LETTER XVIII.

The Ionian Isles—Lord and Lady Nugent—Corfu—Greek and English Soldiers—Cockneyism—The Gardens of Alcinous—English Officers—Albanians—Dionisio Salomos, the Greek Poet—Greek Ladies—Dinner with the Artillery Mess.

This is proper dream-land. The “Isle of Calypso,”[7]folded in a drapery of blue air, lies behind, fading in the distance, “the Acroceraunian mountains of old name,” which caught Byron’s eye as he entered Greece, are piled up before us on the Albanian shore, and the Ionian sea is rippling under our bow, breathing, from every wave, of Homer, and Sappho, and “sad Penelope.” Once more upon Childe Harold’s footsteps. I closed the book at Rome, after following him for a summer through Italy, confessing, by many pleasant recollections, that

“Not in vainHe wore his sandal shoon, and scallop shell.”

“Not in vain

He wore his sandal shoon, and scallop shell.”

I resume it here with the feeling of Thalaba when he caught sight of the green bird that led him through the desert. It lies open on my knee at the second canto, describing our position even to the hour:

“‘Twas on a Grecian autumn’s gentle eveChilde Harold hailed Leucadia’s cape afar;A spot he longed to see, nor cared to leave.”

“‘Twas on a Grecian autumn’s gentle eve

Childe Harold hailed Leucadia’s cape afar;

A spot he longed to see, nor cared to leave.”

We shall lie off-and-on to-night, and go in to Corfu in the morning. Two Turkish vessels-of-war, with the crescent flag flying, lie in a small cove a mile off, on the Albanian shore, and by the discharge of musketry, our pilot presumes that they have accompanied the Sultan’s tax-gatherer, who gets nothing from these wild people without fighting for it.

The entrance to Corfu is considered pretty, but the English flag flying over the forts, divested ancient Corcyra of its poetical associations. It looked to me a commonplace seaport, glaring in the sun. The “gardens of Alcinous” were here, but who could imagine them, with a red-coated sentry posted on every corner of the island.

The Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Isles, Lord Nugent, came off to the ship this morning in a kind of Corfiote boat, called a “scampavia,” a greyhound-looking craft, carrying sail enough for a schooner. She cut the water like the wing of a swallow. His lordship was playing sailor, and was dressed like the mate of one of our coasters, and his manners were as bluff. He has a fine person, however, and is said to be a very elegant man when he chooses it. He is the author of the “Life and Times of John Hampden,” and Whig, of course. Southey has lately reviewed him rather bitterly in the “Quarterly.” Lady N. is literary, too, and they have written between them a book of tales called (I think) “Legends of the Lilies,” of which her ladyship’s half is said to be the better.

Went on shore for a walk. Greeks and English soldiers mix oddly together. The streets are narrow, and crowded with them in about equal proportions. John Bull retains his red face, and learns no Greek. We passed through the Bazaar, and bad English was the universal language. There is but one square in the town, and round its wooden fence, enclosing a dusty area, without a blade of grass, were riding the English officers, while the regimental band played in the centre. A more arid and cheerless spot never pained the eye. The appearance of the officers, retaining all their Bond-street elegance and mounted upon English hunters, was in singular contrast with the general shabbiness of the houses and people. I went into a shop at a corner to inquire for the residence of a gentleman to whom I had a letter. “It’swerry ‘ot, sir,” said a little red-faced woman behind the counter, as I went out, “perhaps you’d like a glass ofvater.” It was odd to hear the Wapping dialect in the “isles of Greece.” She sold green groceries, and wished me to recommend her to thehofficers. Mrs. Mary Flack’s “grocery” in the gardens of Alcinous.

“The wild Albanian, kirtled to the knee,” walks through the streets of Corfu, looking unlike and superior to everything about him. I met several in returning to the boat. Their gait is very lofty, and the snow-whitejuktanilla, or kirtle, with its thousand folds, sways from side to side, as they walk, with a most showy effect. Lord Byron was very much captivated with these people, whose capital (just across the strait from Corfu) he visited once or twice in his travels through Greece. Those I have seen are all very tall, and have their prominent features, with keen eyes and limbs of the most muscular proportions. The common English soldiers look like brutes beside them.

The placard of a theatre hung on the walls of a church. A rude picture of a battle between the Greeks and Turks hung above it, and beneath was written, in Italian, “Honour the representation of the immortal deeds of your hero Marco Bozzaris.” It is singular that even a pack of slaves can find pleasure in a remembrance that reproaches every breath they draw.

Called on Lord Nugent with the commodore. The governor, sailor, author, antiquary, nobleman (for he is all these, and a jockey to boot), received us in a calico morning frock, with his breast and neck bare, in a large library lumbered with half-packed antiquities and strewn with straw. Books, miniatures of his family (a lovely one of Lady Nugent among them), Whig pamphlets, riding-whips, spurs, minerals, hammer and nails, half-eaten cakes, plans of fortifications, printed invitations to his own balls and dinners, military reports, Turkish pistols, and, lastly, his own just printed answer to Mr. Southey’s review of his book, occupied the table. He was reading his own production when we entered. His lordship mentioned, with great apparent satisfaction, a cruise he had taken some years ago with Commodore Chauncey. The conversation was rather monologue than dialogue; his excellency seeming to think, with Lord Bacon, that “the honorablest part of talk was to give the occasion, and then to moderate and pass to something else.” He started a topic, exhausted and changed it with the same facility and rapidity with which he sailed his scampavia. An engagement with the artillery-mess prevented my acceptance of an invitation to dine with him to-morrow—a circumstance I rather regret, as he is said to be, at his own table, one of the most polished and agreeable men of his time.

