Part 18

Abreast of Paxo, on the mainland, is the small village of Parga. The place has its own tragic history connected with its cession to the Turks in 1815. But I am afraid that its principal association in my mind is the frivolous one of a roaring chorus, "Robbers all at Parga!" This song may be as much of a libel as that bold ballad concerning the beautiful town at the eastern end of Lake Erie; the ladies of that place are not in the habit of "coming out to-night, to dance by the light of the moon," and in the same way there may never have been any robbers worth speaking of at Parga. It is Hobhouse who tells the story. "In the evening preparations were made for feeding our Albanians. After eating, they began to dance round the fire to their own singing with an astonishing energy. One of their songs begins, 'When we set out from Parga, there were sixty of us.' Then comes the chorus: 'Robbers all at Parga! Robbers all at Parga!' As they roared out this stave, they whirled round the fire, dropped to and rebounded from their knees, and again whirled round in a wild circle, repeating it at the top of their voices:

"'Robbers all at Parga! Robbers all at Parga!'"

At Parga we met the Byronic legend, which from this point hangs over the whole Ionian Sea. Parga is not far from the castle of Suli, and with the word "Suliote" we are launched aloft into the resplendent realm of Byron's poetry, which seems as beautiful and apparition-like as the Oberland peaks viewed from Berne--shining cliffs, so celestially and impossibly fair, far up in the sky. (We may note, however, in passing, that these lofty limits are, after all, as real as a barn-yard, or as an afternoon sewing society.) The country near Parga is described at length in the second canto of "Childe Harold."

The third island of the Ionian group is Santa Maura, the Leucadia of the ancients. It looks like a chain of mountains set in the sea. Here there are earthquakes, as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu would have expressed it. The story is that at Santa Maura and at Zante there is a severe shock once in twenty years, and a "small roll" twice in every three months. It is at least true that slight earthquakes are not uncommon, and that the houses are built to resist them, with strong beams crossing from side to side to hold the walls together, so that the interiors look like the cabins of a ship. The rolling motion, when it comes, must make this resemblance very vivid. The impression of Santa Maura which remains in my own mind, however, does not concern itself with earthquakes, unless, indeed, one means moral ones. I see a long, lofty promontory ending in a silvery headland. I see it flushed with the rose-tints of sunset, high above a violet sea. Of course I was looking for it; every one looks for the rock from which dark Sappho flung herself in her despair. But even without Sappho it is a striking cliff; it rises perpendicularly from deep water, and it is so white that one fancies that it must be visible even upon the darkest night. All day its towering opaline crest serves as a beacon from afar. The temple of Apollo which once crowned its summit can still be traced in sculptured fragments, though there are no marble columns like those that gleam across the waves from Sunium. "Leucadia's far-projecting rock of woe," Byron calls it. But it does not look woful. One fancies that exaltation must flood the soul of the human creature who springs to meet Death from such a place. The memory of the Greek poetess has nothing to do with these reflections, unless one refers to the ladies who are announced to the public from time to time as "the modern Sappho," in which case one might suggest to them the excellent facilities the rock affords. As to the greatest of women of letters, I do not know that there is anything more to say about her in the language of the United States. If she had flourished and perished last year, M. Jules Lemaitre (her name would have been Leocadie, probably) would doubtless have written an article about her: "The career, literary and other, of Mademoiselle Leocadie, a ete des plus distinguees, bien qu'un peu tapageuse."

As the steamer crossed from Santa Maura to Cephalonia we had a clear view of little Ithaca, the Ithaca which Ulysses loved, "not because it was broad, but because it was his own." Except Paxo, Ithaca is the smallest of the sister islands. The guide-book declares "No steamer touches at Ithaca, but there is frequent communication by caique." This announcement, like others from the same authority, is false, though it may have been true thirty years ago. The very steamer that carried us stopped regularly at the suitors' island upon her return voyage to Corfu. We could not take this voyage; therefore we were free to wish (selfishly) that this particular one, among the many deceptive statements which we had read, might have been veracious. For "communication by caique" is surely a phrase of delight. It brings up not only the Ionian, but the AEgean Sea; it carries the imagination onward to the Bosporus itself.

Sir William Gell and Dr. Schliemann between them have discovered at Ithaca all the sites of the Odyssey, even to the stone looms of the nymphs. Other explorers, with colder minds, have decided that at least the author of the poem must have had a close acquaintance with the island, for many of his descriptions are very accurate. We need no guide for Penelope; we can materialize her, as the spiritualists say, for ourselves. Hers is a very modern character. One knows without the telling that she had much to say, day by day, about her sufferings, her feelings, her duty, and her conscience--above all things, her conscience. Her confidantes in that upper room were probably extremely familiar with her point of view, which was that if she should choose any one of her suitors, or if she should cruelly drive the whole throng away, suicide on an overwhelming scale would inevitably be the result. It would amount to a depopulation of the entire archipelago! Would any woman be justified in causing such widespread despair as that?

