Bargaining--Departure for Athens--Voyage--The Piræus--Athens--
Vandalism--The Parthenon--Its entablatures--Mysterious fire--
Curiosities--Athenian improvements--Road to Corinth--Megara--
Thunder storm--Isthmus of Corinth--Cutting the isthmus--
Difficulties of the enterprize--Levels of the seas--Corinth--
Change of climate--Vostizza.
While I was rambling among the mountains, the expected boat came
in, and announced its departure again for Athens in the evening.
The patron, however, as soon as he heard of my return, came to me,
and expressed a wish at first that I should engage his vessel for
myself alone, in which case he would sail immediately after sunset,
when a land-breeze usually springs up. This was a regular attempt at
imposition upon an Englishman, which impressed me with the conviction
that some of my countrymen who have travelled in Greece must have
conducted themselves as consummate coxcombs. Their highnesses would
not condescend, forsooth, to make a voyage from Epidaurus to the other
side of the gulph in a small packet, in which their precious persons
were liable to be contaminated by the touch of a native Greek, or other
passengers bound for the same destination. My new acquaintance was
clearly of opinion that it was beneath my national dignity to reject
his offer, the more especially as he proposed to place his vessel at my
service for the moderate sum of one hundred drachmas!
♦ BARGAINING ♦
Even my Greek valet could not stand this: he indignantly bade the
fellow go away, but at the same time asked me how much I was inclined
to give, he being himself on his route to Athens, and not all
indisposed to perform it free of expense. I said, what was perfectly
true, that I had not the most remote intention of engaging the
vessel for my own use, the more especially as several persons, to my
knowledge, were waiting at Epidaurus to procure a passage to the other
side; and that, moreover, far from feeling any disinclination to sail
in company with a motley group of all sorts of travellers, it was the
thing of all others I preferred. So far as I was concerned, the boat
being open to the atmosphere, they might fill it mast high if they
liked, and I would take my chance with the rest. “How much are you to
pay,” I asked my kind adviser, “for your passage?”
“Oh, sir,” he replied, “I am but a very poor man--they will perhaps
make me pay them two drachmas and a half.”
“And quite enough too,” I observed, “for it is but a voyage of a few
hours, and, for my own part, I shall pay no more.”
The first negotiation having failed, the patron had the impudence again
to come to me, and inquired whether, at all events, I might not wish
to engage the best part of his vessel for myself, which I might have
for the reduced sum of thirty drachmas. I went to look at his boat in
order to understand what he meant by the “best part.” It was a common
coaster, without any deck; the bottom was filled with small gravel
for ballast; and upon this gravel, unless I had a mattress, which I
had not, I was to take my seat wherever I chose! I thanked him for
his obliging offer; but gave him to understand that I had no ambition
whatever to distinguish myself in any way from his other passengers,
and that I would pay the ordinary fare, whatever that was, but not a
Lepta more. “Then,” said he, angrily, “you shall not come in my boat.”
“Very well,” I replied, “then you shall not sail to-night--at least
not without me.” Upon explaining the matter to the port-captain, who
had to endorse my passport, he observed that I was quite right, and
that he would not permit the vessel to leave the harbour if such an
attempt at extortion, of which he was quite ashamed, were persevered
in on the part of the patron, whom he immediately sent for, and
reproved vehemently as a disgrace to the _kingdom_! My Greek, who was
my dragoman throughout this proceeding, seemed very much astonished
at this new revolution. So then, he said, or rather seemed to say,
Englishmen are to be openly plundered no more!
♦ DEPARTURE FOR ATHENS ♦
I went on-board with my luggage about eight o’clock in the evening,
and took my place on the _gravel_, sitting on my portmanteau.
