PART V GREECE

XV FROM CORFU TO CORINTH

A little narrow-gauge railway runs across the kingdom of Greece from Patras to the town of Corinth, hugging the Gulf of Corinth, and then, crossing a ridge that divides the isthmus, follows the shore of the Saronic Gulf to Athens. There are altogether about six hundred miles of railroad under operation in Greece, and about three hundred miles abandoned. You can find the track of the latter in various parts of the country, but the most important of the abandoned routes was to run up through Thessaly, the northern part of the kingdom, to the Turkish frontier. A little more patience and a little more money would have carried it through and made a splendid thing for the entire country, because the people of southern Greece do not raise food enough to supply their own wants, while in northern Greece there is a good deal to spare. The difference in the price of bread in the Peloponnesus and in Thessaly is unnaturally great, for the Thessalians have few markets and the Peloponnesians have few farms. This railroad was expected to equalize things, but unfortunately it has not been completed and the rails lie rusting until they are stolen for old iron.

Brindisi is the gateway to the East. The steamers for India, China and Japan touch there coming and going, to leave and take passengers for and from Paris, London, Berlin and other parts of Europe, who can thus save the long voyage of seven or eight days from Bremen and Hamburg and five and six days from London and Havre, and cross Europe by rail. Special trains with dining-cars and sleepers are run in connection with the steamers which carry the mails also, making Paris and Berlin in thirty-six hours from Brindisi and London in forty-eight.

When you leave Brindisi going east you enter Hellenic ground. The Adriatic, like some other beauties, has an uncertain temper and behaves badly sometimes. It is called “the blue Adriatic,” “the gem of seas,” “the sapphire sea,” and by other poetic names, but it is also “the stormy Adriatic,” and an old seaman told me that “it could kick up more sea than the Atlantic Ocean on the slightest provocation.” The steamers for Greece generally leave Brindisi at midnight, so as to reach the opposite coast early in the morning, and there, when you awaken, if you please, you can see the sun rise upon masses of solid snow that crown the mountains of the Albanian coast of Turkey. The land of mythology is before you. Every island, every mountain, every valley was the scene of some fable, the abode of some god, or a battlefield that you read about in the Greek classics when you were in college. The places and the names of ancient history are brought home in a familiar way, and as you gaze from the deck of the steamer upon them they look like the real thing.

At Corfu, a beautiful little island lying off the Turkish coast, you get your first view of oriental life and customs, and a girl with a kodak is kept busy taking snap-shots of the queer things she sees. There is a temptation to photograph all the ruins, because they remind you of the warriors, heroes and philosophers you studied about when a boy, and Greece is full of them. The island of Ithaca excites vivid recollections, and the Phæacian ship which brought Ulysses home lies in the harbor of Corfu, turned to stone. It is now occupied by a monastery of Greek monks and called by the humiliating name of Mouse Island. According to the Odyssey, after he was wrecked, Ulysses landed at Corfu, swimming to the shore. He made up a bed of dead leaves on the rocks as a precaution against rheumatism, and, worn out by excitement, peril and fatigue, sank into a dreamless sleep. There he was discovered by Nausicaa, a beautiful princess, upon whose charms Homer loves to linger. She was the daughter of King Alcinous, and when Ulysses awoke she led him to her father’s palace, with its exquisite gardens and luscious fruits. The local guides, who endeavor to adjust their moral consciousness to the curiosity of visitors, and the topography of the island to the demands made upon them, show the exact place where Ulysses swam ashore, and tell you that the garden of the King Alcinous is now occupied by the country palace of King George of Greece, one of the most democratic and considerate of monarchs, who loves to have the people enjoy everything that belongs to him. He opens his gates to strangers and subjects alike. Nobody is required to pay a fee or even to ask permission, although the proper thing to do is to leave a card at the porter’s lodge and a word of appreciation, which that official takes entirely to himself. One of the streets in Corfu is named in honor of King Alcinous, and Ulysses is considered a sort of stepson of whom the community is exceedingly proud.