Thank Heaven, revolutions do not affect the climate! The isle that gave a shelter to the storm-driven Ulysses is an English barrack, but the same balmy air that fanned the blind eyes of old Homer blows over it still. “The breezes,” says Landor, beautifully, “are the children of eternity.” I never had the hair lifted so pleasantly from my temples as to-night, driving into the interior of the island. The gardening of Alcinous seems to have been followed up by nature. The rhododendron, the tamarisk, the almond, cypress, olive, and fig, luxuriate in the sweetest beauty everywhere.

There was a small party in the evening at the house of the gentleman who had driven me out, and among other foreigners present were the Count Dionisio Salomos, of Zante, and the Cavaliere Andrea Mustoxidi, both men of whom I had often heard. The first is almost the only modern Greek poet, and his hymns, principally patriotic, are in the common dialect of the country, and said to be full of fire. He is an excessively handsome man, with large dark eyes, almost effeminate in their softness. His features are of the clearest Greek chiselling, as faultless as a statue, and are stamped with nature’s most attractive marks of refinement and feeling. I can imagine Anacreon to have resembled him.

Mustoxidi has been a conspicuous man in the late chapter of Grecian history. He was much trusted by Capo d’Istria, and among other things had the whole charge of his school at Ægina. An Italian exile (a Modenese, and a very pleasant fellow), took me aside when I asked something of his history, and told me a story of him, which proves either that he was a dishonest man, or (no new truth) that conspicuous men are liable to be abused. A valuable donation of books was given by some one to the school library. They stood on the upper shelves, quite out of reach, and Mustoxidi was particular in forbidding all approach to them. Some time after his departure from the island, the library was committed to the charge of another person, and the treasures of the upper shelves were found to be—painted boards! His physiognomy would rather persuade me of the truth of the story. He is a small man, with a downcast look, and a sly, gray eye, almost hidden by his projecting eyebrows. His features are watched in vain for an open expression.

The ladies of the party were principally Greeks. None of them were beautiful, but they had the melancholy, retired expression of face which one looks for, knowing the history of their nation. They are unwise enough to abandon their picturesque national costume, and dress badly in the European style. The servant girls, with their hair braided into the folds of their turbans, and their open-laced bodices and sleeves, are much more attractive to the stranger’s eye. The liveliest of the party, a little Zantiote girl of eighteen, with eyes and eye-lashes that contradicted the merry laugh on her lips, sang us an Albanian song to the guitar very sweetly.

Dined to-day with the artillery mess, in company with the commodore and some of his officers. In a place like this, the dinner is naturally the great circumstance of the day. The inhabitants do not take kindly to their masters, and there is next to no society for the English. They sit down to their soup after the evening drive, and seldom rise till midnight. It was a gay dinner, as dinners will always be where the whole remainder of what the “day may bring forth” is abandoned to them, and we parted from our hospitable entertainers, after four or five hours “measured with sands of gold.” We must do the English the justice of confessing the manners of their best bred men to be the best in the world. It is inevitable that one should bear the remainder of the nation little love. Neither the one class nor the other, doubtless, will ever seek it at our hands. But mutual hospitality may soften so much of our intercourse as happens in the traveller’s way, and without loving John Bull better, all in all, one soon finds out in Europe that the dog and the lion are not more unlike, than the race of bagmen and runners with which our country is overrun, and the cultivated gentlemen of England.

On my right sat a captain of the corps, who had spent the last summer at the Saratoga Springs. We found any number of mutual acquaintances, of course, and I was amused with the impressions which some of the fairest of my friends had made upon a man who had passed years in the most cultivated society of Europe. He liked America with reservations. He preferred our ladies to those of any other country except England, and he had found more dandies in one hour in Broadway than he should have met in a week in Regent-street. He gave me a racy scene or two from the City Hotel, in New York, but he doubted if the frequenters of a public table in any country in the world were, on the whole, so well-mannered. If Americans were peculiar for anything, he thought it was for confidence in themselves and tobacco-chewing.

[7]

Fano, which disputes it with Gozo, near Malta.

LETTER XIX.

Corfu—Unpopularity of British Rule—Superstition of the Greeks—Accuracy of the Descriptions in the Odyssey—Advantage of the Greek Costume—The Paxian Isles—Cape Leucas, or Sappho’s Leap—Bay of Navarino, Ancient Pylos—Modon—Coran’s Bay—Cape St. Angelo—Isle of Cythera.

