[Illustration]
From the little harbor where we had found shelter for our landing to
visit Branchidæ it proved but a few hours’ steaming to Cos, which was
scheduled as our next stopping place. Like Samos, Cos lies close to the
Asia Minor shore. The chief city, which bears the same name as the
island, unchanged from ancient times, proved to be a formidable looking
place by reason of its great walls and moles, recalling the Cretan
cities much more forcibly than the Samos town had done; for the
yellowish-white fortresses which flank the narrow inner harbor of Cos
resemble both in color and architecture the outworks that were thrown up
to protect the ports of Candia and Canea. Later in the day it was borne
in upon us that these walls were by no means uncommon in the vicinity,
and that they bore witness to the visits of the Crusaders; for the great
walls and castle at Halicarnassus not far away were very similar to the
forts of Cos, and with the best of reasons, since they were the work of
the same hands,—of the so-called “Knights of Rhodes,” who once settled
in these regions and built strongholds that for those times were
impregnable enough. Our next day or two brought us often in contact with
the relics of these stout old knights, who were variously known as of
Rhodes, or of St. John, and, last of all, of Malta. As far as Cos was
concerned, the knightly fortress was chiefly remarkable from the water,
as we steamed past the frowning battlements of buff and dropped anchor
in the open roadstead before the city; for, as is generally the case
with these old towns, there is at Cos no actual harborage for a steamer
of modern draught, whatever might have been the case anciently when
ships were small.
The morning sun revealed the city itself spreading out behind the
fortress, in a great splash of dazzling white amidst the green of the
island verdure, its domes and minarets interspersed with the tops of
waving trees. Behind the city, the land rose gradually to the base of a
long range of green hills stretching off to the southward and into the
interior of the island. It was easily the most fertile and agreeable
land we had yet encountered in our Ægean pilgrimage, and so lovely that
we almost forgot that it was Turkish and that we had been warned not to
separate far from one another on going ashore for fear of complications
and loss of the road. However it was Turkish, this time, pure and
unadulterated, and the examination of our papers and passports was no
idle formality, but was performed with owl-like solemnity by a local
dignitary black-mustachioed and red-fezzed. While this was proceeding
the members of our party stood huddled behind a wicket gate barring
egress from the landing stage and speculated on the probability of being
haled to the dungeons, which might easily be imagined as damp and gloomy
behind the neighboring yellow walls of stone.
The Sultan’s representative being fully satisfied that we might safely
be permitted to enter the island, the gate was thrown back, and in a
quaking body we departed through a stone arcade in which our feet echoed
and reëchoed valiantly, past rows of natives sipping coffee and smoking
the nargileh in the shade, and thence through a stone archway into a
spacious public square, paved with cobble-stones and dominated by the
most gigantic and venerable plane tree imaginable. Its enormous trunk
stood full in the centre of the square, rising from a sort of stone
dais, in the sides of which were dripping stone fountains, deeply
incrusted with the green mildew of age. Overhead, even to the uttermost
parts of the square, the branches spread a curtain of fresh green
leaves. They were marvelous branches—great, gnarled, twisted limbs, that
were as large in themselves as the trunk of a very respectable tree, and
shored up with a forest of poles. Actual measurement of the
circumference of the trunk itself revealed it to be something over forty
feet in girth, and it was not difficult to believe the legend that this
impressive tree really did date back to the time of Hippocrates, the
great physician of Cos, who was born in the island long before the dawn
of the Christian era. In any event, the great plane of Cos is called to
this day the “tree of Hippocrates,” whether it has any real connection
with that eminent father of medicine or not.