Corfu has been the scene of many exciting events both in modern and mythological times. When we arrived the people were more or less excited over the action of the government in expelling the late Mahmoud Damad Pasha, brother-in-law of the Sultan of Turkey, and Hadji Kadri and Siret, two other Turkish exiles, who were accused of sedition and conspiracy, and, having fled from Constantinople, took refuge upon the beautiful Greek island, where they were received with warm sympathy and treated with distinguished respect. The government of Greece, however, could not very well furnish an asylum to Turkish fugitives of such eminent notoriety. The relations between the two countries have been cordial since the close of the war four years ago, and the Grecian ministry considered it prudent not to offer any new cause of offense. So the Sultan’s brother-in-law and his companions were requested to leave Corfu and go to Switzerland, which is the most hospitable country in Europe to political exiles.

Corfu hates the Turks. No people on the earth’s surface hates them more, not even the Bulgarians or Macedonians, although more than two centuries have passed since the wrongs of which they complain were committed. From 1815 to 1863, with the other Ionian islands, Corfu was occupied by the English, and in the latter year, upon the accession of the present King George to the throne, Mr. Gladstone persuaded Queen Victoria to give them back to Greece. That accounts for a statue of Mr. Gladstone, before the university in Athens, erected by the students a few years ago.

Fortunately for those who go to Corfu to enjoy the climate--and it is a favorite winter resort for people with weak lungs, and other invalids--the English administration built a fine system of roads which are still kept in comparatively good repair, although the modern Greeks will never be celebrated for road-building. You can drive from one end of the island to the other and, during the spring and autumn, it is as near paradise as any place on earth. The late Empress of Austria had a beautiful villa on the outskirts of the city. It was proposed to bring the late Czar of Russia to Corfu in the hope that his life might be saved, and numerous other famous invalids have sought health and strength in its glorious sunshine and soft, but invigorating air.

The island embraces about 277 square miles, and is thickly settled, having more than 115,000 inhabitants Most of the surface is covered with olive groves. It is estimated that there are more than 4,000,000 trees, which are allowed to grow without pruning and develop a beauty and attain a size unparalleled elsewhere. The manufacture and export of preserved olives and olive oil is the chief occupation of the people, but they raise a good deal of other fruit and wine, and their cheese made from goat’s milk is famous in the London and Paris markets.

To the beauty of the scenery and the delightful climate is added the charm that always attends the mysteries of mythology, and besides the romance of Ulysses many other stories of ancient days were located there. Near the base of a picturesque old citadel with twin towers is a low, circular structure dating back to the sixth or seventh century before Christ, but the inscription is still decipherable and records that this monument was erected to Menerates, son of Tlasias, who lost his life by drowning. Near by are two or three monuments erected in honor of officials of the British government who distinguished themselves during the occupation.

Sailing toward Patras, the steamer from Corfu soon passes the Ambracian Gulf, where Octavius laid the foundation of his influence in Rome by a victory over the fleet of his rival, Mark Antony, and a little farther down is the island of Leucas, where, according to the ancient story-tellers, Sappho plunged into the sea because Phaon did not return her love. A little farther on is Ithaca, whose connection with the Odyssey has made it familiar to every student of Greek, for the wanderings and misfortunes, the sufferings and the fortitude of Ulysses, the king of this island, have been handed down to us in one of the most fascinating stories of adventure. His descendants occupy Ithaca to-day, and are distinguished for their bold seamanship, their love of home, their hospitality and their courage, and their mercantile instincts have made them rich. The most important product of the island is a strong aromatic wine. They show you where Homer lived in the town of Stavros, and an ancient staircase cut in the rock leads past a Greek church to a rectangular forum hewn in the side of the mountain. It is surrounded by seats and looks like an ancient place of worship, but is claimed to be the place where Homer had a school.

Nearly every natural phenomenon upon the island is described in the Odyssey--even a stalactite cave to which any boy in town will lead you through a vineyard and over stony goat pastures. The entrance is narrow, and it is hard work for fat men to squeeze through, but with a little effort you can enter a damp chamber about fifty feet in diameter and thirty feet in height, from the roof of which hang numerous stalactites like those to be seen in Mammoth Cave, Kentucky. If you want to know how it looks, read Book XIII of the Odyssey, where Homer describes the grotto of the nymphs.

