FOOTNOTE:[41]Now the Hôtel de Provence.
[41]Now the Hôtel de Provence.
[41]Now the Hôtel de Provence.
ATHENS—THE EXCAVATION OF MARBLES AT BASSÆ—BRONSTEDT'S MISHAP—FATE OF THE CORINTHIAN CAPITAL OF BASSÆ—SEVERE ILLNESS—STACKELBERG'S MISHAP—TRIP TO ALBANIA WITH HUGHES AND PARKER—THEBES—LIVADIA—THE FIVE EMISSARIES—STATE OF THE COUNTRY—MERCHANTS OF LIVADIA—DELPHI—SALONA—GALAXIDI—PATRAS—PREVISA—NICOPOLIS—ARTA—THE PLAGUE—JANINA.
The fate of the Ægina Marbles being now practically settled, Foster, who was engaged to make a marriage very displeasing to his family, with a Levantine, left for Smyrna, while Haller, Linckh, and Cockerell went to Athens. The latter had not been in Greece since November 1811. In the interval the expedition to dig up the sculptures he had discovered at Bassæ had been there and had successfully accomplished their purpose, the party consisting of Haller, Foster, Linckh, Stackelberg, Gropius, Bronstedt, and an English traveller, Mr. Leigh.[42]They had provided themselves with powers from Constantinople sufficient to overcome the resistance of the local authorities, and after many difficulties had succeeded in bringing away the sculptures with one exception, to which I will presently refer.
The excavations were carried out in June, July, and August, while my father was absent at Malta and in Sicily. Nevertheless, as he had discovered their existence it was understood that he was to be a participator in any sculptures that should be disinterred.
The party of excavators established themselves there for nearly three months, building huts of boughs all round the temple, making almost a city, which they christened Francopolis. They had frequently from fifty to eighty men at work at a time, a band of Arcadian music to entertain them, and in the evening after work, while the lamb was roasting on a wooden spit, they danced. However, if Cockerell lost the pleasure, he escaped the fever from which they all suffered desperately—and no wonder, after living such a life in such a climate.
It was during this expedition that a misfortune befell Bronstedt which, although it had an element of absurdity in it, was very serious to the victim. While the work at Bassæ was proceeding he left his companions to take a trip into Maina. Before starting he wrote for himself a letter of introduction to Captain Murzinos purporting to be from my father, and would have presented it; but, as ill-luck would have it, on the 20th of August, on the road between Sparta and Kalamata, he fell into the hands of a band of eight robbers. Understanding them to be Mainiotes, and supposing all Mainiotes to be friends, he tried to save his propertyby saying that he had a letter with him to Captain Murzinos; but the robbers replied: "Oh, have you? If we had Murzinos here we would play him twice the pranks we are playing you," and spared nothing. They decamped with his money, his watch, his rings, a collection of antique coins, all that he had in their eyes worth taking, to the tune, as he considered, of 800l.(11,000 piastres fortes d'Espagne), leaving him disconsolate in the dark to collect his scattered manuscripts, which they had rejected with the contemptuous words: ΚαÏÏ„á¼ÏƒÎ¹Î± εἱναι. Δεν τἠστοχá¼ÏƒÎ¿Î¼ÎµÎ½ [Greek: Kartasia einai. Den ta stochasomen] ("Papers! we don't look at them.") In the darkness and confusion after the departure of the robbers he managed to lose some of these as well. The poor traveller returned quite forlorn to Phigaleia. After this, Linckh writes in his delicious French: "Bronstedt parcourt la Morée en longue et à travers pour cherger ses hardes pertus par les voleurs. Le drôle de corps a beaucoup d'espérance, parce que le consul Paul lui a recommendé fortement au nouveau Pascha dans une letter qui a etté enveloppée en vilours rouge." Such a letter, bound in red velvet, was esteemed particularly urgent, but he obtained no redress whatever, nor ever saw again any of "ses hardes," except the ring which had been given him by hisfiancée, Koes' sister. This was recovered for him by Stackelberg on a journey which he took through Maina, when he saw it exposed for sale in the house of one of the captains or chieftains of thecountry, together with the watch, purse, and several other articles which had been Bronstedt's; but the prices asked were too exorbitant for him to ransom any but this, which he knew the late owner had highly prized.