By-and-by came in a whole crowd of men, women, and children, including
my acquaintances of the glen, with beds and mattresses, on which
they settled themselves at once for sleep. We sailed at nine with
a tolerably good breeze, which, however, died away soon after. The
night was balmy and so clear that I never thought of sleep while
contemplating the azure canopy of the sky, “thick inlaid with patens
of bright gold,” and feeling that the Parthenon would be soon within
my view. Accordingly, by the earliest gleam of morning, while we were
passing Ægina, I beheld that still glorious monument to the incarnate
wisdom and genius of all antiquity. “If the progress of decay,” said
Mr. Hobhouse, “be as rapid as it has been for more than a century past,
there will, in a few years, be not one marble standing upon another
on the site of the Parthenon.” I had expected to find this prophecy
realized, as it was well-known that the Turks, before they quitted the
capital, had wantonly destroyed every remnant of its ancient lustre
upon which they could lay their hands. Most agreeable, therefore,
was my surprise to find so vast a pile of columns still remaining,
to attest the miracles of which architecture is capable, the true
gods of Paganism being the men who could conceive and embody, in a
permanent form, the ideas that even to this hour, are breathing amid
the sculptures of that mutilated temple.
♦ VOYAGE ♦
♦ THE PIRÆUS ♦
It was tantalizing to be obliged to row all the day, as not even a
sigh of the atmosphere would come to our assistance. It was four
o’clock in the afternoon before we entered the Piræus, where we found a
considerable degree of bustle prevailing. Several Greek vessels were in
the harbour; a French man-of-war was in the roads; and merchant ships,
of some hundred tons burthen, were either delivering or receiving
cargoes in the most systematic order. Upwards of a hundred horses and
camels were waiting on the beach for employment, the road to Athens,
which is at the distance of about five miles from the Piræus, being as
yet chiefly traversed by animals with all sorts of burthens on their
backs, although it was by no means impassable for carriages. I lost
no time in procuring horses; and after riding for about an hour and
a quarter through the olive grounds which interpose between Athens
and the sea, where, by-the-bye, companies of the Bavarian troops were
encamped in wooden huts, being engaged in widening and re-constructing
the road, I alighted at Casali’s hotel, and was immediately shown to an
excellent chamber.
♦ ATHENS ♦
A capital dinner and a bottle of genuine old Madeira compensated me
for the privations of the morning; and after my bed of gravel, I found
Casali’s unobjectionable. But when I sallied forth the next day to
explore the wonders of Athens, alas! they were no longer to be seen.
The once proud city of marble was literally a mass of ruins--the
inglorious ruins of mud houses and wretched mosques, forming in all
quarters such undistinguishable piles, that in going about I was wholly
unable to fix upon any peculiarities of streets or buildings by which
I might know my way from one part of the capital to another. With the
exception of the remains of the Forum, the Temple of Theseus, which is
still in excellent preservation, the celebrated columns of the temple
of Jupiter Olympus, and the Parthenon, nothing now exists at Athens of
all the splendid edifices by which it was so profusely decorated in the
days of its glory.
♦ VANDALISM ♦
I therefore devoted the whole day to the Acropolis, examining with a
degree of admiration which every hour rendered more and more intense,
the columns and capitals, but above all the entablatures, which time
had spared, or Vandalism had still left unviolated upon that sacred
mountain. “Time had spared!” The phrase has no meaning here; for it
is the singular attribute of these skies of Attica to embalm in their
own unchangeable purity every particular form or feature, even the
slightest sprig, the most delicate flower, the most minute vein and
curl of the leaf, the slightest smile of beauty, which the sculptor
chooses to call into existence from the quarries of Pentelicus. The
very heads that grace those columns are as round and as fresh at
this moment as they were in the time of Pericles. A marble, which by
some good fortune had been overlooked amongst the weeds by all the
despoilers, was turned up a day or two before my visit, exhibiting a
cantharus surrounded by a wreath of vine-leaves. The vessel stood out
from the mass to which it was attached, and the wreath seemed as if
it had just left the chisel of Phidias. In such a climate it is no
poetical privilege to say, that the amaranths are immortal, rivalling
those with which
----“the spirits elect
Bind their resplendent locks.”