Corfu.—Called on one of the officers of the 10th this morning, and found lying on his table two books upon Corfu. They were from the circulating library of the town, much thumbed, and contained the most unqualified strictures on the English administration in the islands. In one of them, by a Count, or Colonel, Boig de St. Vincent, a Frenchman, the Corfiotes were taunted with their slavish submission, and called upon to shake off the yoke of British dominion in the most inflammatory language. Such books in Italy or France would be burnt by the hangman, and prohibited on penalty of death. Here, with a haughty consciousness of superiority, which must be galling enough to an Ionian who is capable of feeling, they circulate uncensured in two languages, and the officers of the abused government read them for their amusement, and return them coolly to go their rounds among the people. They have twenty-five hundred troops upon the island, and they trouble themselves little about what is thought of them. They confess that their government is excessively unpopular, the officers are excluded from the native society, and the soldiers are scowled upon in the streets.

The body of St. Spiridion was carried through the streets of Corfu to-day, sitting bolt upright in a sedan chair, and accompanied by the whole population. He is the great saint of the Greek church, and such is his influence, that the English government thought proper, under Sir Frederick Adams’s administration, to compel the officers to walk in the procession. The saint was dried at his death, and makes a neat, black mummy, sans eyes and nose, but otherwise quite perfect. He was carried to-day by four men in a very splendid sedan, shaking from side to side with the motion, preceded by one of the bands of music from the English regiments. Sick children were thrown under the feet of the bearers, half dead people brought to the doors as he passed, and every species of disgusting mummery practised. The show lasted about four hours, and was, on the whole, attended with more marks of superstition than anything I found in Italy. I was told that the better educated Christians of the Greek Church disbelieve the saint’s miracles. The whole body of the Corfiote ecclesiastics were in the procession, however.

I passed the first watch in the hammock-nettings to-night, enjoying inexpressibly the phenomena of this brilliant climate. The stars seem burning like lamps in the absolute clearness of the atmosphere. Meteors shoot constantly with a slow liquid course over the sky. The air comes off from the land laden with the breath of the wild thyme, and the water around the ship is another deep blue heaven, motionless with its studded constellations. The frigate seems suspended between them.

We have little idea, while conning an irksome school-task, how strongly the “unwilling lore” is rooting itself in the imagination. The frigate lies perhaps a half mile from the most interesting scenes of the Odyssey. I have been recalling from the long neglected stores of memory, the beautiful descriptions of the court of King Alcinous, and of the meeting of his matchless daughter with Ulysses. The whole web of the poet’s fable has gradually unwound, and the lamps ashore, and the outline of the hills, in the deceiving dimness of night, have entered into the delusion with the facility of a dream. Every scene in Homer may be traced to this day, the blind old poet’s topography was so admirable. It was over the point of land sloping down to the right, that the Princess Nausicaa went with her handmaids to wash her bridal robes in the running streams. The description still guides the traveller to the spot where the damsels of the royal maid spread the linen on the grass, and commenced the sports that waked Ulysses from his slumbers in the bed of leaves.

Ashore with one of the officers this morning, amusing ourselves with trying on dresses in a Greek tailor’s shop. It quite puts one out of conceit with these miserable European fashions. The easy and flowing juktanilla, the unembarrassed leggings, the open sleeve of the collarless jacket leaving the throat exposed, and the handsome close-binding girdle from it, seems to me the very dress dictated by reason and nature. The richest suit in the shop, a superb red velvet, wrought with gold, was priced at one hundred and forty dollars. The more sober colours were much cheaper. A dress lasts several years.

We made our farewell visits to the officers of the English regiments, who had overwhelmed us with hospitality during our stay, and went on board to get under way with the noon breeze. We were accompanied to the ship, not as the hero of Homer, when he left the same port, by three damsels of the royal train, bearing, “one a tunic, another a rich casket, and a third bread and wine” for his voyage, but by Mrs. Thompson and Mrs. Wilson, soldiers’ wives, and washerwomen, with baskets of hurriedly-dried linen, pinned, every bundle, with a neat bill in shillings and halfpence.

Ulysses slept all the way from Corcyra to Ithaca. He lost a great deal of fine scenery. The passage between Corfu and Albania is beautiful. We ran past the southern cape of the island with a free wind, and are now off the Paxian Isles, where, according to Plutarch, Emilanus, the rhetorician, voyaging by night, “heard a voice louder than human, announcing the death of Pan.” A “schoolboy midshipman” is breaking the same silence with “on deck, all hands! on deck, all of you!”

Off the mouth of the Alpheus. If he still chases Arethusa under the sea, and she makes straight for Sicily, her bed is beneath our keel. The moon is pouring her broad light over the ocean, the shadows of the rigging on the deck lie in clear and definite lines, the sailors of the watch sit around upon the guns in silence, and the ship, with her clouds of snowy sail spread aloft, is stealing through the water with the noiseless motion of a swan. Even the gallant man-of-war seems steeped in the spirit of the scene. The hour wants but an “Ionian Myrrha” to fill the last void of the heart.

Cape Leucas on the lee—the scene of Sappho’s leap. We have coursed down the long shore of ancient Leucadia, and the precipice to which lovers came from all parts of Greece for an oblivious plunge, is shining in the sun, scarce a mile from the ship. The beautiful Grecian here sung her last song, and broke her lyre and died. The leap was not always so tragical: there are two lovers, at least, on record (Maces of Buthrotum, and Cephalos, son of Deioneos), who survived the fall, and were cured effectually by salt water. It was a common resource in the days of Sappho, and Strabo says that they were accustomed to check their descent by tying birds and feathers to their arms. Females, he says, were generally killed by the rapidity of the fall, their frames being too slight to bear the shock; but the men seldom failed to come safe to shore. The sex has not lost its advantages since the days of Phaon.