The piece of sculpture I have just mentioned, which the explorers of Phigaleia failed to bring away, was the capital of the single Corinthian column of the interior of the temple. It will be remembered by those who have read my father's work on the subject, that all the columns of the interior were of the Ionic order with one exception, which was Corinthian, and which stood in the centre of one end of the cella. The capital of this Corinthian column was of the very finest workmanship; and although the volutes had been broken off, much of it was still well preserved, and the party of excavators took it with them to the coast for embarcation with the rest. There are figures of it by Stackelberg in his book, and by Foster in a drawing in the Phigaleian Room of the British Museum. Veli Pasha, the Governor of the Morea, had sanctioned the explorations on the understanding that he should have half profits; but when he had seen the sculptures he was so disappointed that they were not gold or silver, and so little understood them, that he took the warriors under shields for tortoises, allowing that as such they were rather well done. It chanced that at this moment news reached him that he had beensuperseded in his command, and not thinking much of them, and eager to get what he could, he accepted 400l.as his share of the spoil and sanctioned the exportation of the marbles. The local archons, however, put every impediment they could in the way by fomenting a strike among the porters which caused delays, and by giving information to the incoming pasha, who sent down troops to stop the embarcation. Everything had been loaded except the capital in question, which was more ponderous than the rest, and was still standing half in and half out of the water when the troops came up. The boat had to put off without it, and the travellers had the mortification of seeing it hacked to pieces by the Turks in their fury at having been foiled. The volute of one of the Ionic columns presented by my father to the British Museum is the only fragment of any of the interior capitals of the temple remaining. He brought it away with him on his, the first, visit.
To return to where I left my father before this digression. As I said, after the sale of the Ægina Marbles, Haller and he came to Athens, where, finding the summer very hot in the town, they went to live at Padischa or Sadischa, not far outside the town, and set earnestly to work upon the drawings for the book on Ægina and Phigaleia. All went on quietly till on the 22nd of August Cockerell was attacked by a malignant bilious fever, which broughthim to death's door: at least, either the illness or the remedies did. The doctor, Abraham, the first in Athens, thought it must be yellow fever, gave him up, and fearing infection for himself, refused to attend him after the first few days. It was even whispered that it might be the plague, for the enormous swelling of the glands was not unlike it. But Haller would listen to no counsels of despair, and refused to leave his friend. The kind Madame Masson, too, the aunt of the Misses Makri, came out from Athens, and the two nursed him with ceaseless devotion. Haller never left his bedside, night or day, for the first month. The vice-consul, hearing that the sufferer was as good as dead, came to take away his keys and put seals upon his property, and was only prevented by Haller by main force. The same faithful friend compelled the doctor to do his duty. The first having deserted his patient, a second was called in and kept attentive by threats and persuasion. The methods of medicine were inconceivably barbarous. Bleeding was the great remedy in fever, and calomel the alternative. When the patient had been brought by this treatment so low that his heart was thought to have stopped, live pigeons were cut in half and the reeking portions applied to his breast to restore the vital heat. Medicine failing, spells were believed in. Madame Masson, though described as one of the first personages in Athens, could neither read nor write, and was grosslyignorant. She had a great faith in spells; and Haller, fearing that in the feeble condition of the patient she might commit some folly, kept a strict watch upon her. One day, however, in his absence, when my father was suffering agonies from his glands, she took the opportunity to tie round his neck a charm of particular potency. It was a little bag containing some resin, some pitch, a lock of hair, and two papers, each inscribed with the figure of a pyramid and other symbols drawn with a pen. They even got so far as to speak of his burial, and it was settled that it should be in the Theseum, where one Tweddle, an Englishman, and other foreigners had been interred, and where Haller himself was laid not many years after.
The churches were kept lighted night and day for his benefit, and his nurse attributed his final recovery entirely to the intercession of Panagia Castriotissa, or "Our Lady of the Acropolis." At length, after long hovering between life and death, his robust constitution carried him through, and towards the end of September the doctor advised his being removed to Athens. He was carried thither in a litter and set down at Madame Masson's, where he was henceforth to live. Before this episode was fairly concluded or my father had progressed far in convalescence, a new cause of agitation arose. Notice was received that Baron Stackelberg was in the hands of pirates.
He had been for a tour in Asia Minor, and was on his way back between Constantinople and Athens, when in crossing the Gulf of Volo he was taken. His case was even more deplorable than Bronstedt's, for he not only lost whatever he had with him, and saw his drawings torn to pieces in sheer malice before his very eyes, but the miscreants claimed an enormous ransom, amounting to about 3,000l., and sent a notice to his friends in Athens to the effect that the money must be forwarded promptly or portions of the prisoner would be sent as reminders. Meanwhile he had to live with the pirates, and his experiences were no laughing matter. The ruffians used to show him hideous instruments of torture to frighten him into paying a higher ransom. They made him sleep in the open air, which half killed him with fever; and as they had nowhere to keep him when they went on their marauding expeditions, he had to go with them. On one occasion he saw a vessel run aground to avoid capture, and the sailors clamber up the rocks to escape. An old man who could not follow fast enough was brought in to be sold as a slave. The rest got away, and one of the pirates, in his fury at being eluded, in order to slake his thirst for blood seized on a wretched goat that was grazing by him and cut its throat. Several weeks of this sort of company and exposure left poor Stackelberg more dead than alive. His rescue, which was managed with great diplomacy and a splendiddisregard for his own safety by Baron Haller, was finally effected at a cost of about 500l.
A Mr. Hughes, in company with Mr. Parker, whom he was "bearleading," arrived in Athens when my father was recovering; and about the last week of November, at their invitation, tempted by the opportunity of travelling with a Tartar and a buyulurdi—that is to say, in security and with as little discomfort as possible—he consented to join in a tour to Albania. I shall not give a detailed account of this voyage. It was over ground everyone has read about. It resulted in no discoveries and few adventures, and anyone who is curious about it will find it fully described in Hughes's book. General Davies, quartermaster-general to the British forces in the Mediterranean, was to form one of the party.
