street and take our way to the ancient citadel by the shortest and
steepest path. Dawn is just breaking in pink, and the half-moon is in
the sky. The sleepy guard unbolts the gate and admits us, but does not
care to follow; and we pass the Propylæa and have the whole field to
ourselves. There is a great hush as we come into the silent presence
of the gray Parthenon; the shades of night are still in its columns.
We take our station on a broken pillar, so that we can enjoy a
three-quarters view of the east front. As the light strengthens we have
a pink sky for background to the temple, and the smooth bay of Phalerum
is like a piece of the sky dropped down. Very gradually the light breaks
on the Parthenon, and in its glowing awakening it is like a sentient
thing, throwing shadows from its columns and kindling more and more; the
lion gargoyles on the corners of the pediment have a life which we had
not noticed before. There is now a pink tint on the fragments of columns
lying at the side; there is a reddish hue on the plain about Piræus;
the strait of Salamis is green, but growing blue; Phalerum is taking
an iridescent sheen; I can see, beyond the Gulf of Ægina, the distant
height of Acro-Corinth. .
The city is still in heavy shadow, even the Temple of Theseus does not
relax from its sombreness. But the light mounts; it catches the top
of the white columns of the Propylæa, it shines on the cornice of the
Erechtheum, and creeps down in blushes upon the faces of the Caryatides,
which seem to bow yet in worship of the long-since-departed Pallas
Athene. The bugles of the soldiers called to drill on the Thesean
esplanade float up to us; they are really bugle-notes summoning the
statues and the old Panathenaic cavalcades on the friezes to life and
morning action. The day advances, the red sun commanding the hill and
flooding it with light, and the buildings glowing more and more in it,
but yet casting shadows. A hawk sweeps around from the north and hangs
poised on motionless wings over the building just as the sun touches it.
We climb to the top of the western pediment for the wide sweep of view.
The world has already got wind of day, and is putting off its nightcaps
and opening its doors. As we descend we peer about for a bit of marble
as a memento of our visit; but Lord Elgin has left little for the
kleptomaniac to carry away.
At this hour the Athenians ought to be assembling on the Pnyx to hear
Demosthenes, who should be already on the bema; but the bema has
no orator, and the terrace is empty. We might perhaps see an early
representation at the theatre of Dionysus, into which we can cast
a stone from this wall. We pass the gate, scramble along the ragged
hillside,—the dumping-ground of the excavators on the Acropolis,—and
stand above the highest seats of the Amphitheatre. No one has come.
The white marble chairs in the front row—carved with the names of the
priests of Bacchus and reserved for them—wait, and even the seats not
reserved are empty. There is no white-clad chorus manoeuvring on
the paved orchestra about the altar; the stage is broken in, and the
crouching figures that supported it are the only sign of life. One would
like to have sat upon these benches, that look on the sea, and listened
to a chorus from the Antigone this morning. One would like to have
witnessed that scene when Aristophanes, on this stage, mimicked and
ridiculed Socrates, and the philosopher, rising from his undistinguished
seat high up among the people, replied.
XXX.—THROUGH THE GULF OF CORINTH.
WITH deep reluctance we tore ourselves from the fascinations of Athens
very early one morning. After these things, says the Christian's
guide, Paul departed from Athens and came to Corinth. Our departure was
in the same direction. We had no choice of time, for the only steamer
leaves on Sunday morning, and, besides, our going then removed us from
the temptation of the Olympic games. At half past five we were on board
the little Greek steamer at the Piraeus.
We sailed along Salamis. It was a morning of clouds; but Ægina
(once mistress of these seas, and the hated rival of Athens) and the
Peloponnesus were robed in graceful garments that, like the veils of the
Circassian girls, did not conceal their forms. In four hours we landed
at Kalamaki, which is merely a station for the transfer of passengers
across the Isthmus. Six miles south on the coast we had a glimpse of
Cenchreæ, which is famous as the place where Paul, still under the
bonds of Jewish superstition, having accomplished his vow, shaved his
head. The neck of limestone rock, which connects the Peloponnesus with
the mainland, is ten miles long, and not more than four miles broad from
Kalamaki to Lutraki on the Gulf of Corinth, and as it is not, at its
highest elevation, over a hundred feet above the sea, the project of
piercing it with a canal, which was often entertained and actually begun
by Nero, does not seem preposterous. The traveller over it to-day will
see some remains of the line of fortification, the Isthmian Wall, which
served in turn Greeks, Macedonians, Saracens, Latin Crusaders, and
Slavonic settlers; and fragments of the ancient buildings of the
Isthmian Sanctuary, where the Panhellenic festivals were celebrated.