We have caught a glimpse of Ithaca through the isles, the land

“Where sad Penelope o’erlooked the wave.”

and which Ulysses loved,non quia larga, sed quia sua—the most natural of reasons. We lose Childe Harold’s track here. He turned to the left into the gulf of Lepanto. We shall find him again at Athens. Missolonghi, where he died, lies about twenty or thirty miles on our lee, and it is one, of several places in the gulf, that I regret to pass so near, unvisited.

Entering the bay of Navarino. A picturesque and precipitous rock, filled with caves, nearly shuts the mouth of this ample harbour. We ran so close to it, that it might have been touched from the deck with a tandem whip. On a wild crag to the left, a small, white marble monument, with the earth still fresh about it, marks the grave of some victim of the late naval battle. The town and fortress, miserable heaps of dirty stone, lie in the curve of the southern shore. A French brig-of-war is at anchor in the port, and broad, barren hills, stretching far away on every side, complete the scene before us. We run up the harbour, and tack to stand out again, without going ashore. Not a soul is to be seen, and the bay seems the very sanctuary of silence. It is difficult to conceive, that but a year or two ago, the combined fleets of Europe, were thundering among these silent hills, and hundreds of human beings lying in their blood, whose bones are now whitening in the sea beneath. Our pilot was in the fight, on board an English frigate. He has pointed out to us the position of the different fleets, and among other particulars, he tells me, that when the Turkish ships were boarded, Greek sailors were found chained to the guns, who had been compelled, at the muzzle of the pistol, to fight against the cause of their country. Many of them must thus have perished in the vessels that were sunk.

Navarino was the scene of a great deal of fighting, during the late Greek revolution. It was invested, while in possession of the Turks, by two thousand Peloponnesians and a band of Ionians, and the garrison were reduced to such a state of starvation, as to eat their slippers. They surrendered at last, under promise that their lives should be spared; but the news of the massacre of the Greek patriarchs and clergy, at Adrianople, was received at the moment, and the exasperated troops put their prisoners to death, without mercy.

The peaceful aspect of the place is better suited to its poetical associations. Navarino was the ancient Pylos, and it is here that Homer brings Telemachus in search of his father. He finds old Nestor and his sons sacrificing on the seashore to Neptune, with nine altars, and at each five hundred men. I should think the modern town contained scarce a twentieth of this number.

Rounding the little fortified town of Modon, under full sail. It seems to be built on the level of the water, and nothing but its high wall and its towers are seen from the sea. This, too, has been a much-contested place, and remained in possession of the Turks till after the formation of the provisional government under Mavrocordato. It forms the south-western point of the Morea, and is a town of great antiquity. King Philip gained his first battle over the Athenians here, some thousands of years ago; and the brave old Miualis beat the Egyptian fleet in the same bay, without doubt in a manner quite as deserving of as long a remembrance. It is like a city of the dead—we cannot even see a sentinel on the wall.

Passed an hour in the mizen-chains with “the Corsair” in my hand, and “Coran’s Bay” opening on the lee. With what exquisite pleasure one reads, when he can look off from the page, and study the scene of the poet’s fiction—

“In Coran’s bay floats many a galley light,Through Coran’s lattices the lamps burn bright,For Seyd, the Pacha, makes a feast to-night.”

“In Coran’s bay floats many a galley light,

Through Coran’s lattices the lamps burn bright,

For Seyd, the Pacha, makes a feast to-night.”

It is a small, deep bay, with a fortified town, on the western shore, crowned on the very edge of the sea, with a single, tall tower. A small aperture near the top, helps to realise the Corsair’s imprisonment, and his beautiful interview with Gulnare:—

“In the high chamber of his highest tower,Sate Conrad fettered in the Pacha’s power,” &c.

“In the high chamber of his highest tower,

Sate Conrad fettered in the Pacha’s power,” &c.

The Pirate’s Isle is said to have been Poros, and the original of the Corsair himself, a certain Hugh Crevelier, who filled the Ægæan with terror, not many years ago.

Made the Cape St. Angelo, the southern point of the Peloponnesus, and soon after the island of Cythera, near which Venus rose from the foam of the sea. We are now running northerly, along the coast of ancient Sparta. It is a mountainous country, bare and rocky, and looks as rude and hardy as the character of its ancient sons. I have been passing the glass in vain along the coast to find a tree. A small hermitage stands on the desolate extremity of the Cape, and a Greek monk, the pilot tells me, has lived there many years, who comes from his cell, and stands on the rock with his arms outspread to bless the passing ship. I looked for him in vain.

A French man-of-war bore down upon us a few minutes ago, and saluted the commodore. He ran so close, that we could see the features of his officers on the poop. It is a noble sight at sea, a fine ship passing, with all her canvass spread, with the added rapidity of your own course and hers. The peal of the guns in the midst of the solitary ocean, had a singular effect. The echo came back from the naked shores of Sparta, with a warlike sound, that might have stirred old Leonidas in his grave. The smoke rolled away on the wind, and the noble ship hoisted her royals once more, and went on her way. We are making for Napoli di Romania, with a summer breeze, and hope to drop anchor beneath its fortress, at sunset.