"We set out from Athens on November 29th, a large cavalcade. Two of my friends, though they had not yet learnt that to travel in these countries one must sacrifice a little personal comfort, were otherwise agreeable companions, gentlemanlike and goodhumoured; but I early began to foresee trouble with the General. He was one of those people who think everyone who cannot speak English must be either an assassin or a rogue, and was more unreasonable, unjust, and unaccommodating than any Englishman I ever met, odious as many of them make themselves abroad. It rained heavily, but everyone tried to begay except the general, who damned gloomily, right and left.
We went over an interesting country, but as it was all in the clouds we enjoyed the scenery neither of Parnes nor of Phylæ. Our way was beguiled by the singing of some of the party. The Tartar especially gave proofs of a good voice, a very desirable quality in a Greek companion. The recollection of the scenery of any part of Greece or Asia Minor is bound up with that of the cheerful roundelays of the guides as one rides through the mountains, or the soft melodious song of the Anatolian plains. It is the characteristic thing of Eastern travel. After about three hours in the clouds we got down into Bœotia and saw below us a splendid country of mountain, plain, and sea.
Our Tartar had gone on before us to Thebes, so that when we arrived at our conachi (lodging) it was all ready for us. It was as well, for the weather had given Hughes a return of his fever, and he had to lie in bed.
Parker and I rode next morning without the others to Platæa. It has an admirable situation, and its walls are in better preservation and more interesting and venerable than any I have seen yet.
We could find nothing interesting at Thebes, so as soon as Hughes was better we all set out for Livadia. As we were passing through the hills that separate the respective plains of these two towns a pleasantcoincidence occurred. We fell in with an English traveller, a Mr. Yonge, who was a friend of Hughes, and was bearing a letter of introduction to me. After greetings and compliments he gave us the latest European news, viz. of the grand defeat of the French at Leipsic. Glorious news indeed!
Hughes being laid up again at Livadia and the General impracticable, Parker and I made excursions thence to the Cave of Trophonius, Orchomenus, and Topolias, the point from which one visits the five emissaries of the Lake Copais. These last struck me as perhaps the most astonishing work of antiquity known to me. Two are still running, but the first, third, and fifth are quite dry. At the entrances the mountain has been cut to a face of thirty or forty feet high at the mouth and not a tool-mark visible, so they look like the work of nature. I wanted to go to the other side of the ridge to see the exits, but our guide assured me that it was too dangerous, because of the pirates who lie in the mountain in the daytime and would probably catch us. Poor Stackelberg's misfortune was too recent a warning to be neglected, so I gave it up.
All this country, broadly speaking, is quite uncultivated, and inhabited by immense herds attended by whole families living in huts and wandering, according to the pasture and season, in parties of perhaps twenty with horses and mules. They are not Turcomans,such as I saw in Asia, but are called Vlaki and speak Greek. One can imagine nothing more picturesque than they are and the mountains they live in.
Our quarters during our three nights out had been of the roughest, and when Parker and I got back to Livadia our whole evening was spent in the bath, ridding ourselves of the fleas and dirt we had been living in.
Hughes was found to be better, and the General (thank goodness!) tired out and gone off to Salona. He was an odious individual—got drunk every day of our absence—and we were well rid of him. We had brought with us from Athens letters of introduction to the principal Greek merchants, primates of Livadia, Messrs. Logotheti. On the first day of our arrival they had come very civilly to call upon us. Now that we were back from our excursion we returned the visit. The Greeks appear to possess great wealth and influence here, whereas the Turks are but few in the place, and those there are speak Greek and to some extent have Greek manners. When we came into the Logothetis' house we found some actually arguing a point—a thing not to be thought of among Turks elsewhere: the affectation of pride among Orientals, so stupefying to themselves and so exasperating to others, would forbid it. When we came in they rose to go, leaving Signor Nicola to attend to his foreign guests. Our host gave us a striking instanceof the devices used by well-to-do Greeks to conceal their wealth from the rapacious Government. He at once led us out of the room he had received us in at the head of the first landing, which was reserved for the reception of Turks and was very simple, into his own apartments, which were exceedingly splendid. There in one corner of the room was the beautiful Logothetina, wife of a Logotheti nephew, in bed. Her father went up to her when he came in and she kissed his hand. One might have thought her being in bed embarrassing, but not at all; we all sat down and stopped with them for an hour. No one either said or did much, for those who talked had little to say, and many said nothing. When Logotheti went home we accompanied him, and very grand he was, with a large stick in his hand and five or six persons escorting him—quite in the splendid style of the ancient Greeks.
It so happened that in the morning while on a visit to the bey, or waiwode, we heard the reading of a firman bringing the news of the taking of Belgrade by the Turks. During the reading the primates all stood up, and when it was concluded all exclaimed: 'Thanks to God for this success! May our Sultan live!' In the evening we went to dine with Logotheti. There were a Corfiote doctor and several other Greeks. Our talk was of their hopes of emancipation, as it always is when one is in company with Greeks, with the inevitable references to Leonidas and the Hellenes.
