Corfu—Unpopularity of British Rule—Superstition of the
Greeks—Accuracy of the Descriptions in the Odyssey—Advantage
of the Greek Costume—The Paxian Isles—Cape Leucas, or Sappho’s
Leap—Bay of Navarino, Ancient Pylos—Modon—Coran’s Bay—Cape
St. Angelo—Isle of Cythera.
CORFU.—Called on one of the officers of the 10th this morning, and
found lying on his table two books upon Corfu. They were from the
circulating library of the town, much thumbed, and contained the most
unqualified strictures on the English administration in the islands. In
one of them, by a Count, or Colonel, Boig de St. Vincent, a Frenchman,
the Corfiotes were taunted with their slavish submission, and called
upon to shake off the yoke of British dominion in the most inflammatory
language. Such books in Italy or France would be burnt by the hangman,
and prohibited on penalty of death. Here, with a haughty consciousness
of superiority, which must be galling enough to an Ionian who is capable
of feeling, they circulate uncensured in two languages, and the officers
of the abused government read them for their amusement, and return them
coolly to go their rounds among the people. They have twenty-five
hundred troops upon the island, and they trouble themselves little about
what is thought of them. They confess that their government is
excessively unpopular, the officers are excluded from the native
society, and the soldiers are scowled upon in the streets.
* * * * *
The body of St. Spiridion was carried through the streets of Corfu
to-day, sitting bolt upright in a sedan chair, and accompanied by the
whole population. He is the great saint of the Greek church, and such is
his influence, that the English government thought proper, under Sir
Frederick Adams’s administration, to compel the officers to walk in the
procession. The saint was dried at his death, and makes a neat, black
mummy, sans eyes and nose, but otherwise quite perfect. He was carried
to-day by four men in a very splendid sedan, shaking from side to side
with the motion, preceded by one of the bands of music from the English
regiments. Sick children were thrown under the feet of the bearers, half
dead people brought to the doors as he passed, and every species of
disgusting mummery practised. The show lasted about four hours, and was,
on the whole, attended with more marks of superstition than anything I
found in Italy. I was told that the better educated Christians of the
Greek Church disbelieve the saint’s miracles. The whole body of the
Corfiote ecclesiastics were in the procession, however.
I passed the first watch in the hammock-nettings to-night, enjoying
inexpressibly the phenomena of this brilliant climate. The stars seem
burning like lamps in the absolute clearness of the atmosphere. Meteors
shoot constantly with a slow liquid course over the sky. The air comes
off from the land laden with the breath of the wild thyme, and the water
around the ship is another deep blue heaven, motionless with its studded
constellations. The frigate seems suspended between them.
We have little idea, while conning an irksome school-task, how strongly
the “unwilling lore” is rooting itself in the imagination. The frigate
lies perhaps a half mile from the most interesting scenes of the
Odyssey. I have been recalling from the long neglected stores of memory,
the beautiful descriptions of the court of King Alcinous, and of the
meeting of his matchless daughter with Ulysses. The whole web of the
poet’s fable has gradually unwound, and the lamps ashore, and the
outline of the hills, in the deceiving dimness of night, have entered
into the delusion with the facility of a dream. Every scene in Homer may
be traced to this day, the blind old poet’s topography was so admirable.
It was over the point of land sloping down to the right, that the
Princess Nausicaa went with her handmaids to wash her bridal robes in
the running streams. The description still guides the traveller to the
spot where the damsels of the royal maid spread the linen on the grass,
and commenced the sports that waked Ulysses from his slumbers in the bed
of leaves.
* * * * *
Ashore with one of the officers this morning, amusing ourselves with
trying on dresses in a Greek tailor’s shop. It quite puts one out of
conceit with these miserable European fashions. The easy and flowing
juktanilla, the unembarrassed leggings, the open sleeve of the
collarless jacket leaving the throat exposed, and the handsome
close-binding girdle from it, seems to me the very dress dictated by
reason and nature. The richest suit in the shop, a superb red velvet,
wrought with gold, was priced at one hundred and forty dollars. The more
sober colours were much cheaper. A dress lasts several years.
* * * * *
We made our farewell visits to the officers of the English regiments,
who had overwhelmed us with hospitality during our stay, and went on
board to get under way with the noon breeze. We were accompanied to the
ship, not as the hero of Homer, when he left the same port, by three
damsels of the royal train, bearing, “one a tunic, another a rich
casket, and a third bread and wine” for his voyage, but by Mrs. Thompson
and Mrs. Wilson, soldiers’ wives, and washerwomen, with baskets of
hurriedly-dried linen, pinned, every bundle, with a neat bill in
shillings and halfpence.
Ulysses slept all the way from Corcyra to Ithaca. He lost a great deal
of fine scenery. The passage between Corfu and Albania is beautiful. We
ran past the southern cape of the island with a free wind, and are now
off the Paxian Isles, where, according to Plutarch, Emilanus, the
rhetorician, voyaging by night, “heard a voice louder than human,
announcing the death of Pan.” A “schoolboy midshipman” is breaking the
same silence with “on deck, all hands! on deck, all of you!”
* * * * *
Off the mouth of the Alpheus. If he still chases Arethusa under the sea,
and she makes straight for Sicily, her bed is beneath our keel. The moon
is pouring her broad light over the ocean, the shadows of the rigging on
the deck lie in clear and definite lines, the sailors of the watch sit
around upon the guns in silence, and the ship, with her clouds of snowy
sail spread aloft, is stealing through the water with the noiseless
motion of a swan. Even the gallant man-of-war seems steeped in the
spirit of the scene. The hour wants but an “Ionian Myrrha” to fill the
last void of the heart.
Cape Leucas on the lee—the scene of Sappho’s leap. We have coursed down
the long shore of ancient Leucadia, and the precipice to which lovers
came from all parts of Greece for an oblivious plunge, is shining in the
sun, scarce a mile from the ship. The beautiful Grecian here sung her
last song, and broke her lyre and died. The leap was not always so
tragical: there are two lovers, at least, on record (Maces of Buthrotum,
and Cephalos, son of Deioneos), who survived the fall, and were cured
effectually by salt water. It was a common resource in the days of
Sappho, and Strabo says that they were accustomed to check their descent
by tying birds and feathers to their arms. Females, he says, were
generally killed by the rapidity of the fall, their frames being too
slight to bear the shock; but the men seldom failed to come safe to
shore. The sex has not lost its advantages since the days of Phaon.