CHAPTER II.
Zante—Earthquakes—Patras—The Marquis of Sligo joins Lady Hester’s party—Corinth—Visit of the Bey’s harým to Lady Hester—Indiscreet curiosity—Women of the East—Isthmus of Corinth—Kencri—The Piræus.
Zante—Earthquakes—Patras—The Marquis of Sligo joins Lady Hester’s party—Corinth—Visit of the Bey’s harým to Lady Hester—Indiscreet curiosity—Women of the East—Isthmus of Corinth—Kencri—The Piræus.
A British ship of war is at all times a noble and interesting spectacle, but, in the Mediterranean, she becomes a beautiful one also. For a week together the sea was scarcely rougher than the bosom of a lake; and the white dresses and straw hats of the sailors, the cleanness of the decks, and the awning over our heads, combined with the serenity of the weather, gave to our voyage the appearance of a party of pleasure.
The view was truly enchanting, when, doubling the north-east point of the island of Zante, we of a sudden discovered the bay and surrounding country. At the foot of mountains which are seen on the right hand, stand the white houses of the chief town, extending for a mile and a half. Immediately behind, and elevated above them, olive-trees, cypresses, and vineyards,meet the eye as it ascends: and the picture is crowned by the castle which commands the town beneath it. From the bottom of the bay a fertile plain extends four or five miles inland, bounded in the distance by blue hills. On the left, a high mountain, the ancient Etatus, corresponding with that on the opposite shore, rises conically from its promontory, and, like the other, exhibits at different heights white villas, olive woods, vineyards, and arid patches of soil, left apparently neglected, or else inaccessible to the plough of the husbandman.
Captain Brisbane went on shore the same evening; and the next morning Mr. Foresti, the English consul, and an aide-de-camp from Major-General Oswald, who was Commander-in-Chief of the Ionian Islands, came on board: soon after which we landed, and residences were assigned to us in the town. The civility and attention of Lady Hester’s host may be judged of from the fact that, every morning, as soon as she was visible, he waited on her, in full dress, to inquire if the arrangements of the house, from day to day, were such as she approved.
When seen from the castle, from which almost the whole circuit of the island can be taken in at one view, its features were not less delightful than those I have before described. Hence it has obtained the name of “the Golden Island,” “the Flower of the Levant,” &c. It is composed of two chains of mountains to the north and south, with a spacious vale betweenthem. Looking down upon this vale, instead of meadows of herbage and fields of corn, is beheld a luxuriant garden of all the productions of warm climates. It is here that the currants grow which are in such request in England. It was the vintage time at our arrival, and I saw the process of drying them. The vines which produce them grow no higher than gooseberry-bushes, and are not sticked. The currants, when gathered, are spread in the open fields, on spots smoothed for the purpose, near the vines, where they lie in square layers about an inch thick, until they become shrivelled and blackened by the sun, and assume the appearance which they have when they reach us, a change which is effected in a few days. They are shovelled up into sacks, and deposited in roomy places called seraglios, where they are kept for about three years, and are then fit for exportation and use. Undried, these grapes are about as large again as an English currant, and in taste exceedingly luscious. They are exclusively the production of this island, with the exception of those grown in the Morea. Currants, with dried olives and olive oil, are the staple commodities of Zante.
The fertility of this happy spot seemed inexhaustible, if a judgment might be formed from the cheapness of its productions. Half a dozen lemons cost only a halfpenny, and grapes, peaches, and other fruits were to be had almost for plucking. Turkeys were sold at one shilling each: geese, poultry, &c., in proportion.The wines of the island, like those of Cephalonia, seemed to us to have little flavour: and it is said that, to make them keep, the skins, jars, or casks in which they are put, are smeared over with rosin. This is the case also up the Archipelago; and custom alone can reconcile a stranger to the taste, which at length becomes just tolerable.
Of the native Zanteots such as I saw may be described in a few words. The women paint their faces excessively, particularly with white round the mouth: they take great pride in long hair, and make the greatest possible display of it. Among the higher classes, the unmarried females are kept much shut up in rooms with blinds to the windows, and are often betrothed without being seen by their future husbands. Among the lower and middle orders there must be a greater freedom of conduct, since many young creatures of considerable beauty were pointed out to me as having attached themselves to English officers without the sanction of the Church; whilst assassination, which formerly followed almost inevitably an illicit connection, if discovered, from the hand of some of the relatives of the female, was now rarely heard of.
