. Langdon,
+I went out to Boujac to dine with Mr. Styth. The great beauty of Smyrna
+is its surrounding country. Within a few miles there are three villages,
+Bournabat, Boujac, and Sediguey, occupied by Franks, of which Boujac is
+the favourite. The Franks are always looking to the time of going out to
+their country houses, and consider their residences in their villages
+the most agreeable part of their year; and, from what I saw of it,
+nothing can be more agreeable. Not more than half of them had yet moved
+out, but after dinner we went round and visited all who were there.
+They are all well acquainted, and, living in a strange and barbarous
+country, are drawn closer together than they would be in their own.
+Every evening there is a reunion at some of their houses, and there is
+among them an absence of all unnecessary form and ceremony, without
+which there can be no perfect enjoyment of the true pleasures of social
+intercourse. These villages, too, are endeared to them as places of
+refuge during the repeated and prolonged visitations of the plague, the
+merchant going into the city every morning and returning at night, and
+during the whole continuance of the disease avoiding to touch any member
+of his family. The whole region of country around their villages is
+beautiful in landscape and scenery, producing the choicest flowers and
+fruits; the fig tree particularly growing with a luxuriance unknown in
+any other part of the world. But the whole of this beautiful region lies
+waste and uncultivated, although, if the government could be relied on,
+holding out, by reason of its fertility, its climate, and its facility
+of access, particularly now by means of steamboats, far greater
+inducements to European emigration than any portion of our own country.
+I will not impose upon the reader my speculations on this subject; my
+notes are burdened with them; but, in my opinion, the Old World is in
+process of regeneration, and at this moment offers greater opportunities
+for enterprise than the New.
+
+On Monday, accompanied by Dr. N. and his son and Paolo Nuozzo, I
+embarked on board the steamboat Maria Dorothea for Constantinople; and
+here follows another letter, and the last, dated from the capital of the
+Eastern empire.
+
+
+                                         Constantinople, May ----, 1835.
+
+  MY DEAR ****,
+
+    Oh you who hope one day to roam in Eastern lands, to bend your
+    curious eyes upon the people warmed by the rising sun, come quickly,
+    for all things are changing. You who have pored over the story of
+    the Turk; who have dreamed of him as a gloomy enthusiast, hating,
+    spurning, and slaying all who do not believe and call upon the
+    Prophet;
+
+      "One of that saintly, murderous brood,
+      To carnage and the Koran given,
+      Who think through unbelievers' blood
+      Lies their directest path to Heaven;"
+
+    come quickly, for that description of Turk is passing away. The day
+    has gone by when the haughty Mussulman spurned and persecuted the
+    "Christian dog." A few years since it would have been at peril of a
+    man's life to appear in many parts of Turkey in a European dress;
+    but now the European is looked upon, not only as a creature fit to
+    live, but as a man to be respected. The sultan himself, the great
+    head of the nation and the religion, the vicegerent of God upon
+    earth, has taken off the turban, and all the officers of government
+    have followed his example. The army wears a bastard European
+    uniform, and the great study of the sultan is to introduce European
+    customs. Thanks to the infirmities of human nature, many of these
+    customs have begun to insinuate themselves. The pious follower of
+    the Prophet has dared to raise the winecup to his lips; and in many
+    instances, at the peril of losing his paradise of houris, has given
+    himself up to strong drink. Time was when the word of a Turk was
+    sacred as a precept of the Koran; now he can no more be relied upon
+    than a Jew or a Christian. He has fallen with great facility into
+    lying, cheating, and drinking, and if the earnest efforts to change
+    him are attended with success, perhaps we may soon add stealing and
+    having but one wife. And all this change, this mighty fall, is
+    ascribed by the Europeans here to the destruction of the janisaries,
+    a band of men dangerous to government, brave, turbulent, and bloody,
+    but of indomitable pride; who were above doing little things, and
+    who gave a high tone to the character of the whole people. If I was
+    not bent upon a gallop, and could stop for the jogtrot of an
+    argument, I would say that the destruction of the janisaries is a
+    mere incidental circumstance, and that the true cause is--_steam
+    navigation_. Do not laugh, but listen. The Turks have ever been a
+    proud people, possessing a sort of peacock pride, an extravagantly
+    good opinion of themselves, and a superlative contempt for all the
+    rest of the world. Heretofore they have had comparatively little
+    intercourse with Europeans, consequently but little opportunity of
+    making comparisons, and consequently, again, but little means of
+    discovering their own inferiority. But lately things have changed;
+    the universal peace in Europe and the introduction of steamboats
+    into the Mediterranean have brought the Europeans and the Turks
+    comparatively close together. It seems to me that the effect of
+    steamboats here has as yet hardly begun to be felt. There are but
+    few of them, indifferent boats, constantly getting out of order, and
+    running so irregularly that no reliance can be placed upon them. But
+    still their effects are felt, their convenience is acknowledged;
+    and, so far as my knowledge extends, they have never been introduced
+    anywhere yet without multiplying in numbers, and driving all other
+    vessels off the water. Now the Mediterranean is admirably suited to
+    the use of steamboats; indeed, the whole of these inland waters,
+    the Mediterranean, the Adriatic, the Archipelago, the Dardanelles,
+    the Sea of Marmora, the Bosphorus, and the Black Sea, from the
+    Straits of Gibraltar to the Sea of Azoff, offer every facility that
+    can be desired for steam navigation; and when we consider that the
+    most interesting cities in the world are on the shores of these
+    waters, I cannot but believe that in a very few years they will be,
+    to a certain extent, covered with steamboats. At all events, I have
+    no doubt that in two or three years you will be able to go from
+    Paris to Constantinople in fifteen or twenty days; and, when that
+    time comes, it will throw such numbers of Europeans into the East as
+    will have a sensible effect upon the manners and customs of the
+    people. These eastern countries will be invaded by all classes of
+    people, travellers, merchants, and mechanics, gentlemen of elegant
+    leisure, and blacksmiths, shoemakers, tinkers, and tailors, nay,
+    even mantuamakers, milliners, and bandboxes, the last being an
+    incident to civilized life as yet unknown in Turkey. Indeed,
+    wonderful as the effects of steamboats have been under our own eyes,
+    we are yet to see them far more wonderful in bringing into close
+    alliance, commercial and social, people from distant countries, of
+    different languages and habits; in removing national prejudices, and
+    in breaking down the great characteristic distinctions of nations.
+    Nous verrons, twenty years hence, what steamboats will have done in
+    this part of the world!
+
+    But, in standing up for steamboats, I must not fail in doing justice
+    to the grand seignior. His highness has not always slept upon a bed
+    of roses. He had to thank the petticoats of a female slave for
+    saving his life when a boy, and he had hardly got upon his throne
+    before he found that he should have a hard task to keep it. It lay
+    between him and the janisaries. In spite of them and of the general
+    prejudices of the people, he determined to organize an army
+    according to European tactics. He staked his throne and his head
+    upon the issue; and it was not until he had been pushed to the
+    desperate expedient of unfurling the sacred standard of the Prophet,
+    parading it through the streets of Constantinople, and calling upon
+    all good Mussulmans to rally round it; in short, it was not until
+    the dead bodies of thirty thousand janisaries were floating down the
+    Bosphorus, that he found himself the master in his own dominions.
+    Since that time, either because he is fond of new things, or because
+    he really sees farther than those around him, he is constantly
+    endeavouring to introduce European improvements. For this purpose he
+    invites talent, particularly mechanical and military, from every
+    country, and has now around him Europeans among his most prominent
+    men, and directing nearly all his public works.
+
+    The Turks are a sufficiently intelligent people, and cannot help
+    feeling the superiority of strangers. Probably the immediate effect
+    may be to make them prone rather to catch the faults and vices than
+    the virtues of Europeans; but afterward better things will come;
+    they will fall into our better ways; and perhaps, though that is
+    almost more than we dare hope for, they will embrace a better
+    religion.
+
+    But, however this may be, or whatever may be the cause, all ye who
+    would see the Turk of Mohammed; the Turk who swept the plains of
+    Asia, who leaned upon his bloody sword before the walls of Vienna,
+    and threatened the destruction of Christendom in Europe; the Turk of
+    the turban, and the pipe, and the seraglio, come quickly, for he is
+    becoming another man. A little longer, and the great characteristic
+    distinctions will be broken down; the long pipe, the handsome
+    pipe-bearer, and the amber mouthpiece are gone, and oh, death to all
+    that is beautiful in Eastern romance, the walls of the seraglio are
+    prostrated, the doors of the harem thrown open, the black eunuch and
+    the veiled woman are no more seen, while the honest Turk trudges
+    home from a quiet tea-party stripped of his retinue of fair ones,
+    with his one and only wife tucked under his arm, his head drooping
+    between his shoulders, taking a lecture from his better half for an
+    involuntary sigh to the good old days that are gone. And oh you who
+    turn up your aristocratic noses at such parvenues as Mohammed and
+    the Turks; who would go back to those distant ages which time covers
+    with its dim and twilight glories,
+
+      "When the world was fresh and young,
+      And the great deluge still had left it green;"
+
+    you who come piping-hot from college, your brains teeming with
+    recollections of the heroic ages; who would climb Mount Ida, to sit
+    in council with the gods, come quickly, also, for all things are
+    changing. A steamboat--shade of Hector, Ajax, and Agamemnon, forgive
+    the sins of the day--an Austrian steamboat is now splashing the
+    island-studded AEgean, and paddling the classic waters of the
+    Hellespont. Oh ye princes and heroes who armed for the Trojan war,
+    and covered these waters with your thousand ships, with what pious
+    horror must you look down from your blessed abodes upon the impious
+    modern monster of the deep, which strips the tall mast of its
+    flowing canvass, renders unnecessary the propitiation of the gods,
+    and flounders on its way in spite of wind and weather!
+
+    A new and unaccountable respect for the classics almost made me
+    scorn the newfangled conveyance, though much to the comfort of
+    wayfaring men; but sundry recollections of Greek caiques, and also
+    an apprehension that there might be those yet living who had heard
+    me in early days speak anything but respectfully of Homer, suggested
+    to me that one man could not stem the current of the times, and that
+    it was better for a humble individual like myself to float with the
+    tide. This idea, too, of currents and tides made me think better of
+    Prince Metternich and his steamboat; and smothering, as well as I
+    could, my sense of shame, I sneaked on board the Maria Dorothea for
+    a race to Constantinople. Join me, now, in this race; and if your
+    heart does not break at going by at the rate of eight or ten miles
+    an hour, I will whip you over a piece of the most classic ground
+    consecrated in history, mythology, or poetry, and in less time than
+    ever the swiftfooted Achilles could have travelled it. At eleven
+    o'clock on a bright sunny day the Maria Dorothea turned her back
+    upon the city and beautiful bay of Smyrna; in about two hours passed
+    the harbour of Vourla, then used as a quarantine station, the yellow
+    plague flag floating in the city and among the shipping; and toward
+    dark, turning the point of the gulf, came upon my old acquaintance
+    Foggi, the little harbour into which I had been twice driven by
+    adverse winds. My Greek friend happened to be on board, and, in the
+    honesty of his heart, congratulated me upon being this time
+    independent of the elements, without seeming to care a fig whether
+    he profaned the memory of his ancestors in travelling by so
+    unclassical a conveyance. If he takes it so coolly, thought I, what
+    is it to me? they are his relations, not mine. In the evening we
+    were moving close to the Island of Mytilene, the ancient Lesbos, the
+    country of Sappho, Alcaeus, and Terpander, famed for the excellence
+    of its wine and the beauty of its women, and pre-eminently
+    distinguished for dissipation and debauchery, the fatal plague flag
+    now floating mournfully over its walls, marking it as the abode of
+    pestilence and death.