The suitors of Penelope waited for the return of Telemachus upon a little island on the east of Ithaca, and on the island of Zante, from which we get so many currants and raisins, the fishermen still collect pitch to calk their boats from a spring mentioned by Herodotus.

Patras is one of the most enterprising commercial towns of Greece, and one of the oldest. It is second to Athens in population and has one-third of all the commerce of the country. In some respects it is the most modern of Grecian towns, but its history can be traced back at least seven centuries before Christ. Patras was also one of the first centers of Christian teaching, and, according to local tradition, the Apostle Andrew was crucified and buried there. He is the patron saint of the town and the cathedral is dedicated to his memory.

Near by is a curious spring, to which is attached a superstition that has kept its hold upon the people since the age of mythology, when, as now, sick people looked upon their reflections in the water and by their appearance judged as to the probability of recovery. The effect appears to be a matter of light. If the sun is obscured by clouds or happens to be in a certain part of the heavens every face reflected in the water shows a deathlike pallor. With a clear sky and at high noon the reflection is always full and ruddy with color.

From Patras to Corinth, along the edge of the gulf, through olive groves and currant plantations, with a range of snow-clad mountains on one side and picturesque hills on the other, is a delightful journey. The culture of currants seems to absorb the greatest degree of attention. They tell me that toothsome little fruit was formerly called “corenth,” taking its name from the historic city. The currant trade is the largest and the most profitable in Greece, and a considerable part of the cultivated area is planted like the vineyards of Italy, in rows about three feet apart, with single stalks, which are trimmed down every fall in order to strengthen the roots. New shoots spring out with the sunshine in March and April, and, by August, are loaded with large light and dark currants unlike those grown in America. You can buy them in boxes at any grocery store for mince pies, fruit-cake, plum pudding or that sort of thing. The development of this industry has been gradual. In 1830, after the independence of Greece was established, the crop amounted to only about 1,900 tons. In 1899 it was 153,500 tons, and it was a poor year. The average for the last ten years has been about 170,000 tons, and the value of the currants exported annually has reached nearly $8,000,000. The largest quantity goes to England and France. The United States takes 10,000 tons, which, you must appreciate, is an enormous quantity of dried currants. The French wine-growers use them for toning up their wine.

While currant-culture is profitable, there is a good deal of risk in it. The crop is easily affected both by drought and excessive rains. Severe wind-storms may blow the fruit off the bushes, and the hills surrounding the Gulf of Corinth, which is the most productive section of the country, are exposed to storms which at any day may convert a good crop into a poor one.

Olive oil is also a source of wealth, and the beautiful silver-leaved trees are one of the pleasantest features of the landscape. Olive trees live to a great age. It is asserted by some who delight to entertain travelers that groves are now standing which bore fruit in the days of Socrates and Demosthenes, and near Eleusis, trees are pointed out which may have been standing for 2,800 years. The trunks are enormous and are perforated with holes, new bark having grown around the wounds made by decay. Most of the olives are consumed in the country. Much of the oil is sent to France.

Owing to the infrequent and irregular rains, irrigation is necessary everywhere in Greece; and every farmer has a simple and limited irrigation system of his own. The water is pumped up from wells by blindfolded mules, horses or oxen, and pours into cement reservoirs set at such an elevation as will give a natural flow into the fields. Windmills are not used.

At every railway station were crowds of people, many of them in the picturesque native costume, which is a cross between that of a ballet-dancer and a Highland chieftain. The kilts are white cotton, accordion-plaited, and worn over white woolen tights, with black garters below the knee. The shoe or slipper is without a heel, curling up over the toe like an old-fashioned skate, and having a large rosette or pompon of silk or black cotton upon the tip. The jacket is beautifully embroidered in gold or silver braid, sleeveless and open in front. The shirt sleeves of cotton are full and flowing, and the front of the shirt is plaited. The collar is a stiff circlet, embroidered with gold thread or braid; the girdle is often of leather or sometimes a sort of sash. A Greek gentleman in full dress or a servant in complete livery will wear a pistol and two or three daggers stuck in between his belt and his shirt-front in a handy sort of way. The peasant wears a leathern belt, with a sheathed dagger or a pouch over the pit of his stomach, from which the handles of a knife and a revolver usually protrude. The Greek still wears the red Phrygian cap upon his head, and the tassel dangles down upon his shoulder in an artistic way.

