CHAPTER XVII--ADVENTURES IN QUARANTINE.--RHODES AND ITS MARVELS.

_Missing our Steamer--A Serious Dilemma--A Study of Faces--Making a Row and What Came of It--Under the Yellow Flag--Adventures of a Quarantined Traveller--Escaping the Plague--Mal-de-Mer--A Laughable Incident--Getting on Our Sea-Legs--Custom House Troubles--The Potency of “Backsheesh”--Oriental Fashions in New York--“Doing” a Custom House Inspector--A Curious Tradition--The “Lamb” as a Trade Mark--The Temple of Diana--One of the “Seven Wonders”--Singular Discoveries--A Horde of Scoundrels--The Island of Rhodes--The Colossus--A Wonderful City--The Knights of St. John--Their Exploits--Surrendering to the Turks._

WHEN I went on deck the morning after our departure from the Piraeus, the steamer was at anchor in the harbor of Syra. We expected to catch the French steamer that was to sail that afternoon for Smyrna and the Syrian coast, and I looked around for the _Tibre_, which was her name.

She was nowhere in sight, and a boatman who wanted a job was kind enough to inform me that she had come and gone twelve hours before.

Here was a pretty caldron of piscatorial productions. As the rest of our party made their appearance up the cabin stairs I broke the dreadful news to them, and made a careful study of their features as they received it. If there had been any profane persons in our number, I think a swearing band could have been organized without much difficulty.

Weren’t we on our ears and didn’t we go to the office of the company and make a row? {237}We had a printed time-table and demanded why the steamer sailed before her advertised time. The agent explained that he was very sorry, but the fact was the steamer did not touch at Naples on account of the quarantine there, and therefore she had reached Syra twenty-four hours ahead of time. There was nothing for her to do at Syra and no reason why she should wait, and so he had let her go.

We demanded a special steamer to take us to Smyrna, in season to overtake the _Tibre_, but the agent wouldn’t give it. We could hire one for one thousand dollars, but that was paying rather high for our passage, and we demurred.

The only thing left for us was to take a small steamer of the Austrian Lloyd’s that was to leave next day and might get us to Smyrna in season to catch the _Tibre_. The agent telegraphed the state of the case to the agent at Smyrna, and away we went for the other boat.

There she lay in the harbor, a little, old, paddle steamer, named the _Wien_, a wooden craft that had been running a quarter of a century. She did not look inviting externally. We wanted to go aboard and take a look at her cabins, but here was a difficulty. A yellow flag floated from her topmast. She was in quarantine, and if we once set foot on her we could not go ashore again in Syra. She had come from Trieste by way of Italy, and there was a five days’ quarantine in Greece against all ships from Italy. So we waited until about the time of her departure. She was stopping for the steamer with the mails from Trieste, and there were no less than four steamers in port waiting the same mails.

We took a lounge around the public square of Syra, and drank beer and coffee at a restaurant; then we took another lounge and more beer and coffee, and then we took a couple of carriages and drove to the interior of the Island, where there were some pretty orange groves and some very attractive country seats. Then we came back and drank some beer and coffee, and went on the steamboat--the steamer that brought us from the Piræus--to sleep.

Next morning we started for the same sort of excitements as on the day before, and just as we started, we saw the Trieste {238}steamer poking her nose around a headland and steaming toward the harbor. Then we gave up our projects, and prepared to transfer ourselves to the _Wien_.

She lay near the entrance to the harbor, and an ugly wind was blowing straight into the entrance. The wind wasn’t much for a steamer, though she rocked about considerably, but it was altogether different with a row boat, such as we engaged to transfer us. We made a contract for two boats, one for us and one for our baggage, for the sanitary reasons of the quarantine. The boat with our baggage was towed alongside by a rope about thirty feet long, and then a couple of men descended from the steamer and put the baggage on board. Then the boat was towed away again, and nobody could enter it until a plentiful supply of salt water had been thrown over it.

As for ourselves, we had gingerly work to get on board. Our boat went to the steamer’s gangway, and was held under it by means of hooks and ropes, but she was not allowed to touch it. The waves were short and choppy, and we had to watch our chances and jump one by one upon the gangway. The instant we touched it we were in quarantine, and so was everything about us. We got on board without accident, and then came the work of paying. The price had been fixed beforehand, and the boatman wanted his pay at starting, but we were firm in refusing. This was in accordance with our inflexible rule never to pay boatmen, hackmen, _et id oinne genus_, until their services were ended.