+
+    Early in the morning I found myself opposite the promontory of
+    Lectum, now Cape Baba, separating the ancient Troas from AEolia; a
+    little to the right, but hardly visible, were the ruins of Assos,
+    where the apostles stopped to take in Paul; a little farther the
+    ruins of Alexandria Troas, one of the many cities founded by
+    Alexander during his conquests in Asia; to the left, at some
+    distance in the sea, is the Island of Lemnos, in the songs of the
+    poets overshadowed by the lofty Olympus, the island that received
+    Vulcan after he was kicked out of heaven by Jupiter. A little
+    farther, nearer the land, is the Island of Tenedos, the ancient
+    Leucophrys, where Paris first landed after carrying off Helen, and
+    behind which the Greeks withdrew their fleet when they pretended to
+    have abandoned the siege of Troy. Still farther, on the mainland, is
+    the promontory of Sigaeum, where the Scamander empties into the sea,
+    and near which were fought the principal of Homer's battles. A
+    little farther--but hold, stop the engine! If there be a spot of
+    classic ground on earth in which the historical, and the poetical,
+    and the fabulous are so beautifully blended together that we would
+    not separate them even to discover the truth, it is before us now.
+    Extending for a great distance along the shore, and back as far as
+    the eye can reach, under the purest sky that ever overshadowed the
+    earth, lies a rich and beautiful plain, and it is the plain of Troy,
+    the battle-ground of heroes. Oh field of glory and of blood, little
+    does he know, that surly Turk who is now lazily following his plough
+    over thy surface, that every blade of thy grass could tell of
+    heroic deeds, the shock of armies, the meeting of war chariots, the
+    crashing of armour, the swift flight, the hot pursuit, the shouts of
+    victors, and the groans of the dying. Beyond it, towering to the
+    heavens, is a lofty mountain, and it is Mount Ida, on whose top
+    Paris adjudged the golden apple to the goddess of beauty, and paved
+    the way for those calamities which brought on the ten years' siege,
+    and laid in ruins the ancient city of Priam. Two small streams,
+    taking their rise from the mountain of the gods, join each other in
+    the middle of the plain; Scamander and Simois, whose waters once
+    washed the walls of the ancient city of Dardanus; and that small,
+    confused, and shapeless mass of ruins, that beautiful sky and the
+    songs of Homer, are all that remain to tell us that "Troy was."
+    Close to the sea, and rising like mountains above the plain, are two
+    immense mounds of earth; they are the tombs of Ajax and Achilles.
+    Shades of departed heroes, fain would we stop and pay the tribute
+    which we justly owe, but we are hurried past by an engine of a
+    hundred horse power.
+
+    Onward, still onward! We have reached the ancient Hellespont, the
+    Dardanelles of the Turks, famed as the narrow water that divides
+    Europe from Asia, for the beauties that adorn its banks, and for its
+    great Turkish fortifications. Three miles wide at the mouth, it
+    becomes gradually narrower, until, in the narrowest part, the
+    natives of Europe and Asia can talk together from the opposite
+    sides. For sixty miles (its whole length) it presents a continued
+    succession of new beauties, and in the hands of Europeans,
+    particularly English, improved as country seats, would make one of
+    the loveliest countries in the world. I had just time to reflect
+    that it was melancholy, and seemed inexplicable that this and other
+    of the fairest portions of the earth should be in the hands of the
+    Turks, who neither improve it themselves nor allow others to do so.
+    At three o'clock we arrived at the Dardanelles, a little Turkish
+    town in the narrowest and most beautiful part of the straits; a
+    strong fort with enormous cannon stands frowning on each side. These
+    are the terrible fortifications of Mohammed II., the keys of
+    Constantinople. The guns are enormous; of one in particular, the
+    muzzle is two feet three inches in diameter; but, with Turkish
+    ingenuity, they are so placed as to be discharged when a ship is
+    directly opposite. If the ship is not disabled by the first fire,
+    and does not choose to go back and take another, she is safe. At
+    every moment a new picture presents itself; a new fort, a new villa,
+    or the ruins of an ancient city. A naked point on the European side,
+    so ugly compared with all around it as to attract particular
+    attention, projects into the strait, and here are the ruins of
+    Sestos; here Xerxes built his bridge of boats to carry over his
+    millions to the conquest of Greece; and here, when he returned with
+    the wreck of his army, defeated and disgraced, found his bridge
+    destroyed by a tempest, and, in his rage, ordered the chains to be
+    thrown into the sea and the waves to be lashed with rods. From this
+    point, too, Leander swam the Hellespont for love of Hero, and Lord
+    Byron and Mr. Ekenhead for fun. Nearly opposite, close to a Turkish
+    fort, are the ruins of Abydos. Here Xerxes, and Leander, and Lord
+    Byron, and Mr. Ekenhead landed.
+
+    Our voyage is drawing to a close. At Gallipoli, a large Turkish town
+    handsomely situated at the mouth of the Dardanelles, we took on
+    board the Turkish governor, with his pipe-bearer and train of
+    attendants, escorted by thirty or forty boats, containing three or
+    four hundred people, his mightiness taking a deck passage. Toward
+    evening we were entering the Sea of Marmora, the ancient Propontis,
+    like one of our small lakes, and I again went to sleep lulled by the
+    music of a high-pressure engine. At daylight we were approaching
+    Constantinople; twelve miles this side, on the bank of the Sea of
+    Marmora, is the village of St. Stephano, the residence of Commodore
+    Porter. Here the domes and minarets of the ancient city, with their
+    golden points and glittering crescents, began to appear in sight.
+    High above the rest towered the mosque of Sultan Achmet and the
+    beautiful dome of St. Sophia, the ancient Christian church, but now,
+    for nearly four hundred years, closed against the Christians' feet.
+    We approach the walls and pass a range of gloomy turrets; there are
+    the Seven Towers, prisons, portals of the grave, whose mysteries few
+    live to publish: the bowstring and the sea reveal no secrets. That
+    palace, with its blinded windows and its superb garden, surrounded
+    by a triple range of walls, is the far-famed seraglio; there beauty
+    lingers in a splendid cage, and, lolling on her rich divan, sighs
+    for the humblest lot and freedom. In front, that narrow water, a
+    thousand caiques shooting through it like arrows, and its beautiful
+    banks covered with high palaces and gardens in the oriental style,
+    is the Thracian Bosphorus. We float around the walls of the
+    seraglio, enter the Golden Horn, and before us, with its thousand
+    mosques and its myriad of minarets, their golden points glittering
+    in the sun, is the Roman city of Constantinople, the Thracian
+    Byzantium, the Stamboul of the Turks; the city which, more than all
+    others, excites the imagination and interests the feelings; once
+    dividing with Rome the empire of the world; built by a Christian
+    emperor and consecrated as a Christian city, a "burning and a
+    shining light" in a season of universal darkness, all at once lost
+    to the civilized world; falling into the hands of a strange and
+    fanatic people, the gloomy followers of a successful soldier; a city
+    which, for nearly four centuries, has sat with its gates closed in
+    sullen distrust and haughty defiance of strangers; which once sent
+    forth large and terrible armies, burning, slaying, and destroying,
+    shaking the hearts of princes and people, now lying like a fallen
+    giant, huge, unwieldy, and helpless, ready to fall into the hands of
+    the first invader, and dragging out a precarious and ignoble
+    existence but by the mercy or policy of the great Christian powers.
+    The morning sun, now striking upon its domes and minarets, covers
+    it, as it were, with burnished gold; a beautiful verdure surrounds
+    it, and pure waters wash it on every side. Can this beautiful city,
+    rich with the choicest gifts of Heaven, be pre-eminently the abode
+    of pestilence and death? where a man carries about with him the
+    seeds of disease to all whom he holds dear? if he extend the hand of
+    welcome to a friend, if he embrace his child or rub against a
+    stranger, the friend, and the child, and the stranger follow him to
+    the grave? where, year after year, the angel of death stalks through
+    the streets, and thousands and tens of thousands look him calmly in
+    the face, and murmuring "Allah, Allah, God is merciful," with a
+    fatal trust in the Prophet, lie down and die? We enter the city, and
+    these questions are quickly answered. A lazy, lounging, and filthy
+    population; beggars basking in the sun, and dogs licking their
+    sores; streets never cleaned but by the winds and rains; immense
+    burying-grounds all over the city; tombstones at the corners of the
+    streets; graves gaping ready to throw out their half-buried dead,
+    the whole approaching to one vast charnel-house, dispel all
+    illusions and remove all doubts, and we are ready to ask ourselves
+    if it be possible that, in such a place, health can ever dwell. We
+    wonder that it should ever, for the briefest moment, be free from
+    that dreadful scourge which comes with every summer's sun and strews
+    its streets with dead.
+
+                                                             ****
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+    Mr. Churchill.--Commodore Porter.--Castle of the Seven Towers.--The
+      Sultan's Naval Architect.--Launch of the Great Ship.--Sultan
+      Mahmoud.--Jubilate.--A National Grievance.--Visit to a
+      Mosque.--The Burial-grounds.
+
+
+THERE is a good chance for an enterprising Connecticut man to set up a
+hotel in Constantinople. The reader will see that I have travelled with
+my eyes open, and I trust this shrewd observation on entering the city
+of the Caesars will be considered characteristic and American. Paul was
+at home in Pera, and conducted us to the Hotel d'Italia, which was so
+full that we could not get admission, and so vile a place that we were
+not sorry for it. We then went to Madame Josephine's, a sort of private
+boarding-house, but excellent of its kind. We found there a collection
+of travellers, English, French, German, and Russian, and the dinner was
+particularly social; but Dr. N. was so disgusted with the clatter of
+foreign tongues, that he left the table with the first course, and swore
+he would not stay there another day. We tried to persuade him. I
+reminded him that there was an Englishman among them, but this only made
+him worse; he hated an Englishman, and wondered how I, as an American,
+could talk with one as I had with him. In short, he was resolved, and
+had Paul running about every street in Pera looking for rooms.
+Notwithstanding his impracticabilities as a traveller, I liked the
+doctor, and determined to follow him, and before breakfast the next
+morning we were installed in a suite of rooms in the third story of a
+house opposite the old palace of the British ambassador.
+
+For two or three days I was _hors du combat_, and put myself under the
+hands of Dr. Zohrab, an Armenian, educated at Edinburgh, whom I
+cordially recommend both for his kindness and medical skill. On going
+out, one of my first visits was to my banker, Mr. Churchill, a gentleman
+whose name has since rung throughout Europe, and who at one time seemed
+likely to be the cause of plunging the whole civilized world into a war.
+He was then living in Sedikuey, on the site of the ancient Chalcedon, in
+Asia; and I have seldom been more shocked than by reading in a
+newspaper, while in the lazaretto at Malta, that, having accidentally
+shot a Turkish boy with a fowling-piece, he had been seized by the
+Turks, and, in defiance of treaties, _bastinadoed_ till he was almost
+dead. I had seen the infliction of that horrible punishment; and,
+besides the physical pain, there was a sense of the indignity that
+roused every feeling. I could well imagine the ferocious spirit with
+which the Turks would stand around and see a Christian scourged. The
+civilized world owes a deep debt of gratitude to the English government
+for the uncompromising stand taken in this matter with the sultan, and
+the firmness with which it insisted on, and obtained, the most ample
+redress for Mr. Churchill, and atonement for the insult offered to all
+Christendom in his person.
+
+My companions and myself had received several invitations from Commodore
+Porter, and, accompanied by Mr. Dwight, one of our American
+missionaries, to whom I am under particular obligations for his
+kindness, early in the morning we took a caique with three athletic
+Turks, and, after a beautiful row, part of it from the seraglio point to
+the Seven Towers, a distance of five miles, being close under the walls
+of the city, in two hours reached the commodore's residence at St.
+Stephano, twelve miles from Constantinople, on the borders of the Sea of
+Marmora. The situation is beautiful, abounding in fruit-trees, among
+which are some fig trees of the largest size; and the commodore was then
+engaged in building a large addition to his house. It will be remembered
+that Commodore Porter was the first envoy ever sent by the United
+States' government to the Sublime Porte. He had formerly lived at
+Buyukdere, on the Bosphorus, with the other members of the diplomatic
+corps; but his salary as charge being inadequate to sustain a becoming
+style, he had withdrawn to this place. I had never seen Commodore Porter
+before. I afterward passed a month with him in the lazaretto at Malta,
+and I trust he will not consider me presuming when I say that our
+acquaintance ripened into friendship. He is entirely different from the
+idea I had formed of him; small, dark, weather-beaten, much broken in
+health, and remarkably mild and quiet in his manners. His eye is his
+best feature, though even that does not indicate the desperate hardihood
+of character which he has exhibited on so many occasions. Perhaps I
+ought not to say so, but he seemed ill at ease in his position, and I
+could not but think that he ought still to be standing in the front rank
+of that service he so highly honoured. He spoke with great bitterness of
+the Foxardo affair, and gave me an account of an interesting interview
+between General Jackson and himself on his recall from South America.