The next island, Cephalonia, is the largest of the Ionian group. There is much to say about it. But I must not say it here. The truth is that one sails past these sisters as slippery Ulysses sailed past the sirens; they are so beautiful that one must tie one's hands to the mast (or the bench) to keep them from writing a volume on the subject. But I must permit myself a word about Sir Charles Napier. Sir Charles was Governor of Cephalonia during the period of the British Protectorate, and officially he was a subordinate of the Lord High at Corfu. One of these temporary kings appears to have felt some jealousy regarding the vigorous administration of his Cephalonian lieutenant. It was not possible to censure his acts; they were all admirable. It was permissible, however, to censure a mustache, which at that time was considered a wayward appendage, not strictly in accordance with the regulations. Ludicrous as it may appear, it is nevertheless true that this sapient Lord High actually issued an order saying that the offending ornament must be shaved off. The witty lieutenant's answer was conveyed in four words: "Obeyed--to a hair." Napier constructed good roads throughout his rough, mountainous domain. "I wish I could be buried at the little chapel on the top of the mountain," he said to one of his friends. "At the last day many a poor mule's soul will say a good word for me, I know, when they remember what the old road was." One regrets that this wish was not carried out. But as for the souls of the poor mules, I for one am sure that they will remember him.

At Zante, for some unexplained cause, the classic associations suddenly vanished: Homer faded, Theocritus followed him; Pliny and Strabo disappeared. The later memories, too: Lord Guildford and his university, Byron and his Suliotes, Napier and his mules--all these left us. We were back in the present; we must have some Zante flowers and Zante trinkets; we thought of nothing but going ashore. By pushing a bench, with semi-unconscious violence, against the Greek, we succeeded in making him move a little, so that we could rise. Then we landed (but not in a caique), and went roaming through the yellow town. Zante is the most cheerful-looking place I have ever seen. The bay ripples and smirks; it is so pretty that it knows it is pretty, and it smirks accordingly. The town, stretching, with its gayly tinted houses, round a level semicircle at the edge of the water, smiles, as one may say, from ear to ear. And this joyful expression is carried up the hill, by charming gardens, orange groves, and vineyards, to the Venetian fort at the top, which, as we saw it in the brilliant sunshine, with the birds flying about it, seemed to be throwing its cap into the sky with a huzza.

"O hyacinthine isle! O purple Zante! Isola d'oro! Fior di Levante!"

sang Poe, borrowing his chimes this time, however, from an Italian song--"Zante, Zante, fior di Levante!" This flower of the Levant exports not flowers, but fruit. The currants, which had vaguely presented themselves at Santa Maura and Cephalonia, came now decisively to the front. One does not think of these little berrylettes (I am certainly hunted by "ette") as ponderous. But when one beholds tons of them, cargoes for ships, one regards them with a new respect. It was probably the brisk commercial aspect of the currants which made the port look so modern. All the Ionian Islands except Corfu export currants, but Zante throws them out to the world with both hands. I must confess that I have always blindly supposed (when I thought of it at all) that the currant of the plum-pudding was the same fruit as the currant of our gardens--that slightly acrid red berry which grows on bushes that follow the lines of back fences--bushes that have patches of weedy ground under them where hens congregate. I fancied that by some process unknown to me, at the hands of persons equally unknown (perhaps those who bring flattened raisins from grapes), these berries were dried, and that they then became the well-known ornament of the Christmas-cake. It was at Zante that my shameful ignorance was made clear to me. Here I learned that the dried fruit of commerce is a dwarf grape, which has nothing in common with currant jelly. Its English name, currant, is taken from the French "raisin de Corinthe," or Corinth grape, a title bestowed because the fruit was first brought into notice at Corinth. We have stolen this name in the most unreasonable way for our red berry. Then, to make the confusion worse, as soon as we have put the genuine currants into our puddings and cakes, we turn round and call them "plums"! The real currant, the dwarf grape of Corinth, is about as large as a gooseberry when ripe, and its color is a deep violet-black; the vintage takes place in August. It is not a hardy vine. It attains luxuriance, I was told, only in Greece; and even there it is restricted to the northern Peloponnesus, the shores of the Gulf of Corinth, and the Ionian Islands. M. About, confronted with the 195,000,000 pounds of currants which were exported in 1876, dipped his French pen afresh, and wrote: "Plum-pudding and plum-cake are typical pleasures of the English nation, pleasures whose charms the Gaul cannot appreciate." He adds that if other countries should in time be converted to "these two pure delights," Greece would not need to cultivate anything else; she would become rich "enormement."