A “well-greaved Greek” is the most picturesque looking object in Europe. No other costume will compare with his; but, like all national peculiarities, it is gradually becoming obsolete. You see it in the country and towns of the interior, but in the cities few people wear it. The aristocracy dress their servants in that way, which has made it unpopular among the mechanics and the working classes generally. They fear people will mistake them for household servants.

In the rural districts, however, those objections do not prevail, and almost all the natives at the railway stations and the few men who were digging in the fields were in native dress. Their picturesqueness would be greatly enhanced if they were a little neater about their persons. At first acquaintance the modern Greek does not inspire either admiration or confidence. He is very dirty as to his garments, as to his habits and as to his house, and, I grieve to say, judging from appearances, that he lets his wife and sisters carry more than their share of the load. Most of the labor in the fields, as we passed through on the railroads, was being done by women. We saw women staggering along the highways under heavy cargoes, which they carried upon their heads, and clambering down from the mountains with big bundles of fagots upon their backs. In fact, the men seemed to have selected the easy jobs. None of them had burdens upon their heads or backs, and very few were toiling in the fields. They were driving carts and watching the sheep, goats and swine while their wives and daughters were swinging the hoe.

“As beautiful as a Greek shepherd” used to be a favorite phrase with writers of romance, but I doubt if those who used it had ever seen one, for the ideal Greek shepherd is not visible to the ordinary eye. The men who tend the flocks are stupid, filthy-looking fellows, with blank faces, matted beards and clothing that apparently has never seen a laundry. The ancient Greek knew all about statuary and architecture. That we know by evidences that have been found under the soil of his country; but the modern Greek of the working class lives in a house that is comfortless, unclean and dismal, with no evidences of beauty or taste or culture. He needs whitewash, chloride of lime and carbolic acid, although it is claimed by many that his intellect is as strong and active as those of his prototype who lived twenty centuries ago.

In passing through the railway towns of the “currant country” nature alone is lovely. Everything else seems stricken with poverty and neglect. The men who hang around the railway stations seem to be indifferent to their condition and do not inspire either respect or admiration, although their conversational powers seem to be well developed, and nearly every one of them carried a string of beads--not to count his prayers, but to occupy his hands while talking. Beads are aids to conversation. Members of parliament use them when making speeches. I never learned that Demosthenes required any such auxiliary to eloquence, but am assured that the activity of the brain and the fluency of tongue are increased by fingering them.

Modern Corinth, which stands at the head of the gulf, is a town of four thousand inhabitants, having been founded only forty years ago, after the last houses of the ancient town had been overturned by an earthquake. During recent years its prosperity has been considerably revived by the completion of a ship-canal, cut through the clay ridge that divides the Gulf of Corinth and the Saronic Gulf, which shortens the journey for ships by two hundred and two miles. The idea of cutting a canal through that isthmus was proposed by the ancients and was undertaken by Caesar, Hadrian and Nero. Traces of the work of Nero still exist. The present canal was built by a French company and opened in 1893. It is three miles and a half in length, one hundred feet in breadth, and can accommodate vessels drawing twenty-six feet of water. There are no locks or sluices, but it is on the tidewater level, with breakwaters to protect the entrances.

Old Corinth, that St. Paul visited three times and possibly four, and which was one of the most important, populous, immoral and enterprising cities of his day, is dead and buried. Buttercups and dandelions are growing upon its grave, as bright and cheerful as those that decorate the prairies of Kansas or the dooryards of New England. The Grecian buttercup is not so large nor so beautiful as that we found in Norway, but it gives one a home feeling to find it everywhere--a universal flower. New Corinth resembles Santa Fé and other of the adobe towns of New Mexico and Arizona. It is surrounded by clay cliffs, weatherworn into fantastic shapes like those of the Rio Grande valley, and the dust is deep in the unpaved streets. The same lean cattle, mangy dogs and half-naked children playing in the sunshine; the same diminutive donkeys, the modern “Greek slaves,” bearing burdens that hide their bodies and leave only their legs and ears exposed; the same mud fences and adobe walls that are found in New Mexico; the same bake-ovens beside the cabins, and women of similar features, wearing similar garments, picking the live stock out of the children’s hair. Crowds of men are sitting at tables in front of the cafés, drinking coffee and talking politics, and the same dilapidated vehicles that you see in the old Spanish-American settlements were waiting for our arrival at the railway station.