+General Jackson wished him to resume his rank in the navy, but he
+answered that he would never accept service with men who had suspended
+him for doing what, they said in their sentence of condemnation, was
+done "to sustain the honour of the American flag."
+
+At the primitive hour of one we sat down to a regular family dinner. We
+were all Americans. The commodore's sister, who was living with him,
+presided, and we looked out on the Sea of Marmora and talked of home. I
+cannot describe the satisfaction of these meetings of Americans so far
+from their own country. I have often experienced it most powerfully in
+the houses of the missionaries in the East. Besides having, in many
+instances, the same acquaintances, we had all the same habits and ways
+of thinking; their articles of furniture were familiar to me, and there
+was scarcely a house in which I did not find an article unknown except
+among Americans, a Boston rocking-chair.
+
+We talked over the subject of our difficulties with France, then under
+discussion in the Chamber of Deputies, and I remember that Commodore
+Porter was strong in the opinion that the bill paying the debt would
+pass. Before rising from table, the commodore's janisary came down from
+Constantinople, with papers and letters just arrived by the courier from
+Paris. He told me that I should have the honour of breaking the seals,
+and I took out the paper so well known all over Europe, "Galignani's
+Messenger," and had the satisfaction of reading aloud, in confirmation
+of the commodore's opinion, that the bill for paying the American claims
+had passed the Chamber of Deputies by a large majority.
+
+[Illustration: Castle of the Seven Towers.]
+
+About four o'clock we embarked in our caique to return to Constantinople.
+In an hour Mr. D. and I landed at the foot of the Seven Towers, and few
+things in this ancient city interested me more than my walk around its
+walls. We followed them the whole extent on the land side, from the Sea
+of Marmora to the Golden Horn. They consist of a triple range, with five
+gates, the principal of which is the Cannon Gate, through which Mohammed
+II. made his triumphal entry into the Christian city. They have not been
+repaired since the city fell into the hands of the Turks, and are the
+same walls which procured for it the proud name of the "well-defended
+city;" to a great extent, they are the same walls which the first
+Constantine built and the last Constantine died in defending. Time has
+laid his ruining hand upon them, and they are everywhere weak and
+decaying, and would fall at once before the thunder of modern war. The
+moat and fosse have alike lost their warlike character, and bloom and
+blossom with the vine and fig tree. Beyond, hardly less interesting than
+the venerable walls, and extending as far as the eye can reach, is one
+continued burying-ground, with thousands and tens of thousands of
+turbaned headstones, shaded by thick groves of the mourning cypress.
+Opposite the Damascus Gate is an elevated enclosure, disconnected from
+all around, containing five headstones in a row, over the bodies of Ali
+Pacha, the rebel chief of Yanina, and his four sons. The fatal mark of
+death by the bowstring is conspicuous on the tombs, as a warning to
+rebels that they cannot escape the sure vengeance of the Porte. It was
+toward the sunset of a beautiful evening, and all Stamboul was out among
+the tombs. At dark we reached the Golden Horn, crossed over in a caique,
+and in a few minutes were in Pera.
+
+The next day I took a caique at Tophana, and went up to the shipyards at
+the head of the Golden Horn to visit Mr. Rhodes, to whom I had a letter
+from a friend in Smyrna. Mr. Rhodes is a native of Long Island, but from
+his boyhood a resident of this city, and I take great pleasure in saying
+that he is an honour to our state and country. The reader will remember
+that, some years ago, Mr. Eckford, one of our most prominent citizens,
+under a pressure of public and domestic calamities, left his native
+city. He sailed from New-York in a beautiful corvette, its destination
+unknown, and came to anchor under the walls of the seraglio in the
+harbour of Constantinople. The sultan saw her, admired her, and bought
+her; and I saw her "riding like a thing of life" on the waters of the
+Golden Horn, a model of beauty.
+
+The fame of his skill, and the beautiful specimen he carried out with
+him, recommended Mr. Eckford to the sultan as a fit instrument to build
+up the character of the Ottoman navy; and afterward, when his full value
+became known, the sultan remarked of him that America must be a great
+nation if she could spare from her service such a man. Had he lived,
+even in the decline of life he would have made for himself a reputation
+in that distant quarter of the globe equal to that he had left behind
+him, and doubtless would have reaped the attendant pecuniary reward. Mr.
+Rhodes went out as Mr. Eckford's foreman, and on his death the task of
+completing his employer's work devolved on him. It could not have
+fallen upon a better man. From a journeyman shipbuilder, all at once Mr.
+Rhodes found himself brought into close relations with the seraskier
+pacha, the reis effendi, the grand vizier, and the sultan himself; but
+his good sense never deserted him. He was then preparing for the launch
+of the great ship; the longest, as he said, and he knew the dimensions
+of every ship that floated, in the world. I accompanied him over the
+ship and through the yards, and it was with no small degree of interest
+that I viewed a townsman, an entire stranger in the country, by his
+skill alone standing at the head of the great naval establishment of the
+sultan. He was dressed in a blue roundabout jacket, without whiskers or
+mustache, and, except that he wore the tarbouch, was thorough American
+in his appearance and manners, while his dragoman was constantly by his
+side, communicating his orders to hundreds of mustached Turks, and in
+the same breath he was talking with me of shipbuilders in New-York, and
+people and things most familiar in our native city. Mr. Rhodes knows and
+cares but little for things that do not immediately concern him; his
+whole thoughts are of his business, and in that he possesses an ambition
+and industry worthy of all praise. As an instance of his discretion,
+particularly proper in the service of that suspicious and despotic
+government, I may mention that, while standing near the ship and
+remarking a piece of cloth stretched across her stern, I asked him her
+name, and he told me he did not know; that it was painted on her stern,
+and his dragoman knew, but he had never looked under, that he might not
+be able to answer when asked. I have seldom met a countryman abroad with
+whom I was more pleased, and at parting he put himself on a pinnacle in
+my estimation by telling me that, if I came to the yard the next day at
+one, I would see the sultan! There was no man living whom I had a
+greater curiosity to see. At twelve o'clock I was at the yard, but the
+sultan did not come. I went again, and his highness had come two hours
+before the time; had accompanied Mr. Rhodes over the ship, and left the
+yard less than five minutes before my arrival; his caique was still
+lying at the little dock, his attendants were carrying trays of
+refreshments to a shooting-ground in the rear, and two black eunuchs
+belonging to the seraglio, handsomely dressed in long black cloaks of
+fine pelisse cloth, with gold-headed canes and rings on their fingers,
+were still lingering about the ship, their effeminate faces and musical
+voices at once betraying their neutral character.
+
+The next was the day of the launch; and early in the morning, in the
+suite of Commodore Porter, I went on board an old steamer provided by
+the sultan expressly for the use of Mr. Rhodes's American friends. The
+waters of the Golden Horn were already covered; thousands of caiques,
+with their high sharp points, were cutting through it, or resting like
+gulls upon its surface; and there were ships with the still proud banner
+of the crescent, and strangers with the flags of every nation in
+Christendom, and sailboats, longboats, and rowboats, ambassadors'
+barges, and caiques of effendis, beys, and pachas, with red silk flags
+streaming in the wind, while countless thousands were assembled on the
+banks to behold the extraordinary spectacle of an American ship, the
+largest in the world, launched in the harbour of old Stamboul. The
+sultan was then living at his beautiful palace at Sweet Waters, and was
+obliged to pass by our boat; he had made a great affair of the launch;
+had invited all the diplomatic corps, and, through the reis effendi,
+particularly requested the presence of Commodore Porter; had stationed
+his harem on the opposite side of the river; and as I saw prepared for
+himself near the ship a tent of scarlet cloth trimmed with gold, I
+expected to see him appear in all the pomp and splendour of the greatest
+potentate on earth. I had already seen enough to convince me that the
+days of Eastern magnificence had gone by, or that the gorgeous scenes
+which my imagination had always connected with the East had never
+existed; but still I could not divest myself of the lingering idea of
+the power and splendour of the sultan. His commanding style to his own
+subjects: "I command you, ----, my slave, that you bring the head of ----,
+my slave, and lay it at my feet;" and then his lofty tone with foreign
+powers: "I, who am, by the infinite grace of the great, just, and
+all-powerful Creator, and the abundance of the miracles of the chief of
+his prophets, emperor of powerful emperors; refuge of sovereigns;
+distributor of crowns to the kings of the earth; keeper of the two very
+holy cities (Mecca and Medina); governor of the holy city of Jerusalem;
+master of Europe, Asia, and Africa, conquered with our victorious sword
+and our terrible lance; lord of two seas (Black and White); of Damascus,
+the odour of Paradise; of Bagdad, the seat of the califs; of the
+fortresses of Belgrade, Agra, and a multitude of countries, isles,
+straits, people, generations, and of so many victorious armies who
+repose under the shade of our Sublime Porte; I, in short, who am the
+shadow of God upon earth;" I was rolling these things through my mind
+when a murmur, "the sultan is coming," turned me to the side of the
+boat, and one view dispelled all my gorgeous fancies. There was no
+style, no state, a citizen king, a republican president, or a
+democratic governor, could not have made a more unpretending appearance
+than did this "shadow of God upon earth." He was seated in the bottom of
+a large caique, dressed in the military frockcoat and red tarbouch, with
+his long black beard, the only mark of a Turk about him, and he moved
+slowly along the vacant space cleared for his passage, boats with the
+flags of every nation, and thousands of caiques falling back, and the
+eyes of the immense multitude earnestly fixed upon him, but without any
+shouts or acclamations; and when he landed at the little dock, and his
+great officers bowed to the dust before him, he looked the plainest,
+mildest, kindest man among them. I had wished to see him as a wholesale
+murderer, who had more blood upon his hands than any man living; who had
+slaughtered the janisaries, drenched the plains of Greece, to say
+nothing of bastinadoes, impalements, cutting off heads, and tying up in
+sacks, which are taking place every moment; but I will not believe that
+Sultan Mahmoud finds any pleasure in shedding blood. Dire necessity, or,
+as he himself would say, fate, has ever been driving him on. I look upon
+him as one of the most interesting characters upon earth; as the
+creature of circumstances, made bloody and cruel by the necessities of
+his position. I look at his past life and at that which is yet in store
+for him, through all the stormy scenes he is to pass until he completes
+his unhappy destiny, the last of a powerful and once-dreaded race,
+bearded by those who once crouched at the footstool of his ancestors,
+goaded by rebellious vassals, conscious that he is going a downward
+road, and yet unable to resist the impulse that drives him on. Like the
+strong man encompassed with a net, he finds no avenue of escape, and
+cannot break through it.
+
+The seraskier pacha and other principal officers escorted him to his
+tent, and now all the interest which I had taken in the sultan was
+transferred to Mr. Rhodes. He had great anxiety about the launch, and
+many difficulties to contend with: first, in the Turks' jealousy of a
+stranger, which obliged him to keep constantly on the watch lest some of
+his ropes should be cut or fastenings knocked away; and he had another
+Turkish prejudice to struggle against: the day had been fixed twice
+before, but the astronomers found an unfortunate conjunction of the
+stars, and it was postponed, and even then the stars were unpropitious;
+but Mr. Rhodes had insisted that the work had gone so far that it could
+not be stopped. And, besides these, he had another great difficulty in
+his ignorance of their language. With more than a thousand men under
+him, all his orders had to pass through interpreters, and often, too,
+the most prompt action was necessary, and the least mistake might prove
+fatal. Fortunately, he was protected from treachery by the kindness of
+Mr. Churchill and Dr. Zohrab, one of whom stood on the bow and the other
+in the stern of the ship, and through whom every order was transmitted
+in Turkish. Probably none there felt the same interest that we did; for
+the flags of the barbarian and every nation in Christendom were waving
+around us, and at that distance from home the enterprise of a single
+citizen enlisted the warmest feelings of every American. We watched the
+ship with as keen an interest as if our own honour and success in life
+depended upon her movements. For a long time she remained perfectly
+quiet. At length she moved, slowly and almost imperceptibly; and then,
+as if conscious that the eyes of an immense multitude were on her, and
+that the honour of a distant nation was in some measure at stake, she
+marched proudly to the water, plunged in with a force that almost buried
+her, and, rising like a huge leviathan, parted the foaming waves with
+her bow, and rode triumphantly upon them. Even Mussulman indifference
+was disturbed; all petty jealousies were hushed; the whole immense mass
+was roused into admiration; loud and long-continued shouts of applause
+rose with one accord from Turks and Christians, and the sultan was so
+transported that he jumped up and clapped his hands like a schoolboy.