No! it is to the human animal alone, to his impieties against the
divinity of genius, to those insane passions which urge him to war
against his own tribes, to the insatiable desire of indiscriminate
devastation which sometimes actuates him, as if he were obeying the
mandate of some evil spirit--or to what is still more debasing, the
thirst of gold--rapine for the sake of restoring the shattered fortunes
of a titled pauper, or of transmuting the adventurer into a parvenu--to
these, thou holy pile! holy even after all the vices of our nature
have done their worst upon thy fanes and altars, do we owe these
prostrate columns, these fractured capitals, these loosened mutilated
entablatures, bearing witness alike to the despicable dust, as well as
to the redeeming god, of which man is composed.
♦ THE PARTHENON ♦
Had the Parthenon remained perfect it would have been the Iliad in
marble--in Pentelican marble; the polished, unchangeable, eloquent
dialect of exalted conception--the living model of mind for all ages,
which no age shall ever rival. Minerva, for whom the temple rose, was
no fable. Her reputed wisdom, the terrors which her thunders cast
upon the field of war, her preference for the olive and those arts
of prosperous peace of which it was the symbol; the brilliant beauty
of her presence when she started at once into existence, completely
arrayed in panoply wrought by the immortal artist; her immediate
admission into the assembly of the gods, her love for mankind, the
peculiar tutelar favour with which she looked upon Attica, her
inflexible virtues, the matchless purity of her life, the pains which
she took to teach kings how to cultivate the land, and the Argonauts
the navigation of the seas, and the shepherdess the charms of the
lute; her skill in embroidery, painting, poetry, and sculpture, and
the exquisite perfection of taste which shone through all her works,
were no more than the picture which the Parthenon itself displayed of
transcendant genius in all the departments of thought and action upon
which human intelligence, in its most inspired moods, can be exerted.
♦ ITS ENTABLATURES ♦
Enough of that pile,--which under the care of an enlightened
government, may now be looked upon, I hope, as imperishable,--still
remains to animate the new generations of Greece with the grandeur of
antiquity. The very atmosphere of these ruins is favourable to the
birth of noble aspirations. It is scarcely possible for any mind, open
at all to improvement, to hold ineffectual converse with the figures
that still live upon the entablatures, to mark the spirit impressed on
their looks, the gracefulness with which they ride, or the power with
which, standing on the earth, they rein back their proud horses, or the
style in which they hold the pipe, or fling upon the air the triumphant
sound of the Bacchanal drum, while dancing in procession to the temple,
or returning from the fields of victory.
♦ MYSTERIOUS FIRE ♦
A sentinel, who happened to be from the island of Cerigo, perceiving
that I had lingered all the day among these ruins, suggested to me
that I ought not to leave the Acropolis without examining what he and
his comrades conceived to be the greatest curiosity of the place. He
called one of the guard and desired him to shew me the “mysterious
fire,” as he called it. Upon quitting the porch of the temple, I
turned under this man’s guidance to the right, and descending a few
steps towards the guard-house, I reached a part of the foundations of
the Parthenon, which are composed of large blocks of marble fitted
together without any cement. Looking in between two of these blocks,
which were separated from each other little more than the eighth of an
inch, I distinctly saw in the interior of the wall a pale yellow light,
resembling that of a taper in the daytime.
♦ CURIOSITIES ♦
At first I looked about to see whether this could be the result of a
contrivance to procure a little fee for the benefit of the guard; but I
could discover no ground whatever for any such suspicion. Neither was
the sun then shining on that part of the Acropolis; and the men assured
me that the illumination was much stronger always during the night. I
examined one or two other apertures in its immediate neighbourhood,
and observed a similar light, which they had not discovered before,
and which raised their wonder in a way that convinced me, that they at
least were quite unconscious of any fraud. There was no smoke or heat
about the spot; and the wall was of a thickness of at least from three
to four feet, if not more. I concluded that the glow proceeded from
some phosphoric substance or insect in the interior of the structure;
and had only to lament that it was not known to the priests of the
Parthenon of old, as it would have then been handed down to us as the
divinity of some oracle, or as a fragment of the vestal fire which was
never to be extinguished.