LETTER XX.

The Harbour of Napoli—Tricoupi and Mavrocordato, Otho’s Cabinet Councillors—Colonel Gordon—King Otho—The Misses Armanspergs—Prince of Saxe—Miaulis, the Greek Admiral—Excursion to Argos, the Ancient Terynthus.

Napoli di Romania.—Anchored in the harbour of Napoli after dark. An English frigate lies a little in, a French and Russian brig-of-war astern, and two Greek steamboats, King Otho’s yacht, and a quantity of caïques, fill the inner port. The fort stands a hundred feet over our heads on a bold promontory, and the rocky Palamidi soars a hundred feet still higher, on a crag that thrusts its head sharply into the clouds, as if it would lift the little fortress out of eyesight. The town lies at the base of the mountain, an irregular looking heap of new houses; and here, at present, resides the boy-king of Greece, Otho the first. His predecessors were Agamemnon and Perseus, who, some three thousand years ago (more or less, I am not certain of my chronology), reigned at Argos and Mycenæ, within sight of his present capital.

Went ashore with the commodore, to call on Tricoupi and Mavrocordato, the king’s cabinet councillors. We found the former in a new stone house, slenderly furnished, and badly painted, but with an entry full of servants, in handsome Greek costumes. He received the commodore with the greatest friendliness. He had dined on board the “Constitution” six years before, when his prospects were less promising than now. He is a short, stout man, of dark complexion, and very bright black eyes, and looks very honest and very vulgar. He speaks English perfectly. He shrugged his shoulders when the commodore alluded to having left him fighting for a republic, and said anything was better than anarchy. He spoke in the highest terms of my friend, Dr. Howe (who was at Napoli with the American provisions, when Grivas held the Palamidi). Greece, he said, had never a better friend. Madame Tricoupi (the sister of Prince Mavrocordato) came in presently with two very pretty children. She spoke French fluently, and seemed an accomplished woman. Her family had long furnished the Prince Hospodars of Wallachia, and though not a beautiful woman, she has every mark of the gentle blood of the east. Colonel Gordon, the famous Philhellene, entered, while we were there. He was an intimate friend of Lord Byron’s, and has expended the best part of a large fortune in the Greek cause. He is a plain man, of perhaps fifty, with red hair and freckled face, and features and accent very Scotch. I liked his manners. He had lately written a book upon Greece, which is well spoken of in some review that has fallen in my way.

Went thence to Prince Mavrocordato’s. He occupies the third story of a very indifferent house, furnished with the mere necessaries of life. A shabby sofa, a table, two chairs, and a broken tumbler, holding ink and two pens, is the inventory of his drawing-room. He received us with elegance and courtesy, and presented us to his wife, a pretty and lively little Constantinopolitan, who chattered French like a magpie. She gave the uncertainty of their residence until the seat of government was decided on, as the apology for their lodgings, and seemed immediately to forget that she was not in a palace. Mavrocordato is a strikingly handsome man, with long, curling, black hair, and most luxuriant moustaches. His mouth is bland, and his teeth uncommonly beautiful; but without being able to say where it lies, there is an expression of guile in his face, that shut my heart to him. He is getting fat, and there is a shade of red in the clear olive of his cheek, which is very uncommon in this country. The commodore remarked that he was very thin when he was here six years before. The settlement of affairs in Greece has probably relieved him from a great deal of care.

Presented, with the commodore, to King Otho. Tricoupi officiated as chamberlain, dressed in a court suit of light blue, wrought with silver. The royal residence is a comfortable house, built by Capo d’Istria, in the principal street of Napoli. The king’s aide, a son of Marco Bozzaris, a very fine, resolute-looking young man of eighteen, received us in the antechamber, and in a few minutes the door of the inner room was thrown open. His majesty stood at the foot of the throne (a gorgeous red velvet arm-chair, raised on a platform, and covered with a splendid canopy of velvet), and with a low bow to each of us as we entered, he addressed his conversation immediately, and without embarrassment, to the commodore. I had leisure to observe him closely for a few minutes. He appears about eighteen. He was dressed in an exceedingly well cut, swallow-tailed coat, of very light blue, with a red standing collar, wrought with silver. The same work upon a red ground, was set between the buttons of the waist, and upon the edges of the skirts. White pantaloons, and the ordinary straight court-sword completed his dress. He is rather tall, and his figure is extremely light and elegant. A very flat nose, and high cheekbones, are the most marked features of his face; his hair is straight, and of a light brown, and with no claim to beauty; the expression of his countenance is manly, open, and prepossessing. He spoke French fluently, though with a German accent, and went through the usual topics of a royal presentation (very much the same all over the world) with grace and ease. In the few remarks which he addressed to me, he said that he promised himself great pleasure in the search for antiquities in Greece. He bowed us out after an audience of about ten minutes, no doubt extremely happy to exchange his court-coat and our company for a riding-frock and saddle. His horse and a guard of twelve lancers were in waiting at the door.

