Part 20

Last night I dined at the Wyses’, and met General Church, Mr. Finlay, Mr. Elliot, Secretary of Legation, Captain Lambert, R.N. (of the ‘Scylla,’ which lies in the Piræus), who was at Marsala when Garibaldi landed, and seems a fine hearty gallant sort of officer. An Austrian Secretary of Legation and an Attaché made up the party. Captain Lambert spoke of the harbour. Phalerum they say is the right harbour, it is so hard to tack into Piræus. General Church spoke of seventeen tacks. But there is no trade at the back. Patras, said Sir T. Wyse, is the only place with a _back_ to it; _i.e._ currants.

The weather has become perfectly fine, the sun hot, but a fresh breeze blowing. In a fortnight, they say, all will be brown. Just now the land is green with barley, into which they turn the horses, partly cutting it, partly leaving them to feed on as it stands, only shackling them.

This place is very pleasant to stay at, in the lounging way. I walked to Colonus and the Academy, about a mile and a half away, going north-east towards the Cephissus and the ‘Olive Grove.’ You are let into a farm-house garden, with all sorts of fruits and vegetables, quince-trees, pomegranate-trees, orange-trees, &c.; and here also are a few remains. I suppose the trees have never grown well up again since Sylla cut them down.[17] There are a few old olives, and about the farm newer trees, planes chiefly. Then you cross a bare field to the bare hill or mound of Colonus, where are two marble monuments to Ottfried Müller and to Lenormant. The view of the Acropolis is very good.

In the evening I rambled about, along the Ilissus, picked some maiden-hair from the rocks over the springs of Calirrhoë, where we found women washing and donkeys drinking, and so through some beer and wine gardens along the water-side to the Stadium, a great hollow in the hill-side where the foot-races were.

Tuesday, April 30.

Yesterday I went to Phyle, up on the hills of Parnes; took four hours on horseback to get there, and nearly four hours back. This is Greek Passion Week, and horses are not easy to get; my guide had a very poor one. Phyle is romantic enough; a very steep, rough horse-way leads to it, and on one side of it, to Thebes. It is a fort with three sides remaining, and two towers, and from the plateau you see Hymettus and the plain with the Acropolis far below. The road up rounds a shoulder of Ægialus, and then gets wilder. You see goats about, nearly all black. The whole of the mountains are pine-wooded--a light-green with a stone-pine head; they spring from the bare rock. There is a thin herbage in places, with bare shrubs; the biggest is the πρῑνος, with little prickly holly-leaves, quite red when young as now, and very close; numerous flowers at Phyle, cistus, thyme in blossom. The young pines look soft of foliage: I mistook them for deciduous trees.

To-day Mr. Finlay called, and took me to the University Library, and to the βουλευτήριον, where the βουλή were sitting, and apparently at work. There are fifty βουλευταί. Also we saw the Chamber, who seemed wholly idle. Thence to the new Cathedral, not yet finished, and very gorgeous (for so small a place) inside; thence to his house, where the visit ended by some Scotch marmalade, of which one takes a spoonful and a glass of water.

At the library I saw a new Greek translation of Plutarch, and of Homer, in verse. I also saw Mr. Finlay’s Attic coins, from the στατήρ to the lowest.

May 1.

This morning I was called at ten minutes to four; got some café-au-lait and went down to Piræus, and embarked on a Greek steamer, which at six started for Kalamaki, a little landing-place on the Isthmus, whence the road runs over, four miles long, to New Corinth. As I started, on the road to Piræus, the light of sunrise (about 5.20) came over Lycabettus, the sun actually rising over Hymettus with the Parthenon between. People were then in the fields. Acrocorinthus was visible pretty nearly all the way, and latterly the mountains of Phocis, clouded, over the low Isthmus; Megara just beyond, and Salamis very noticeable. Old Corinth, or New Corinth the elder, nearly on the site of the antique, was wholly destroyed by earthquake in 1857. To New Corinth, which is on the sea-side of the Gulf of Corinth, the passengers are taken by omnibus and cart, and embark for Patras. At Kalamaki I mounted a horse with a Greek saddle, the most dreadful invention in the world, which made it hopeless to reach Corinth and return before the steamer returned to Athens; however, we went on as well as the saddle allowed, some way up towards Acrocorinthus, a wild country, with a great deal of low pine about, and with old quarries, and saw from the higher part[18] the Gulf of Corinth stretching away to the mountains of Phocis, heavily clouded, to the northern side of it. When we got back it was just beginning to rain, and it has rained hard ever since. I was fain to go into the cabin, where I found however a resource in a Greek army doctor (in full uniform, I only found out that he was a doctor afterwards). He spoke French well enough. This rain is said to be very unusual. The morning from five o’clock was delightful. Kalamaki is just at the north-east extremity of the low level of the Isthmus, out of which Acrocorinthus rises, almost by itself, and which is filled up, north and south, as the space widens, by high mountains.