The town has a beautiful site, at the head of the gulf. The water has a deep-blue color, with opalescent tints upon the surface. It receded in ancient times and left a sandy beach upon which goats were browsing among old barrel-hoops, piles of rubbish and struggling weeds, and fishermen were leisurely mending their nets beside their boats, or in the shade of the little shanties in which they keep their implements. Modern Corinth is surrounded by mighty hills upon which shepherds were guarding sheep and cattle, and when storms come upon them they find shelter in the caves that the wind and the rain have burrowed in the clay cliffs. At the top of the highest hill, the Acro-Corinth, as it is called, is a medieval fortress erected by the Venetians when they possessed the country. It is surrounded by ruins of houses and temples from which the material to build the fort was taken. The view from the peak, famous even in antiquity, embraces a great part of the mountainous district on both sides of the Gulf of Corinth, which is spread out like a map around the observer. In ancient times a watch was always kept there to signal the approach of an enemy to the people of the towns and the farmers in the valley below.

The traveler who enters Greece from the west has a continuous view of Parnassus, which rears its snow-clad summit among less famous mountains upon the opposite side of the gulf, and beside it is the beautiful Helicon, the haunt of the Muses. In clear weather the Acropolis of Athens is visible, the pillars of the Parthenon and the glistening marble walls of the royal palace.

Near the base of Acro-Corinth is the remarkable spring of Pirene, which, according to mythology, gushed forth at a stroke of the hoof of Pegasus, and was bestowed on Sisyphus by the river god Asopus, in return for his having revealed the hiding-place of the owner’s daughter, Aegina, who had been carried off by Zeus. Near by are ruins of a barracks and several dismounted cannon.

In the golden age, four hundred years before Christ, old Corinth was the most splendid, luxurious and wealthy, the most frivolous and wicked of all the cities of Greece. It was a commercial metropolis, the Chicago of that period, a center and focus of financial affairs, and stood upon a plateau about six miles from the sea, upon the side of the hill called Acro-Corinth, looking down upon a narrow and beautiful inlet of blue water, between two ranges of mountains. The Gulf of Corinth is often compared to the fjords of Norway, but its surroundings are mild and modest beside their rugged grandeur. It bears a closer resemblance to the Bosphorus and to the Inland Sea of Japan.

The road which leads from the railway station at new Corinth to the ruins of the old city is exceptionally good for Greece. It rises with an almost imperceptible grade toward a group of seven majestic columns, the earliest examples of the Doric school of architecture extant, and one of the oldest and most precious monuments of the art, scholarship and religion of ancient Greece. They are deeply fluted monoliths, twenty-three and one-half feet high, five feet and eight inches in diameter at the base and four feet and three inches at the top, with projecting capitals and heavy entablature. They were once covered with enamel. Five of them are nearly perfect. The other two have been broken and the pieces are now held together by iron bands. All have been gnawed more or less by the tooth of time and show curious wounds, which look as if they had been cut with a chisel. These pillars are all that remain of the famous Temple of Apollo, the ideal of Doric architecture, the noblest, simplest and most natural of all the schools.