The king usually passes his evenings with the Misses Armanspergs, the daughters of the president of the regency. They accompanied him from Munich, and are the only ladies in his realm with whom he is acquainted. They keep a carriage, which is a kind of wonder at Napoli; ride on horseback in the English style, very much to the amusement of the Greeks; and givesoiréesonce of twice a week, which are particularly dull. One of the three is a beautiful girl, and if policy does not interfere, is likely to be Queen of Greece. The Count Armansperg is a small, shrewd-looking man, with a thin German countenance, and agreeable manners. He is, of course, the real king of Greece.

The most agreeable man I found in Napoli, was the king’s uncle, the prince of Saxe, at present in command of his army. He is a tall and uncommonly handsome soldier, of perhaps thirty-six years, and, with all the air of a man of high birth, has the open and frank manners of the camp. He has been twice on board the ship, and seemed to consider his acquaintance with the commodore’s family as a respite from exile. The Bavarian officers in his suite spoke nothing but the native German, and looked like mere beef-eaters. The prince returns in two years, and when the king is of age, his Bavarian troops leave him, and he commits himself to the country.

Hired the only two public vehicles in Napoli, and set off with the commodore’s family, on an excursion to the ancient cities in the neighbourhood. We left the gate built by the Venetians, and still adorned with a bas-relief of a winged lion, at nine o’clock of a clear Grecian summer’s day. Auguries were against us. Pyrrhus did the same thing with his elephants and his army, one morning about two thousand years ago, and was killed before noon; and our driver stopped his horses a half mile out of the gate, and told us very gravely thatthe evil eyewas upon him. He had dreamed that he hadfounda dollar the night before—a certain sign by the laws of witchcraft in Greece, that he shouldloseone. He concluded by adding another dollar to the price of each carriage.

We passed the house of old Miaulis, the Greek admiral, a pretty cottage a mile from the city, and immediately after came the ruins of the ancient Terynthus, the city of Hercules, The walls, built of the largest hewn stones in the world, still stand, and will till time ends. It would puzzle modern mechanics to carry them away. We drove along the same road upon which Autolycus taught the young hero to drive a chariot, and passing ruins and fragments of columns strewn over the whole length of the plain of Argos, stopped under a spreading aspen tree, the only shade within reach of the eye. A dirty khan stood a few yards off, and our horses were to remain here while we ascended the hills to Mycenæ.

It was a hot walk. The appearance of ladies, as we passed through a small Greek village on our way, drew out all the inhabitants, and we were accompanied by about fifty men, women, and children, resembling very much in complexion and dress, the Indians of our country. A mile from our carriages we arrived at a subterranean structure, built in the side of the hill, with a door toward the east, surmounted by the hewn stone so famous for its size among the antiquities of Greece. It shuts the tomb of old Agamemnon. The interior is a hollow cone, with a small chamber at the side, and would make “very eligible lodgings for a single gentleman,” as the papers say.

We kept on up the hill, wondering that the “king of many islands and of all Argos,” as Homer calls him, should have built his city so high in this hot climate. We sat down at last, quite fagged, at the gate of a city builtonlyeighteen hundred years before Christ. A descendant of Perseus brought us some water in a wooden piggin, and somewhat refreshed, we went on with our examination of the ruins. The mere weight of the walls has kept them together three thousand six hundred years. You can judge how immoveable they must be. The antiquarians call them the “cyclopean walls of Mycenæ;” and nothing less than a giant, I should suppose, would dream of heaving such enormous masses one upon the other. “The gate of the Lions,” probably the principal entrance to the city, is still perfect. The bas-relief from which it takes its name, is the oldest sculptured stone in Europe. It is of green basalt, representing two lions rampant, very finely executed, and was brought from Egypt. An angle of the city wall is just below, and the ruins of a noble aqueduct are still visible, following the curve of the opposite hill, and descending to Mycenæ on the northern side. I might bore you now with a long chapter on antiquities (for, however dry in the abstract, they are exceedingly interesting on the spot), but I let you off. Those who like them will find Spohn and Wheeler, Dodwell, Leake, and Gell, diffuse enough for the most classic enthusiasm.

We descended by a rocky ravine, in the bosom of which lay a well with six large fig-trees growing at its brink. A woman, burnt black with the sun, was drawing water in a goat-skin, and we were too happy to get into the shade, and in the name of Pan, sink delicately, and ask for a drink of water. I have seen the time when nectar in a cup of gold would have been less refreshing.

We arrived at the aspen about two o’clock, and made preparations for our dinner. The sea-breeze had sprung up, and came freshly over the plain of Argos. We put our claret in a goat-skin of water hung at one of the wheels, the basket was produced, the ladies sat in the interior of the carriage, and the commodore, and his son, and myself made tables of the foot-boards; and thus we achieved a meal which, if meals are measured by content, old King Danaus and his fifty daughters might have risen from their graves to envy us.

A very handsome Greek woman had brought us water, and stood near while we were eating, and making over to her the remnants of the ham, and its condiments, and the empty bottles, with which she seemed made happy for a day, we went on our way to Argos.

“Rivers die,” it is said, “as well as men and cities.” We drove through the bed of “Father Inachus,” which was a respectable river in the time of Homer, but which, in our day, would be puzzled to drown a much less thing than a king. Men achieve immortality in a variety of ways. King Inachus might have been forgotten as the first Argive; but by drowning himself in the river which afterwards took his name, every knowledge-hunter that travels is compelled to look up his history. So St. Nepomuc became the guardian of bridges by breaking his neck over one.