♦ ATHENIAN IMPROVEMENTS ♦
The site of the Areopagus; of the levelled rock, where the orators
usually harangued the people of Athens; the place where the tribune
stood; the indentures in the precipice where the laws and acts of
authority were inserted and promulgated; the cave said to have been
the prison of Socrates; the remarkable stone, still as slippery,
and almost as brilliant as ice, down which childless women are said
to have made a practice of sliding, in former days, as a remedy for
barrenness; and some few other “lions” of a minor character, served to
while away another morning. I flattered myself, moreover, that a long
narrow street, filled with shops of all sorts, which had escaped the
destroying hand of the Turks, preserved an air of antiquity, and that
the variety of objects which it displayed--such as fruits, grocery,
wine, spirits, haberdashery, tailors, shoemakers, smiths, winders and
weavers of silk, manufacturers of tassels and gold lace--might often
have served to divert the intense thoughts of Demosthenes from the
agitations of the forum; of Euripides from the theatre; of Aristides
from the calumny by which that just man was assailed on account of
his virtues. But I should never have done day-dreaming, if I had
remained longer at Athens; and so having gone with Mr. Griffith over
the handsome mansion, then nearly finished, for the British legation,
visited the new buildings which were going on in its neighbourhood,
intended to be the “West End” of the capital; observed the lines of new
streets marked out amongst the ruins of Old Athens, and the very neat
houses already completed in different parts of the new town, where the
saw and the mallet were busy in every direction, I engaged a brace of
horses, and behold me on the road to Corinth.
♦ ROAD TO CORINTH ♦
The said road, by-the-bye, was no road at all; nothing more than a
bridle path among the hills, all-fragrant with that peculiar thyme
which enables the bees of the neighbouring ranges of Hymettus to
produce the most delicious honey in the world, upon which said honey
I feasted like a heathen god every morning. I slung a jar of it to
my saddle-bow for a little stranger, who, I expected, would greet me
on my arrival at home. The very rocks of Greece are redolent with
some sort or another of vegetation, which can have no nutriment
except from the atmosphere. Quitting the hills, we descended to the
sea-shore by Salamis and those gloried waters where the Persian hosts
were overwhelmed by a handful of freemen; passed through the ruins of
Eleusis; and stopped for the night at Lyssa in a sort of inn, where
horses, mules, donkies, and men all slept, I may say, together under
the same roof. The habitable part of this stable was floored with clean
planks, on which a hair-cloth was spread for me. The owner of the
mansion gathered himself up in a corner; several Greeks were strewed
about in various directions; and I, wrapped in my cloak, found even the
plank and hair-cloth preferable to a couch of gravel.
♦ MEGARA ♦
About two o’clock in the morning (13th November) my guide summoned
me to the field, when I gladly pursued with him our way to Megara.
Sagittarius and his congregation of worlds shed a brilliant lustre over
the sky, which scarcely began to grow pale until we heard the cocks of
the said Megara sounding their jocund horns. We soon after entered on
the isthmus of Corinth, keeping still by the side of the sea; Salamis
on our left; the sun rising over Ægina; Negropont, a cloud in the
distance; the Epidaurian mountains standing out like giants of air; the
sea beneath us a lake of crystal; the rocks over which we were wending,
tossed into all sorts of jagged forms; here impeded by straggling
roots of trees; there by trees overthrown in some storm; now menaced
with destruction by masses depending over our heads; now in danger,
if our animals made a false step, of making no gentle transition from
the precipices above that beauteous mirror to the floors which shone
beneath it, mosaiqued though they were all over by the hands of all the
Nereids.
♦ THUNDER STORM ♦
But for these perils, against which we occasionally guarded by allowing
the horses to seek their own fortunes, I was sometimes compensated by
following our course through patches of forest, still rich in foliage,
through which vistas of the Ægean opened, such as no pencil can ever
imitate. Trees and islands, skies and water, may be represented;
and airy perspectives, shewn through a break in an old wood, may be
wrought by a master into a semblance of enchantment; but here lived the
enchantment itself, the ever-changing mystic lights and shades, which
cannot be brought down from heaven; the memories of bright ages, of
heroic deeds, of matchless poetry and eloquence, and of undying names,
consecrated and preserved in one vast temple of glory, where silence
always points her sceptre to the past.