The drive across was exceedingly pleasant. The Isthmus is seamed with
ravines and ridges, picturesque with rocks which running vines drape and
age has colored, and variegated with corn-fields. We enjoyed on either
hand the splendid mountain forms; on the north white Helicon and
Parnassus; on the south the nearly two-thousand-feet wall-crowned height
of Acro-Corinth and the broken snowy hills of the Morea.
Familiar as we were with the atlas, we had not until now any adequate
conception how much indented the Grecian mainland and islands are, nor
how broken into peaks, narrow valleys, and long serrated summits are the
contours. When we appreciate, by actual sight, the multitude of islands
that compose Greece, how subject to tempests its seas are, how difficult
is communication between the villages of the mainland, or even those on
the same island, we understand the naturalness of the ancient divisions
and strifes; and we see the physical obstacles to the creation of a
feeling of unity in the present callow kingdom. And one hears with no
surprise that Corfu wishes herself back under English protection.
We drove through the cluster of white houses on the bay, which is now
called Corinth, and saw at three miles' distance the site of the old
city and the Acropolis beyond it. Earthquakes and malaria have not been
more lenient to the ancient town than was Roman vengeance, and of the
capital which was to Greece in luxury what Athens was in wit, only a few
columns and sinking walls remain. Even the voluptuousness of Corinth is
a tale of two thousand years ago, and the name might long ago have sunk
with the fortunes of the city, but for the long residence there of a
poor tent-maker, in whom no proud citizen of that day, of all those
who “sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play,” would have
recognized the chief creator of its fame.
Our little Greek steamer was crowded excessively, and mainly with Greeks
going to Patras and Zante, who noisily talked politics and business in
a manner that savored more of New England than of the land of Solon and
Plato. For the first time in a travel of many months we met families
together, gentlemen with their wives and children, and saw the evidences
of a happy home-life. It is everything in favor of the Greeks that they
have preserved the idea of home, and cherish, as the centre of all good
and strength, domestic purity.
At dinner there was an undisguised rush for seats at the table, and the
strongest men got them. We looked down through the skylights and beheld
the valiant Greeks flourishing their knives, attacking, while expecting
soup, the caviare and pickles, and thrusting the naked blades into their
mouths without fear. The knife seems seldom to hurt the Greek, whose
display of deadly weapons is mainly for show. There are dozens of stout
swarthy fellows on board, in petticoats and quilted leggings, with each
a belly full of weapons,—the protruding leathern pouch contains a
couple of pistols, a cheese-knife, cartridges, and pipes and tobacco.
The sail through the Gulf of Corinth is one to be enjoyed and
remembered, but the reader shall not be wearied with a catalogue of
names. What is it to him that we felt the presence of Delphi, that we
had Parnassus on our right, and Mt. Panachaicum, lifting itself higher
than Mt. Washington, on our left, the Locrian coast on one side, and the
range of Arcadia on the other? The strait narrowed as we came at evening
near Patras, and between the opposite forts of Rheum and Antirheum it is
no broader than the Bosphorus; it was already dusky when we peered into
the Bay of Lepanto, which is not, however, the site of the battle of
that name in which the natural son of the pretty innkeeper of Ratisbon
rendered such a signal service to Christendom. Patras, a thriving new
city, which inherits the name but not the site of the ancient, lies
open in the narrow strait, subject to the high wind which always blows
through the passage, and is usually a dangerous landing. All the time
that we lay there in the dark we thought a tempest was prevailing, but
the clamor subsided when we moved into the open sea. Of Patras we saw
nothing except a circle of lights on the shore a mile long, a procession
of colored torches which illumined for an instant the façade of the
city hall, and some rockets which went up in honor of a local patriot
who had returned on our boat from Athens. And we had not even a glimpse
of Missolonghi, which we passed in the night.
At daylight we are at Zante, anchored in its eastward-looking harbor
opposite the Peloponnesian coast. The town is most charmingly situated,
and gives one an impression of wealth and elegance. Old Zacynthus was
renowned for its hospitality before the days of the Athenian and Spartan
wars, and—such is the tenacity with which traits are perpetuated
amid a thousand changes—its present wealthy and enterprising
merchant-farmers, whose villas are scattered about the slopes, enjoy a
reputation for the same delightful gift. The gentlemen are distinguished
among the Ionians for their fondness of country life and convivial
gayety. Early as it was, the town welcomed us with its most gracious
offerings of flowers and fruit; for the pedlers who swarmed on board
brought nothing less poetical than handfuls of dewy roses, carnations,
heliotrope, freshly cut mignonette, baskets of yellow oranges, and
bottles of red wine. The wine, of which the Zante passengers had
boasted, was very good, and the oranges, solid, juicy, sweet, the best
I have ever eaten, except, perhaps, some grown in a fortunate year in
Florida. Sharp hills rise behind the town, and, beyond, a most fertile
valley broadens out to the sea. Almost all the land is given up to the
culture of the currant-vine, the grapes of Corinth, for in the transfer
of the chief cultivation of this profitable fruit from Corinth to Zante,
the name went with the dwarf vines. On the hillsides, as we sailed
away, we observed innumerable terraces, broad, flat, and hard like
threshing-floors, and learned that they were the drying-grounds of the
ripe currants.
