diagram of church with four columns
The church has a porch before the door,νάρθηξ, supported by marble columns, the interior wall of which on each side of the door is painted with representations of the Last Judgment, and the tortures of the condemned, with a liberal allowance of flames and devils. These pictures of the torments of the wicked are always placed outside the body of the church, as typical of the unhappy state of those who are out of its pale: they are never seen within. The interior of this curious old church, which is dedicated to All Saints, has depicted on its walls on all sides portraits of a great many holy personages, in the stiff, conventional, early style. It has four columns within which support the dome; and the altar or holy table,αγια τραπεζα, is separated from the nave by a wooden screen, called the iconostasis, on which are paintings of the Blessed Virgin, the Redeemer, and many saints. These pictures are kissed by all who enter the church. The iconostasis has three doors in it; one in the centre, before the holy table, and one on each side. The centre one is only a half-door, like an old English buttery hatch, the upper part being screened with a curtain of rich stuff, which, except on certain occasions,is drawn aside, so as to afford a view of the book of the Gospels, in a rich binding, lying upon the holy table beyond. A Greek church has no sacristy; the vestures are usually kept in presses in this space behind the iconostasis, where none but the priests and the deacon, or servant who trims the lamps, are allowed to enter, and they pass in and out by the side doors. The centre door is only used in the celebration of the holy mass. This part of the church is the sanctuary, and is called, in Romaic,αγιο,Βημο, orΘημο. It is typical of the holy of holies of the Temple, and the veil is represented by the curtain which divides it from the rest of the church. Everything is symbolical in the Eastern Church; and these symbols have been in use from the very earliest ages of Christianity. The four columns which support the dome represent the four Evangelists; and the dome itself is the symbol of heaven, to which access has been given to mankind by the glad tidings of the Gospels which they wrote. Part of the mosaic with which the whole interior of the dome was formerly covered in the cathedral of St. Sofia at Constantinople, is to be seen in the four angles below the dome, where the winged figures of the four evangelists still remain. Luckily for the Greek Church their sacred buildings are not under the authority of lay churchwardens—grocers in towns, and farmers in villages—who feel it their duty to whitewash over everything which is old and venerable,and curious, and to oppose the clergyman in order to show their independence.
The Greek church, debased as it is by ignorance and superstition, has still the merit of carefully preserving and restoring all the memorials of its earlier and purer ages. If the fresco painting of a saint is rubbed out or damaged in the lapse of time, it is scrupulously repainted, exactly as it was before, even to the colour of the robe, the aspect of the countenance, and the minutest accessories of the composition. It is this systematic respect for everything which is old and venerable which renders the interior of the ancient Eastern churches so peculiarly interesting. They are the unchanged monuments of primæval days. The Christians who suffered under the persecution of Dioclesian may have knelt before the very altar which we now see, and which was then exactly the same as we now behold it, without any additions or subtractions either in its form or use.
To us Protestants one of the most interesting circumstances connected with these Eastern churches is, that the altar is not called thealtar, but theholy table, as with us, and that the Communion is given before it in both kinds. Besides the principal church there is a smaller one, not far from it, which is painted in the same manner as the other. I unfortunately neglected to ascertain the dates of the foundation of these two edifices.
The library contains about a thousand volumes, the far greater part of which are printed books, mostly Venetian editions of ecclesiastical works, but there are some fine copies of Aldine Greek classics. I did not count the number of the manuscripts; they are all books of divinity and the works of the fathers; there may be between one and two hundred of them. I found one folio Bulgarian manuscript which I could not read, and therefore was, of course, particularly anxious to purchase. As I saw it was not a copy of the Gospels, I thought it might possibly be historical: but the monks would not sell it. The only other manuscript of value was a copy of the Gospels, in quarto, containing several miniatures and illuminations of the eleventh century; but with this also they refused to part, so it remains for some more fortunate collector. It was of no use to the monks themselves, who cannot read either Hellenic or ancient Greek; but they consider the books in their library as sacred relics, and preserve them with a certain feeling of awe for their antiquity and incomprehensibility. Our only chance is when some worldly-minded Agoumenos happens to be at the head of the community, who may be inclined to exchange some of the unreadable old books for such a sum of gold or silver as will suffice for the repairs of one of their buildings, the replenishing of the cellar, or some other equally important purpose. At the time of my visit the march of intellect had notpenetrated into the heights of the monastery of St. Barlaam, and the good old-fashioned Agoumenos was not to be overcome by any special pleading; so I told him at last that I respected his prejudices, and hoped he would follow the dictates of his conscience equally well in more important matters. The worthy old gentleman therefore pitched the two much-coveted books back into the dusty corner whence he had taken them, and where to a certainty they will repose undisturbed until some other bookworm traveller visits the monastery; and the sooner he comes the better, as mice and mildew are actively at work.