Our hosts and the other Greeks struck me as heavier and more Bœotian in appearance than the Greeks I was accustomed to, but also more polished. The Corfiote, of course, was talkative and ignorant: they always are. We ate an immense quantity of turkeys—roast, boiled, hashed and again roasted—fowls and all sorts of poultry dressed in all sorts of ways, and we drank a great deal of bad wine in toasts to King George, success to the Greeks, &c.
As soon as Hughes could move we went on from Livadia by Chæronea to Castri,[43]the ancient Delphi. Until within the last few years the region we were now in was impassable owing to robbers, but Ali Pasha's tyranny has at any rate the merit of an excellent zabete or police, so that it is now fairly safe. The scenery among the mountains is splendid. Our visit to Castri was not a long one. Except the Castalian spring and the stadium, one could make out nothing of the ancient topography. The whole site is covered with walls running in every sort of direction, possibly to keep the earth from slipping down the hill.
In the evening we got to Crisso.
A buyulurdi such as we carried confers the most arbitrary rights; but it was not until the protocaro had been cudgelled by our Tartar that we were ableto procure a lodging, a tolerably good one, in the house of the papa. I reflected how wretched is the position of the Greeks, and how ungenerous of us Englishmen to live at their expense and assist in the general oppression; but I was too pleased to get a lodging for the night to act upon it.
From Crisso we went to Salona, and here it became necessary to settle upon our further route. When we came to look into it, it appeared that the plague is raging in every town on our way by Nepacto and Missalonghi through Ætolia. Moreover, the roads are rough and infested by robbers, the horses bad, and in fact the best way to get to Albania seemed to be to go by sea. This was settled upon accordingly, and we started to do it. From Salona to the port is a two hours' ride. Thence we set sail in a felucca. The sea was running very high, the wind was in our teeth, and though we got to Galaxidi at last, it was not without considerable peril. I have had a good many adventures, but I do not think I was ever in greater danger than during those four hours of sailing in that weather in the dark, and I thanked God heartily when I found myself ashore. The only lodging we could get was in the guard-house, a filthy magazine so alive with bugs that after a first failure I gave up all idea of going to sleep, and sat up with Parker smoking till morning. It was out of the question going to look for other quarters. The country is so infested withrobbers, who think nothing even of penetrating into the town and carrying off a primate or so, that arriving late and knocking at doors we should have been taken for brigands and answered by pistol shots from the windows.
In the morning our buyulurdi stood us in good stead. With its help we were able to get some good fowls and a sheep, bread and rice. Then going to the shore we made a bargain to be taken to Previsa in a boat. The voyage was fairly prosperous. The second day we landed at Patras, and heard the news of the grand defeat of the French confirmed. We set out again at night and got becalmed, and with difficulty reached a small port, the Scrofé, beyond the flat at the mouth of the Achelous. Here was a scampa-via from Santa Maura, and other boats, and we entered with some trepidation lest we should be taken for pirates and fired upon.
Here we were detained several days by stormy weather. Getting away we passed the mouth of the Achelous, and tried to find either of two excellent ports, Petala and Dragonise; but as they were not marked in our bad charts we failed, and were finally obliged to put into a creek not far from Santa Maura, and lay there the greater part of the night, till the wind blew us off again to sea. At daylight we anchored in the shallow port of Santa Maura.
The weather again detained us some days, till wewith some difficulty got across to Previsa. Here the harbour is a fine one, but too shallow to admit large vessels, and with an awkward bar. The shore is all desolation and misery, with one exception, the palace of the vizier, which is splendid. The foundations on the side towards the sea are all of stones from Actium and the neighbouring San Pietro, the ancient Nicopolis.
In Venetian days Previsa had no fortifications. Now the pasha has made it quite a strong place, with several forts and a deep ditch across the isthmus, though the cannon, to be sure—which are old English ones of all sorts and sizes—are in the worst possible order, their carriages ill-designed, and now rotten as well. The population has fallen from 16,000, to 5,000 at the outside, mostly Turks.
We went of course to Nicopolis. The ruins are most interesting. There are the theatre, the baths, the odeum, and the walls of the city, all in fair preservation and most instructive: the latter especially, as an example of ancient fortification. An aqueduct, which is immensely high, brought water from nine hours off.
We went from Previsa, in a scampa-via belonging to the vizier, to Salona, the port for Arta. It consists of only two houses, the Customs house and the serai of the vizier. In the latter we got lodgings for the night, and bespoke some returning caravan horses to carry us to Arta. The road, 25 feet wide, is one which has been lately made for the vizier by awretched Cephaloniote engineer across otherwise impassable flats. It is not finished yet; 800 to 1,000 men are still at work upon it. There is no doubt that this road and the canal from Arta to Previsa, as well as the destruction of the Suliotes, who made this part of the world impassable to travellers without a large escort, are public benefits to be put to Ali Pasha's credit.