May 2.

The town is full of people buying and selling for πάσχα, _e.g._ lambs; there are flocks all about, on the Areopagus, and also the outskirts. Wax candles also, beside the usual marketings.

May 4.

Yesterday was Friday, in Greek παρασκυή, and yesterday in particular, Good Friday, ἡ μεγάλη παρασκευή, a great fast, and everybody buying his lamb for the Pascha of Sunday.

On Thursday I went up Pentelicus; left this at eight, got up by twelve. The view was clouded to the west and north-west, but Eubœa and the Euripus and Marathon lay like a map below, also South Attica, with Andros, Tenos, Ceos, and over Eubœa, less distinct, Scyros. The upper slopes of the mountain are clad with arbutus chiefly, just going out of flower. There are marble quarries for a great part of the way up, and one with a great grotto or cave richly adorned with the common English maiden-hair, and with a little of the true Capillus veneris.

Coming down I stopped to lunch beside the monastery of the Pan-agia; bread and cheese and oranges, by a beautiful gushing water in a sort of cup out of a wall, tall white poplars overhead, olives, and also large dwarf oaks (fifteen feet high or more), the first I have seen. I looked into the monastery court, in the middle of which is a huge bay-tree. Mr. Psyllis, a Greek gentleman, a senator, whom Mr. Finlay had introduced me to, happened to be there; he was spending his holiday there with some of his family, so he talked to me, and presently gave me coffee, which Miss Victoria, his daughter, presented on a tray to us, retiring after so doing. Then he took me up a little outside staircase to a little set of rooms, and presented me to his relation, the abbot or ἡγούμενος, Cyrillus Δελγέριος, a fine-looking elderly man, who lives there in two small rooms; one a sort of reception-room, where sometimes the king and queen come, and therefore adorned with their pictures (two common engravings); the other his bedroom and sitting-room, where he had a little wood fire. He also asked me to take coffee, so presently his domestic made it at this fire, and presented it, with that well-known Turkish sweetmeat, but made at Syra, and much nicer, and with a glass of water. You take first sweetmeat; secondly, coffee; thirdly, water. The monastery is very rich.

Last night (May 3) was a great night. The people at eight crowd to the churches. In every church a bier is laid out with a great cloth over it, and a figure or representation (sometimes a little embroidered map) of the Crucifixion. The people all come in (in the chief church between files of soldiers) and kiss the figure, and then perhaps go out. About half-past nine the priests take up the bier and carry it out, and the people follow after with lighted candles (stéariques), and go all about the streets. The chief procession had a band of military music at the head, and lots of soldiers, then some banners and crosses, and then, a little way behind, the priests and the bier. All the streets are filled with the people carrying lighted stéariques, and blue and red lights were let off.

To-day is pretty quiet, only they are still buying lambs, which are all to be killed, poor things, this evening.

Sunday, May 5.

The paschal lambs were very generally sacrificed in the course of yesterday afternoon. About 4 P.M. I met their skins walking about on the backs of sundry collectors of lambskins here, as of hareskins with you, and on the doors of the houses one might see here and there in the byeways a skin ready for delivery.

In the afternoon I went up to the Parthenon; the effect of interval and depth in the columniation is far greater than in any picture or imitation; then out on a road towards Phalerum with very good views of the Parthenon. Coming back I met the lambskins on the backs of skin-collectors, and hanging at doors, in the byeways by the Lantern of Demosthenes.