The modern Argos occupies the site of the ancient. It is tolerably populous, but it is a town of most wretched hovels. We drove through several long streets of mud houses with thatched roofs, completely open in front, and the whole family huddled together on the clay floor, with no furniture but a flock bed in the corner. The first settlement by Deucalion and Pyrrha, on the sediment of the deluge, must have looked like it. Mud, stones, and beggars, were all we saw. Old Pyrrhus was killed here, after all his battles, by a tile from a house-top; but modern Argos has scarce a roof high enough to overtop his helmet.

We left our carriages in the street, and walked to the ruins of the amphitheatre. The brazen Thalamos in which Danae was confined when Jupiter visited her in a shower of gold, was near this spot, the supposed site of most of the thirty temples once famous in Argos.

Some solid brick walls, the seats of the amphitheatre cut into the solid rock of the hill, the rocky Acropolis above, and twenty or thirty horses tied together, and treading out grain on a thrashing-floor in the open field, were all we found of ancient or picturesque in the capital of the Argives. A hot, sultry afternoon, was no time to weave romance from such materials.

We returned to our carriages, and while the Greek was getting his horses into their harness, we entered a most unpromising café for shade and water. A billiard-table stood in the centre; and the high, broad bench on which the Turks seat themselves, with their legs crooked under them, stretched around the wall. The proprietor was a Venetian woman, who sighed, as she might well, for a gondola. The kingdom of Agamemnon was not to her taste.

After waiting awhile here for the sun to get behind the hills of Sparta, we received a message from our coachman, announcing that he was arrested. The “evil eye” had not glanced upon him in vain. There was no returning without him, and I walked over with the commodore to see what could be done. A fine-looking man sat cross-legged on a bench, in the upper room of a building adjoining a prison, and a man with a pen in his hand was reading the indictment. The driver had struck a child who was climbing on his wheel. I pleaded his case in “choice Italian,” and after half an hour’s delay, they dismissed him, exacting a dollar as a security for reappearance. It was a curious verification of his morning’s omen.

We drove on over the plain, met the king, five camels, and the Misses Armansperg, and were on board soon after sunset.

LETTER XXI.

Visit from King Otho and Miaulis—Visit an English and Russian frigate—Beauty of the Greek Men—Lake Lerna—The Hermionicus Sinus—Hydra—Ægina.

Napoli di Romania.—Went ashore with one of the officers, to look for the fountain of Canathus. Its waters had the property (vide Pausanias) of renewing the infant purity of the women who bathed in them. Juno used it once a year. We found but one natural spring in all Napoli. It stands in a narrow street, filled with tailors, and is adorned with a marble font bearing a Turkish inscription. Two girls were drawing water in skins. We drank a little of it, but found nothing peculiar in the taste. Its virtues are confined probably to the other sex.

The king visited the ship. As his barge left the pier, the vessels of war in the harbour manned their yards and fired the royal salute. He was accompanied by young Bozzaris and the prince, his uncle, and dressed in the same uniform in which he received us at our presentation. As he stepped on the deck, and was received by Commodore Patterson, I thought I had never seen a more elegant and well-proportioned man. The frigate was in her usual admirable order, and the king expressed his surprise and gratification at every turn. His questions were put with uncommon judgment for a landsman. We had heard, indeed, on board the English frigate which brought him from Trieste, that he lost no opportunity of learning the duties and management of the ship, keeping watch with the midshipmen, and running from one deck to the other at all hours. After going thoroughly through all the ship, the commodore presented him to his family. He seemed very much pleased with the ease and frankness with which he was received, and seating himself with our fair country-women in the after-cabin, prolonged his visit to a very unceremonious length, conversing with the most unreserved gaiety. The yards were manned again, the salutes fired once more, and the king of Greece tossed his oars for a moment under the stern, and pulled ashore.

Had the pleasure and honour of showing Miaulis through the ship. The old man came on board very modestly, without even announcing himself, and as he addressed one of the officers in Italian, I was struck with his noble appearance, and offered my services as interpreter. He was dressed in the Hydriote costume, the full blue trousers gathered at the knee, a short open jacket, worked with black braid, and a red skull-cap. His lieutenant dressed in the same costume, a tall, superb-looking Greek, was his only attendant. He was quite at home on board, comparing the “United States” continually to the “Hellas,” the American built frigate which he commanded. Every one on board was struck with the noble simplicity and dignity of his address. I have seldom seen a man who impressed me more. He requested me to express his pleasure at his visit, and his friendly feelings to the commodore, and invited us to his country-house, which he pointed out from the deck, just without the city. Every officer in the ship uncovered as he passed. The gratification at seeing him was universal. He looks worthy to be one of the “three” that Byron demanded, in his impassioned verse,

“To make a new Thermopylæ.”

Returned visits of ceremony with the commodore, to the English and Russian vessels of war. The British frigate “Madagascar” is about the size of the “United States,” but not in nearly so fine a condition. The superior cleanliness and neatness of arrangement on board our own ship are indisputable. The cabin of Captain Lyon (who is said to be one of the best officers in the English service) was furnished in almost oriental luxury, and what I should esteem more, crowded with the choicest books. He informed us that of his twenty-four midshipmen, nine were sons of noblemen, and possessed the best family influence on both father’s and mother’s side, and several of the remainder had high claims for preferment. There is small chance there, one would think, for commoners.