In a room near the library some ancient relics are preserved in silver shrines or boxes, of Byzantine workmanship: they are, however, not of very great antiquity or interest; the shrines are only of sufficient size to contain two skulls and a few bones; the style and execution of the ornaments are also much inferior to many works of the same kind which are met with in ecclesiastical houses.
The refectory is a separate building, with an apsis at the upper end, in which stands a marble table where the sacred bread used by the Greek church is usually placed, and where, I believe, the agoumenos or the bishop dines on great occasions. The walls of this room are also painted: not, however, with the representations of celebrated eaters, but with the likenesses of such thin, famished-looking saints that they seemmost inappropriate as ornaments to a dining-room. The kitchen, which stands near the refectory, is a circular building of great antiquity, but the interior being pitch dark when I looked in, and there coming from the door a dusty cold smell, which did not savour of any dainty fare, I did not examine it.
The monks and the abbot had now assembled in the room where the capstan stood. Ten or twelve of them arranged themselves in order at the bars, the net was spread upon the floor, and, having sat down upon it cross-legged, the four corners were gathered up over my head, and attached to the hook at the end of the rope. All being ready, the monks at the capstan took a few steps round, the effect of which was to lift me off the floor and to launch me out of the door right into the sky, with an impetus which kept me swinging backwards and forwards at a fearful rate; when the oscillation had in some measure ceased the abbot and another monk, leaning out of the door, steadied me with their hands, and I was let down slowly and gently to the ground.
When I was disencumbered of the net by my friends the robbers below, I sat down on a stone, and waited while the rope brought down, first my servants, and then the baggage. All this being accomplished without accident, I sent the horses, baggage, and one servant to the great monastery of Meteora, where I proposed to sleep; and, with the other servant and thepalicari, started on foot for a tour among the other monasteries.
A delightful walk of an hour and a half brought us to the entrance of the monastery of Hagios Stephanos, to which we gained access by a wooden drawbridge. The rock on which this monastery stands is isolated on three sides, and on the fourth is separated from the mountain by a deep chasm which, at the point where the drawbridge is placed, is not more than twelve feet wide. The interior of this building resembles St. Barlaam, inasmuch as it consists of a confused mass of buildings, surrounding an irregularly-formed court, of which the principal feature is the church. The paintings in it are not so numerous as at St Barlaam, but the iconostasis, or screen before the altar, is most beautifully carved, something in the style of Grinlin Gibbons: the pictures upon it being surrounded with frames of light open work, consisting of foliage, birds, and flowers in alto rilievo, cut out of a light-coloured wood in the most delicate manner. I was told that the whole of this beautiful work had been executed in Russia, and put up here during the reign of Ali Pasha, who had the good policy to protect the Greeks, and by that means to ensure the co-operation of one half of the population of the country.
In this monastery there were thirteen or fourteen monks and several women. On my inquiring forthe library, one of the monks, after some demurring, opened a cupboard door; he then unfastened a second door at the back of it which led into a secret chamber, where the books of the monastery were kept. They were in number about one hundred and fifty; but I was disappointed at finding that although thus carefully concealed there was not a single volume amongst them remarkable for its antiquity or for any other cause: in fact, they were not worth the trouble of turning over. The view from this monastery is very fine: at the foot of the rock is the village of Kalabaki, to the east the citadel of Tricala stands above a wide level plain watered by the river which we had followed from its sources in Mount Pindus; beyond this a sea of distant blue hills extends to the foot of Mount Olympus, whose summit, clothed in perpetual snow, towers above all the other mountains. The whole of this region is inhabited by a race of a different origin from the real Albanians: they speak the Wallachian language, and are said to be extremely barbarous and ignorant. Observing that the village of Kalabaki presented a singularly black appearance, I inquired the cause: it had, they said, been recently burned and sacked by the klephti or robbers (some of my friends, perhaps), and the remnant of the inhabitants had taken refuge in the two monasteries of Hagios Nicholas and Agia Mone, which had been deserted by the monks some time before. The poor people inthese two impregnable fastnesses were, they told me, so suspicious of strangers and in such a state of alarm, that there was no use in my visiting them, as to a certainty they would not admit me; and as it appeared that everything portable had been removed when the caloyeri (the monks) had departed from their impoverished homes, I gave up the idea.
I then proceeded along a romantic path to the monastery of Agia Triada, and on the way my servants entertained me by an account of what the monks had told them of their admiration of the Pasha of Tricala, whom they considered as a perfect model of a governor; and that it would be a blessing for the country if all other pashas were like him, as then all the roving bands of robbers, who spread terror and desolation through the land, would be cleared away. There is, it seems, a high tower over the gate of the town of Tricala, and when the Pasha caught any people whom he thought worthy of the distinction, he had them taken up to the top of this tower and thrown from it against the city walls, which his provident care had furnished with numerous large iron hooks, projecting about the length of a man's arm, which caught the bodies of the culprits as they fell, and on which they hung on either side of the town gate, affording a pleasing and instructive spectacle to the people who came in to market of a morning.