[Illustration: TREE OF HIPPOCRATES. COS]
We left the shady square by a narrow and roughly paved street, little
wider than an alley and lined with whitewashed houses, closely set. It
wound aimlessly along through the thickly settled portion of the city,
and at last opened out into the country-side, where the houses grew
fewer and other splendid trees became more numerous, generally shading
wayside fountains, beside which crouched veiled native women gossiping
over their water-jars. A pair of baggy-trousered soldiers went with us
on the road, partly as overseers, no doubt, but chiefly as guides and
protectors—the latter office proving quite needless save for the
occasional expert kicking of a barking cur from some wayside hovel. They
proved to be a friendly pair, although of course conversation with them
was impossible, and a lively exchange of cigarettes and tobacco was kept
up as we walked briskly along out of the city and into the open country
that lay toward the hills. Their chief curiosity was a kind of
inextinguishable match, which proved exceedingly useful for smokers
bothered by the lively morning breeze. They were flat matches, seemingly
made of rude brown paper such as butchers at home used to employ for
wrapping up raw meat. The edges were serrated, and when once the match
was lighted it burned without apparent flame and with but little smoke
until the entire fabric was consumed.
The object of this walk, which proved to be of something like three or
four miles into the suburbs of Cos, was to view the remnants of the
famous health temple, sacred, of course, to Asklepios. We found it
situated on an elevation looking down across a smiling plain to the sea,
with the white walls and roofs of Cos a trifle to one side. It was not a
prospect to be forgotten. It was a bright day, but with sufficient haze
in the air to give to the other islands visible across the intervening
water an amethystine quality, and to make the distant summits in Asia
Minor faint and ethereal. The nearer green of the fields, the purple of
the sea, and the delicate hues of the islands and far-away peaks, held
us for a long time before turning to the curious ruin of the temple,
which, as usual, was less a temple than a hospital.
Little remains of it, save for the foundations. Three enormous terraces,
faced with flights of steps of easy grade, led up to the main sanctuary
of the god, comparatively little of which remains to be seen. Various
smaller buildings, shrines for allied divinities, porticoes for the
sick, apartments for the priests, treasuries and the like, are readily
distinguishable, and serve to reveal what an extensive establishment the
health temple was in its time. Restorations of it, on paper, reveal it
as having been probably most impressive, both architecturally and by
reason of its commanding position, which was not only admirable by
nature but accentuated by the long approach over the three successive
terraces to the many-columned main building above.
Of the numerous smaller structures lying about the precinct, the most
curious and interesting were the subterranean treasuries—if that is the
proper name for them—which have been discovered at the foot of the
slope. They apparently consist of vaults in the earth, each covered over
with a massive stone slab. The slab is removable, but only at great
pains. A circular hole pierces it through the centre, suitable for
dropping money or other valuables into the receptacle beneath and for
inserting the tackle with which to lift the rock when the treasury was
to be opened. The vast weight of the stone and the time required for
raising it would have been ample guarantee against unauthorized visits
to the treasury. Other theories accounting for these underground
chambers and their curious coverings have been advanced—the most
fantastic one being the supposition that these were the chambers devoted
to housing the sacred serpents of the god, the holes serving for their
emergence and for the insertion of food! But while the cult of Asklepios
certainly does appear to have made use of the sacred snakes as a part of
its mummery, it seems hardly likely that these subterranean cavities
were used for any such purpose.
As for the practice of medicine in Cos, it is widely believed to have
been of a sensible and even of an “ethical” sort, largely devoid of mere
reliance on idle superstition or religious formalism for its curative
effects, though unquestionably employing these, as was not only the case
in ancient times, but as even persists to-day in some localities of the
archipelago. The religious ceremonies, which generally took the form of
sleeping in the sacred precincts in the hope of being divinely healed,
appear to have been supplemented at Cos by the employment of means of
healing that were rudely scientific. Hippocrates, the most celebrated of
the Coan physicians, has left abundant proof that he was no mere
charlatan, but a common-sense doctor, whose contributions to medical
science have not by any means entirely passed out of esteem. Reference
has been made hitherto to the custom of depositing in the temple
anatomical specimens representing the parts healed, as votive offerings
from grateful patients—a custom which persists in the modern Greek
church, as everybody who examines the altar-screen of any such church
will speedily discover.