+
+Mr. Rhodes's triumph was complete; the sultan called him to his tent,
+and with his own hands fixed on the lappel of his coat a gold medal set
+in diamonds, representing the launching of a ship. Mr. Rhodes has
+attained among strangers the mark of every honourable man's ambition,
+the head of his profession. He has put upon the water what Commodore
+Porter calls the finest ship that ever floated, and has a right to be
+proud of his position and prospects under the "shade of the Sublime
+Porte." The sultan wishes to confer upon him the title of chief naval
+constructor, and to furnish him with a house and a caique with four
+oars. In compliment to his highness, who detests a hat, Mr. Rhodes wears
+the tarbouch; but he declines all offices and honours, and anything that
+may tend to fix him as a Turkish subject, and looks to return and enjoy
+in his own country and among his own people the fruits of his honourable
+labours. If the good wishes of a friend can avail him, he will soon
+return to our city rich with the profits of untiring industry, and an
+honourable testimony to his countrymen of the success of American skill
+and enterprise abroad.
+
+To go back a moment. All day the great ship lay in the middle of the
+Golden Horn, while perhaps more than a hundred thousand Turks shot
+round her in their little caiques, looking up from the surface of the
+water to her lofty deck: and in Pera, wherever I went, perhaps because I
+was an American, the only thing I heard of was the American ship. Proud
+of the admiration excited so far from home by this noble specimen of the
+skill of an American citizen, I unburden myself of a long-smothered
+subject of complaint against my country. I cry out with a loud voice for
+_reform_, not in the hackneyed sense of petty politicians, but by a
+liberal and enlarged expenditure of public money; by increasing the
+outfits and salaries of our foreign ambassadors and ministers. We claim
+to be rich, free from debt, and abundant in resources, and yet every
+American abroad is struck with a feeling of mortification at the
+inability of his representative to take that position in social life to
+which the character of his country entitles him. We may talk of
+republican simplicity as we will, but there are certain usages of
+society and certain appendages of rank which, though they may be
+unmeaning and worthless, are sanctioned, if not by the wisdom, at least
+by the practice of all civilized countries. We have committed a fatal
+error since the time when Franklin appeared at the court of France in a
+plain citizen's dress; everywhere our representative conforms to the
+etiquette of the court to which he is accredited, and it is too late to
+go back and begin anew; and now, unless our representative is rich and
+willing to expend his own fortune for the honour of the nation, he is
+obliged to withdraw from the circles and position in which he has a
+right and ought to move, or to move in them on an inferior footing,
+under an acknowledgment of inability to appear as an equal.
+
+And again: our whole consular system is radically wrong, disreputable,
+and injurious to our character and interests. While other nations
+consider the support of their consuls a part of the expenses of their
+government, we suffer ourselves to be represented by merchants, whose
+pecuniary interests are mixed up with all the local and political
+questions that affect the place and who are under a strong inducement to
+make their office subservient to their commercial relations. I make no
+imputations against any of them. I could not if I would, for I do not
+know an American merchant holding the office who is not a respectable
+man; but the representative of our country ought to be the
+representative of our country only; removed from any distracting or
+conflicting interests, standing like a watchman to protect the honour of
+his nation and the rights of her citizens. And more than this, all over
+the Mediterranean there are ports where commerce presents no inducements
+to the American merchant, and there the office falls into the hands of
+the natives; and at this day the American arms are blazoned on the
+doors, and the American flag is waving over the houses, of Greeks,
+Italians, Jews, and Arabs, and all the mongrel population of that inland
+sea; and in the ports under the dominion of Turkey particularly, the
+office is coveted as a means of protecting the holder against the
+liabilities to his own government, and of revenue by selling that
+protection to others. I will not mention them by name, for I bear them
+no ill will personally, and I have received kindness from most of the
+petty vagabonds who live under the folds of the American flag; but the
+consuls at Gendoa and Algiers are a disgrace to the American name.
+Congress has lately turned its attention to this subject, and will,
+before long, I hope, effect a complete change in the character of our
+consular department, and give it the respectability which it wants; the
+only remedy is by following the example of other nations, in fixing
+salaries to the office, and forbidding the holders to engage in trade.
+Besides the leading inducements to this change, there is a secondary
+consideration, which, in my eyes, is not without its value, in that it
+would furnish a valuable school of instruction for our young men. The
+offices would be sought by such. A thousand or fifteen hundred dollars a
+year would maintain them respectably, in most of the ports of the
+Mediterranean, and young men resident in those places, living upon
+salaries, and not obliged to engage in commerce, would employ their
+leisure hours in acquiring the language of the country, in communicating
+with the interior, and among them would return upon us an accumulation
+of knowledge far more than repaying us for all the expense of supporting
+them abroad.
+
+Doubtless the reader expects other things in Constantinople; but all
+things are changing. The day has gone by when the Christian could not
+cross the threshold of a mosque and live. Even the sacred mosque of St.
+Sophia, the ancient Christian church, so long closed against the
+Christians' feet, now, upon great occasions, again opens its doors to
+the descendants of its Christian builders. One of these great occasions
+happened while I was there. The sultan gave a firman to the French
+ambassador, under which all the European residents and travellers
+visited it. Unfortunately, I was unwell, and could not go out that day,
+and was obliged afterward to content myself with walking around its
+walls, with uplifted eyes and a heavy heart, admiring the glittering
+crescent and thinking of the prostrate cross.
+
+But no traveller can leave Constantinople without having seen the
+interior of a mosque; and accordingly, under the guidance of Mustapha,
+the janisary of the British consul, I visited the mosque of Sultan
+Suliman, next in point of beauty to that of St. Sophia, though far
+inferior in historical interest. At an early hour we crossed the Golden
+Horn to old Stamboul; threaded our way through its narrow and intricate
+streets to an eminence near the seraskier pacha's tower; entered by a
+fine gateway into a large courtyard, more than a thousand feet square,
+handsomely paved and ornamented with noble trees, and enclosed by a high
+wall; passed a marble fountain of clear and abundant water, where, one
+after another, the faithful stopped to make their ablutions; entered a
+large colonnade, consisting of granite and marble pillars of every form
+and style, the plunder of ancient temples, worked in without much regard
+to architectural fitness, yet, on the whole, producing a fine effect;
+pulled off our shoes at the door, and, with naked feet and noiseless
+step, crossed the sacred threshold of the mosque. Silently we moved
+among the kneeling figures of the faithful scattered about in different
+parts of the mosque and engaged in prayer; paused for a moment under the
+beautiful dome sustained by four columns from the Temple of Diana at
+Ephesus; leaned against a marble pillar which may have supported, two
+thousand years ago, the praying figure of a worshipper of the great
+goddess; gazed at the thousand small lamps suspended from the lofty
+ceiling, each by a separate cord, and with a devout feeling left the
+mosque.
+
+[Illustration: Mosque of Sultan Suliman.]
+
+In the rear, almost concealed from view by a thick grove of trees,
+shrubs, and flowers, is a circular building about forty feet in
+diameter, containing the tomb of Suliman, the founder of the mosque, his
+brother, his favourite wife Roxala, and two other wives. The monuments
+are in the form of sarcophagi, with pyramidal tops, covered with rich
+Cashmere shawls, having each at the head a large white turban, and
+enclosed by a railing covered with mother-of-pearl. The great beauty of
+the sepulchral chamber is its dome, which is highly ornamented, and
+sparkles with brilliants. In one corner is a plan of Mecca, the holy
+temple, and tomb of the Prophet.
+
+In the afternoon I went for the last time to the Armenian burying-ground.
+In the East the graveyards are the general promenades, the places of
+rendezvous, and the lounging-places; and in Constantinople the Armenian
+burying-ground is the most beautiful, and the favourite. Situated in the
+suburbs of Pera, overlooking the Bosphorus, shaded by noble palm-trees,
+almost regularly toward evening I found myself sitting upon the same
+tombstone, looking upon the silvery water at my feet, studded with
+palaces, flashing and glittering with caiques from the golden palace of
+the sultan to the seraglio point, and then turned to the animated groups
+thronging the burying-ground; the Armenian in his flowing robes, the
+dashing Greek, the stiff and out-of-place-looking Frank; Turks in their
+gay and bright costume, glittering arms, and solemn beards, enjoying the
+superlative of existence in dozing over their pipe; and women in long
+white veils, apart under some delightful shade, in little picnic
+parties, eating ices and confectionary. Here and there, toward the
+outskirts, was the araba, the only wheeled carriage known among the
+Turks, with a long low body, highly carved and gilded, drawn by oxen
+fancifully trimmed with ribands, and filled with soft cushions, on which
+the Turkish and Armenian ladies almost buried themselves. Instead of the
+cypress, the burying-ground is shaded by noble plane-trees; and the
+tombstones, instead of being upright, are all flat, having at the head a
+couple of little niches scooped out to hold water, with the beautiful
+idea to induce birds to come there and drink and sing among the trees.
+Their tombstones, too, have another mark, which, in a country where men
+are apt to forget who their fathers were, would exclude them even from
+that place where all mortal distinctions are laid low, viz., a mark
+indicating the profession or occupation of the deceased; as, a pair of
+shears to mark the grave of a tailor; a razor that of a barber; and on
+many of them was another mark indicating the manner of death, the
+bowstring, or some other mark, showing that the stone covered a victim
+of Turkish cruelty. But all these things are well known; nothing has
+escaped the prying eyes of curious travellers; and I merely state, for
+my own credit's sake, that I followed the steps of those who had gone
+before me, visited the Sweet Waters, Scutary, and Belgrade, the
+reservoirs, aqueducts, and ruins of the palace of Constantine, and saw
+the dancing dervishes; rowed up the Bosphorus to Buyukdere, lunched
+under the tree where Godfrey encamped with his gallant crusaders, and
+looked out upon the Black Sea from the top of the Giant's Mountain.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+    Visit to the Slave-market.--Horrors of Slavery.--Departure from
+      Stamboul.--The stormy Euxine.--Odessa.--The Lazaretto.--Russian
+      Civility.--Returning Good for Evil.
+
+
+THE day before I left Constantinople I went, in company with Dr. N. and
+his son, and attended by Paul, to visit the slave-market; crossing over
+to Stamboul, we picked up a Jew in the bazars, who conducted us through
+a perfect labyrinth of narrow streets to a quarter of the city from
+which it would have been utterly impossible for me to extricate myself
+alone. I only know that it was situated on high ground, and that we
+passed through a gateway into a hollow square of about a hundred and
+fifty or two hundred feet on each side. It was with no small degree of
+emotion that I entered this celebrated place, where so many Christian
+hearts have trembled; and, before crossing the threshold, I ran over in
+my mind all the romantic stories and all the horrible realities that I
+could remember connected with its history: the tears of beauty, the
+pangs of brave men, and so down to the unsentimental exclamation of
+Johnson to his new friend Don Juan:
+
+        "Yon black eunuch seems to eye us;
+    I wish to God that somebody would buy us."