Captain Lyon spoke in the highest terms of his late passenger, King Otho, both as to disposition and talent. Somewhere in the Ægæan, one of his Bavarian servants fell overboard, and the boatswain jumped after him, and sustained him till the boat was lowered to his relief. On his reaching the deck, the king drew a valuable repeater from his pocket, and presented it to him in the presence of the crew. He certainly has caught the “trick of royalty” in its perfection.

The guard presented, the boatswain “piped us over the side,” and we pulled alongside the Russian. The file of marines drawn up in honour of the commodore on her quarter deck, looked like so many standing bears. Features and limbs so brutally coarse I never saw. The officers, however, were very gentlemanly, and the vessel was in beautiful condition. In inquiring after the health of the ladies on board our ship, the captain and his lieutenant rose from their seats and made a low bow—a degree of chivalrous courtesy very uncommon, I fancy, since the days of Sir Piercie Shafton. I left his imperial majesty’s ship with an improved impression of him.

They are a gallant looking people the Greeks. Byron says of them, all “are beautiful, very much resembling the busts of Alcibiades.” We walked beyond the walls of the city this evening, on the plain of Argos. The whole population were out in their Sunday costumes, and no theatrical ballet was ever more showy than the scene. They are a very affectionate people, and walk usually hand in hand, or sit upon the rocks at the road-side, with their arms over each other’s shoulders; and their picturesque attitudes and lofty gait, combined with the flowing beauty of their dress, give them all the appearance of heroes on the stage. I saw literally no handsome women, but the men were magnificent, almost without exception. Among others, a young man passed us with whose personal beauty the whole party were struck. As he went by he laid his hand on his breast and bowed to the ladies, raising his red cap, with its flowing blue tassel, at the same time with perfect grace. It was a young man to whom I had been introduced the day previous, a brother of Mavromichalis, the assassin of Capo d’Istrias. He is about seventeen, tall and straight as an arrow, and has the eye of a falcon. His family is one of the first in Greece; and his brother, who was a fellow of superb beauty, is said to have died in the true heroic style, believing that he had rid his country of a tyrant.

The view of Napoli and the Palamidi from the plain, with its back ground of the Spartan mountains, and the blue line of the Argolic gulf between, is very fine. The home of the Nemean lion, the lofty hill rising above Argos, was enveloped in a black cloud as the sun set on our walk, the short twilight of Greece thickened upon us, and the white, swaying juktanillas of the Greeks striding past, had the effect of spirits gliding by in the dark.

The king, with his guard of lancers on a hard trot, passed us near the gate, followed close by the Misses Armansperg, mounted on fine Hungarian horses. His majesty rides beautifully, and the effect of the short high-borne flag on the tips of the lances, and the tall Polish caps with their cord and tassels, is highly picturesque.

Made an excursion with the commodore across the gulf, to Lake Lerna, the home of the hydra. We saw nothing save the half dozen small marshy lakes, whose overflow devastated the country, until they were dammed by Hercules, who is thus poetically said to have killed a many-headed monster. We visited, near by, “the mills,” which were the scene of one of the most famous battles of the late struggle. The mill is supplied by a lovely stream, issuing from beneath a rock, and running a short course of twenty or thirty rods to the sea. It is difficult to believe that human blood has ever stained its pure waters.

Left Napoli with the daylight breeze, and are now entering the Hermionicus Sinus. A more barren land never rose upon the eye. The ancients considered this part of Greece so near to hell, that they omitted to put the usual obolon into the hands of those who died here, to pay their passage across the Styx.

Off the town of Hydra. This is the birthplace of Miaulis, and its neighbour island, Spesia, that of the sailor heroine, Bobolina. It is a heap of square stone houses set on the side of a hill, without the slightest reference to order. I see with the glass, an old Greek smoking on his balcony, with his feet over the railing, and half a dozen bare-legged women getting a boat into the water on the beach. The whole island has a desolate and sterile aspect. Across the strait, directly opposite the town, lies a lovely green valley, with olive groves and pastures between, and hundreds of gray cattle feeding in all the peace of Arcadia. I have seen such pictures so seldom of late, that it is like a medicine to my sight. “The sea and the sky,” after a while, “lie like a load on the weary eye.”

In passing two small islands just now, we caught a glimpse between them of the “John Adams,” sloop-of-war, under full sail in the opposite direction. Five minutes sooner or later we should have missed her. She has been cruising in the Archipelago a month or two, waiting the commodore’s arrival, and has on board despatches and letters, which makes the meeting a very exciting one to the officers. There is a general stir of expectation on board, in which my only share is that of sympathy. She brings her news from Smyrna, to which port, though my course has been errant enough, you will scarce have thought of directing a letter for me.

Anchored off the Island of Ægina, a mile from the town. The rocks which King Æacus (since Judge Æacus of the infernal regions) raised in the harbour to keep off the pirates, prevent our nearer approach. A beautiful garden of oranges and figs close to our anchorage, promises to reconcile us to our position. The little bay is completely shut in by mountainous islands, and the sun pours down upon us, unabated by the “wooing Ægæan wind.”

Back to Index Next