The extreme veneration of Asklepios at Cos is doubtless to be explained
by the fact that Cos was an Epidaurian colony; for the Epidaurians
claimed that the healing god was born in the hills overlooking their
valley in the Peloponnesus. At any rate the health temple at Cos and the
great sanitarium at Epidaurus shared the highest celebrity in ancient
times as resorts for the sick; and in each case there are traces to show
that they were sites devoted not only to the worship of a deity, but to
the ministration unto the ailing by physical means, as far as such means
were then understood.
Cos, however, was far from basing her sole claim to ancient celebrity on
her physicians and hospitals. Her embroideries rivaled the more famous
Rhodian work, and she was an early home of culture and resort of noted
students, not only of medicine, but of rhetoric, grammar, poetry,
philosophy, and science. Ptolemy II, otherwise known as Ptolemy
Philadelphus, is known to have studied here, and it is not at all
improbable that the Sicilian poet, Theocritus, was a fellow student with
him. For it is known that Theocritus was a student at Cos at some time,
and he was later summoned to Ptolemy’s Egyptian court, where he wrote
the epithalamium for the unholy marriage between Philadelphus and his
sister. Not a little of the present knowledge of ancient Cos is due to
the writings that Theocritus left as the result of his student days in
the island.
The curator of antiquities in charge of the excavations at the
Asklepeion took us in charge on our return walk and led us through the
city to his own home, where, although we were on Turkish soil, we had a
taste of real Greek hospitality. Our party was numerous enough to appall
any unsuspecting hostess, but we were ushered into the great upper room
of the house, with no trace of dismay on the part of the wife and
daughter. It was a huge room, scrupulously neat and clean, and the forty
or so included in our number found chairs ranged in line about the
apartment, where we sat at ease examining the fragments that the curator
had to show from the mass of inscriptions recovered from the temple.
Meantime, after the national custom, the eldest daughter served
refreshment to each in turn, consisting of preserved quince, glasses of
mastika, and huge tumblers of water. It was a stately ceremony, each
helping himself gravely to the quince from the same dish, and sipping
the cordial, while the mother bustled about supplying fresh spoons. And
with a general exchange of cards and such good wishes as were to be
expressed in limited traveler’s Greek, we departed to the landing and
again embarked.
We designed to push on to Cnidos at once, and to climb the heights of
that ancient promontory of Asia Minor in the late afternoon. But
inasmuch as Halicarnassus, the native city of Herodotus, lay directly on
the way, we sailed into its capacious harbor and out again without
stopping, for the sake of such glance at the site as might be had from
the water. The bay on which the city lies—it is now called Boudrun—is
wonderfully beautiful, running well into the mainland, while the city
itself, with its great white castle of the Knights of St. John as the
central feature, lies at the inmost end. Of the castle we were able to
get a very good view, going close enough to arouse the violent
excitement of a gesticulating Turkish official who came out in a tiny
boat, bravely decked with the crescent flag, to show us where to anchor
if we so desired. The site of the famous Mausoleum was pointed out from
the deck, and most of us were confident that we saw it, although it was
not easy to find. The remains of this incomparably magnificent tomb,
designed for King Mausolus, are, as everybody knows, to be seen in the
British Museum to-day.
It was but a few miles farther to the promontory of Cnidos, and we
dropped anchor there in mid-afternoon, in one of the double bays for
which the ancient naval station was famous. The bays are still separated
by a narrow isthmus—the same which the ancients tried in vain to sever.
The story goes that the drilling of the rocks caused such a flying of
fragments as to endanger the eyes of the workmen, and the oracle when
questioned dissuaded them from continuing the work, saying “Zeus could
have made the land an island if he had intended so to do.” Hence the two
little harbors remain, one on either side of the neck of land that juts
into the sea. They were used as anchorage for triremes and merchant
ships respectively, when Cnidos was a power in the world. To-day the
spot is absolutely deserted, and we found both the diminutive bays
devoid of all trace of life, until at evening a passing fisherman came
in and made all snug for the night.