Zante is the sixth of the islands, and as the steamer leaves her, still smiling gayly over her dimpling bay, it seems proper to cast at least one thought in the direction of the seventh sister, upon whom we are now turning our backs. For "We are seven" the islands declare as persistently as the little cottage girl, though the seventh has gone away, if not to heaven, at least to the very end of the Peloponnesus. Why Cerigo should have been included in the Ionian group I do not know; it lies off the southernmost point of Greece, near Cape Malea, and might more reasonably be classed with the Cyclades, or with Crete. Birthplace of Aphrodite, Cythera of the ancients, though it is, I have never met any one who has landed there in actual fact (I do not include dreams). People going by sea to Athens from Naples, or from Brindisi, pass it in their course, and if they read their Murray or their Baedeker, to say nothing of other literature, no doubt their thoughts dwell upon the goddess of love for a moment as they pass her favorite shore. A photograph of the minds of travellers, as their eyes rest upon this celebrated isle, would be interesting. To mention (with due respect) typical names only, what would be the vision of Mr. Herbert Spencer, or of Prince Bismarck? of the Archbishop of Canterbury, or of Ibsen? of General Booth, Tolstoi, or Miss Yonge? We can each of us think of a list which would rouse our curiosity in an acute degree. To come down to an unexciting level, I know what the apparition in my own mind would be--that picture in the Uffizi Gallery at Florence: Botticelli's "Birth of Venus." I should inevitably behold the fifteenth-century goddess coming over the waves in her very small shell; I should see her high cheek-bones, her sad eyes, her discontented mouth, her lank form with the lovely slender feet, and her long, thick hair; and at last I should know (what I do not know now) whether she is beautiful or ugly. On the shore, too, would appear that galloping woman, who, clothed in copiously gathered garments which are caught up and tied in the wrong places, brings in haste a flowered robe to cover her melancholy mistress. Such are the idle fancies that come as one watches the track of churned water, like a broad ribbon, stretching from the steamer's stern--water forever fleeing backward as the boat advances. Scallops of foam sweep out on each side; their cool fringe dips under a little as the wavelet which comes from the opposite direction lifts its miniature crest and curls over in a graceful sweep.

The voyage northward to Missolonghi is beautiful. The sea was dotted with white wings. The Greeks are bold sailors; one never observes here the timidity, the haste to seek refuge anywhere and everywhere, which is so conspicuous along the Riviera and the western coast of Italy. Throughout the Ionian archipelago, and it was the same later among the islands of the AEgean, it was inspiring to note the smallest craft, far from land, dashing along under full sail, leaning far over as they flew.

Missolonghi is a small abortive Venice, without the gondolas; it is situated on a lagoon, and a causeway nearly two miles long leads to it, across the shallow water. Vague and unimportant as it is upon its muddy shore, it was the soul of the Greek revolution. It has been through terrible sieges. During one of these Marco Botzaris was in command, and his grave is outside the western gate. A few years ago all the school-boys in America could chant his requiem; perhaps they chant it still. After the death of Botzaris, Byron took five hundred of the chieftain's needy Suliotes, and formed them into a body-guard, giving them generous pay. This is but one of many instances. It is the fashion of the day to paint Byron in the darkest colors. But when you stand in the squalid, unhealthy little street where he drew his last breath you realize that he came here voluntarily; that he offered his life if need be, and, in the end, gave it, to the cause which appealed to him; he did not stay safely at home and write about it. He died nearly seventy years ago, but at Missolonghi he is very real and very present still--with his red coat, and his bravery and penetration. Napier said that, of all the Englishmen who came to assist the Greek revolution, Byron was the one who comprehended best the character of the modern Greek--"all the rest expected to find Plutarch's men." It is another fashion of the moment to put aside as of small account the glittering cantos which stirred the English-speaking world in the early days of this century. But it is not while the wild, beautiful Albanian mountains are rising above your head that you think meanly of them. "Remember all the splendid things he said of Greece," says some one. When you are in Greece, you do remember.