+
+The bazar forms a hollow square, with little chambers about fifteen feet
+each way around it, in which the slaves belonging to the different
+dealers are kept. A large shed or portico projects in front, under
+which, and in front of each chamber, is a raised platform, with a low
+railing around it, where the slave-merchant sits and gossips, and dozes
+over his coffee and pipes. I had heard so little of this place, and it
+was so little known among Europeans, taking into consideration,
+moreover, that in a season of universal peace the market must be without
+a supply of captives gained in war, that I expected to see but a remnant
+of the ancient traffic, supposing that I should find but few slaves, and
+those only black; but, to my surprise, I found there twenty or thirty
+white women. Bad, horrible as this traffic is under any circumstances,
+to my habits and feelings it loses a shade of its horrors when confined
+to blacks; but here whites and blacks were exposed together in the same
+bazar. The women were from Circassia and the regions of the Caucasus,
+that country so renowned for beauty; they were dressed in the Turkish
+costume, with the white shawl wrapped around the mouth and chin, and
+over the forehead, shading the eyes, so that it was difficult to judge
+with certainty as to their personal appearance. Europeans are not
+permitted to purchase, and their visits to this bazar are looked upon
+with suspicion. If we stopped long opposite a door, it was closed upon
+us; but I was not easily shaken off, and returned so often at odd times,
+that I succeeded in seeing pretty distinctly all that was to be seen. In
+general, the best slaves are not exposed in the bazars, but are kept at
+the houses of the dealers; but there was one among them not more than
+seventeen, with a regular Circassian face, a brilliantly fair
+complexion, a mild and cheerful expression; and in the slave-market,
+under the partial disguise of the Turkish shawl, it required no great
+effort of the imagination to make her decidedly beautiful. Paul stopped,
+and with a burst of enthusiasm, the first I had discovered in him,
+exclaimed "Quelle beaute!" She noticed my repeatedly stopping before
+her bazar; and, when I was myself really disposed to be sentimental,
+instead of drooping her head with the air of a distressed heroine, to my
+great surprise she laughed and nodded, and beckoned me to come to her.
+Paul was very much struck; and repeating his warm expression of
+admiration at her beauty, told me that she wanted me to buy her. Without
+waiting for a reply, he went off and inquired the price, which was two
+hundred and fifty dollars; and added that he could easily get some Turk
+to let me buy her in his name, and then I could put her on board a
+vessel, and carry her where I pleased. I told him it was hardly worth
+while at present; and he, thinking my objection was merely to the
+person, in all honesty and earnestness told me he had been there
+frequently, and never saw anything half so handsome; adding that, if I
+let slip this opportunity, I would scarcely have another as good, and
+wound up very significantly by declaring that, if he was a gentleman, he
+would not hesitate a moment. A gentleman, in the sense in which Paul
+understood the word, is apt to fall into irregular ways in the East.
+Removed from the restraints which operate upon men in civilized
+countries, if he once breaks through the trammels of education, he goes
+all lengths; and it is said to be a matter of general remark, that
+slaves are always worse treated by Europeans than by the Turks. The
+slave-dealers are principally Jews, who buy children when young, and, if
+they have beauty train up the girls in such accomplishments as may
+fascinate the Turks. Our guide told us that, since the Greek revolution,
+the slave-market had been comparatively deserted; but, during the whole
+of that dreadful struggle, every day presented new horrors; new captives
+were brought in, the men raving and struggling, and vainly swearing
+eternal vengeance against the Turks, and the women shrieking
+distractedly in the agony of a separation. After the massacre at Scio,
+in particular, hundreds of young girls, with tears streaming down their
+cheeks, and bursting hearts, were sold to the unhallowed embraces of the
+Turks for a few dollars a head. We saw nothing of the horrors and
+atrocities of this celebrated slave-market. Indeed, except prisoners of
+war and persons captured by Turkish corsairs, the condition of those who
+now fill the slave-market is not the horrible lot that a warm
+imagination might suppose. They are mostly persons in a semibarbarous
+state; blacks from Sennaar and Abyssinia, or whites from the regions of
+the Caucasus, bought from their parents for a string of beads or a
+shawl; and, in all probability, the really beautiful girl whom I saw had
+been sold by parents who could not feed or clothe her, who considered
+themselves rid of an encumbrance, and whom she left without regret; and
+she, having left poverty and misery behind her, looked to the
+slave-market as the sole means of advancing her fortune; and, in
+becoming the favoured inmate of a harem, expected to attain a degree of
+happiness she could never have enjoyed at home.
+
+I intended to go from Constantinople to Egypt, but the plague was raging
+there so violently that it would have been foolhardy to attempt it; and
+while making arrangements with a Tartar to return to Europe on horseback
+across the Balkan, striking the Danube at Semlin and Belgrade, a Russian
+government steamer was advertised for Odessa; and as this mode of
+travelling at that moment suited my health better, I altered my whole
+plan, and determined to leave the ruined countries of the Old World for
+a land just emerging from a state of barbarism, and growing into
+gigantic greatness. With great regret I took leave of Dr. N. and his
+son, who sailed the same day for Smyrna, and I have never seen them
+since. Paul was the last man to whom I said farewell. At the moment of
+starting my shirts were brought in dripping wet, and Paul bestowed a
+malediction upon the Greek while he wrung them out and tumbled them into
+my carpet-bag. I afterward found him at Malta, whence he accompanied me
+on my tour in Egypt, Arabia Petraea, and the Holy Land, by which he is,
+perhaps, already known to some of my readers.
+
+With my carpet-bag on the shoulders of a Turk, I walked for the last
+time to Tophana. A hundred caiquemen gathered around me, but I pushed
+them all back, and kept guard over my carpet-bag, looking out for one
+whom I had been in the habit of employing ever since my arrival in
+Constantinople. He soon spied me; and when he took my luggage and myself
+into his caique, manifested that he knew it was for the last time.
+Having an hour to spare, I directed him to row once more under the walls
+of the seraglio; and still loath to leave, I went on shore and walked
+around the point, until I was stopped by a Turkish bayonet. The Turk
+growled, and his mustache curled fiercely as he pointed it at me. I had
+been stopped by Frenchmen, Italians, and by a mountain Greek, but found
+nothing that brings a man to such a dead stand as the Turkish bayonet.
+
+I returned to my caique, and went on board the steamer. She was a
+Russian government vessel, more classically called a pyroscaphe, a
+miserable old thing; and yet as much form and circumstance were observed
+in sending her off as in fitting out an _exploring expedition_.
+Consuls' and ambassadors' boats were passing and repassing, and after
+an enormous fuss and preparation, we started under a salute of cannon,
+which was answered from one of the sultan's frigates. We had the usual
+scene of parting with friends, waving of handkerchiefs, and so on; and
+feeling a little lonely at the idea of leaving a city containing a
+million inhabitants without a single friend to bid me Godspeed, I took
+my place on the quarter-deck, and waved my handkerchief to my caiqueman,
+who, I have no doubt, independent of the loss of a few piasters per day,
+was very sorry to lose me; for we had been so long together, that, in
+spite of our ignorance of each other's language, we understood each
+other perfectly.
+
+I found on board two Englishmen whom I had met at Corfu, and a third,
+who had joined them at Smyrna, going to travel in the Crimea; our other
+cabin-passengers were Mr. Luoff, a Russian officer, an aiddecamp of
+the emperor, just returned from travels in Egypt and Syria, Mr.
+Perseani, secretary to the Russian legation in Greece; a Greek merchant,
+with a Russian protection, on his way to the Sea of Azoff; and a French
+merchant of Odessa. The tub of a steamboat dashed up the Bosphorus at
+the rate of three miles an hour; while the classic waters, as if
+indignant at having such a bellowing, blowing, blustering monster upon
+their surface, seemed to laugh at her unwieldy and ineffectual efforts.
+Slowly we mounted the beautiful strait, lined on the European side
+almost with one continued range of houses, exhibiting in every beautiful
+nook a palace of the sultan, and at Terapeia and Buyukdere the palaces
+of the foreign ambassadors; passed the Giant's Mountain, and about an
+hour before dark were entering a new sea, the dark and stormy Euxine.
+
+Advancing, the hills became more lofty and ragged, terminating on the
+Thracian side in high rocky precipices. The shores of this extremity of
+the Bosphorus were once covered with shrines, altars, and temples,
+monuments of the fears or gratitude of mariners who were about to leave,
+or who had escaped, the dangers of the inhospitable Euxine; and the
+remains of these antiquities were so great that a traveller almost in
+our own day describes the coasts as "covered by their ruins." The
+castles on the European and the Asiatic side of the strait are supposed
+to occupy the sites where stood, in ancient days, the great temples of
+Jupiter Serapis and Jupiter Urius. The Bosphorus opens abruptly, without
+any enlargement at its mouth, between two mountains. The parting view of
+the strait, or, rather, of the coast on each side, was indescribably
+grand, presenting a stupendous wall opposed to the great bed of waters,
+as if torn asunder by an earthquake, leaving a narrow rent for their
+escape. On each side, a miserable lantern on the top of a tower, hardly
+visible at the distance of a few miles, is the only light to guide the
+mariner at night; and as there is another opening called the false
+Bosphorus, the entrance is difficult and dangerous, and many vessels are
+lost here annually.
+
+As the narrow opening closed before me, I felt myself entering a new
+world; I was fairly embarked upon that wide expanse of water which once,
+according to ancient legends, mingled with the Caspian, and covered the
+great oriental plain of Tartary, and upon which Jason, with his
+adventurous Argonauts, having killed the dragon and carried off the
+golden fleece from Colchis, if those same legends be true (which some
+doubt), sailed across to the great ocean. I might and should have
+speculated upon the great changes in the face of nature and the great
+deluge recorded by Grecian historians and poets, which burst the narrow
+passage of the Thracian Bosphorus for the outlet of the mighty waters;
+but who could philosophize in a steamboat on the Euxine? Oh Fulton! much
+as thou hast done for mechanics and the useful arts, thy hand has fallen
+rudely upon all cherished associations. We boast of thee; I have myself
+been proud of thee as an American; but as I sat at evening on the stern
+of the steamer, and listened to the clatter of the engine, and watched
+the sparks rushing out of the high pipes, and remembered that this was
+on the dark and inhospitable Euxine, I wished that thy life had begun
+after mine was ended. I trust I did his memory no wrong; but if I had
+borne him malice, I could not have wished him worse than to have all his
+dreams of the past disturbed by the clatter of one of his own engines.
+
+I turned away from storied associations to a new country grown up in our
+own day. We escaped, and, I am obliged to say, without noticing them,
+the Cyaneae, "the blue Symplegades," or "wandering islands," which, lying
+on the European and Asiatic side, floated about, or, according to Pliny,
+"were alive, and moved to and fro more swiftly than the blast," and in
+passing through which the good ship Argo had a narrow escape, and lost
+the extremity of her stern. History and poetry have invested this sea
+with extraordinary and ideal terrors; but my experience both of the
+Mediterranean and Black Sea was unfortunate for realizing historical and
+poetical accounts. I had known the beautiful Mediterranean a sea of
+storm and sunshine, in which the storm greatly predominated. I found the
+stormy Euxine calm as an untroubled lake; in fact, the Black Sea is in
+reality nothing more than a lake, not as large as many of our own,
+receiving the waters of the great rivers of the north: the Don, the
+Cuban, the Phase, the Dnieper, and the Danube, and pouring their
+collected streams through the narrow passage of the Bosphorus into the
+Mediterranean. Still, if the number of shipwrecks be any evidence of its
+character, it is indeed entitled to its ancient reputation of a
+dangerous sea, though probably these accidents proceed, in a great
+measure, from the ignorance and unskilfulness of mariners, and the want
+of proper charts and of suitable lighthouses at the opening of the
+Bosphorus. At all events, we outblustered the winds and waves with our
+steamboat; passed the Serpent Isles, the ancient Leuce, with a roaring
+that must have astonished the departed heroes whose souls, according to
+the ancient poets, were sent there to enjoy perpetual paradise, and
+scared the aquatic birds which every morning dipped their wings in the
+sea, and sprinkled the Temple of Achilles, and swept with their plumage
+its sacred pavement.
+
+[Illustration: Odessa.]
+
+On the third day we made the low coast of Moldavia or Bess Arabia,
+within a short distance of Odessa, the great seaport of Southern Russia.
+Here, too, there was nothing to realize preconceived notions; for,
+instead of finding a rugged region of eternal snows, we were suffering
+under an intensely hot sun when we cast anchor in the harbour of Odessa.
+The whole line of the coast is low and destitute of trees; but Odessa is
+situated on a high bank; and, with its beautiful theatre, the exchange,
+the palace of the governor, &c., did not look like a city which, thirty
+years ago, consisted only of a few fishermen's huts.