I was tired and a little out of sorts at night, and so did not sit up to see the hullabaloo at 12 P.M., when the king and queen, after attending divine service, come out upon a platform and show themselves, in honour of the great event, and in token that ὁ Χριστὸς ἀνέστη. This morning I was disturbed by worse than heathen Greeks howling away under my window in a yard, and looking forth beheld four paschal lambs over the embers, stuck through with poles, and the heathen turning them, and singing strange words, among which I thought I could occasionally detect ‘Yesous.’

Wednesday, May 8.

The weather continues uncertain. Yesterday I went in a boat from Piræus out into Salamis Bay, past Psyttalea, and then back and round the whole headland of Piræus, to see the little harbour on the other side, and the walls, of which very nearly all the circuit can be traced by blocks still remaining. The two harbours, Munychia and Zea, are pretty little coves, both very small, Munychia extremely so, with jetties of stone closing its mouth; it is shallow and deserted. The rain came on, so I came up by omnibus to the ἄστι, where the dances that should have been, round the Temple of Theseus, were much interrupted.

Thursday, May 9.

In the afternoon, yesterday, I went to the Acropolis from three to six, and looked at the sculptures on the left hand as you go in. Note the minute comparative size of the Erechtheum, which is also a good deal lower in site than the Parthenon. I suppose the figures are perhaps seven feet high. This small size shows very well from the terrace under Lycabettus, where you see both.

I and two other gentlemen have agreed to go to Nauplia by steamer on the 12th, and to ride thence to Corinth, returning by steamer from the Isthmus on the 15th. The weather is now beautiful, and seems to promise favourably. New snow seems to have fallen on some of the hills near the Isthmus. We are to go with Spiro Adamopulos, a well-known trustworthy guide.

Pray can you guess what a φεσοπωλεῖον is, or a καπνοπωλεῖον or finally, a πνενματοπωλεῖον? there are a great many in Athens, but there are even more καφφενεῖα. You know of course a ὑποδηματάποιος, but what is a ῥαπτής? and should you know an omnibus as a λεωφορεῖον?

Saturday, May 11.

I dined yesterday at the Hills’, at three, meeting Miss Bremer, who has been living here three years. She is a little shrunk old lady, very quiet. In the evening I went to a mixed soirée, consisting chiefly of Greeks, from nine to near twelve; music, with two professionals, Italians. I talked a little to Miss Bremer, and to a Mr. and Mrs. and Miss Dragoumi. Mrs. and Miss Dragoumi had come with us in the boat: he conducts a Greek review. The music was good, I think; they get pianos from Vienna, and have some good masters. They say the Greek girls marry at seventeen; they learn French and music very well. Everybody learns French; a good many, English, to read; everybody, old Greek, to read a little.

Thursday, May 16.

I have got back, a little tired, but no worse. We had a beautiful sail by steamer to Nauplia on Sunday; it is a filthy place, and we left it gladly at six on Monday, on horseback; saw the ruins of Tiryns, Τίρυνθά τε τειχιόεσσαν, and stopped half an hour at Argos, after a ride of seven miles. It was by this time nine o’clock, and very hot; and we didn’t go up the Acropolis, but rode off, and in about an hour and a half reached our halting-place below Mycenæ, remains of walls on some bare rocky ground a mile above being visible as we rode up. We lunched under a tree, almost the only tree visible, and then went up, riding. The Tomb,[19] or Treasury, is _extremely_ remarkable, so also are the other ruins, the Gate and the Wall. Thence back by another course to the road, and shortly into a pass, the τρητός, which became wooded, with shrubs, and had a pleasant stream. So into a fine upland among hills, then down into an open valley, or plain among hills, where we saw the three columns of Nemea; then down to them, and back over the hill-side, lower down to our former line, and so down a water-course to another little plain, to four houses among some willows--one a small barrack for some ten soldiers; one a little cook and coffee shop; one, I suppose, a little farm, and a sort of granary place behind the shop, with a room fitted up over one part of the granary for strangers. Here we lodged, and next day went on to Corinth; but here rain came on, and we saw no view. We slept at Kalamaki on the east side of the Isthmus, and came on yesterday. I go to-day to Constantinople, and shall return on the 31st.

_To the same._

Constantinople: Sunday, May 19, 10 A.M.