Zante was, at this time, garrisoned by the 35th regiment of infantry: it is a defensible place, owing to the strong castle above the town. There was an Albanian regiment quartered in it, under the command of Major (afterwards General) Church. Zanteis proverbial for the frequency of earthquakes. The Zanteots declare that they experience them every week; we were there a fortnight and felt none. But the fissures in the walls of almost every house bore sufficient testimony to the severity of one which shook the island at the end of July; in consequence of which some of the inhabitants were so much alarmed that they slept for some time in tents, and many of the English officers were among the number. It happened just after midnight. Those who spoke of it to me described it as beginning somewhat like the trembling that agitates a house in London when a carriage passes it rapidly. The shocks lasted for half a minute, and were repeated several times. Wine glasses danced off the table on which they were standing, and the houses and walls seemed almost to reel: yet, when all was over, nothing was to be seen but here and there a ceiling peeled off, and irregular cracks through the stone walls. Many ludicrous situations arose from the terror in which persons left their beds; as few had time or inclination to stop to put on their clothes before they ran out into the streets.
Captain Brisbane made no stay at Zante, but sailed to rejoin his squadron. General Oswald displayed much courtesy in his attentions to Lady Hester during the fortnight she was on the island; and, when she thought proper to depart, he furnished her with a government transport, in which we left Zante for Patras on the 23rd of August. A felucca was hired to accompany us, into which it was proposedto disembark at Patras, in case (which was probable) the Turkish governor of the castle at the entrance of the Gulf of Lepanto should refuse admission to an English vessel. We landed at Patras on the following evening. Mr. Strani, the English consul, gave us a most hospitable reception in his own house.
A valley, about a mile in width, runs from the shore of the Gulf of Lepanto to a chain of mountains. The valley is covered with vineyards and olive-trees: and, at the verge of it, near the foot of the hills, stands Patras, the ancient Patra. The houses, built of mud, are despicable without and comfortless within. Here and there I observed a mosque. Melancholy indeed was the change from the fine streets of La Valetta to the mud habitations of Patras! Still I felt that I was in Greece, and the language and appearance of the inhabitants had something magical in it. My bosom beat with emotion as I now trod, for the first time, the soil of a people, in studying whose language and habits the chief part of fifteen years of my early life had been—I still think wisely—expended.
Mr. B. and myself, having some leisure here, resolved to try the hot bath. We were exceedingly overpowered by the heat, and experienced the feelings common I believe to all those who enter ahamámfor the first time, namely, a sense of suffocation so great as to alarm ourselves and the bather. But those who overcome this first impression never fail to like the process better on each succeeding experiment.
We found at Patras an English woman married to a Greek sailor, and through her means her husband recommended himself to Lady Hester’s notice as a servant, and he was hired to accompany us to Athens.
Our two German servants had a quarrel when at this place, and sallied forth to fight with sabres. François had served in the Austrian, French, and English armies. As they were exceedingly vociferous, many persons assembled as spectators, and prevented their coming to blows.
The Marquis of Sligo had been cruizing some months in the Mediterranean Sea, in his yacht, a commodious vessel of considerable burden. He was at this time on a visit to Veli, pasha of the Morea, who resided at Tripolizza;[8]but no sooner did he hear of Lady Hester’s arrival at Zante, than he remanded his vessel to Malta, and hastened towards Patras to meet her. Mr. B. had written to him from Patras, and the letter found him at Corinth; where he took a boat, and arrived on the evening of the 27th, just as we were on the point of embarking in a felucca for Corinth, and he immediately joined Lady Hester’sparty. We set sail by night; and, passing the spot where once stood a temple of Neptune, we entered the Gulf of Lepanto or of Corinth. We proceeded up the gulf, landing to take our meals; for here the delightful bowers, formed by nature of myrtle, oleander, laurel, arbutus, and other shrubs, invite one to live in the open air. By night we slept on deck; the cabin, with a tilted awning toward the stem, being reserved for her ladyship, who suffered much from the heat.
We arrived at Corinth on the 7th of September. It blew so fresh on our reaching the landing-place, that we had much difficulty in getting on shore. Corinth is at some little distance from the strand. Here we made a stay of three days. The weather was so hot that Lord Sligo and myself suspended our beds in an arbour formed by vines, and there slept. Corinth is a miserable town, and has not much to interest the traveller in actual remains of edifices, although its desolate and altered state appeals very forcibly to his recollections. A fragment only of one Doric temple remains, affording no specimen of that order of architecture which derives its name from the city. One might question the existence even of a city of such celebrity, if there were not here and there some traces and fragments of buildings, which just satisfy doubt but not curiosity. Corinth is surrounded by marshes, which render it most unwholesome; and the plague was said to depopulate it frequently.I paid a visit to the son of the bey, or governor: he received me very civilly, gave me a pipe and coffee, and permitted me to view his apartments: he begged some Peruvian bark of me, which he seemed to hold in great estimation.