Arta is a flourishing place under the special eye of the vizier. The bazaar is considerable, and there is every sign of industry.
We left it about midday. The ice was thick on the pools and the road hard with frost. Passing the bridge, we got again on to the vizier's new road. The Cephaloniote superintendent, who was very desirous that we should express to the vizier great admiration for the work, was assiduous in doing the honours of it. After various stoppages, at last, at seven o'clock, nearly frozen, we reached the khan of Five Wells.
A rousing fire we made to warm ourselves by was no use, for it smoked so intolerably that it drove us out again to walk about in the cold till the room was clear. Our only distraction was a Tartar we fell in with who had lately been to Constantinople by land, and his account of the journey is enough to make one shudder.
He passed through no less than nineteen vilayets,or towns, in which the plague was raging. At Adrianople the smell of the dead was so great that his companion fell ill. At the next place he asked at the post if there was any pest. 'A great deal, God be praised,' was the reply. At another town, in answer to inquiries he was told 'half the town is dead or fled, but God is great.'
What a miserable country!
Next day, riding along a paved way, we got to Janina or Joannina, the capital of Ali Pasha.
The firstcoup d'Å“ilof the great town and the lake is certainly impressive, but not so much so as I had expected. Once inside the town the thing that struck me most was the splendid dress of all ranks and the shabby appearance we Franks presented.
We made for the house of our minister, George Foresti, with whom we dined, and there met Colonel Church, just arrived from Durazzo."
FOOTNOTES:[42]Grandfather of the present Lord Leigh.[43]By a convention with the Greek Government made in 1891, the French Government obtained power to buy out the inhabitants of Castri and remove the village in order to excavate the site. The ancient topography is now well ascertained.
[42]Grandfather of the present Lord Leigh.
[42]Grandfather of the present Lord Leigh.
[43]By a convention with the Greek Government made in 1891, the French Government obtained power to buy out the inhabitants of Castri and remove the village in order to excavate the site. The ancient topography is now well ascertained.
[43]By a convention with the Greek Government made in 1891, the French Government obtained power to buy out the inhabitants of Castri and remove the village in order to excavate the site. The ancient topography is now well ascertained.
ALI PASHA—PSALLIDA—EUPHROSYNE—MUKHTAR—STARTS FOR A TRIP TO SULI—CASSIOPEIA—UNABLE TO FORD RIVER—TURNS BACK TO JANINA—LEAVES TO RETURN TO ATHENS—CROSSES THE PINDUS THROUGH THE SNOW—MALAKASH—A ROBBER—METEORA—TURKISH RULE—THE MONASTERY—BY TRIKHALA, PHERSALA, ZITUNI, THERMOPYLÆ AND LIVADIA TO ATHENS.
"Next day, as the vizier wished to see us, and we of course to see him, Foresti took us to the palace he was living in for the moment. He has no less than eight in the town. This one is handsome, but the plan is as usual ill-contrived, and there was much less magnificence than I had expected.
We were first led into the upper apartments to await his leisure, and found there a number of fine youths, not very splendidly dressed. After half an hour of waiting we were led into a low room, in the corner of which sat this extraordinary man. He welcomed us politely and said he hoped we had had a good journey and would like Janina, and desired that if there was anything we lacked we would mention it, for that he regarded us as his children, and his house and family were at our disposal. He next asked if any of us spoke Greek; and hearing that I did,asked me when I had learnt it, and how long I had remained in Athens. Then, observing that Hughes was near the fire, he ordered in a screen in the shape of a large vessel of water, saying that young men did not require fire, only old men; and in saying this he laughed with so muchbonhomie, his manner was so mild and paternal and so charming in its air of kindness and perfect openness, that I, remembering the blood-curdling stories told of him, could hardly believe my eyes. Finally, he said he hoped to improve our acquaintance, and begged us to stay on. We, however, bowed ourselves out.
The number and richness of the shops is surprising, and the bustle of business is such as I have not seen since leaving Constantinople. We understood that when the vizier first settled at Janina in '87—that is, twenty-seven years ago—there were but five or six shops in the place: now there are more than 2,000. The city has immensely increased, and we passed through several quarters of the town which are entirely new.
The fortresses on the promontory into the lake are of the vizier's building. He has always an establishment of 3,000 soldiers, 100 Tartars (the Sultan himself has but 200), a park of artillery presented him by the English, and German and other French artillerymen. We seem to have supplied him also with arms and ammunition in his wars with Suli andother parts of Epirus. Perhaps it is not much to our honour to have assisted a tyrant in dispossessing or exterminating the lawful owners of the soil, who only fought for their own liberty; but one must remember that, picturesque as they were and desperately as they fought, they were nothing but robbers and freebooters and the scourge of the country.