+
+The harbour of Odessa is very much exposed to the north and east winds,
+which often cause great damage to the shipping. Many hundred anchors
+cover the bottom, which cut the rope cables; and, the water being
+shallow, vessels are often injured by striking on them. An Austrian brig
+going out, having struck one, sank in ten minutes. There are two moles,
+the quarantine mole, in which we came to anchor, being the principal.
+Quarantine flags were flying about the harbour, the yellow indicating
+those undergoing purification, and the red the fatal presence of the
+plague. We were prepared to undergo a vexatious process. At
+Constantinople I had heard wretched accounts of the rude treatment of
+lazaretto subjects, and the rough, barbarous manners of the Russians to
+travellers, and we had a foretaste of the light in which we were to be
+regarded, in the conduct of the health-officer who came alongside. He
+offered to take charge of any letters for the town, purify them that
+night, and deliver them in the morning; and, according to his
+directions, we laid them down on the deck, where he took them up with a
+pair of long iron tongs, and putting them into an iron box, shut it up
+and rowed off.
+
+In the morning, having received notice that the proper officers were
+ready to attend us, we went ashore. We landed in separate boats at the
+end of a long pier, and, forgetting our supposed pestiferous influence,
+were walking up toward a crowd of men whom we saw there, when their
+retrograde movements, their gestures, and unintelligible shouts reminded
+us of our situation. One of our party, in a sort of ecstasy at being on
+shore, ran capering up the docks, putting to flight a group of idlers,
+and, single-handed, might have depopulated the city of Odessa, if an
+ugly soldier with a bayonet had not met him in full career and put a
+stop to his gambols. The soldier conducted us to a large building at the
+upper end of the pier; and carefully opening the door, and falling back
+so as to avoid even the wind that might blow from us in his direction,
+told us to go in. At the other end of a large room, divided by two
+parallel railings, sat officers and clerks to examine our passports and
+take a general account of us. We were at once struck with the military
+aspect of things, every person connected with the establishment wearing
+a military uniform; and now commenced a long process. The first
+operation was to examine our passports, take down our names, and make a
+memorandum of the purposes for which we severally entered the dominions
+of the emperor and autocrat of all the Russias. We were all called up,
+one after the other, captain, cook, and cabin-boy, cabin and deck
+passengers; and never, perhaps, did steamboat pour forth a more motley
+assemblage than we presented. We were Jews, Turks, and Christians;
+Russians, Poles, and Germans; English, French, and Italians; Austrians,
+Greeks, and Illyrians; Moldavians, Wallachians, Bulgarians, and
+Sclavonians; Armenians, Georgians, and Africans; and one American. I had
+before remarked the happy facility of the Russians in acquiring
+languages, and I saw a striking instance in the officer who conducted
+the examination, and who addressed every man in his own language with
+apparently as much facility as though it had been his native tongue.
+After the oral commenced a corporeal examination. We were ordered one by
+one into an adjoining room, where, on the other side of a railing,
+stood a doctor, who directed us to open our shirt bosoms, and slap our
+hands smartly under our arms and upon our groins, these being the places
+where the fatal plague-marks first exhibit themselves.
+
+This over, we were forthwith marched to the lazaretto, escorted by
+guards and soldiers, who behaved very civilly and kept at a respectful
+distance from us. Among our deck passengers were forty or fifty Jews,
+dirty and disgusting objects, just returned from a pilgrimage to
+Jerusalem. An old man, who seemed to be, in a manner, the head of the
+party, and exceeded them all in rags and filthiness, but was said to be
+rich, in going up to the lazaretto amused us and vexed the officers by
+sitting down on the way, paying no regard to them when they urged him
+on, being perfectly assured that they would not dare to touch him. Once
+he resolutely refused to move; they threatened and swore at him, but he
+kept his place until one got a long pole and punched him on ahead.
+
+In this way we entered the lazaretto; but if it had not been called by
+that name, and if we had not looked upon it as a place where we were
+compelled to stay for a certain time, nolens volens, we should have
+considered it a beautiful spot. It is situated on high ground, within an
+enclosure of some fifteen or twenty acres, overlooking the Black Sea,
+laid out in lawn and gravel walks, and ornamented with rows of
+acacia-trees. Fronting the sea was a long range of buildings divided
+into separate apartments, each with a little courtyard in front
+containing two or three acacias. The director, a fine, military-looking
+man, with a decoration on his lapel, met us on horseback within the
+enclosure, and with great suavity of manner said that he could not bid
+us welcome to a prison, but that we should have the privilege of
+walking at will over the grounds, and visiting each other, subject only
+to the attendance of a guardiano; and that all that could contribute to
+our comfort should be done for us.
+
+We then selected our rooms, and underwent another personal examination.
+This was the real touchstone; the first was a mere preliminary
+observation by a medical understrapper; but this was conducted by a more
+knowing doctor. We were obliged to strip naked; to give up the clothes
+we pulled off, and put on a flannel gown, drawers, and stockings, and a
+woollen cap provided by the government, until our own should be smoked
+and purified. In everything, however, the most scrupulous regard was
+paid to our wishes, and a disposition was manifested by all to make this
+rather vexatious proceeding as little annoying as possible. The bodily
+examination was as delicate as the nature of the case would admit; for
+the doctor merely opened the door, looked in, and went out without
+taking his hand from off the knob. It was none of my business, I know,
+and may be thought impertinent, but, as he closed the door, I could not
+help calling him back to ask him whether he held the same inquisition
+upon the fair sex; to which he replied with a melancholy upturning of
+the eyes that in the good old days of Russian barbarism this had been
+part of his duties, but that the march of improvement had invaded his
+rights, and given this portion of his professional duties to a _sage
+femme_.
+
+All our effects were then taken to another chamber, and arranged on
+lines, each person superintending the disposition of his own, so as to
+prevent all confusion, and left there to be fumigated with sulphuric
+acid for twenty-four hours. So particular were they in fumigating
+everything susceptible of infection, that I was obliged to leave there
+a black riband which I wore round my neck as a guard to my watch. Toward
+evening the principal director, one of the most gentlemanly men I ever
+met, came round, and with many apologies and regrets for his inability
+to receive us better, requested us to call upon him freely for anything
+we might want. Not knowing any of us personally, he did me the honour to
+say that he understood there was an American in the party, who had been
+particularly recommended to him by a Russian officer and fellow-passenger.
+Afterward came the commissary, or chief of the department, and repeated
+the same compliments, and left us with an exalted opinion of Russian
+politeness. I had heard horrible accounts of the rough treatment of
+travellers in Russia, and I made a note at the time, lest after
+vexations should make me forget it, that I had received more politeness
+and civility from these northern barbarians, as they are called by the
+people of the south of Europe, than I ever found amid their boasted
+civilization.
+
+Having still an hour before dark, I strolled out, followed by my
+guardiano, to take a more particular survey of our prison. In a
+gravel walk lined with acacias, immediately before the door of my little
+courtyard, I came suddenly upon a lady of about eighteen, whose dark
+hair and eyes I at once recognised as Grecian, leading by the hand a
+little child. I am sure my face brightened at the first glimpse of this
+vision which promised to shine upon us in our solitude; and perhaps my
+satisfaction was made too manifest by my involuntarily moving toward
+her. But my presumption received a severe and mortifying check; for
+though at first she merely crossed to the other side of the walk, she
+soon forgot all ceremony, and, fairly dragging the child after her, ran
+over the grass to another walk to avoid me; my mortification, however,
+was but temporary; for though, in the first impulse of delight and
+admiration, I had forgotten time, place, and circumstance, the repulse I
+had received made me turn to myself, and I was glad to find an excuse
+for the lady's flight in the flannel gown and long cap and slippers,
+which marked me as having just entered upon my season of purification.
+
+I was soon initiated into the routine of lazaretto ceremonies and
+restrictions. By touching a quarantine patient, both parties are
+subjected to the longest term of either; so that if a person, on the
+last day of his term, should come in contact with another just entered,
+he would lose all the benefit of his days of purification, and be
+obliged to wait the full term of the latter. I have seen, in various
+situations in life, a system of operations called keeping people at a
+distance, but I never saw it so effectually practised as in quarantine.
+For this night, at least, I had full range. I walked where I pleased,
+and was very sure that every one would keep out of my way. During the
+whole time, however, I could not help treasuring up the precipitate
+flight of the young lady; and I afterward told her, and, I hope, with
+the true spirit of one ready to return good for evil, that if she had
+been in my place, and the days of my purification had been almost ended,
+in spite of plague and pestilence she might have rushed into my arms
+without my offering the least impediment.
+
+In making the tour of the grounds, I had already an opportunity of
+observing the relation in which men stand to each other in Russia. When
+an officer spoke to a soldier, the latter stood motionless as a statue,
+with his head uncovered during the whole of the conference; and when a
+soldier on guard saw an officer, no matter at what distance, he
+presented arms, and remained in that position until the officer was out
+of sight. Returning, I passed a grating, through which I saw our
+deck passengers, forty or fifty in number, including the Jewish
+pilgrims, miserable, dirty-looking objects, turned in together for
+fourteen days, to eat, drink, and sleep as best they might, like brutes.
+With a high idea of the politeness of the Russians toward the rich and
+great, or those whom they believed to be so, and with a strong
+impression already received confirming the accounts of the degraded
+condition of the lower classes, I returned to my room, and, with a
+Frenchman and a Greek for my room-mates, my window opening upon the
+Black Sea, I spent my first night in quarantine.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+    The Guardiano.--One too many.--An Excess of Kindness.--The last Day
+      of Quarantine.--Mr. Baguet.--Rise of Odessa.--City-making.--Count
+      Woronzow.--A Gentleman Farmer.--An American Russian.
+
+
+I SHALL pass over briefly the whole of our _pratique_. The next morning
+I succeeded in getting a room to myself. A guardiano was assigned to
+each room, who took his place in the antechamber, and was always in
+attendance. These guardianos are old soldiers, entitled by the rules of
+the establishment to so much a day; but, as they always expect a
+gratuity, their attention and services are regulated by that
+expectation. I was exceedingly fortunate in mine; he was always in the
+antechamber, cleaning his musket, mending his clothes, or stretched on a
+mattress looking at the wall; and, whenever I came through with my hat
+on, without a word he put on his belt and followed me; and very soon,
+instead of regarding him as an encumbrance, I became accustomed to him,
+and it was a satisfaction to have him with me. Sometimes, in walking for
+exercise, I moved so briskly that it tired him to keep up with me; and
+then I selected a walk where he could sit down and keep his eye upon me,
+while I walked backward and forward before him. Besides this, he kept my
+room in order, set my table, carried my notes, brushed my clothes, and
+took better care of me than any servant I ever had.
+
+Our party consisted of eight, and being subjected to the same
+quarantine, and supposed to have the same quantum of infection, we were
+allowed to visit each other; and every afternoon we met in the yard,
+walked an hour or two, took tea together, and returned to our own
+rooms, where our guardianos mounted guard in the antechamber; our gates
+were locked up, and a soldier walked outside as sentinel. I was
+particularly intimate with the Russian officer, whom I found one of the
+most gentlemanly, best educated, and most amiable men I ever met. He had
+served and been wounded in the campaign against Poland; had with him two
+soldiers, his own serfs, who had served under him in that campaign, and
+had accompanied him in his tour in Egypt and Syria. He gave me his
+address at St. Petersburgh and promised me the full benefit of his
+acquaintance there. I have before spoken of the three Englishmen. Two of
+them I had met at Corfu; the third joined them at Smyrna, and added
+another proof to the well-established maxim that three spoil company;
+for I soon found that they had got together by the ears; and the
+new-comer having connected himself with one of the others, they were
+anxious to get rid of the third. Many causes of offence existed between
+them; and though they continued to room together, they were merely
+waiting till the end of our pratique for an opportunity to separate. One
+morning the one who was about being thrown off came to my room, and told
+me that he did not care about going to the Crimea, and proposed
+accompanying me. This suited me very well; it was a long and expensive
+journey, and would cost a mere fraction more for two than for one; and
+when the breach was widened past all possibility of being healed, the
+cast-off and myself agreed to travel together. I saw much of the
+secretary of legation, and also of the Greek and Frenchman, my
+room-mates for the first night. Indeed, I think I may say that I was an
+object of special interest to all our party. I was unwell, and my
+companions overwhelmed me with prescriptions and advice; they brought
+in their medicine chests; one assuring me that he had been cured by
+this, another by that, and each wanted me to swallow his own favourite
+medicine, interlarding their advice with anecdotes of whole sets of
+passengers who had been detained, some forty, some fifty, and some sixty
+days, by the accidental sickness of one. I did all I could for them,
+always having regard to the circumstance that it was not of such vital
+importance to me, at least, to hold out fourteen days if I broke down on
+the fifteenth. In a few days the doctor, in one of his rounds, told me
+he understood I was unwell, and I confessed to him the reason of my
+withholding the fact, and took his prescriptions so well, that, at
+parting, he gave me a letter to a friend in Chioff, and to his brother,
+a distinguished professor in the university at St. Petersburgh.