Agia Triada contains about ten or twelve monks,who pulled me up to the entrance of their monastery with a rope thirty-two fathoms long. This monastery, like the others, resembles a small village, of which the houses stand huddled round the little painted church. Here I found one hundred books, all very musty and very uninteresting. I saw no manuscripts whatever, nor was there anything worthy of observation in the habitation of the impoverished community. Having paid my respects to the grim effigies of the bearded saints upon the chapel walls, I was let down again by the rope, and walked on, still through most romantic scenery, to the monastery of Hagia Roserea.
The rock upon which this monastery stands is about a hundred feet high; it is perfectly isolated, and quite smooth and perpendicular on all sides, and so small that there is only room enough for the various buildings, without leaving any space for a garden. In fact, the buildings, although far from large, cover the whole summit of the rock. When we had shouted and made as much noise as we could for some time, an old woman came out upon a sort of wooden balcony over our heads; another woman followed her, and they began to talk and scream at us both together, so that we could not understand what they said. At last, one of them screaming louder than the other, we found that the monks were all out, and that these two ladies being the only garrison of the place declined the honour of our visit, and would not let down the ropeladder, which was drawn half way up. We used all the arguments we could think of, and told the old gentlewomen that they were the most beautiful creatures in the world, but all to no purpose; they were not to be overcome by our soft speeches, and would not let down the ladder an inch. Finding there were no hopes of getting in, we told them they were the ugliest old wretches in the country, and that we would not come near them if they asked us upon their knees; upon which they screamed and chattered louder than ever, and we walked off in high indignation.
The great Monastery of Meteora—The Church—Ugliness of the Portraits of Greek Saints—Greek Mode of Washing the Hands—A Monastic Supper—Morning View from the Monastery—The Library—Beautiful MSS.—Their Purchase—The Kitchen—Discussion among the Monks as to the Purchase Money for the MSS.—The MSS. reclaimed—A last Look at their Beauties—Proposed Assault of the Monastery by the Robber Escort.
Asthe day was drawing to a close we turned our steps towards the great monastery of Meteora, where we arrived just before dark. The vast rock upon which it is built is separated from the end of a projecting line of mountains by a widish chasm, at the bottom of which we found ourselves, after scrambling up a path which wound among masses of rock and huge stones which at some remote period had fallen from above.
Having reached the foot of the precipice under the monastery, we stopped in the middle of this dark chasm and fired a gun, as we had done at the monastery of Barlaam. Presently, after a careful reconnoitring from several long-bearded monks, a rope with a net at the end of it came slowly down to us, a distance of about twenty-five fathoms; and being bundled into the net, I was slowly drawn up into the monastery,where I was lugged in at the window by two of the strongest of the brethren, and after having been dragged along the floor and unpacked, I was presented to the admiring gaze of the whole reverend community, who were assembled round the capstan. This is by far the largest of the convents in this region; it is also in better order than the others, and is inhabited by a greater number of caloyers; I omitted to count their number, but there may have been about twenty: the monastery is, however, calculated to contain three times that number. The buildings both in their nature and arrangement are very similar to those of St. Barlaam, excepting that they are somewhat more extensive, and that there is a faint attempt at cultivating a garden which surrounded three sides of the monastery. Like all the other monasteries, it has no parapet wall.
The church had a large open porch before it, where some of the caloyers sat and talked in the evening; it was painted in fresco of bright colours, with most edifying representations of the tortures and martyrdoms of little ugly saints, very hairy and very holy, and so like the old caloyers themselves, who were discoursing before them, that they might have been taken for their portraits. These Greek monks have a singular love for the devil, and for everything horrible and hideous. I never saw a picture of a well-looking Greek saint anywhere, and yet the earlier Greek artists in their conceptions of the personages of Holy Writ sometimesapproached the sublime; and in the miniatures of some of the manuscripts written previous to the twelfth century, which I collected in the Levant, there are figures of surpassing dignity and solemnity: yet in Byzantine and Egyptian art that purity and angelic expression so much to be admired in the works of Beato Angelico, Giovanni Bellini, and other early Italian masters, are not to be found. The more exalted and refined feeling which prompted the execution of those sublime works seems never to have existed in the Greek church, which goes on century after century, even up to the present time, using the same conventional and stiff forms, so that to the unpractised eye there would be considerable difficulty in discovering the difference between a Greek picture of a saint of the ninth century from one of the nineteenth. The agoumenos, a young active man with a good deal of intelligence in his countenance, sent word that the hour of supper was at hand, previously, however, to which I went through the process of washing my hands in, or rather over a Turkish basin with a perforated cover and a little vase in the middle for the piece of fresh-smelling soap in common use, which is so very much better than ours in England that I wonder none has been as yet imported, a venerable monk all the while pouring the water over my hands from a vessel resembling an antique coffee-pot. I then dried my fingers on an embroidered towel, and sat downwith the agoumenos and another officer of the monastery before a metal tray covered with various dainty dishes. We three sat upon cushions on the floor, and the tray stood upon a wooden stool turned upside down, according to the usual fashion of the country: no meat had entered into the composition of our feast, but it was very savoury nevertheless, and our fingers were soon in the midst of the most tempting dishes, knives and forks being considered as useless superfluities. When my right hand was anointed with any oleaginous mixture, which it was very frequently indeed, if I wanted to drink, a monk held a silver bowl to my lips and a napkin under my chin, as you serve babies; after which I began again, until with a sigh I was obliged to throw myself back from the tray, and holding my hands aloft, the perforated basin and the coffee-pot made their appearance again. A cup of piping hot coffee concluded the evening's entertainment, and I retired to another room—the guest chamber—which opened upon a narrow court hard by, where all my things had been arranged. A long, thin candle was placed on a small stool in the middle of the floor, and having winked at the long rays which darted out of it for some time, I rolled myself into a comfortable position in the corner, and was asleep before I had settled upon any optical theory to account for them; nor did the dull, monotonous sound of the mallet, which, struck on a suspended board, called the goodbrethren to midnight prayer, disturb me for more than a moment.