But there was reason in the request of the boatmen on this occasion, and we might have relaxed enough to pay him before getting on board the steamer. Had we paid in the boat he could have received the money directly from our hands without any nonsense. When we were all on board, one of our party went to the foot of the gangway and held out the stipulated napoleon. We and all our napoleons were infected the instant we came on board, and the boatman was obliged to receive his in a tin cup of salt water. And if the party who paid him had dropped overboard while leaning down, and the boatman had rescued him, the boat and all it contained would have gone into quarantine the {239}prescribed number of days. Such an event has occurred several times in Syra and other ports. In time of quarantine a man must be very careful about his movements.

The _Wien_ got away from Syra about four in the afternoon, and put out into a very rough sea. The lady of our party went to bed immediately, her husband didn’t feel very well, and two others of the party were as cheerful as a pair of chickens that have been caught in a thunder shower. The fifth member of the crowd knew he wouldn’t be seasick, but had no appetite worth mentioning, and I was left alone in my glory, to pace the deck or go below, as I pleased.

I haven’t been seasick for a reasonable number of years, and didn’t want to begin again at that time and place. I have a suspicion that I take a malicious delight in showing how well I can be when others around me are covering the sea with maledictions, and furnishing pleasure and undigested food to the fishes that follow in the wake of the ship.

To give an illustration of the way I can stand the rolling of the “deep and dark blue ocean,” let me relate one incident.

Several years ago I went on board a steamer at Civita Vecchia, for Genoa. When we left Leghorn there were about sixty passengers, as happy as though they had just returned from a wedding or a circus. When we got out to sea we struck into a Mediterranean squall, such as sometimes blows the strings out of a pair of laced gaiters, or shaves the hair from the back of a bull dog. Those passengers went below to study the interior construction of the ship. Among them was an Englishman, who told me he had made four voyages to China, and hadn’t been seasick since he was a boy. I was the only passenger that didn’t go below, and I eat my dinner alone and with an appetite that would terrify the keeper of a boarding house. My English friend was much disordered about the stomach, and when we got to Genoa it was all he could do to get himself on shore. I took care of his wife and carried her down the gangway and up again on shore, and was as polite as I knew how, and it was entire disinterestedness on my part, as I had never met her before, and her husband was a big fellow who could fight if he wanted to, {240}and, moreover, seasickness had given her a bedraggled appearance that was not calculated to incite love making to any alarming extent.

She looked as though somebody had run her through a patent clothes wringer and forgotten to shake her out afterwards.

As soon as the _Wien_ had left the harbor of Syra and got out to sea, she tossed about in a very lively way, and it was no joke to walk along her deck without falling. One needed to have as many legs as a spider or a caterpillar to keep himself straight, and when you were below deck, the creaking of the timbers was something surprising.

“As long as she creaks she holds,” is an old maxim of the mariners, and if it be true, there was never a holdinger ship than the _Wien_.

We passed Samos and Naxos and other islands of the Ægean Sea, and when the moon came out I propped and chocked myself into a corner on deck, and devoted the time to thinking about the siege of Troy and a dozen other things connected with the history of Greece.

Particularly did I think of the gold and silver things I had seen in Dr. Schliemann’s collection at Athens, things that were said to have come from the treasury chest of old King Priam, the same venerable oyster that fought Agamemnon and the other Kings of Greece.

They are dead now, every mother’s son of them, and it was a pleasure while looking at Priam’s personal property, to know “that the old fellow couldn’t come in to carry it off, and that no wandering heir could set up a Tichborne claim to it.” I read a great deal about Priam when I went to school; a man named Homer wrote something about him, and I got up quite an interest in Priam, and particularly in a young lady that they called Helen. Because somebody stole, or, as the pickpockets say, “raised” Helen, Troy was besieged and destroyed with all its palaces and other good houses.

We reached Smyrna about noon the day after leaving Syra, and found the _Tibre_ at anchor. There was a delay in leaving the _Wien_, a vexatious delay, of nearly an hour, just when time was very precious. The formalities of the Turkish ports are not {241}to be gone through in a hurry, as we found to our cost The doctor of the ship was rowed off to the health office to report everything correct. Then the Doctor of the Port, a Turkish official, with a good deal of bombast about him, was rowed out in his boat. The crew of the _Wien_ was ordered to form in line at the ship’s side, where the Doctor could see them. He surveyed them as carefully as he could at a distance of twenty feet, and without coming on board he pronounced the ship all right, and admitted her to _pratique_. And then what a scramble among the boatmen, and what a scene of confusion!