Unconscious of their artistic and archeological advantages, which students travel four thousand miles to enjoy, the Grecian peasants continue to plow the adjacent fields, and, the day that we rode through, groups of women with tucked-up skirts were breaking the earth with heavy hoes and heaping it around the roots of the currant bushes. Fields of winter wheat were vivid with tender shoots of green, and a fodder plant that resembles alfalfa was growing bravely on the other side of formidable fences built with stones stolen from the ruins of the old metropolis. Here and there is an old-fashioned threshing-floor, almost as venerable as the pillars of the temple, a circle thirty or forty feet in diameter, paved with smooth stones, upon which, after the harvest, the grain is separated from the stalk by driving hoofed cattle over it. In his Epistle to the Corinthians, Paul recalled to them that pious injunction in Deuteronomy, “Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn,” but he might have appealed to them also in behalf of the blindfolded donkeys that patiently follow the treadmills to fill the irrigation reservoirs so that the plants may live when the earth is dry.

Women were washing at the reservoirs and spreading the garments out upon the grass and cobble-stones to dry, and little children were amusing themselves with the same simple games that absorb the attention of childhood in America.

Before reaching the site of the old city we passed a cross-roads where a troop of young Corinthians was rushing out of an unpainted adobe schoolhouse. Nearly all of them were clothed in tunics made of blue and white checked gingham, the favorite pattern for aprons among New England housewives. It was the noonday recess, and, notwithstanding their traditional eagerness for intellectual culture, it is evident that the schoolboys of Greece feel more amiable when coming away from the schoolhouse than when they are following their noses in the other direction. They were playing pranks upon one another, and we stopped the carriage to see the result of an amateur wrestling match. In the adjoining lot was a boy about twelve years old, clad in a similar tunic, herding a drove of pigs. He looked as if he felt his humiliating situation, and we silently extended our sympathy to him. I felt like reminding the youngster, for his encouragement and consolation, that one of the noblest and the greatest of the popes was a pig-driver when he was a boy, and that that also was the occupation of Pizarro, the _conquistador_ of Peru, before he entered the Spanish army.

Where this schoolhouse stands was once a suburb of Corinth, known as Kraneion, which, about 2,300 years ago, was the abode of an old crank named Diogenes; perhaps not the first, and I am certain not the last, of the cynics. He was born and brought up in the town of Sinope, where his father was a money-changer, and the old man, being deficient in the moral perception and the cunning of some of the modern Greeks, was detected in the adulteration of coin. He died in prison, and the disgrace seems to have soured the life of his son, who wandered about telling people what fools they were to waste their time in enjoyment; and, to practice what he preached, he discarded all earthly possessions except a cloak, a wallet in which he carried bread, and a wooden bowl. He threw the last away some time after, when he saw a boy drinking out of the hollow of his hand--at least that is the story as I remember it from my college days, when for a time I knew Diogenes and other famous Greeks quite intimately.

When Diogenes finally reached Corinth he found that prosperous and luxurious city a fine field for a cynic to work in, and took lodgings and office-room in a large jar that was made to hold wine but had been thrown away as leaky and useless. He used to make fun of the rich and vain Corinthians, and although he ate nothing but scraps that the cooks threw at him, he lived to a very old age, and became so famous that Alexander the Great came to visit him. After a memorable interview, when the emperor arose to take his departure, with a gracious impulse he told the old cynic that he would grant him any favor that he desired to ask. Diogenes looked up with a twinkle in his eye, and requested him to get out of his light.

Diogenes died from the bite of a dog, and his last request to the neighbors was that they throw his body into the alley for the dogs to eat; but they refused to do so, and gave him a noble funeral and erected a monument in his honor, upon which was carved the figure of a dog--the symbol of his life.

A little village of fifty or sixty houses, with a store or two, a post-office and a café, occupies the site of the old city. Part of the lands about have been purchased by the American Archeological Institute. Its representatives from the American School of Classical Studies at Athens have been engaged for several years in making excavations, and have laid bare a considerable portion of old Corinth, including the forum, the market-place, the temple of justice, three fountains, baths hewn in the solid rock, and several dwellings and buildings that were occupied for business purposes. The work is being extended gradually as fast as the limited funds of the society will allow, and the disclosures are of great classical interest and importance to historians and students. It will be continued until all the important ruins are disclosed. Near by, upon a convenient roadway, a warehouse has been erected to preserve the statues, the inscriptions and other small articles of interest that are found in the excavations.