Nov. 10.—Just before the dawn of day I opened the shutters of the unglazed windows of my room and surveyed the scene before me; all still looked grey and cold, and it was only towards the east that the distant outline of the mountains showed clear and distinct against the dark sky. By degrees the clouds, which had slept upon the shoulders of the hills, rose slowly and heavily, whilst the valleys gradually assumed all their soft and radiant beauty. It seemed to me as if I should never tire of gazing at this view. In the course of time, however, breakfast appeared, and having rapidly despatched it, I went to look at the buildings and curiosities.
The church resembles that of St. Barlaam, but is in better order; and the paintings are more brilliant in colour and are more profusely decorated with gold. There is a dome above the centre of the church, and the iconostasis or screen before the altar is ornamented with the usual stiff pictures and carving, but the latter is not to be compared to that in the monastery of St. Stephanos. There were some silver shrines containing relics, but they were not particularly interesting either as to workmanship or antiquity. The most interesting thing is a picture ascribed to St. Luke, which, whatever may be its real history, is evidently a very ancient and curious painting.
The books are preserved in a range of low-vaulted and secret rooms, very well concealed in a sort of mezzanine: the entrance to them is through a door at the back of a cupboard in an outer chamber, in the same way as at St Stephanos. There are about two thousand volumes of very rubbishy appearance, not new enough for the monks to read or old enough for them to sell; in fact, they are almost valueless. I found, however, a few Aldines and Greek books of the sixteenth century, printed in Italy, some of which may be rather rare editions, but I saw none of the fifteenth century. I did not count the number of the manuscripts; there are, however, some hundreds of them, mostly on paper; but, excepting two, they were all liturgies and church books. These two were poems. One appeared to be on some religious subject, the other was partly historical and partly the poetical effusions of St. Athanasius of Meteora. I searched in vain for the manuscripts of Hesiod and Sophocles mentioned by Biornstern; some later antiquarian may, perhaps, have got possession of them and taken them to some country where they will be more appreciated than they were here. After looking over the books on the shelves, the librarian, an old grey-bearded monk, opened a great chest in which things belonging to the church were kept; and here I found ten or twelve manuscripts of the Gospels, all of the eleventh or twelfth century. They were upon vellum, and all,except one, were small quartos; but this one was a large quarto, and one of the most beautiful manuscripts of its kind I have met with anywhere. In many respects it resembled the Codex Ebnerianus in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. It was ornamented with miniatures of the same kind as those in that splendid volume, but they were more numerous and in a good style of art; it was, in fact, as richly ornamented as a Romish missal, and was in excellent preservation, except one miniature at the beginning, which had been partially smeared over by the wet finger of some ancient sloven. Another volume of the Gospels, in a very small, clear hand, bound in a kind of silver filagree of the same date as the book, also excited my admiration. Those who take an interest in literary antiquities of this class are aware of the great rarity of an ornamental binding in a Byzantine manuscript. This must doubtless have been the pocket volume of some royal personage. To my great joy the librarian allowed me to take these two books to the room of the agoumenos, who agreed to sell them to me for I forget how many pieces of gold, which I counted out to him immediately, and which he seemed to pocket with the sincerest satisfaction. Never was any one more welcome to his money, although I left myself but little to pay the expenses of my journey back to Corfu. Such books as these would be treasures in the finest national collection in Europe.
We looked at the refectory, which also resembled that at Barlaam. The kitchen, however, merits a detailed description. This very ancient building, perched upon the extreme edge of the precipice, was square in its plan, with a steep roof of stone, the top of which was open. Within, upon a square platform of stone, there were four columns serving for the support of the roof, which was arched all round, except in the space between the tops of the columns, where it was open to the sky. This platform was the hearth, where the fire was lit, whilst smaller fires of charcoal might be lit all round against the wall, where there were stone dressers for the purpose, so that in fact the building was all chimney and fireplace; and when a great dinner was prepared on a feast-day the principal difficulty must have been to have prevented the cook from being roasted among the other meats. The whole of the arched roof was thickly covered with lumps of soot, the accumulations probably of centuries. The ancient kitchens at Glastonbury and at Stanton Harcourt are constructed a good deal upon the same plan, but this is probably a much earlier specimen of culinary architecture. The porch outside the church is larger than ordinary, and extends, if I remember rightly, along the side of that building which stands in the principal court, and is not, as is usually the case,attached to the end of the church, over the principal door.