There was shouting in all the languages of the Levant, and there was an amount of crowding and pushing that ought to have thrown half of the boatmen into the water. They swore at each other, or at least the accent of what they said was very much like the accent of swearing in other lands, and they clambered up the sides of the ship like so many monkeys. We had taken time by the forelock by engaging a boatman and closing a bargain with him while waiting for _pratique_, as we thought it would save a few minutes, and was easier to do when the boats and men were ten or fifteen yards distant, than when the latter were crowding the {242}deck. We were to be taken to the _Tibre_ with our baggage, then to shore, and then back to the _Tibre_ again for a franc each.

On our way to the _Tibre_ we were intercepted by a boat of the Custom House; the official was smoking his pipe in the rear of his craft, and just gave a glance at our baggage, as if to note the number of pieces; he then extended his hand and pronounced the word “backsheesh!”

I, as paymaster of the party, gave him a franc, he waved his hand to indicate that we were a numerous party and were liberally supplied with baggage. I added a franc, he nodded assent as his fingers closed on it, and the “_formalites de la douane_” were finished.

I unhesitatingly assert that the Orient has the most pleasing Custom House arrangements I have ever seen. No trouble, no overhauling of baggage, no exhibition of your unwashed linen to a crowd of staring idlers, and no rumaging around generally in the places you desire should not be rumaged at all. A little “backsheesh” to the official and everything is satisfactory.

In Liverpool or New York, and likewise on the continent, you can sometimes buy your way through, but you often hit the wrong man, and then there is a row. You may attempt to bribe an honest man, (generally a very newly appointed official,) and then you come off badly. In Turkey you cannot make any such mistake, as the whole Custom House staff is on the make, and will take your bribes without hesitation.

I observe with pleasure, that our officials in America are learning something from the sleepy Orientals.

On my last trip home one of my fellow passengers had a lot of stuff that was liable to duty, and he determined to get it through, if possible, free of charge. So he packed his trunk, putting these things on the bottom and a lot of old clothes on top. Then he spread open a ten dollar greenback and laid it upon the old clothes, slightly securing it with a pin. When his trunk was opened for examination my friend turned away so that the inspector might not be troubled with his presence.

The examination lasted about a quarter of a minute. The inspector closed the trunk with the remark that such a lot of old clothes wasn’t worth carrying around; the passenger departed {243}for his hotel and when there and in the silence and solitude of his room he opened the trunk.

And behold, the pin that held the greenback was gone!

And the greenback was gone likewise!

What became of that greenback my friend never knew. He suggests that the pin, being of English manufacture, was liable to confiscation and the officer only did his duty in seizing it. In the hurry of removing the pin the greenback may have adhered to it and passed into the pocket of the officer without attracting his attention.

When he emptied his pockets that night he was doubtless astonished at finding the greenback, and still more when he examined it and found that it was counterfeit.

We had less than two hours on shore, and therefore saw very little of Smyrna. We walked or rather ran through the bazaars, not stopping to buy any anything, but threading our way among Turks, Arabs, Levantines, camels, donkeys, boxes, bales, filth, and other Oriental things. The pavements were rough, and in many places they were muddy and slippery, and by the time we got back to the landing we were thoroughly tired.

It had been our intention to make a journey to the ruins of Ephesus during the two days’ stay of the _Tibre_, but this was out of the question.

Though Smyrna has enjoyed the advantages of commerce for a very long time, there is still a great deal of prejudice among her people. Here is a story which was told me in illustration of this assertion: {244}Some years ago, an English merchant sent a cargo of goods to Smyrna, and among the articles were a hundred pigs of block tin. The rest-of the cargo passed the custom house without trouble, but the tin could not be landed, and the ship, at its departure, brought the metal away.

And why?

Because of the trade mark upon it. The smelters of this particular lot had adopted the figure of a lamb as their trade-mark, and stamped it on each piece of tin. It happened that when the Crusaders went to Asia Minor, the banners of some of the divisions of their army were ornamented with the picture of a lamb. Consequently, the lamb became unpopular, and has continued so to this day.

The tin in question was re-cast without the representation of the hated animal, and sent again to Smyrna, where it was received without hesitation.