We were all day among the Ionian Islands, and were able to see all of
them except Cythera, off Cape Malea, esteemed for its honey and its
magnificent temple to the foam-born Venus. They lay in such a light as
the reader of Homer likes to think of them. We sailed past them as in
a dream, not caring to distinguish history from fable. It was off the
little Echinades, near the coast, by the mouth of the Achelous, that Don
John, three hundred years ago, broke the European onset of the Ottoman
arms; it was nearly a dear victory for Christendom, for among the
severely wounded was Cervantes, and Don Quixote had not yet been
written. But this battle is not more real to us than the story of
Ulysses and Penelope which the rocky surface of Ithaca recalls. And as
we lingered along the shores of Cephalonia and Leucadia, it was not of
any Cæsar or Byzantine emperor or Norman chieftain that we thought, but
of the poet whose verses will outlast all their renown. Leucadia still
harbors, it is said, the breed of wolves that, perhaps, of all the
inhabitants of these islands preserve in purity the Hellenic blood. We
sailed close to the long promontory, “Leucadia's far-projecting rock
of woe,” and saw, if any one may see, the very precipice from which
Sappho, leaping, quenched in brine the amatory flames of a heart that
sixty years of song and trouble had not cooled.
Through the strait of Actium we looked upon the smooth inland sea of
Ambracia, while our steamer churned along the very waters that saw
the flight of the purple sails of Cleopatra, whom the enamored Antony
followed and left the world to Augustus. The world was a small affair
then, when its possession could be decided on a bit of water where, as
Byron says, two frigates could hardly manouvre. These historical empires
were fleeting shows at the best, not to be compared to the permanent
conquests and empire of the mind. The voyager from the Bosphorus to
Corfu feels that it is not any Alexander or Cæsar, Chagan or Caliph,
but Homer, who rules over the innumerable islands and sunny mainlands of
Greece.
It was deep twilight when we passed the barren rock of Anti-paxos, and
the mountain in the sea called Paxos. There is no island in all these
seas that has not its legend; that connected with Paxos, and recorded
by Plutarch, I am tempted to transcribe from the handbook, in the quaint
language in which it is quoted, for it expresses not only the spirit of
this wild coast, but also our own passage out of the domain of mythology
into the sunlight of Christian countries: “Here, about the time that
our Lord suffered his most bitter passion, certain persons sailing from
Italy to Cyprus at night heard a voice calling aloud, Thamus! Thamus!
who giving ear to the cry was bidden (for he was pilot of the ship),
when he came near to Pelodes to tell that the great god Pan was dead,
which he doubting to do, yet for that when he came to Pelodes there was
such a calm of wind that the ship stood still in the sea unmoored, he
was forced to cry aloud that Pan was dead; wherewithal there were such
piteous outcries and dreadful shrieking as hath not been the like. By
which Pan, of some is understood the great Sathanas, whose kingdom was
at that time by Christ conquered, and the gates of hell broken up; for
at that time all oracles surceased, and enchanted spirits that were wont
to delude the people henceforth held their peace.”
It was ten o'clock at night when we reached Corfu, and sailed in under
the starlight by the frowning hill of the fortress, gliding spectrally
among the shipping, with steam shut off, and at a signal given by the
bowsman letting go the anchor in front of the old battery.
Corfu, in the opinion of Napoleon, enjoys the most beautiful situation
in the world. Its loveliness is in no danger of being overpraised. Shut
in by the Albanian coast opposite, the town appears to lie upon a
lake, surrounded by the noblest hills and decorated with a
tropical vegetation. Very picturesque in its moss-grown rock is the
half-dismantled old double fortress, which the English, in surrendering
to the weak Greek state, endeavored to render as weak as possible. It
and a part of the town occupy a bold promontory; the remainder of the
city lies around a little bay formed by this promontory and Quarantine
Island. The more we see of the charming situation, and become familiar
with the delicious mountain outlines, we regret that we can tarry but
a day, and almost envy those who make it a winter home. The interior
of the city itself, when we ascend the height and walk in the palace
square, appears bright and cheerful, but retains something of the
dull and decorous aspect of an English garrison town. In the shops the
traveller does not find much to interest him, except the high prices of
all antiquities. We drove five miles into the country, to the conical
hill and garden of Gasturi, whose mistress gathered for us flowers and
let us pluck from the trees the ripe and rather tasteless nespoli. From
this summit is an extraordinary prospect of blue sea, mountains, snowy
summits, the town, and the island, broken into sharp peaks and most
luxuriant valleys and hillsides. Ancient, gnarled olive-trees abound,
thousands of acres of grapevines were in sight, the hedges were the
prickly-pear cactus, and groves of walnuts and most vigorous fig-trees
interspersed the landscape. There was even here and there a palm. A
lovely land, most poetical in its contours.