Having seen all that was worthy of observation, I was waiting in the court near the door leading to the place where the monks were assembled to lower me down to the earth again. Just as I was ready to start there arose a discussion among them as to the distribution of the money which I had paid for the two manuscripts. The agoumenos wanted to keep it all for himself, or at least for the expenses of the monastery; but the villain of a librarian swore he would have half. The agoumenos said he should not have a farthing, but as the librarian would not give way he offered him a part of the spoil; however, he did not offer him enough, and out of spite and revenge, or, as he protested, out of uprightness of principle, he told all the monks that the agoumenos had pocketed the money which he had received for their property, for that they all had a right to an equal share in these books, as in all the other things belonging to the community. The monks, even the most dunderheaded, were not slow in taking this view of the subject, and all broke out into a clamorous assertion of their rights, every man of them speaking at once. The price I had given was so large that every one of them would have received several pieces of gold each. But no, they said, it was not that, but for the principles of justice that they contended. They did not want the money,no more did the librarian, but they would not suffer their rules to be outraged or their rights to be trampled under foot. In the monasteries of St. Basil all the members of the society had equal rights—they ate in common, they prayed in common, everything was bought and sold for the benefit of the community at large. Tears fell from the eyes of some of the particularly virtuous monks; others stamped upon the ground, and showed a thoroughly rebellious spirit. As for me, I kept aloof, waiting to see what might be the result.
The agoumenos, who was evidently a man of superior abilities, calmly endeavoured to explain. He told the unruly brethren exactly what the sum was for which he had sold the books, and said that the money was not for his own private use, but to be laid out for the benefit of all, in the same way as the ordinary revenues of the monastery, which, he added, would soon prove quite insufficient if so large a portion of them continued to be divided among the individual members. He told them that the monastery was poor and wanted money, and that this large sum would be most useful for certain necessary expenses. But although he used many unanswerable arguments, the old brute of a librarian had completely awakened the spirit of discord, and the ignorant monks were ready to be led into rebellion, by any one and for any reason or none. At last the contest waxed so warm that thesale of the two manuscripts was almost lost sight of, and every one began to quarrel with his neighbour, the entire community being split into various little angry groups, chattering, gesticulating, and wagging their long beards.
After a while the agoumenos, calling my interpreter, said that as the monks would not agree to let him keep the money in the usual way for the use of the monastery, he could have nothing to do with it; and to my great sorrow I was therefore obliged to receive it back, and to give up the two beautiful manuscripts, which I had already looked upon as the chief ornaments of my library in England. The monks all looked sadly downcast at this unexpected termination of their noble defence of their principles, and my only consolation was to perceive that they were quite as much vexed as I was. In fact we felt that we had gained a loss all round, and the old librarian, after walking up and down once or twice with his hands behind his back in gloomy silence, retreated to a hole where he lived, near the library, and I saw no more of him.
My bag was brought forward, and when the books were extracted from it, I sat down on a stone in the court yard, and for the last time turned over the gilded leaves and admired the ancient and splendid illuminations of the larger manuscript, the monks standing round me as I looked at the blue cypress-trees, and green and gold peacocks, and intricatearabesques, so characteristic of the best times of Byzantine art. Many of the pages bore a great resemblance to the painted windows of the earlier Norman cathedrals of Europe. It was a superb old book: I laid it down upon the stone beside me and placed the little volume with its curious silver binding on the top of it, and it was with a sigh that I left them there with the sun shining on the curious silver ornaments.
Amongst other arguments it had been asserted by some of the monks that nothing could be sold out of the monastery without the leave of the Bishop of Tricala, and, as a forlorn hope, they now proposed that the agoumenos should go to some place in the vicinity where the bishop was said to be, and that, if he gave permission, the two books should be forwarded immediately by a trusty man to the khan of Malacash, where I was to pass the night. I consented to this plan, although I had no hope of obtaining the manuscripts, as in the present unsettled state of the country the bishop would naturally calculate on the probability of the messenger being robbed, and on the improbability of his meeting me at the khan, as it would be absolutely necessary for me to leave the place before sunrise the next day.
All this being arranged I proceeded to the chamber of the windlass, was put into the net, swung out into the air, and let down. They let me down very badly, being all talking and scolding each other; and had Inot made use of my hands and feet to keep myself clear of the projecting points of the rock I should have fared badly. To increase my perils, my friends the palicari at the bottom, to testify their joy at my re-appearance, rested their long guns across their knees and fired them off, without the slightest attention to the direction of the barrels, which were all loaded with ball-cartridge: the bullets spattered against the rock close to me, and in the midst of the smoke I came down and was caught in the arms of my affectionate thieves, who bundled me out of my net with many extraordinary screeches of welcome.