The only brigands we saw we met at Patras. Missolonghi is on the northern shore of the bay; to reach Patras the steamer crosses to the Peloponnesus side. It was a dark night, and I don't know where we stopped, but it must have been far out from land. The barges which came to meet us were rough craft, with loose boards for seats and water in the bottom. We obtained places in one of them, and after twenty minutes of pitching up and down, shouting, tumbling about, and splashing, the crew bent to their big oars, and we started. Swaying lights glimmered through the darkness here and there; they came from vessels at anchor in the roadstead. We plunged and rolled, apparently making no progress; but at last a long, wet breakwater, dimly seen, appeared on the right, and finally we perceived the lights of the landing-place, which is the water-side of one of the squares of the town. Our crew jumped out in the surf, and drew the heavy boat up to the steps of the embankment. Here were assembled the brigands. There were a hundred of them at least, all yelling. Probably they were astonished to see ladies landing from the Greek coaster. This was part of our original misconception in the selection of that steamer (a mistake, however, which had turned out to be such a picturesque success); but it was part also of a general error which came from our nationality. For we were natives of the one land on earth where to women is always accorded, without question, a first place. It had never occurred to us that we could be jostled. After Patras we were more careful (and more proud of our country than ever). But at the moment, as we were pulled first to the right by men who wished to carry us and our travelling-bags in that direction, and then to the left by others who had attacked the first party, felled them, and captured their prey--at the moment when we were closely pressed by a throng of wild-looking, dancing, shrieking figures, dressed in strange attire, and carrying pistols, it was not a little alarming. The fray had lasted six or seven minutes, and there were no signs of cessation, when there appeared on the edge of the throng a neatly dressed little man in spectacles. He made his way within, and rescued us by the simple process of repeating something that sounded like "La, la, la, _la_! La, la, la, _la_!" Breathless, freed, we stood, saved, in the square, while our preserver went back and captured our bags, bringing them out and depositing them gently, one after the other, on the ground by our side. We then waited until a handcart, trundled by a petticoated porter, appeared, when the little man led us quietly to the custom-house near by, where, after some delay, we obtained our luggage, which was piled upon the cart. Followed by this cart, we walked across the square to the hotel. Throughout the whole of this process, which lasted twenty minutes, the brigands surrounded us in a close, scowling circle that moved as we moved. When its line drew too near us the little man walked round the ring--"La, la, la, _la_! La, la, la, _la_!"--and it widened slightly, but only slightly. We reached refuge at last, and escaped into a lighted hall. It was a real escape, and the hotel seemed a paradise. It was not until the next day that we recognized it as a mortal inn, with the appearance of the well-known tepid soup in the dining-room; but the coffee was excellent. And this showed that there was a German influence somewhere in the house; it proved to emanate from our preserver, who was also the landlord, and an exile from the Rhine. I think he was homesick. But at least he had learned the dialect of his temporary abode, and also the way to treat the last remnants of the pirate and brigand days, as its spirit reappears now and then, though faintly, among the hangers-on of a Greek port town.

Though I have talked of brigands, for Greece as a whole, for the young nation, I have but one feeling--namely, admiration. The country, escaping at last from its bondage to Turkey, after a long and exhausting war, had everything to do and nothing to do it with. There was no agriculture, no commerce, no money, and only a small population; there were no roads, no schools, no industries or trades, and few men of education. (I quote the words of Mr. Shaw-Lefevre, written in 1891.) The Greeks have done much, and under the most unfavorable conditions. They will do more. The struggle upward of an intelligent and ambitious people is deeply interesting, and the effort in Greece appeals especially to Americans, because the country, in spite of its form of government, is a democracy.

When we left Patras we left the Ionian Sea, and I ought therefore to bring these slight records to a close. But it was the same blue water, after all, that was washing the shores of the long, lake-like gulf beyond, and the impression produced by its pure, early-world tint, lasts as far as Corinth; here one turns inland, and the next crested waves which one meets are AEgean. They rouse other sensations.

There is now a railroad from Patras to Athens. On the morning when we made the transit there was given to us for our sole use a saloon on wheels, which was much larger than the compartments of an English railway carriage, and smaller than an American parlor car. In its centre was a long table, and a cushioned bench ran round its four sides; broad windows gave us a wide view of the landscape as we rolled (rather slowly) along. The track follows the gulf all the way to Corinth, and we passed through miles of vineyards. But I did not think of currants here; they had been left behind at Zante. There is, indeed, only one thing to think of, and the heart beats quickly as Parnassus lifts its head above the other snow-clad summits. "The prophetess of Delphi was hypnotized, of course." This sudden incursion of modernity was due no doubt to the mode of our progress through this sacred country. We ought to have been crossing the gulf in a Phaeacian boat, which needs no pilot, or, at the very least, in a bark with an azure prow. But even upon an iron track, through utilitarian currant fields, the spell descends again when the second peak becomes visible at the eastern end of the bay.

"Not here, O Apollo! Are haunts meet for thee, But where Helicon breaks down In cliff to the sea--"

How many times, in lands far from here, had I read these lines for their mere beauty, without hope of more!

And now before my eyes was Helicon itself.

THE END

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