[Illustration: CNIDOS, SHOWING THE TWO HARBORS]
Above the waters of the harbor towered the commanding rock of the
Cnidian acropolis, something like twelve hundred feet in height—a bare
and forbidding rock, indeed. Of the town and the temples that once
clustered along its base nothing was to be seen. Man has long ago
abandoned this spot and left it absolutely untenanted save by memories.
It was in ancient times a favorite haunt of Aphrodite, and three temples
did honor to that goddess on the knolls above the sea. Here also stood
the marble Aphrodite carved by Praxiteles, and esteemed his masterpiece
by many. It was carried off to Constantinople centuries ago, and
perished miserably in a fire in that city in 1641.
Our three boatloads landed with no little difficulty on the abrupt rocks
of the shore, being somewhat put to it to avoid sundry submerged
boulders lying just off the land. It was a sharp scramble from the
water’s edge to the narrow and ascending shelf above, on which the
temples had stood. The ruins of them lay buried in tall grasses and in
huge clumps of daisies, the latter growing in the most remarkable
profusion. With a single sweep of the knife I cut a prodigious armful of
them, and the dining saloon that night was made a perfect bower by the
wild flowers that the returning party brought back with them.
It was one of the days when the non-archæological section of the party
hastily left the remnants of ancient greatness below and set out
precipitately for a climb, for the prospect of a view from the
overshadowing cliff above was promising. It proved the most formidable
ascent that we undertook in all our Ægean cruising. Anciently there was
a gradual ascent by means of a zigzag causeway to the fortified heights
above, but the majority of us disregarded it and struck off up the steep
toward the summit. It is not a wise plan for any but hardened climbers,
for the slope soon became so sharp that it made one giddy to look back
down the mountain, and the footing was often difficult because of the
shelving stone and fragments of loose rock. Small bushes were the only
growth, and they were often eagerly seized upon to give the needful
purchase to lift us onward and upward. The summit, however, amply
rewarded our toil. It was easier going toward the top, for we found the
old road and rose more gradually toward the point where the ancient
walls began.
From the pinnacle of the rock the sweep of the view was indescribably
fine. The sun was sinking rapidly to the horizon, illuminating the
islands and the sea. The wind had dropped, the haze had disappeared, and
the shore line of Asia Minor stretched away, clear cut, in either
direction. We were practically at the southwest corner of the peninsula.
The rugged headlands retreated to the north and to the east from our
feet, while inland piled the impressive interior mountains rearing their
snow-capped heads against the blue evening dusk. Over the Ægean, dark
blue and violet islands rose from a sea of molten gold. At our feet lay
the twin harbors and our steamer, looking like a toy ship, the thin
smoke of her funnel rising in a blue wisp into the silent evening air.
The fishermen from the tiny smack that had sought a night’s berth there
had kindled a gleaming fire on the beach. Along the sharp spine of the
promontory we could see the ancient line of wall, rising and falling
along the summit and flanked here and there by ruined towers—a
stupendous engineering work of a nation long dead. It was all
impressively silent, and deserted save for ourselves. The course of
empire had indeed taken its westward way and left once powerful Cnidos a
barren waste.
But the darkness coming suddenly in these latitudes at this season
warned us to descend in haste to the fire that was signaling us from the
landing, and we slipped and slid down the old causeway to the boats.
That night the moon was at the full, and we sat late on the after-deck
enjoying the incomparable brilliancy of the light on sea and cliffs,
shining as of old on a time-defying and rock-bound coast, but on a coast
no longer teeming with life and harbors no longer alive with ships. And
at midnight the wheezing of the engines and the jarring of the screw
gave notice that we were slipping out of the harbor of Cnidos and out
into the sea, to Rhodes.
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