When my servants arrived and informed them of our recent disappointment, "What!" cried they, "would they not let you take the books? Stop a bit, we will soon get them for you!" And away they ran to the series of ladders which hung down another part of the precipice: they would have been up in a minute, for they scrambled like cats; but by dint of running after them and shouting we at length got them to come back, and after some considerable expenditure of oaths and exclamations, kicking of horses, and loading of guns and saddle-bags, we found ourselves slowly winding our way back towards the valley of the Peneus.
After all, what an interesting event it would have been, what a standard anecdote in bibliomaniac history, if I had let my friendly thieves have their own way, and we had stormed the monastery, broken open thesecret door of the library, pitched the old librarian over the rocks, and marched off in triumph, with a gorgeous manuscript under each arm! Indeed I must say that under such aggravating circumstances it required a great exercise of forbearance not to do so, and in the good old times many a castle has been attacked and many a town besieged and pillaged for much slighter causes of offence than those which I had to complain of.
Return Journey—Narrow Escape—Consequences of Singing—Arrival at the Khan of Malacash—Agreeable Anecdote—Parting from the Robbers at Mezzovo—A Pilau—Wet Ride to Paramathia—Accident to the Baggage-Mule—Its wonderful Escape—Novel Costume—A Deputation—Return to Corfu.
Wemade our way from the plain and rocks of Meteora by a different path from the one by which we had arrived, and travelled along the north side of the valley of the Peneus; we kept along the side of the hills, which were covered sometimes with forest and sometimes with a kind of jungle or underwood.
During the afternoon of this day, as I was singing away as usual in advance of my party, some one shouted to me from the thicket, but I took no notice of it. However, before I had ridden on many steps a man jumped out of the bush, seized hold of my horse's bridle, and proceeded to draw his pistol from his belt, but luckily the lock had got entangled in the shawl which he wore round his waist. I pushed my horse against him, and in a moment one of us would have been shot; when the appearance of three or four bright gun-barrels in the bushes close by stopped our proceedings. My men now came running up.
"Hallo!" said one of them. "Is that you? You must not attack this gentleman. He is our friend; he is one of us."
"What!" said the man who had stopped me; "Is that you, Mahommed? Is that you, Hassan? What are you doing here? How is this? Is this your friend? I thought he was a Frank."
In short, they explained what kind of brotherhood we had entered into, where we had been, and where we were going, and all about it. I did not understand much of their conversation, and in the midst of it the Albanian came up to me with a reproachful air and told me that they said my being stopped was owing to my singing, and making such a noise. "Why, Sir," he added, "can't you ride quietly, without letting people know where you are? Why can't you do as others do, and be still, like a—"
"Thief," said I.
"Yes, Sir; or like a quiet traveller. In such troublesome times as these, however honest a man may be, he need not try to excite attention."
I felt that the advice was good, and practised it occasionally afterwards.
In seven hours' time we arrived at the khan of Malacash, where I had slept before; and my carpet was spread in my old corner. I heard my companions talking earnestly about something, and on asking what it was, I was told that they could not make outwhich room it was where the people had been murdered—this room or the outer one.
"How was that?" I inquired.
Why, some time ago, they said, a party of travellers, people belonging to the country, were attacked by robbers at this khan. One of the party, after he had been plundered, had the imprudence to say that he knew who the thieves were. Upon this the gang, after a short consultation, took the party out, one by one, and cut all their throats in the next room; and this was before the present disturbed state of the country. Nevertheless, I slept very soundly, my only sorrow being that no tidings came of the two manuscripts from Meteora.
November 11th.—In our journey of this day we crossed the chain of the Pindus by a different pass from the one by which we had traversed it before; and in the evening we arrived at Mezzovo, where I was lodged by a schoolmaster who had a comfortable house. The ceiling of the room where we sat was hung all over with bunches of dried or rather drying grapes. Here I presented each of my escort with a small bundle of piasters. We had become so much pleased with each other in the few days we had been together, that we had quite an affecting parting. Their chief, the red velvet personage from whom I had received the letter which gained me the pleasure of their company, was gone, it appeared, towards Berat; butthey had found some of their companions, with whom they intended to retire to some small place of defence, the name of which I did not make out, where in a few days they expected to be told what they were to do.
"Why won't you come with us?" said they. "Don't go back to live in a confined, stupid town, to sit all day in a house, and look out of the window. Go back with us into the mountains, where we know every pass, every rock, and every waterfall: you should command us; we would get some more men together: we will go wherever you like, and a rare jolly life we will lead."
"Gentlemen," said I, "I take your kind offers as highly complimentary to me; I am proud to think that I have gained so high a place in your estimation. When you see your captain, pray assure him of my friendship, and how much I feel indebted to him for having given me such gallant and faithful guards."