At noon the Acropolis of Corinth burst upon the scene, and in a few
hours afterwards we were in the town, where I spent the night--and such
a night!--Heaven preserve us! I never before heard such a storm of
thunder, never beheld such lightning as raged for four or five hours
without interruption round the rocks of that lofty citadel. Had it not
served as a natural conductor of the electric fluid, I hardly know how
the houses still remaining at its feet could have escaped destruction.
The rain came down in deluges.
♦ ISTHMUS OF CORINTH ♦
When I ascended the mountain the next morning, I questioned the
Bavarian sentinels as to their feelings during the night, and they
confessed that they had never known what a war of the elements was
before, and that they had the strongest apprehensions about their
powder magazine. But happily no accident occurred. The earth and the
lower hills all round were smoking with the vapours raised by the
sun from the waters, with which they were saturated. Nevertheless,
I beheld, even before I was half-way to the top, the Ægean and the
Gulf of Lepanto almost touching each other, and inviting the hand of
commercial enterprize to complete the channel, which has been already
partly excavated, for uniting the two seas.
♦ CUTTING THE ISTHMUS ♦
I know of no measure which could be devised for the benefit of Greece,
so well calculated to develop its natural riches, to excite a general
spirit of industry amongst its people, and to ensure to that industry
the most ample returns, as this project, no modern invention, for
annihilating the Isthmus. A line of direct communication would thus
be established, by which all those parts of Greece, separated from
each other by the prolongation of the Morea, and by the difficulties
attendant on the navigation round its capes, might be immediately
united. Missolonghi and Lepanto, Patras and even Gastuni, would thus
be brought by steam-boats within a few hours of the Piræus. The Gulf
of Lepanto, where now scarcely a sail is seen, would become another
Bosphorus, the highway for merchant vessels and steamers from the
Ionian isles to Athens and the Cyclades. The whole coast of Albania
would take an interest in the change, whose influence would extend to
Naples, Ancona, and Venice, and above all to Trieste, now becoming a
most important commercial station.
Athens, which in a few months will be brought down to the shore by its
rail-road, would then become an emporium of exchange of the produce of
the east for the produce and manufacture of the west. Corinth would
be raised to a degree of splendour which it had never known before.
The stagnant waters of Lepanto would be roused from their lethargy:
the shores on either side, so dangerous to health in the summer and
autumn, from the quantity of rank vegetation with which they teem,
would be ploughed up and cultivated--the Greek tertians and agues
would disappear--population would rapidly increase, and the cotton
and currants, wheat and oil, which may be grown in any part of the
Morea, or of western Greece, where the rocks are not literally as
bare of earth as rock can be, would ensure to the agriculturist, and
the merchant, and the ship-owner, constant employment of the most
advantageous description.
♦ DIFFICULTIES OF THE ENTERPRIZE ♦
I apprehend that the real width of that portion of the Isthmus which
still remains to be excavated, does not much exceed four English miles.
Two of these miles traverse a mere plain on the western side of the
Isthmus, where a canal has been already cut by the ancients about
eighty feet deep and three hundred feet wide. The mouth of this canal
is at present closed up with sands from the Gulf of Lepanto; these
sands might be easily removed, and the remainder of the excavation,
which is still visible to the extent of about six hundred feet, might
be rendered available as far as it goes. The only great difficulties
of the enterprise would be found in the rocky ridges which extend from
Megara to the Acrocorinthus, the summits of which are about two hundred
feet above the level of the sea. Half the number of men now employed
on the banks of the Danube, would, within the space of two or three
years form a tunnel through these rocks, by the process of blasting,
sufficiently deep for vessels of any size to be towed through the canal
by steamers. The ancients, without our auxiliaries of steam or powder,
actually penetrated these precipices under the superintendence of Nero;
although after his departure the works were abandoned. Beyond the rocks
there is a remarkable ravine which might be easily enlarged, and which
extends as far as the Saronic gulf.