It was a great disappointment to us that we could not go to Ephesus, the seat of one of the “seven churches of Asia,” and a place of great historical interest. A railway runs there from Smyrna, so that the journey can be made with comparative ease. There is a considerable amount of walking and donkey-riding after one gets there, and the accommodations are not altogether palatial. Ephesus was one of the cities which claimed the honor of being the birth-place of Homer, and it had a reputation for a variety of things that do it very little good now. The greatest lion of Ephesus was the Temple of Diana, which was accounted one of the seven wonders of the world; Diana was accounted nearly as great a wonder, in some respects, but she would be of very little consequence at the present time.

The temple at Ephesus was said to be four hundred and twenty-five feet long by half that distance in width. Its roof was supported by one hundred and twenty-eight columns, each sixty feet high, and altogether the edifice was the largest of all the Greek temples, as it occupied four times the area of the Parthenon. Like the latter temple, it contained a statue of gold and ivory, and there was a vast amount of wealth about the building. The roof was set on fire one night by an incendiary named Erostratus, (whether John, Charles, or William, I am unable to {245}say), who lost his head in consequence. He died happy, and avowed that he had no other object than to immortalize his name. Hence came the declaration--

“The daring youth that fired th’ Ephesian dome,

Outlives in fame the pious fool who raised it.”

The city and temple disappeared during the Middle ages, and at the beginning of the present century the site was marked only by heaps of rubbish, and by the Turkish village of Aya Soolook.

In the past twenty years, excavations have been made there at various times, and are still going on. The foundations of the temple have been discovered, and many interesting sculptures brought to light.

Ephesus at one time granted the right of asylum, and was known as a city of refuge.

Any scoundrel who had offended the laws and found things too hot for him at home, was all right in Ephesus; and the result was that the city was overrun with criminals to such an extent, that the respectable inhabitants asked the Emperor Augustus to abolish this right of asylum, which he did. Society was in the condition of that of Texas before her admission to the Union, and before she had any laws to keep rascals in check.

There used to be a couplet, to which our most South-western State was said to owe its name:

“When every other land rejects us,

This is the land that freely takes us.”

Possibly the thieves, murderers, bounty-jumpers, and Tammany officials of the olden time used to say:

“When law from the land would efface us,

We’ll pack up our trunks for Ephesus.”

Neat, isn’t it? Well, the Judge got that up just as we were sailing out of Smyrna.

We were on board the _Tibre_ half an hour before her time of sailing. As we steamed out of the harbor, and the lovely bay on which the city stands, we had a most beautiful sunset, full of {246}bright colors, in strong contrast to the dark and rugged hills that form the setting of the bay. The general features of Smyrna are not unlike those of Naples, when looked at from a distance of half a dozen miles. The harbor is one of the safest along this whole coast, and its trade appears to be quite prosperous. There is much wealth at Smyrna, and a great many foreigners are settled there in business. The population is estimated at one hundred and fifty thousand, of which the Turks and Arabs number a little more than half. Then there are forty thousand Greeks and Italians, fifteen thousand Jews, ten thousand Armenians, and about five thousand Europeans of various nationalities. There are mosques, churches, and synagogues among the places of worship, and the commercial character of the population imbues them with a great deal of liberality in religious matters.

A splendid quay was in course of construction at the time of my visit, and when it is finished the maritime importance of Smyrna will be greatly increased. The stone for this quay was made on the spot, from the sand of the harbor, in the same way as the artificial stone that forms the breakwater at Port Said, in Egypt.

There are three lines of steamers engaged in the coasting; trade of Syria and Palestine--the French, the Austrian, and the Russian. The French steamers run each way every fifteen days, the Russian every two weeks, and the Austrian three times a month. They touch at most of the ports, and make their voyages very leisurely. As a general thing, they run from one port to the next in the night, and rest there during the day. Take our steamer for an illustration.

She left Smyrna just before sunset; at noon next day she was at Rhodes, where she lay till sunset, and then moved on. At breakfast next day she was at Messina, and staid there till night, and so it went on, past Alexandretta (the port of Aleppo), Latakia, Tripoli, and Beyrout. It was a very pleasant way of making the journey, as we were at sea during the night, and could spend the day on shore, each time at a new place. The routes of the different lines vary somewhat, but all of them touch at Beyrout and Jaffa.