The poor fellows were evidently sorry to leave me: one of them, the most active and gay of the whole party, seemed more than half inclined to cry; so, cordially shaking hands with them before the door of the schoolmaster of Mezzovo, we parted, with expressions of mutual goodwill.
"Thank goodness they are gone!" said the little schoolmaster; "those palicari are all over the country now; some belong to one chief, some to another; some are for Mahmoud Pasha, and some against him; butI don't know which party is the worst; they are all rogues, every one of them, when they have an opportunity—scamps! sad scamps! These are hard times for quiet, peaceably-disposed people. So now, Sir, we will come in, and lock the door, and make up the fire, for the nights are getting cold."
The schoolmaster had a snug fireplace, with a good divan on each side of it, of blue cloth or baize. These divans came close up to the hearth, which, like the divans, was raised two feet above the floor. The good man brought out his little stores of preserves and marmalade. He was an old bachelor, and we soon made ourselves very comfortable, one on each side of the fire. We had a famous pilau, made by my "artist," and the schoolmaster gave us raisins to put in it—not that they are a necessary part of that excellent condiment, but he had not much else to give; so we flavoured the pilau with raisins, as if it had been a lamb, which, by the by, is the prince of Oriental dishes, and, when stuffed with almonds, raisins, pistachio nuts, rice, bread-crumbs, pepper and salt, and well roasted, is a dish to set before a king.
The schoolmaster, judging of me by the company I kept, never suspected my literary pursuits, and was surprised when I asked him if he knew of anything in that line, and assured him that I had no objection to do a little business in the manuscript way. He said he knew of an old merchant who had a great manybooks, and that to-morrow we would go and see them. Accordingly, the next day we went to see the merchant's house; but his collection was good for nothing; and after returning for an hour or two to the schoolmaster's hospitable mansion, we got into marching order, and defiled off the village green of Mezzovo.
After fording the river thirty-nine times, as we had done before, our jaded steeds at last stood panting under the windows of the doctor at Yanina, whose comfortable house we had left only a few days before. I stayed at Yanina one day, but the Pasha could not see me to hear my account of the protection I had enjoyed from his firman. A messenger had arrived from Constantinople, and the report in the town was that the Pasha would lose his head or his pashalic if he did not put down the disturbances which had arisen in every part of his government. Some said he would escape by bribing the ministers of the Porte; but as I was no politician I did not trouble myself much on the subject His Highness, however, was good enough to send me word that he would give me any assistance that I needed. Accordingly, I asked for a teskéré for post-horses; and the next day galloped in ten hours to Paramathia. All day long the rain poured down in torrents, and I waded through the bed of the swollen stream, which usually served for a high-road, I do not know how many times. I was told the distance was about sixty miles; and it was one of thehardest day's riding I ever accomplished; for there was nothing deserving the name of a road any part of the way; and the entire day was passed in tearing up and down the rocks or wading in the swollen stream. The rain and the cold compelled us and our horses to do our best: in a hot day we could never have accomplished it.
Towards the afternoon, when we were, by computation, about twenty-five miles from Paramathia, as we were proceeding at a trot along a narrow ledge above a stream, the baggage-horse, or mule I think he was, whose halter was tied to the crupper of my horse, suddenly missed his footing, and fell over the precipice. He caught upon the edge with his fore-feet, the halter supported his head, and my horse immediately stopping, leant with all his might against the wall of rock which rose above us, squeezing my left leg between it and the saddle. The noise of the wind and rain, and the dashing of the torrent underneath, prevented my servants hearing my shouts for assistance. I was the last of the party; and I had the pleasure of seeing all my company trotting on, rising in their stirrups, and bumping along the road before me, unconscious of anything having occurred to check their progress towards the journey's end. It was so bad a day that no one thought of anything but getting on. Every man for himself was the order of the day. I could not dismount, because my left leg was squeezed so tightly against therock, that I every moment expected the bone to snap. My horse's feet were projected towards the edge of the precipice, and in this way he supported the fallen mule, who endeavoured to retain his hold with his chin and his fore-legs. There we were—the mule's eyeballs almost starting out of his head, and all his muscles quivering with the exertion. At last something cracked: the staple in the back of my saddle gave way; off flew the crupper, and I thought at first my horse's tail was gone with it. The baggage-mule made one desperate scrambling effort, but it was of no use, and down he went, over and over among the crashing bushes far beneath, until at length he fell with a loud splash into the waters of the stream. Some of the people hearing the noise made by the falling mule, turned round and came back to see what was the matter; and, horse and men, we all craned our necks over the edge to see what had become of our companion. There he was in the river, with nothing but his head above the water. With some difficulty we made our way down to the edge of the torrent. The mule kept looking at us very quietly all the while till we got close to him, when the muleteer proceeded to assist him by banging him on the head with a great branch of a tree, upon which he took to struggling and scrambling, and at last, to the surprise of all, came out apparently unhurt, at least with no bones broken. The men looked him over, walked him about, gave hima kick or two by way of asking him how he was, and then placing his load upon him again, we pursued our journey.