The bey himself, an elderly man, sent his harým, consisting of his wife and about a dozen young females, her slaves, to visit Lady Hester. Lord Sligo, Mr. B., and myself, were sitting with her ladyship at the time; but it was intimated to us by the interpreter, that women could not enter whilst men were present. On an occasion so tempting, none but the over-fastidious will blame us for resolving to hide ourselves in an adjoining room, and obtain, through the crevices of the wainscot, a sight of these beauties of Corinth: for we naturally supposed that a man whose will was law throughout the province would have selected only beautiful females as the companions of his leisure hours.
As soon as we had retired, the ladies were introduced, and by the engaging manner with which Lady Hester welcomed them, they became in a few moments quite familiar with her. They unveiled their faces, threw off their ferigees,[9]and placed themselves on the sofa, in attitudes apparently negligent, although of studied grace, as best fitting to display their figures, their jewels, and the long tresses that contrasted with the dazzling clearness (for I will not say whiteness) oftheir complexions. The conversation was carried on by signs and gestures; and, naturally inquisitive as females in all countries are on matters of dress, they began to examine Lady Hester’s, and to compare it with their own. Unconscious that the eyes of men were watching them, their naked feet, and sometimes their bosoms, Βαθυκολπαι, from the nature of a Turkish dress, were exposed. At length we relieved Lady Hester from the unpleasant situation in which she found herself unintentionally placed, both on our part and hers, by a half smothered laugh, which acted like an electric shock on the Moslem ladies; for, resuming their veils and ferigees in dismay, they suppressed their gaiety at once, and made earnest signs to know what the noise was. Our position was critical: for so surely as we had been discovered would the bey have endeavoured to do us some mischief. Her ladyship saw by their seriousness how much they were offended; she persisted in affirming it was nothing, and succeeded in pacifying them; but they very soon afterwards went away, and no doubt agreed that it would be best to hush up their suspicions, lest the bey’s jealousy might be excited to their own detriment.
I will here anticipate the course of my narrative, and put down a few observations about Turkish women, which are the result of seven years’ residence among them; observations, too, made under advantageous circumstances, from the frequent occasion I had to pay visits to harýms, in my capacity of physician.
A female in the Levant generally arrives at puberty about the age of twelve years, and is seldom married later than fifteen; often at twelve or thirteen, or even earlier. It is a mistake to suppose that Mahometans consider what the French callembonpointas an essential quality of beauty: their taste I believe to be the same with that of men of other nations, who have given the matter a thought; and rounded limbs and a plumpness which conceals the bones, are with them, and I conceive elsewhere, the requisites for a perfect form.
From the fortieth day after birth, when the mother makes her appearance abroad, children in the East are carried to the bath, and continue, weekly, to frequent it for the rest of their lives. This custom, it is supposed, enervates their frames, renders the muscles flaccid, and prematurely brings on old age: but I differ entirely from those who assert this; convinced as I am that a woman of thirty-five in the East is in as good preservation as a woman of the same period of life in England or France. To say nothing of the antient Greeks and Romans, from whom we have the finest models of female beauty, and who made as frequent use of the bath as Turks now-a-days do, I would assert that travellers have been deceived by appearances; and, forgetting for the moment that no artificial means are used in the East to conceal the wearing effects of child-bearing, and the natural decay of the female frame, they have imagined that they saw no where the same graceful form which distinguishestheir own fair countrywomen, without considering how far that form may be owing to artificial means and expedients. On this point I will only make one other observation, namely, that I have seen a native lady of Damascus, the mother of seven children, whom I had considered in her own country as already shapeless, display, on her arrival in London, by the aid of a mantuamaker, a shape which was the envy of one sex and the admiration of the other.
It is for softness of skin and inodorous sweetness that the women of the East are without rivals. Depilation is used to its utmost extent; and the strigil and frequent ablutions give their bodies as much purity as is consistent with human nature. Does it not imply a commendable cleanliness of person, when an eastern coquette would think no more of winding off a skein of silk on her toes than on her hands, and has no idea that it is possible for the latter to be less agreeable to the touch or any other sense than the former?
The Turkish women stain their hair (if not naturally black or dark brown) with henna powder, made by pulverising the dried leaf of a shrub[10]which imparts a golden brown or auburn colour. But the unprejudiced eye will see nothing more unnatural in this than in the white powder formerly so much used in England and France for the same purpose. One cannot say so much for the straitness which they give to their hair, studiously shunning ringlets and curls; and there seem tobe no examples of it in antiquity. Of the custom which they have of giving a black rim to the eyelids I speak confidently in commendation; for no eyes are so brilliant as those which Nature has so set; examples of which, though rare, are not wanting among us.