The Italian steamer for Brindisi was crowded with passengers. On the
forward deck was a picturesque horde of Albanian gypsies. The captain
said that he counted eighty, without the small ones, which, to avoid the
payment of fare, were done up in handkerchiefs and carried in bags like
kittens. The men, in broad, short breeches and the jackets of their
country, were stout and fine fellows physically. The women, wearing
no marked costume, but clad in any rags of dresses that may have been
begged or stolen, were strikingly wild in appearance, and if it is
true that the women of a race best preserve the primeval traits, these
preserve, in their swarthy complexions, burning black eyes, and jet
black hair, the characteristics of some savage Oriental tribe. The hair
in front was woven into big braids, which were stiff with coins and
other barbarous ornaments in silver. A few among them might be called
handsome, since their profiles were classic; but it was a wild beauty
which woman sometimes shares with the panther. They slept about the deck
amidst their luggage, one family usually crawling into a single sack.
In the morning there were nests of them all about, and, as they crawled
forth, especially as the little ones swarmed out, it was difficult
to believe that the number of passengers had not been miraculously
increased in the night. The women carry the fortune of the family on
their heads; certainly their raiment, which drapes but does not conceal
their forms, would scarcely have a value in the rag-market of Naples. I
bought of one of them a silver ornament, cutting it from the woman's
hair, but I observed that her husband appropriated the money.
It was like entering a new world of order and civilization, next
morning, to sail through the vast outer harbor of Brindisi into the
inner one, and lie, for the first time in the Mediterranean, at a dock.
The gypsies made a more picturesque landing than the other passengers,
trudging away with their hags, tags, rags, and tent-poles, the women and
children lugging their share. It was almost touching to see their care
for the heaps of rubbish which constitute all their worldly possessions.
They come like locusts to plunder sunny Italy; on a pretence of seeking
work in the fields, they will spend the summer in the open air, gaining
health and living, as their betters like to live, upon the labor of
others.
Brindisi has a beautiful Roman column, near it the house where Virgil
is said to have died, and an ancient fortress, which is half crumbling
walls and half dwelling-houses, and is surrounded, like the city wall,
by a moat, now converted into a vegetable garden. As I was peacefully
walking along the rampart, intending to surround the town, a soldier
motioned me back, as if it had been time of war. I offered to stroll
over the drawbridge into the mouldy fortress. A soldier objected. As I
turned away, he changed his mind, and offered to show me the interior.
But it was now my turn to decline; and I told him that, the idle impulse
passed, I would rather not go in. Of all human works I care the least
for fortresses, except to look at from the outside; it is not worth
while to enter one except by storming it or strolling in, and when one
must ask permission the charm is gone. You get sick to death almost of
these soldier-folk who start up and bar your way with a bayonet wherever
you seek to walk in Europe. No, soldier; I like the view from the wall
of the moat, and the great fields of ripe wheat waving in the sweet
north-wind, but I don't care for you or your fortress.
Brindisi is clean, but dull. Yet it was characteristically Italian
that I should encounter in the Duomo square a smart, smooth-tongued
charlatan, who sold gold chains at a franc each,—which did not seem
to be dear; and a jolly, almost hilarious cripple, who, having no use
of his shrunken legs, had mounted himself on a wooden bottom, like a
cheese-box, and, by the aid of his hands, went about as lively as a
centipede.
I stepped into the cathedral; a service was droning on, with few
listeners. On one side of the altar was a hideous, soiled wax image of
the dead Christ. Over the altar, in the central place of worship, was
a flaring figure of the Virgin, clad in the latest mode of French
millinery, and underneath it was the legend, Viva Maria. This was the
salutation of our return to a Christian land: Christ is dead; the Virgin
lives!
Here our journey, which began on the other coast of Italy in November,
ends in June. In ascending the Nile to the Second Cataract, and making
the circuit of the Levant, we have seen a considerable portion of the
Moslem Empire and of the nascent Greek kingdom, which aspires, at least
in Europe, to displace it. We have seen both in a transition period, as
marked as any since the Saracens trampled out the last remnants of
the always sickly Greek Empire. The prospect is hopeful, although the
picture of social and political life is far from agreeble. But for
myself, now that we are out of the Orient and away from all its squalor
and cheap magnificence, I turn again to it with a longing which I cannot
explain; it is still the land of the imagination.