Before dark we arrived at Paramathia, and went straight to the house where we had been so hospitably received before. We crawled up like so many drowned rats into the upper rooms, where we were met by the whole troop of ladies giggling, screaming, and talking, as if they had never stopped since we left them a week before. When the baggage came to be undone, alas! what a wreck was there! The coffee and the sugar and the shirts had formed an amalgam; mud, shoes, and cambric handkerchiefs all came out together; not a thing was dry. The only consolation was that the beautiful illuminated manuscripts of Meteora had not participated in this dirty deluge.
I was wet to the skin, and my boots were full of water. In this dilemma I asked if our hosts could not lend me something to put on until some of my own clothes could be dried. The ladies were full of pity and compassion; but unfortunately all the men were from home, not having returned from their daily occupations in the bazaar, and their clothes could not be got at. At last the good-humoured young bride, seeing that wherever I stood there was always, in a couple of minutes' time, a puddle upon the floor, entered into an animated consultation with the other ladies, and before long they brought me a shirt, and an immensegarment it was, like an English surplice, embroidered in gay colours down the seams. The fair bride contributed the white capote, which I remembered on my former visit, and a girdle. I soon donned this extempore costume. My wet clothes were taken to a great fire, which was lit for the purpose in another room, and I proceeded to dry my hair with a long narrow towel, its ends heavy with gold embroidery, which one of the ladies warmed far me, and twisted round my head in the way usual in the Turkish bath—a method of drying the head well known in most eastern towns, and which saves a great deal of trouble and exertion in rubbing and brushing according to the European method.
I had ensconced myself in the corner of the divan, having nothing else in the way of clothes beyond what I have mentioned, and was employed in looking at one of my feet, which I had stuck out for the purpose, admiring it in all its pristine beauty, for there were no spare slippers to be had, when the curtain was suddenly lifted from over the door, and my servant rushed in and told me with a troubled voice, that the authorities of Paramathia, grieved at their remissness on the former occasion, had presented themselves to compliment me on my arrival in their town, and had brought me a present of tobacco or something, I forget what, in testimony of their anxiety to show their good-will and respect to so distinguished a personage as myself. "Don't let them in!" I exclaimed. "Tell them Iwill receive them to-morrow. Say anything, but only keep them out." But this was more than my servants could accomplish. My friends at Corfu had sent letters explaining the prodigious honour conferred upon the whole province of Albania by my presence, so that nothing could stop them, and in walked a file of grave elders in long gowns, one or two in stately fur pelisses, which I envied them very much. They took very little notice of me, as I sat screwed up in the corner, and all, ranging themselves upon the divan on the opposite side of the room, sat in solemn silence, looking at me out of the corners of their eyes, whenever they thought they could do so without my perceiving it.
My servant stood in the middle of the room to interpret; and after he had remained there a prodigious while, as it seemed to me, the most venerable of the old gentlemen at last said, "I am Signor Dimitri So-and-so; this is Signor Anastasi So-and-so; this gentleman is uncle to the master of the house; and so on. We are come to pay our respects to the noble and illustrious Englishman who passed through this place before. Pray have the goodness to signify our arrival to his Excellency, and say that we are waiting here to have the honour of offering him our services. Where is the respected milordos?" Although I could not speak Romaic, yet I understood it sufficiently to know what the old gentleman was saying; and great was theirsurprise and admiration when they found that the unhappy and very insufficiently-clothed little fellow in the corner was the illustrious milordos himself. The said milordos had now to explain how all his baggage had been upset over a precipice, and that he was not exactly prepared to receive so distinguished a party. After mutual apologies, which ended in a good laugh all round, pipes and coffee were brought in. The visit of ceremony was concluded in as dignified a manner as circumstances would permit; and they went away convinced that I must be a very great man in my own country, as I did not get up more than a few inches to salute them, either on their entry or departure—a most undue assumption of dignity on my part which I sincerely regretted, but which the state of my costume rendered absolutely necessary.
November 15th.—The morning of the following day was bright and clear. I procured fresh horses, and galloped in six hours to the sea at Gominiza. A small vessel was riding at anchor near the shore, whose captain immediately closed with the offer of four dollars to carry me over to Corfu. I was soon on board; and, creeping into a small three-cornered hole under the half-deck, to which I gained access by a hatchway about a foot and a half square, I rolled myself up upon some ropes, and fell asleep at once. It seemed as if I had not been asleep an instant, when my servant, putting his head into the square aperture above, said, "Signoresiamo qui." "Yes," said I, "but where is that? What! are we really at Corfu?" I popped my head out of the trap, and there we were sure enough—my fatigue of the day before having made me sleep so soundly that I had been perfectly unconscious of the duration of the voyage; and I landed on the quay congratulating myself on having accomplished the most dangerous and most rapid expedition that it ever was my fortune to undertake.
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