We passed the 6th of January with Psallida, who is master of a school in Janina. He is, for this country, a learned man. Besides Greek, he speaks Latin and very bad Italian, but as far as manners go he is a mere barbarian. From him I had an account of the Gardiki massacre.[44]I occupied a wet three days in drawing an interior view of a kiosk of the vizier's at the Beshkey Gardens at the north end of the town. Then I got a costume and drew the figures in. Psallida dined with us one day and entertained us with an account of the fair and frail Euphrosyne, who was a celebrity here. Her fate was made the subject of a ballad preserved in Leslie. The story is certainly an awful tragedy. She was of good family and married to a respectable man. Without possessing more education than is usual with Greek ladies she had, besides her great beauty, a natural wit which, with a good deal of love of admiration, soonattracted round her a host of admirers, and she became a reigning beauty. Mukhtar, the son of Ali, who is a dissolute fellow, was attracted by her, and, cutting out his competitors, became her acknowledged lover. His wife, whom he entirely neglected for his new passion, was a daughter of the Vizier of Berat, whose friendship Ali was at that time particularly anxious to cultivate; and when she complained to her father-in-law of his son's conduct, he (Ali) determined to put a stop to it. At the head of his guard he burst at midnight into the room of Euphrosyne, and after calling her the seducer of his son and other names, he forced her to give up whatever presents he had made her, and had her led off to prison with her maid. Next day, in order to make a terrifying example to check the immorality of the town in general and his son in especial, he had nine other women of known bad character arrested, and they and Euphrosyne were led to the brink of the precipice over the lake on which the fortress stands. Her faithful maid refused to desert her, and she and Euphrosyne, linked in each other's arms, leapt together down the fatal rock, as did all the others.
Mukhtar has never forgotten his attachment or forgiven his father, or even seen his wife again, and from having been a gay and frank youth he has become gloomy and ferocious without being less dissolute than before. The court he keeps is a sad blackguardaffair, a great contrast to the austere sobriety of his father's.
We called in the evening (January 14) to take leave of Ali Pasha. He was on that day in the Palace of the Fortress at the extremity of the rock over the lake. We passed through the long gallery described by Byron, and into a low anteroom, from which we entered a very handsome apartment, very warm with a large fire in it, and with crimson sofas trimmed with gold lace. There was Ali, to-day a truly Oriental figure. He had a velvet cap, a prodigious fine cloak; he was smoking a long Persian pipe, and held a book in his hand. Foresti says he did this on purpose to show us he could read. Hanging beside him was a small gun magnificently set with diamonds, and a powder-horn; on his right hand also was a feather fan. To his left was a window looking into the courtyard, in which they were playing at the djerid, and in which nine horses stood tethered in their saddles and bridles, as though ready for instant use. I am told this is a piece of form or etiquette.
At first his reception seemed less cordial than before, whether by design or no, and he took very little notice of us. He showed us some leaden pieces of money, and a Spanish coin just found by some country people, and asked us what they were. Then he said he wished he had a coat of beaver such as he had seen on the Danube. He asked Parkerwhether he had a mother and brothers, and when he heard he was the only son he said it was a sin that he should leave his mother. Why did not he stay at home?
On January 15 we went to call on Mukhtar Pasha. We found him rough, open, and goodhumoured, without any of the inimitable grace of his father, which makes everything Ali says agreeable, however trivial the subject may be. Mukhtar's talk was flat. He was very fond of sport—were we? It was very hot in summer at Trikhala. He had killed so and so many birds; there were loose women at Dramishush; it was a small place, but he would send a man to see that we were properly accommodated; and so on—very civil and rather dull. He smoked a Persian pipe brought him by a beautiful boy very richly dressed, with his hair carefully combed, and another brought him coffee; while coffee and pipes were brought to us by particularly ugly ones. On the sofa beside him were laid out a number of snuff-boxes, mechanical singing birds, and things of that sort. The serai itself was handsome in point of expense, but in the miserable taste now in vogue in Constantinople. The decoration represented painted battle-pieces, sieges, fights between Turks and Cossacks, wild men, and abominations of that sort; while in the centre of the pediment is a pasha surrounded by his guard, and in front of them a couple of Greeks justhanged, as a suitable ornament for the palace of a despot.
On the 16th we set out early for an excursion to Cassiopeia and Suli, across the fine open field behind Janina, past the village of Kapshisda, over a low chain of hills south-west of Janina. Then, after a climb of over an hour, we entered a pass, and presently saw Dramishush in front, on the side of a high mountain.
Cassiopeia is on a gentle height in the middle of a valley. The situation is beautiful, and the theatre the largest and best preserved I have seen in Greece.
Next morning we dismissed Mukhtar Pasha's man who had escorted us so far, and went on south-westwards along the edge of the valley of Cassiopeia. As it grew narrower we climbed a ridge which overhung an awful depth, went over a high mountain, and reached Bareatis, a small village in a pass with a serai of Ali Pasha's, in which he lived for a length of time during the war of Suli. Three and a half hours further on we came to Terbisena, the first village of Suli. It had been pouring all day, and we were not only wet and cold when we arrived but the hovel we got as a lodging let in the water everywhere, and here, huddled in the driest corner we could find, we had to sleep and spend the next day.