+
+We had a restaurant in the lazaretto, with a new bill of fare every day;
+not first-rate, perhaps, but good enough. I had sent a letter of
+introduction to Mr. Baguet, the Spanish consul, also to a German, the
+brother of a missionary at Constantinople, and a note to Mr. Ralli, the
+American consul, and had frequent visits from them, and long talks at
+the parlatoria through the grating. The German was a knowing one, and
+came often; he had a smattering of English, and would talk in that
+language, as I thought, in compliment to me; but the last time he came
+he thanked me kindly, and told me he had improved more in his English
+than by a year's study. When I got out he never came near me.
+
+Sunday, June seventh, was our last day in quarantine. We had counted the
+days anxiously; and though our time had passed as agreeably as, under
+the circumstances, it could pass, we were in high spirits at the
+prospect of our liberation. To the last, the attention and civility of
+the officers of the yard continued unremitted. Every morning regularly
+the director knocked at each gate to inquire how we had passed the
+night, and whether he could do anything for us; then the doctor, to
+inquire into our corporeal condition; and every two or three days,
+toward evening, the director, with the same decoration on the lapel of
+his coat, and at the same hour, inquired whether we had any complaints
+to make of want of attendance or improper treatment.
+
+Our last day in the lazaretto is not to be forgotten. We kept as clear
+of the rest of the inmates as if they had been pickpockets, though once
+I was thrown into a cold sweat by an act of forgetfulness. A child fell
+down before me; I sprang forward to pick him up, and should infallibly
+have been fixed for ten days longer if my guardiano had not caught me.
+Lingering for the last time on the walk overlooking the Black Sea, I saw
+a vessel coming up under full sail, bearing, as I thought, the American
+flag. My heart almost bounded at seeing the stars and stripes on the
+Black Sea; but I was deceived; and almost dejected with the
+disappointment, called my guardiano, and returned for the last time to
+my room.
+
+The next morning we waited in our rooms till the doctor paid his final
+visit, and soon after we all gathered before the door of the directory,
+ready to sally forth. Every one who has made a European voyage knows the
+metamorphosis in the appearance of the passengers on the day of landing.
+It was much the same with us; we had no more slipshod, long-bearded
+companions, but all were clean shirted and shaved becomingly, except our
+old Jew and his party, who probably had not changed a garment or washed
+their faces since the first day in quarantine, nor perhaps for many
+years before. They were people from whom, under any circumstances, one
+would be apt to keep at a respectful distance; and to the last they
+carried everything before them.
+
+We had still another vexatious process in passing our luggage through
+the custom-house. We had handed in a list of all our effects the night
+before, in which I intentionally omitted to mention Byron's poems, these
+being prohibited in Russia. He had been my companion in Italy and
+Greece, and I was loath to part with him; so I put the book under my
+arm, threw my cloak over me, and walked out unmolested. Outside the gate
+there was a general shaking of hands; the director, whom we had seen
+every day at a distance, was the first to greet us, and Mr. Baguet, the
+brother of the Spanish consul, who was waiting to receive me, welcomed
+me to Russia. With sincere regret I bade good-by to my old soldier,
+mounted a drosky, and in ten minutes was deposited in a hotel, in size
+and appearance equal to the best in Paris. It was a pleasure once more
+to get into a wheel-carriage; I had not seen one since I left Italy,
+except the old hack I mentioned at Argos, and the arabas at
+Constantinople. It was a pleasure, too, to see hats, coats, and
+pantaloons. Early associations will cling to a man; and, in spite of a
+transient admiration for the dashing costume of the Greek and Turk, I
+warmed to the ungraceful covering of civilized man, even to the long
+surtout and bell-crowned hat of the Russian marchand; and, more than
+all, I was attracted by an appearance of life and energy particularly
+striking after coming from among the dead-and-alive Turks.
+
+While in quarantine I had received an invitation to dine with Mr.
+Baguet, and had barely time to make one tour of the city in a drosky
+before it was necessary to dress for dinner. Mr. Baguet was a bachelor
+of about forty, living in pleasant apartments, in an unpretending and
+gentlemanly style. As in all the ports of the Levant, except where there
+are ambassadors, the consuls are the nobility of the place. Several of
+them were present; and the European consuls in those places are a
+different class of men from ours, as they are paid by salaries from
+their respective governments, while ours, who receive no pay, are
+generally natives of the place, who serve for the honour or some other
+accidental advantage. We had, therefore, the best society in Odessa at
+Mr. Baguet's, the American consul not being present, which, by-the-way,
+I do not mean in a disrespectful sense, as Mr. Ralli seemed every way
+deserving of all the benefits that the station gives.
+
+In the evening the consul and myself took two or three turns on the
+boulevards, and at about eleven I returned to my hotel. After what I
+have said of this establishment, the reader will be surprised to learn
+that, when I went to my room, I found there a bedstead, but no bed or
+bedclothes. I supposed it was neglect, and ordered one to be prepared;
+but, to my surprise, was told that there were no beds in the hotel. It
+was kept exclusively for the rich seigneurs who always carry their own
+beds with them. Luckily, the bedstead was not corded, but contained a
+bottom of plain slabs of wood, about six or eight inches wide, and the
+same distance apart, laid crosswise, so that lengthwise there was no
+danger of falling through; and wrapping myself in my cloak, and putting
+my carpet-bag under my head, I went to sleep.
+
+Before breakfast the next morning I had learned the topography of
+Odessa. To an American Russia is an interesting country. True, it is not
+classic ground; but as for me, who had now travelled over the faded and
+wornout kingdoms of the Old World, I was quite ready for something new.
+Like our own, Russia is a new country, and in many respects resembles
+ours. It is true that we began life differently. Russia has worked her
+way to civilization from a state of absolute barbarism, while we sprang
+into being with the advantage of all the lights of the Old World. Still
+there are many subjects of comparison, and even of emulation, between
+us; and nowhere in all Russia is there a more proper subject to begin
+with than my first landing-place.
+
+Odessa is situated in a small bay between the mouths of the Dnieper and
+Dniester. Forty years ago it consisted of a few miserable fishermen's
+huts on the shores of the Black Sea. In 1796 the Empress Catharine
+resolved to built a city there; and the Turks being driven from the
+dominion of the Black Sea, it became a place of resort and speculation
+for the English, Austrians, Neapolitans, Dutch, Ragusans, and Greeks of
+the Ionian republic. In eighteen hundred and two, two hundred and
+eighty vessels arrived from Constantinople and the Mediterranean; and
+the Duke de Richelieu, being appointed governor-general by Alexander,
+laid out a city upon a gigantic scale, which, though at first its growth
+was not commensurate with his expectations, now contains sixty thousand
+inhabitants, and bids fair to realize the extravagant calculations of
+its founder. Mr. Baguet and the gentlemen whom I met at his table were
+of opinion that it is destined to be the greatest commercial city in
+Russia, as the long winters and the closing of the Baltic with ice must
+ever be a great disadvantage to St. Petersburgh; and the interior of the
+country can as well be supplied from Odessa as from the northern
+capital.
+
+There is no country where cities have sprung up so fast and increased so
+rapidly as in ours; and, altogether, perhaps nothing in the world can be
+compared with our Buffalo, Rochester, Cincinnati, &c. But Odessa has
+grown faster than any of these, and has nothing of the appearance of one
+of our new cities. We are both young, and both marching with gigantic
+strides to greatness, but we move by different roads; and the whole face
+of the country, from the new city on the borders of the Black Sea to the
+steppes of Siberia, shows a different order of government and a
+different constitution of society. With us, a few individuals cut down
+the trees of the forest, or settle themselves by the banks of a stream,
+where they happen to find some local advantages, and build houses suited
+to their necessities; others come and join them; and, by degrees, the
+little settlement becomes a large city. But here a gigantic government,
+endowed almost with creative powers, says, "Let there be a city," and
+immediately commences the erection of large buildings. The rich
+seigneurs follow the lead of government, and build hotels to let out in
+apartments. The theatre, casino, and exchange at Odessa are perhaps
+superior to any buildings in the United States. The city is situated on
+an elevation about a hundred feet above the sea; a promenade three
+quarters of a mile long, terminated at one end by the exchange, and at
+the other by the palace of the governor, is laid out in front along the
+margin of the sea, bounded on one side by an abrupt precipice, and
+adorned with trees, shrubs, flowers, statues, and busts, like the garden
+of the Tuileries, the Borghese Villa, or the Villa Recali at Naples. On
+the other side is a long range of hotels built of stone, running the
+whole length of the boulevards, some of them with facades after the best
+models in Italy. A broad street runs through the centre of the city,
+terminating with a semicircular enlargement at the boulevards, and in
+the centre of this stands a large equestrian statue erected to the Duke
+de Richelieu; and parallel and at right angles are wide streets lined
+with large buildings, according to the most approved plans of modern
+architecture. The custom which the people have of taking apartments in
+hotels causes the erection of large buildings, which add much to the
+general appearance of the city; while with us, the universal disposition
+of every man to have a house to himself, conduces to the building of
+small houses, and, consequently, detracts from general effect. The city,
+as yet, is not generally paved, and is, consequently, so dusty, that
+every man is obliged to wear a light cloak to save his dress.
+Paving-stone is brought from Trieste and Malta, and is very expensive.
+
+About two o'clock Mr. Ralli, our consul, called upon me. Mr. Ralli is a
+Greek of Scio. He left his native island when a boy; has visited every
+port in Europe as a merchant, and lived for the last eight years in
+Odessa. He has several brothers in England, Trieste, and some of the
+Greek islands, and all are connected in business. When Mr. Rhind, who
+negotiated our treaty with the Porte, left Odessa, he authorized Mr.
+Ralli to transact whatever consular business might be required, and on
+his recommendation Mr. Ralli afterward received a regular appointment as
+consul. Mr. Rhind, by-the-way, expected a great trade from opening the
+Black Sea to American bottoms; but he was wrong in his anticipations,
+and there have been but two American vessels there since the treaty. Mr.
+Ralli is rich and respected, being vice-president of the commercial
+board, and very proud of the honour of the American consulate, as it
+gives him a position among the dignitaries of the place, enables him to
+wear a uniform and sword on public occasions, and yields him other
+privileges which are gratifying, at least, if not intrinsically
+valuable.
+
+No traveller can pass through Odessa without having to acknowledge the
+politeness of Count Woronzow, the governor of the Crimea, one of the
+richest seigneurs in Russia, and one of the pillars of the throne. At
+the suggestion of Mr. Ralli, I accompanied him to the palace and was
+presented. The palace is a magnificent building, and the interior
+exhibits a combination of wealth and taste. The walls are hung with
+Italian paintings, and, for interior ornaments and finish, the palace is
+far superior to those in Italy; the knobs of the doors are of amber, and
+the doors of the dining-room from the old imperial palace at St.
+Petersburgh. The count is a military-looking man of about fifty, six
+feet high, with sallow complexion and gray hair. His father married an
+English lady of the Sidney family, and his sister married the Earl of
+Pembroke. He is a soldier in bearing and appearance, held a high rank
+during the French invasion of Russia, and distinguished himself
+particularly at Borodino; in rank and power he is the fourth military
+officer in the empire. He possesses immense wealth in all parts of
+Russia, particularly in the Crimea; and his wife's mother, after
+Demidoff and Scheremetieff, is the richest subject in the whole empire.