We arrived here this morning at half-past four, and landed between six and seven; it was raining all the time, so that the far-famed first view was nil for us. But our voyage otherwise was prosperous, fair and fine all the way; the moon and stars bright over the isles of Marmora when we went to bed last night.

The steamer only left Piræus at 3 P.M. on Friday. We passed under Cape Colonna, and saw the temple very well about 5.30 P.M.; passed then through the strait between the southern point of Eubœa and the northern point of Andros: the former is known as Capo d’Oro, _i.e._ Caphareus, where Minerva drowned Ajax the Lesser. Night fell as we left Eubœa; and when I came on deck at 6.30 A.M. yesterday, we had Lesbos, a long range of mountains, on the immediate right; and the coast of Asia, south of the Troad, on the right bow. An aged modern Greek pointed out to me a small thing on the horizon, almost straight ahead, a little to the left of our course, which he said was Tenetho, ‘bello paese, buon vino, buon’ e forte.’ Some little after we passed it, and several French savans began to quote, ‘Est in conspectu,’ rather reminding one of ‘As in præsenti.’ We went in between Tenedos or Tenetho (a desert-looking island still, but with one little corner occupied by a little town, with a fort and three minarets) and the Troad, and at this crisis were summoned to breakfast, but recovered (most of us) the deck in time to see the actual plain of Troy, and the entrance of the Dardanelles. There should have appeared three tumuli at the turn, but I could not well make them out. The embouchure of the Simois, just above the town, lets you look up into the plain, backed, many miles off, by Mount Ida.

And so up the Dardanelles, which were crowded with vessels taking advantage of the south wind, and so to Dardanelles (the Turkish town so called), where we stop, to obtain permission to go on. Here are the castles and the consuls, and H.M.S. ‘Melpomene,’ having just, as I now learn, brought Lord Dufferin from Beyrout; and one hears that the Sultan is very ill and likely to die, which on arriving here one learns is all a lie. Then past Sestos and Abydos, and the strait gradually widens till at Gallipoli, where the French and English armies encamped, it opens into the Sea of Marmora. Lampsacus is on the right, a little before Gallipoli on the left. Ægospotami I couldn’t quite make out. The Sea of Marmora, also, was full of shipping, most in full sail for Constantinople, some also beating down, outward bound.

May 20.

Another wet day! Was there ever such a disaster? We are to have the firman to see St. Sophia on Wednesday; to-morrow we are to do the walls; Thursday, Scutari; Friday, Sweet-Waters; Saturday, the Bosphorus. But the place is one requiring blue sky and bright sun, and there is no promise of either. The hotel is costly, but comfortable in its way, if one only had not to stay in it altogether.

May 21, 6.30 P.M.

We waited because of heavy clouds this morning for more than an hour, and then mounted our horses, and set out just in time for a heavy shower, but before getting quite wet we were across the bridge of boats, and under shelter in the bazaar, through whose covered arcades we paced on horseback, between silks and shawls, &c., with great imperturbability. When we got to the end, the shower was over, and passing the Mosque of Sultan Bajazet, and under the Seraskierat tower, we went right ahead through strange Turkish lanes with pavements worse than execrable, and in about two hours from starting reached the ancient citadel of the Seven Towers, still all entire. There, under some trees, we dismounted, and with some trouble got admittance into the court, full of trees and shrubs of natural growth. The trees are here more northern than in Greece--ashes, a sort of lime, planes not abundant, wild figs, and the cypresses, which I suppose are almost all planted; the cemeteries, of course, are perfect forests of them. So up to the parapet, and up a tower for the view; the Sea of Marmora here, the city there--a very fine view; then out and along the outside of the ancient walls, for a long way, to a café at the Adrianople gate; then inside to Belisarius’s castle, and on foot through a house full of Jews (seven or eight girls pulling at us for baksheesh) to a parapet, for another view of the Golden Horn. Thence through a horrible Jews’ quarter, and a not much better Greek quarter, across to the Patriarchal Church, and so along the Golden Horn shore, but separated from it by houses, to our former bridge, and so across to Pera and home, 11 A.M. to 6 P.M.

May 23.