♦ LEVELS OF THE SEAS ♦
Some persons have imagined that even if these difficulties were
conquered, there would be still the insuperable inconvenience arising
from what is really no more than a supposition, that the sea on the
eastern side is higher than the sea in the Gulf of Lepanto. If the fact
were so, the waters, if all obstruction were removed, would soon find
their own level. Or, if an elevation did exist on the eastern side,
and from any circumstance it were likely to be permanent, it might,
if excessive, be corrected by a series of locks; if not excessive,
it would have the effect only of producing a strong current down the
Gulf of Lepanto, and consequently of keeping the canal clear of the
sands which have been hitherto accumulating at the head of that gulf.
I have been informed that the whole expense of such an enterprize
as this would not much exceed half a million sterling; and it would
seem reasonable to calculate the returns on the capital, after the
completion of the works, at not less than from ten to fifteen per cent.
♦ CORINTH ♦
The celebrated ancient columns, each formed of one block of stone,
which every traveller has noticed, are in Corinth, with the exception
of the Acrocorinthus, the only objects worth attention in the way of
“lionising.” The town is nearly as shapeless a mass of ruins as Athens
itself. But even here the “restoration” of Greece was beginning to
exhibit itself in the construction of several new houses, which are
built in a plain substantial style.
♦ CHANGE OF CLIMATE ♦
The road from Corinth to Patras lies principally along the southern
coast of the gulf, and in spring or early summer must be delightful,
as it passes over declivities thickly wooded with flowering shrubs.
Even the shingle has its clustres of bulbous roots, which when the
stems are out and hung with their hyacinths, tulips, jonquils, and
lilies, must give the country an appearance of gaiety unknown to our
climate. We had rain and dense clouds constantly almost the whole way
to Vostizza, which appeared the more remarkable, as the mountains on
the opposite shore appeared at the same time to revel in the enjoyment
of sunshine all day, and of a serene sky at night. I forget who it was
of my predecessors that made the same remark: but I can bear witness to
its truth. The traveller proceeding from Attica is at once sensible of
a very striking difference between the temperature of the air in the
Morea, and that which he had just left beyond the Isthmus.
♦ VOSTIZZA ♦
Vostizza has been for some years, even before the termination of the
revolution, a highly improving town. It is built on the site of the
ancient Ægium, where the states of Achaia were accustomed to hold their
general council. Being the principal, as well as the most central
emporium for the collection of the currants which are cultivated in
the Morea, and which, indeed, have derived their name from Corinth,
where the trade was originally established, it exhibits a degree of
activity and an appearance of wealth not yet known in any other part of
Greece, with the exception of Napoli and Patras. It stands considerably
elevated above the sea, to which there is a descent from the town
through what appears to be a _natural_ tunnel, although art must have
had something to do with the excavation itself, as well as with the
steps which are formed in the rock.
A beautiful merchant brig, belonging to the London house of Loury and
Clarke was in the bay, waiting for a cargo of currants; I looked upon
the vessel with no small pride, observing the superior appearance of
structure, equipment, and of order, which it displayed, in comparison
with the crazy, lubberly sloops and cutters by which it was surrounded.
The superintendent, an intelligent Frenchman, civilly showed me over
the store-house, where the currants were packed in casks. The trade
seemed to afford employment to several coopers. As the produce is
brought in from the country it is paid for in hard dollars; but English
goods are at the same time taken out, which are purchased by the
shopkeepers of the town, and paid for in the same kind of money; and
although I believe the balance of export and import is as yet in favour
of Vostizza, there is no reason to doubt that regenerated Greece has
only to grow a little richer in order to be enabled to cultivate her
soil more extensively, and thus become a very considerable consumer of
our manufactures.
There are many handsome private houses at Vostizza, with gardens behind
them, full of the most beautiful of all trees,--those that yield the
lemon and the orange. The fruit being never absent from the foliage in
this mild climate--for the town seems to have a “pocket-climate” of its
own as compared with other parts of the Morea; the deep yellow of the
mature lemon or orange forming so agreeable a contrast with the green
leaf, and the fruit not yet ripe exhibiting the progressive shades from
the olive to the gold, these trees realize the vision of the poets, who
tell us of regions where the spring never fails to bloom.