We went on shore at Rhodes, and wandered among its palm trees, over its curious walls, and up the famous street of the {247}knights, where the armorial emblems over the doors are still in place, left there by the Turkish conquerors in honor of the Knights of St. John, and their gallant defense of the place before their surrender. The defence of Rhodes forms one of the brightest pages of history, a page that should never be soiled and never be effaced. The site of the Colossus of Rhodes was pointed out; it was on one of the bends of the land that form the harbor; the story that it stood across the entrance, and that ships sailed between its legs, is a beautiful fiction, more astonishing than true.

There are few places in Europe that have such a mediaeval appearance as this city of Rhodes; its walls and towers, and the ancient appearance of its houses, carry the visitor half a dozen centuries backward more easily than do most places in the track of the tourist. And the life there had a lazy, careless way about it, quite in keeping with the mural structures. People were lounging at the water’s edge, some in the _cafés_, and some under the palm trees in front of them. Nobody was in a hurry about anything, and even the servants of the _cafés_ had caught the contagion, and moved around as listlessly as though they had been appointed to their own executions, and were trying to make as much delay as possible. There was little rivalry among the boatmen, and they good naturedly assisted each other in getting to or from the little dock where we landed.

Rhodes is the ancient Rhodes (a rose), and the name belongs both to the island and the city. The latter has a population of about ten thousand, and of these there are six thousand Turks, while the rest are Jews and Greeks. The city is built in the form of an amphitheatre, upon the bay that makes the harbor, but unfortunately the depth of water is not sufficient to afford anchorage for ocean going steamers. It was a warm, still, clear afternoon when we were there, and the town as we approached it had a very quiet and lazy appearance. The walls and towers, the work of the Knights of St John, carried us back to the middle ages, and it seemed as if Rhodes had gone to sleep half a millennium ago and nobody had disturbed her since. Strabo described the ancient city of Rhodes as a place of great magnificence, with many public edifices that were profusely adorned with works of art. There were said to have been three {248}thousand statues in the city, and altogether it must have been a wonderful place. At present there are few remains of anything prior to the occupation by the Knights of St. John in the early part of the fourteenth century.

One of the brightest pages in the history of the Crusades and the events connected with them, is that whereon is written the chronicles of the Knights of St. John. At the time of the first crusade the institution was in high favor with the crusaders, many of whom joined it and bestowed their fortunes upon it. Up to that time it had been merely a secular institution, but its chief determined to organize it as a religious body whose members took the vows of obedience, chastity, and poverty, and were to devote their lives to the aid of the poor and sick in the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem.

In the twelfth century the institution added another vow to those above mentioned,--that of bearing arms in defense of religion. The order thus assumed a military character and rapidly rose in wealth and power. In some of the Saracenic wars the knights performed deeds of great valor, and several battles were won by them. In the thirteenth century they were driven from the Holy Land, in consequence of the reverses suffered by the crusaders, particularly in the battle near St. Jean d’ Acre. After this they established themselves at Cypress. Here they assumed a naval character, as their ships carried pilgrims to and from the Holy Land, and had frequent sea fights with the Turks. In A. D. 1309 they seized Rhodes, which had been a resort of Moslem pirates, and fortified it in the manner we see it at the present day. They were several times assailed by the Turks, but repulsed every assault and made several expeditions into Asia Minor. Their numbers were steadily recruited from the nobility of Europe, and one time nearly all the best families of France, Spain, and Italy were represented among the Knights of St. John. In A. D. 1522 the Sultan Solyman the Magnificent, besieged them with an army twenty thousand strong; they held out for six months--their whole strength was less than six thousand men--they were at length forced to surrender. But their defence had been so heroic that the Turks allowed them to retire with the honors of war, carrying their arms and standards

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{251}and even some of their cannon. The Turkish fleet dipped its flags and fired a salute, as the Knights with tearful eyes sailed away from the island which their order had held for more than two centuries. It is recorded that the commander, Phillipe de l’Isle Adam, was the last to leave the island and that he turned and kissed his hand toward Rhodes as his ship sailed away. The trumpet that was blown at Rhodes to give the signal of the retirement of the Knights is preserved at Malta, and I had the pleasure of examining it several months after my visit to the scene of the heroic defence. After temporary sojourns in Candia, Sicily, and Italy, the Knights, in A. D. 1530, were established at Malta where they built a strong fortress which resisted several sieges by the Turks. They remained at Malta until 1798, when Napoleon, on his way to Egypt, seized the Island and virtually put an end to the existence of the order.

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