On the 19th the weather was fine again, and we went on hoping to find the river fordable, but when wegot to the bank we found it rapid and deep. One of our Turks, after a good deal of boasting, plunged in, and in an instant sank, and the torrent was carrying him and his horse floundering away. Another of his brother Turks, seeing him carried down, called loudly on Allah, and stroked his beard in great tribulation, but without stirring a stump. In another minute the man would have been drowned, but our servant Antonetti, who was but a Christian, very pluckily ran in and clawed him out. The poor boaster was already senseless when we got him to land. We took him back to Dervishina, and gradually brought him round, when instead of thanking his stars for his narrow escape, or Antonetti for the plucky part he had played, he did nothing but lament the loss of his gun, 'Tofeki,' which he had himself won, he said, and of his shawl which had cost him 50 piastres. We promised to make the latter good, and left him to rest.
The whole incident was in all senses a damper to our ardour. When we considered that to pass this river we must wait one day at least, and probably four days to get across the one near Suli, the expenditure of time seemed to us all, at least so I thought, greater than we cared to devote to the expedition. So the long and short of it was that we turned back and slept at Bareatis. Next day we got back to Janina. I made up my mind now that I was wasting time over this trip, and wished to get back to Athens. Butbefore leaving I thought it my duty to call once more on Ali Pasha. A most agreeable old man he is. I was more than ever struck with the easy familiarity and perfect good humour of his manners. We found him in a low apartment with a fire in the middle, generally used for his Albanians and known as laapoda. Then we went to see Pouqueville,[45]the French resident. We found him with his brother, both of them the worst type of Frenchmen—vulgar, bragging, genuine children of the Revolution. Nothing worth remembering was said, but I did gather this from his tone—that the Empire in France is not likely to last.
On the 26th my friends, for a wonder, got up early, and we all set out in a boat for a small village where we were to find my horses. There we bid farewell and I mounted. It came on to rain, and I arrived, wet through, at the Three Khans to sleep.
Next day the rain became snow, but I set out nevertheless for Mezzovo. We had to ford the river several times, and for the last hour to Mezzovo were up to our middles in snow. The scenery was magnificent, and the country is well cultivated. Mezzovo is a Vlaki or Wallachian village; the people speak a sort of mixed Greek. They are exceedingly industrious and well-to-do.
Artistically I do not know that I have gainedmuch, but I do not regret the time I have spent in Albania. The climate is more bracing than that of the rest of Greece, and has set me up after my illness. The scenery, though it cannot be at its best in winter, is most beautiful, and the inhabitants are a fine race—not handsome, but hardy and energetic. An Albanian has very few wants. A little bread of calambochi or Indian corn, an onion, and cheese is abundant fare to him. If he changes his linen five times in the year, that is the outside. A knife and a pistol in his girdle and his gun by his side, he sleeps quite well in the open air with his head on a stone and the lappel of his jacket over his face. In summer and winter he wears a fez. His boots are only goatskin sandals, which he makes himself. His activity in them over rocks is surprising.
As for Ali Pasha's government, one has to remember what a chaotic state the country was in before he made himself master of it. The accounts one gets from the elders make it clear what misery there was. No stranger could travel in it, nor could the inhabitants themselves get about. Every valley was at war with its neighbour, and all were professional brigands. All this Ali has reduced to order. There is law—for everyone admits his impartiality as compared with that of rulers in other parts of Turkey—and there is commerce. He has made roads, fortified the borders, put down brigandage, andraised Albania into a power of some importance in Europe.
That in arriving at this end he has often used means which civilised nations disapprove is no doubt true, but there has been in the first place gross exaggeration as to the crimes attributed to him: for instance, that he sees fifteen or twenty heads cut off every day before breakfast, whereas in point of fact there has not been such a thing as a public execution in the past year; and then, in the second, one must make allowance for the ferocious manners amongst which he was brought up.
On the 29th of January, as the weather seemed favourable, we set out eagerly to cross Pindus. The snow was deep in places, but for the first hour and a half we had no great difficulty. It was the last half-hour before getting to the top that was worst. The road is desperately steep up a precipice, and the snow was above the horses' girths. Our chamalides, however, waded through it, often up to their middles, and, carrying the loads on their own shoulders, lifted the horses by their tails and heads alternately, I hardly know how. Although I constantly slipped down on the steep incline, I was so eager to see the view that I was the first at the top. Towards the interior it was glorious: the feet of Pindus rooting themselves far into the country, which, although mountainous, was free from snow; conspicuous was Elymbo (Olympus), the top cappedwith snow, but the form of it is not beautiful. To the north were other snow-capped mountains. Behind us westward the air was so thick one could see nothing. The west side of the hills is covered with fir, while the east seems to have nothing but oak and birch—quantities of it, but all small trees. As we went down we noticed on the trunks of them the marks of the snow of the year before last, which must have been ten or twelve feet deep. Three and a half hours from our start we got to a khan, where we made a good fire and congratulated ourselves on having got over the hills so well and escaped the fatana—the wind the mountaineers dread.
Our next stage was to Malakash, a Vlaki town. It was astonishing the way our chamalides bore the fatigue of forcing our way through the snow, which was still five or six feet deep in places. They cut a way for the horses, which were constantly falling down and half smothering themselves in the drifts.