The Turks, in their notions of grace, exclude all angular lines. Hence their women seldom walk or sit stiffly upright. The sofa is their throne, and the drooping-headed flower,[11]not the straight reed, is their model.
I now return to the course of my narrative. On the Isthmus of Corinth, towards the Ægean Sea, there is a small port, called Kenkri; there, a two-masted vessel, rigged like a bombard, was hired to convey us to Athens; and, on the evening of the fourth day, we embarked. Kenkri is eight miles from Corinth; and, as we crossed the Isthmus on post-horses, I shall describe the nature of our cavalcade. Persons of consideration, when travelling in Turkey, procure from the Pasha of the province, or the nearest governor, an order, by which post-horses are to be furnished to them—I believe gratis, if the order were complied with to the letter. Such an order as this the Marquis of Sligo had obtained at Tripolizza. The horses are used indifferently for riding or for luggage, and each person is provided with his own saddle. Lord Sligo had with him a Tartar, two Albanians (presented to him by Veli Pasha) superblydressed in the costume of their country, with silver-stocked pistols and silver-hilted yatagans; a dragoman, or interpreter; a Turkish cook; an artist, to paint views and costumes; besides three English servants in livery, and one out of livery. These, with himself, made up eleven persons. Lady Hester and Mr. B., with their retinue, made up eleven more; forming a cavalcade with myself and servant, of twenty-five persons, all the males of which were armed with a sabre and pistols.
In this manner we crossed the Isthmus, and, embarking, lay all night in the harbour. Kenkri (the ancient Cenchræa) has little left of its pristine splendour. There were a few broken columns lying about, and part of the pier of the harbour still remained. At daybreak on the 12th of September, we weighed anchor. The wind was fair, the day delightful, and by twelve o’clock we were at the entrance of the Piræus.
The master of the vessel was a man of fine stature, of noble mien, and of a prepossessing countenance. From beneath his red skull-cap, his curling hair behind formed a bush, somewhat like a bishop’s wig; for the Greeks of certain districts shave the forehead and crown, and leave the hair behind of its natural length. He had with him a son, about twelve years old, whom Lady Hester would have taken to attend upon her, could the captain have been induced to part with him.
The fame of Lord Byron’s exploit in swimming across the Hellespont, from Sestos to Abydos, in imitation of Leander, had already reached us, and, just as we were passing the molehead, we saw a man jump from it into the sea, whom Lord Sligo recognized to be Lord Byron himself, and, haling him, bade him hasten to dress and to come and join us.
Just before arriving at the Piræus is Caluri, formerly the island of Salamis, close to which the fleet of Xerxes was beaten by the Greeks. It seemed that in the strait between Salamis and another island called Psyttalia, where the battle raged the fiercest, there would be scarcely room for a seventy-four gun ship to wear; hence we may infer the small size of the ships of those days, and the Piræus, which contained the whole Athenian fleet, is hardly more spacious than the two harbours of Ramsgate. Its entrance is exceedingly narrow, but having, I was told, a depth of six or seven fathoms.
We sailed in, and anchored before a mean building at the bottom of the port, which served as a custom-house. There happened to be on the strand about a dozen horses, which had brought down part of the freight of a polacca lying at the quay to load. These were forcibly seized by our Tartar, and, laden with our baggage, sent off to the town, which is six miles inland. Lord Sligo himself set off on one of the horses of Lord Byron, who had now joined us, to send down conveyances for Lady Hester and the rest of us.
While we were waiting on the shore, we had leisure to survey what was around us. The country immediately adjoining the port seemed bare and without verdure. Some remains of the quays, which once bordered the Piræus, lay scattered at the water’s edge, and a few ill-constructed boats, made fast by rush hawsers, showed how low the navy of Athens had declined. There were some Turkish women sitting on the bank, covered in every part excepting their eyes, who immediately walked away when we attempted to approach them. We were ignorant of the customs of the country, and Mr. B. made signs to them to stop, which excited greatly the anger of some Turks who were standing near us.
The horses arrived in about two hours. As we quitted the Piræus, the aspect of the country became more pleasing. Gentle slopes and hills, rising and sinking with a pleasing wavy line, gave a tranquillity and repose to the scenery which few can understand who have not felt it in those countries.
While musing on the goodly prospect around me, on temples and demi-gods, on the Parthenon and Socrates, the cool Ilyssus and the shades of Academus, my reflections were interrupted by the loud smack of a whip, applied by Aly the Tartar to the back of a poor Greek, accompanied by a louder oath, which at once dissipated my vision, and brought me back to the reality of things around me.