+He speaks English remarkably well, and, after a few commonplaces, with
+his characteristic politeness to strangers, invited me to dine at the
+palace the next day. I was obliged to decline, and he himself suggested
+the reason, that probably I was engaged with my countryman, Mr. Sontag
+(of whom more anon), whom the count referred to as his old friend,
+adding that he would not interfere with the pleasure of a meeting
+between two countrymen so far from home, and asked me for the day after,
+or any other day I pleased. I apologized on the ground of my intended
+departure, and took my leave.
+
+My proposed travelling companion had committed to me the whole
+arrangements for our journey, or, more properly, had given me the whole
+trouble of making them; and, accompanied by one of Mr. Ralli's clerks, I
+visited all the carriage repositories to purchase a vehicle, after which
+I accompanied Mr. Ralli to his country-house to dine. He occupied a
+pretty little place a few versts from Odessa, with a large fruit and
+ornamental garden. Mr. Ralli's lady is also a native of Greece, with
+much of the cleverness and _spirituelle_ character of the educated
+Greeks. One of her _bons mots_ current in Odessa is, that her husband is
+consul for the other world. A young Italian, with a very pretty wife,
+dined with us, and, after dinner and a stroll through the garden, we
+walked over to Mr. Perseani's, the father of our Russian secretary;
+another walk in the garden with a party of ladies, tea, and I got back
+to Odessa in time for a walk on the boulevards and the opera.
+
+Before my attention was turned to Odessa, I should as soon have thought
+of an opera-house at Chicago as there; but I already found, what
+impressed itself more forcibly upon me at every step, that Russia is a
+country of anomalies. The new city on the Black Sea contains many French
+and Italian residents, who are willing to give all that is not necessary
+for food and clothing for the opera; the Russians themselves are
+passionately fond of musical and theatrical entertainments, and
+government makes up all deficiencies. The interior of the theatre
+corresponds with the beauty of its exterior. All the decorations are in
+good taste, and the Corinthian columns, running from the foot to the
+top, particularly beautiful. The opera was the Barber of Seville; the
+company in _full_ undress, and so barbarous as to pay attention to the
+performance. I came out at about ten o'clock, and, after a turn or two
+on the boulevards, took an icecream at the cafe of the Hotel de
+Petersbourgh. This hotel is beautifully situated on one corner of the
+main street, fronting the boulevards, and opposite the statue of the
+Duke de Richelieu; and looking from the window of the cafe, furnished
+and fitted up in a style superior to most in Paris, upon the crowd still
+thronging the boulevards, I could hardly believe that I was really on
+the borders of the Black Sea.
+
+Having purchased a carriage and made all my arrangements for starting, I
+expected to pass this day with an unusual degree of satisfaction, and I
+was not disappointed. I have mentioned incidentally the name of a
+countryman resident in Odessa; and, being so far from home, I felt a
+yearning toward an American. In France or Italy I seldom had this
+feeling, for there Americans congregate in crowds; but in Greece and
+Turkey I always rejoiced to meet a compatriot; and when, on my arrival
+at Odessa, before going into the lazaretto, the captain told me that
+there was an American residing there, high in character and office, who
+had been twenty years in Russia, I requested him to present my
+compliments, and say that, if he had not forgotten his fatherland, a
+countryman languishing in the lazaretto would be happy to see him
+through the gratings of his prison-house. I afterward regretted having
+sent this message, as I heard from other sources that he was a
+prominent man, and during the whole term of my quarantine I never heard
+from him personally. I was most agreeably disappointed, however, when,
+on the first day of my release, I met him at dinner at the Spanish
+consul's. He had been to the Crimea with Count Woronzow; had only
+returned that morning, and had never heard of my being there until
+invited to meet me at dinner. I had wronged him by my distrust; for,
+though twenty years an exile, his heart beat as true as when he left our
+shores. Who can shake off the feeling that binds him to his native land?
+Not hardships nor disgrace at home; not favour nor success abroad; not
+even time, can drive from his mind the land of his birth or the friends
+of his youthful days.
+
+General Sontag was a native of Philadelphia; had been in our navy, and
+served as sailing-master on board the Wasp; became dissatisfied from
+some cause which he did not mention, left our navy, entered the Russian,
+and came round to the Black Sea as captain of a frigate; was transferred
+to the land service, and, in the campaign of 1814, entered Paris with
+the allied armies as colonel of a regiment. In this campaign he formed a
+friendship with Count Woronzow, which exists in full force at this day.
+He left the army with the rank of brigadier-general. By the influence of
+Count Woronzow, he was appointed inspector of the port of Odessa, in
+which office he stood next in rank to the Governor of the Crimea, and,
+in fact, on one occasion, during the absence of Count Woronzow, lived in
+the palace and acted as governor for eight months. He married a lady of
+rank, with an estate and several hundred slaves at Moscow; wears two or
+three ribands at his buttonhole, badges of different orders; has gone
+through the routine of offices and honours up to the grade of grand
+counsellor of the empire; and a letter addressed to him under the title
+of "his excellency" will come to the right hands. He was then living at
+his country place, about eight versts from Odessa, and asked me to go
+out and pass the next day with him. I was strongly tempted, but, in
+order that I might have the full benefit of it, postponed the pleasure
+until I had completed my arrangements for travelling. The next day
+General Sontag called upon me, but I did not see him; and this morning,
+accompanied by Mr. Baguet the younger, I rode out to his place. The land
+about Odessa is a dead level, the road was excessively dry, and we were
+begrimed with dust when we arrived. General Sontag was waiting for us,
+and, in the true spirit of an American farmer at home, proposed taking
+us over his grounds. His farm is his hobby; it contains about six
+hundred acres, and we walked all over it. His crop was wheat, and,
+although I am no great judge of these matters, I think I never saw
+finer. He showed me a field of very good wheat, which had not been sowed
+in three years, but produced by the fallen seed of the previous crops.
+We compared it with our Genesee wheat, and to me it was an interesting
+circumstance to find an American cultivating land on the Black Sea, and
+comparing it with the products of our Genesee flats, with which he was
+perfectly familiar.
+
+One thing particularly struck me, though, as an American, perhaps I
+ought not to have been so sensitive. A large number of men were at work
+in the field, and they were all slaves. Such is the force of education
+and habit, that I have seen hundreds of black slaves without a
+sensation; but it struck rudely upon me to see white men slaves to an
+American, and he one whose father had been a soldier of the revolution,
+and had fought to sustain the great principle that "all men are by
+nature free and equal." Mr. Sontag told me that he valued his farm at
+about six thousand dollars, on which he could live well, have a bottle
+of Crimea wine, and another every day for a friend, and lay up one
+thousand dollars a year; but I afterward heard that he was a complete
+enthusiast on the subject of his farm; a bad manager, and that he really
+knew nothing of its expense or profit.
+
+Returning to the house, we found Madame Sontag ready to receive us. She
+is an authoress of great literary reputation, and of such character
+that, while the emperor was prosecuting the Turkish war in person, and
+the empress remained at Odessa, the young archduchesses were placed
+under her charge. At dinner she talked with much interest of America,
+and expressed a hope, though not much expectation, of one day visiting
+it. But General Sontag himself, surrounded as he is by Russian
+connexions, is all American. Pointing to the riband on his buttonhole,
+he said he was entitled to one order which he should value above all
+others; that his father had been a soldier of the revolution, and member
+of the Cincinnati Society, and that in Russia the decoration of that
+order would be to him the proudest badge of honour that an American
+could wear. After dining we retired into a little room fitted up as a
+library, which he calls America, furnished with all the standard
+American books, Irving, Paulding, Cooper, &c., engravings of
+distinguished Americans, maps, charts, canal and railroad reports, &c.;
+and his daughter, a lovely little girl and only child, has been taught
+to speak her father's tongue and love her father's land. In honour of me
+she played on the piano "Hail Columbia" and "Yankee Doodle," and the
+day wore away too soon. We took tea on the piazza, and at parting I
+received from him a letter to his agent on his estate near Moscow, and
+from Madame Sontag one which carried me into the imperial household,
+being directed to Monsieur l'Intendant du Prince heritiere,
+Petersbourgh. A few weeks ago I received from him a letter, in which he
+says, "the visit of one of my countrymen is so great a treat, that I can
+assure you, you are never forgotten by any one of my little family; and
+when my daughter wishes to make me smile, she is sure to succeed if she
+sits down to her piano and plays 'Hail Columbia' or 'Yankee Doodle;'
+this brings to mind Mr. ----, Mr. ----, Mr. ----, and Mr. ----, who have
+passed through this city; to me alone it brings to mind my country,
+parents, friends, youth, and a world of things and ideas past, never to
+return. Should any of our countrymen be coming this way, do not forget
+to inform them that in Odessa lives one who will be glad to see them;"
+and I say now to any of my countrymen whom chance may throw upon the
+shores of the Black Sea, that if he would receive so far from home the
+welcome of a true-hearted American, General Sontag will be glad to
+render it.
+
+It was still early in the evening when I returned to the city. It was
+moonlight, and I walked immediately to the boulevards. I have not spoken
+as I ought to have done of this beautiful promenade, on which I walked
+every evening under the light of a splendid moon. The boulevards are
+bounded on one side by the precipitous shore of the sea; are three
+quarters of a mile in length, with rows of trees on each side, gravel
+walks and statues, and terminated at one end by the exchange, and at the
+other by the palace of Count Woronzow. At this season of the year it
+was the promenade of all the beauty and fashion of Odessa, from an hour
+or two before dark until midnight. This evening the moon was brighter,
+and the crowd was greater and gayer than usual. The great number of
+officers, with their dashing uniforms, the clashing of their swords, and
+rattling of their spurs, added to the effect; and woman never looks so
+interesting as when leaning on the arm of a soldier. Even in Italy or
+Greece I have seldom seen a finer moonlight scene than the columns of
+the exchange through the vista of trees lining the boulevards. I
+expected to leave the next day, and I lingered till a late hour. I
+strolled up and down the promenade, alone among thousands. I sat down
+upon a bench, and looked for the last time on the Black Sea, the stormy
+Euxine, quiet in the moonbeams, and glittering like a lake of burnished
+silver. By degrees the gay throng disappeared; one after another, party
+after party withdrew; a few straggling couples, seeming all the world to
+each other, still lingered, like me, unable to tear themselves away. It
+was the hour and the place for poetry and feeling. A young officer and a
+lady were the last to leave; they passed by me, but did not notice me;
+they had lost all outward perceptions; and as, in passing for the last
+time, she raised her head for a moment, and the moon shone full upon her
+face, I saw there an expression that spoke of heaven. I followed them as
+they went out, murmured involuntarily "Happy dog," whistled "Heighho,
+says Thimble," and went to my hotel to bed.
+
+
+END OF VOL. I.
+
+
+
+
+List of Corrections:
+
+  p. iii, Preface: "Egypt, Arabia Petrae, and the Holy Land." was changed
+  to "Egypt, Arabia Petraea, and the Holy Land."
+
+  p. 14: "that we coud" was changed to "that we could."
+
+  p. 87: "friends in this county" was changed to "friends in this
+  country."
+
+  p. 90: "but we connot" was changed to "but we cannot."
+
+  p. 99: "Gate of the Lyons" was changed to "Gate of the Lions" as in
+  the rest of the book.
+
+  p. 130: "to favour such a suiter" was changed to "to favour such a
+  suitor."
+
+  p. 174: "it is confirmed by poetry, hat" was changed to "it is
+  confirmed by poetry, that."
+
+  p. 183: "the jackall's cry was heard" was changed to "the jackal's cry
+  was heard."
+
+  p. 184: "cartainly whip them" was changed to "certainly whip them."
+
+  p. 233: "threade our way" was changed to "threaded our way."
+
+  p. 234: "Cachmere shawls" was changed to "Cashmere shawls."
+
+  p. 244: "the Phase, the Dneiper, and the Danube" was changed to "the
+  Phase, the Dnieper, and the Danube."
+
+  p. 258: "the mouths of the Dneiper and Dneister" was changed to "the
+  mouths of the Dnieper and Dniester."
+
+  p. 268: "quiet in the moonbeans" was changed to "quiet in the
+  moonbeams."
+
+
+Errata:
+
+The summary in the table of contents is not always consistent with the
+summary at the beginning of each chapter. The original has been
+retained.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Incidents of Travel in Greece, Turkey,
+Russia, and Poland, Vol. I (of 2), by John Lloyd Stephens
+
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