From there we followed the course of the river for six hours, and crossed it fifty times at least. On the way we passed a dervish, an Albanian. He was seated on a sort of balcony, very high up, and had a gun in his hand, which he pointed at me and called on me to stop and pay. The sight of the Tartar, however, brought him to reason. Without one a traveller is exposed to great insult from such ruffians.As it was, a poor wretch who tried to pass himself off as one of our party was forced to stop and pay his quota.
In the afternoon we arrived at Meteora, the strange rocks of which we had seen from some distance up the river. We were given quarters in the house of a Cypriote Greek, from whom I learnt a good deal of the terrible exactions of Veli Pasha, in whose dominions we now were. Our host and his two sons, poor wretches with hardly a fez to their heads and mere sandals bound with a thong to their feet, came to welcome us. After the first compliments they fell into the tale of their woes. Their taxes were so heavy that unless the new year were abundantly fruitful the village must be bankrupt and become 'chiflik' or forfeit. When a village is unable to pay its taxes, the vizier, as universal mortgagee, forecloses and the land becomes his private property and the villagers his slaves. This is becoming 'chiflik.'
While we were sitting and talking of these troubles a great noise was heard below. Two Albanians, being refused conachi, had broken in the door of a house and entered by force, and the soubashi was gone out to quell the riot. He very properly refused them any kind of reception and drove them out to the khan.
My hosts had roasted me a fowl, but my heartwas so full I could scarcely eat. How long will it please God to afflict these wretched people with such monstrous tyranny? Besides the exactions of the Government, scoundrels such as these Albanians infest the villages, force their way in houses and eat and drink immoderately and pay nothing. To ease my mind, when the daughter of my host brought me some raisins to eat with my wine I gave her a dollar. She seemed hardly to believe her eyes at first, then took it and kissed my hand.
Next morning, January 31st, I ascended to the principal monastery of Meteora. After a tiring walk of half an hour, winding among the crags of this strange place, we came to the foot of the rock on which it is perched, and found that the ladder commonly used, which is made in joints five or six feet long, had been drawn up. We called to the papades who were aloft to let down the rope and net. After some hallooing, down it came, a circular net with the meshes round the circumference gathered on a hook. Michael and myself, with my drawing materials, got in and were drawn up by a windlass. To swing in mid-air trusting to a rope not so thick as my wrist and 124 feet long (I measured it) is anything but pleasant. I shall not forget my sensations as I looked out through the meshes of the net as we were spinning round in the ascent. There was a horrible void below—sheer precipices on each side, and then the slipping ofthe rope as it crossed on the windlass. Once up, we were pulled in at the entrance, the hook drawn out, and we were set at liberty. The company that received us were some wretched papades, as ignorant as possible. They could tell me next to nothing about their monastery, except that on the occasion of an invasion of the Turks, a bey of Trikhala, one Joseph Ducas, had retired hither and established it and seventeen others. The buildings of ten of them still exist, but only two or three are still inhabited. The church here is a very good one, and there is a chapel of Constantine. The view is magnificent. I gave a dollar to the young priest who took me round, desiring him to use it for any purpose of the church; but I found, from what my peasant guide told me when we had got down, that the scamp had pocketed it for his own use, for that the chief papa had asked him as we were about to leave, if the stranger would not leave some parahs for the church. It was a lovely day, and beneath me, from the village, passed a procession of a bridegroom going to a neighbouring village to fetch his bride. His mother was on one side of his horse, another relative on the other; before him a male relation carried a flag, and behind came all his friends and family in their best dresses with guns on their shoulders, making a gallant show. It was a pretty sight.
We left Kalabaki by Meteora, and reached Trikhalaabout sunset. The solitude of the town and the vastness of the cemeteries gave one the creeps; and hearing that the plague was in the town at that moment, I mounted again, and rode four hours further to a khan and slept there.
Next day we rode to Phersala (twelve hours); but the plague being there also, we proceeded a further four hours to a khan under Thaumaco (sixteen hours' riding). From Meteora to Phersala is one uninterrupted plain which I thought would never end. I saw many villages, but much misery—especially in Trikhala and Phersala.
Next day we got to Zituni (six hours) about noon. I did not venture to stay on account of the plague, and passed on to Molo, at which we arrived in the evening, passing through the Straits of Thermopylæ.
Molo is a village of only 200 houses, and yet forty persons had died of the plague in it in the last three days. The terrified inhabitants had fled to the mountains, and we found only two hangees (men attached to the han) to receive us. We meant to have slept here, but the cats and dogs howled so terribly (always a symptom of the plague) that I could not sleep in comfort; so as the moon shone bright, we mounted and rode six hours further to a village opposite Parnassus, passing in safety the fountain famous for robbers who are almost always stationedthere. The scenery here is very fine and romantic. In six hours more, after crossing two little plains besides that of Chæronæa, we arrived at Livadia (February 3rd). What between the cold, the horror of the plague, and the fatigue, it had been an appalling journey."