Yesterday, with some rain and some fatigue, we did the Seraglio (French engravings and French goût), Kiosk of Amurath II. (better), St. Irene, St. Sophia, the Mosque of Ahmed (all white, except some blue China tiles, beautiful courtyard and fountains), the Hippodrome, and a Tomb of Sultan Mahmoud--all this under the protection of the firman, and in a party of nearly twenty strangers. Sultan Mahmoud’s is a sort of conservatory tomb--large windows all round, with white curtains, light and airy, and high-domed roof. The Sultan is buried there, with his wife, sister, and four daughters.

The Seraglio was a good deal below one’s expectations; St. Sophia certainly beyond mine. The amplitude of the dome is very impressive; it is a sort of Pantheon exalted into a Monotheon. Michael Angelo ought to have seen it.

How many times in the course of the day’s work we had to pull off boots and shoes and put on slippers, I can’t dare to say. The weather is still unsettled. The Bithynian Olympus is one long range of snow-covered Alp. Till yesterday we had a fire in the sitting-room, and yesterday we missed it. I have found great solace from a terrace on the roof, which gives a tolerable view of the Strait, and the Seraglio point, and Scutari, and the hills across the end of the Sea of Marmora, and the snowy Olympus overtopping them.

May 24, 10 A.M.

This, you know, is the Mahometan Sunday, and the Sultan goes to mosque, and we are to go and stare at him on his way. Mosque is at twelve o’clock, and we start at eleven.

I dined yesterday with Dr. Beretta, who is a most amiable kind man, but first I went with him to see Elizabeth Kondaxaky, the Cretan sibyl, who prophesies, fortunately in English, as well as Greek, and other tongues, whereof she has the gift. I have not exactly summed up the result of her prophecies, but she seems to be for England and Turkey--the latter as ‘a necessary evil,’ and the former as the natural protector of necessary evils.

May 26.

On Friday we went to see the Sultan go to mosque, which he did in his caïque of twenty oars or more. We were received into the house of Halil Bey, a profane Frank-mannered Turk, with windows looking, some upon the Bosphorus, where the caïque passed by, and some upon the court of the mosque, where the Sultan disembarked, so we saw the poor creature admirably; he looks quite ‘the sick man.’ When he got on shore, a sort of chant was set up, interpreted to us, as ‘O Sultan! trust not in yourself; there is God above, who is greater than you,’ which was not saying very much.

Then I left my companions and went back to the hotel, and then over to Scutari with Dr. Pincoff, and saw all Scutari, Barrack and General Hospitals, and F. N.’s own tower, and rooms, and everything, of which you shall hear when I return.

We went by steamer up the Bosphorus, to Buyukdere, and up a hill to see the Black Sea.

Sunday, 5 P.M.

We have been to see the dancing dervishes, really not an unedifying spectacle in the way of a divine service. ‘O God, what a wonderful Creator Thou art! Thou hast made so many thousand human beings, black and white; and whom Thou pleasest, black or white, Thou canst raise to be distinguished.’ To such words and other such, chanted with musical instruments accompanying, twenty men, in presence of their chief, in solemn silence, go twirling about with extended arms and spinning long petticoats. ‘O God, what a wonderful Creator Thou art!’ &c., &c. Adieu.

_To C. E. Norton, Esq._

London: July 4, 1861.

On coming back from abroad ten days ago I received two letters from you, one of which I had received by copy from my wife at Athens. Many thanks for them; they were very interesting, and I hope you will not be discouraged by my brief acknowledgments from writing further. I am still invalided, and am to go abroad again the day after to-morrow. I have achieved a good deal already, having seen Athens and Constantinople. I was half tempted to come over to pay you the visit you so kindly proposed, but I should have had to return early in September, and I hope some year to spend a September on your side. I have just made a call on a former acquaintance in America, Miss E. H., of Concord, who brought me a letter from Emerson moreover. She tells me that in New England, she believes, people do not expect that the Southern States will ever be brought back into the Union, and that it is not the object simply to make them return; it being indeed hardly possible that the States, North and South, should ever again live together in union, but that the war is rather in vindication of the North and its rights, which have been trampled upon by the South. Is this true, in your judgment? Certainly it does seem hardly conceivable that South Carolina should ever return. On what terms then would the North be willing to make peace, and what conditions would it require _in limine_ before entering upon the question of separation?