Unfortunately for us, the laws of Greece prohibit the exportation of these relics. The government is very strict about such matters. No excavations can be made without a permit from the authorities, who designate an inspector to supervise them, and he keeps a careful watch upon all that is done. Everything must go to the museum at Athens unless the owner of the property is willing to erect a building for the public exhibition of whatever he may find. In this way some of the old cities and the little towns of Greece have secured local museums which possess a certain advantage in enabling students to study archeology upon the ground, but this scarcely offsets many disadvantages, for most of them are difficult of access. The most important articles discovered at Corinth have been sent by the American school to the National Museum at Athens.

At a shop in the village a few fragments of indifferent value from the excavations are for sale, and they are no doubt genuine. Bogus antiquities are manufactured in large quantities, but most of them are more expensive than the genuine. Although the Romans carried away from Greece the choicest works of art to embellish their palaces and temples, and vandals have been following their example ever since, the earth is still full of marble, pottery and bronzes, which are being uncovered daily. But most of the work is done by foreigners. The Greek government is so poor that it can afford to do but little, and the citizens have other uses for their money.

Near the excavations, in front of a low adobe hut, sat an aged man in the native costume, smoking his pipe and rocking the cradle of a child. He might have posed for a portrait of Diogenes.

In the center of the village is an enormous plane-tree, which shades a triangular market-place. Several men were sipping coffee at little tables and babbling children were playing around them who evidently did not realize the historical sanctity of their surroundings.

Old Corinth has as much interest for religious people as for archeologists and historians, for it is closely associated with the missionary work of St. Paul. In the year 51, in company with Luke the Evangelist, he visited Macedonia--where Miss Stone was captured by brigands. At Philippi he was scourged, imprisoned and put into the stocks. There was an earthquake while he was in prison and he converted the jailer. Having frightened the officials by telling them that he was a Roman, they permitted him to depart, and he sailed to Athens, where he preached an eloquent sermon from Mars Hill. Then he came to Corinth, lodged at the house of Gaius, and found Aquila and Priscilla, and there Silas and Timotheus joined him. He lived at Corinth a year and a half, and there wrote his first epistle to the Thessalonians, which he sent by the hand of Timotheus. He was then brought before Gallio, the proconsul, a brother of Seneca, the great philosopher, who was prime minister for the Emperor Nero, at Rome, at that time. After this he “tarried there yet a good while” before returning to Syria and Jerusalem. Six years later he visited Corinth again, “and there abode three months” at the house of Gaius, where he wrote his epistles to the Romans and Galatians, after which he returned again to Jerusalem and then made his fatal journey to Rome.

Timotheus was left in charge of the church at Corinth, and when Paul sent him there he said: “Let no man despise him.” It would be interesting to know the places in Corinth where Paul lived and preached, and perhaps American shovels may yet discover some evidences of his life there, although beyond his own testimony we know nothing about it. The lintel of the Jewish synagogue has been found already by the American excavations.

XVI MODERN ATHENS

Modern Athens is a city of marble. Many of the dwellings and business houses and nearly all the public edifices are of that material, and even the sidewalks on some of the streets are paved with it. Upon the bosom of Mount Pentelikos are two great gashes which can be seen for many miles. One of them is the quarry from which was hewn the marble for the Parthenon, the Temple of Jupiter, the Temple of Theseus and other famous structures of ancient Athens. The other wound was made in modern times, and shows the source of the material of which the present city of Athens was built. The authorities have protected the old quarry for historical and archeological reasons, and nothing has been taken from it for several centuries. The other quarry is just as good. The stone is easily cut and removed, and, although the grain is not so fine as the Parian marble from the quarries in southern Greece, it is equal to that from the famous Carrara quarries of Italy, and costs much less. I was wondering why some enterprising American did not build a railway to the quarry from Piræus, the seaport of Athens, so as to export the marble, for none is exported now. It need be only about eighteen miles long, not counting the curves necessary to make the grade, and it could be run on the gravity principle.

The use of marble and white stucco gives modern Athens an appearance of neatness and beauty which there is no soot to deface. The dust is very bad, however, when the wind blows. The streets are unpaved and the soil is a clay that moistens into mud or dries into dust very readily, and a waiter always stands at the door of the hotel with a feather duster to brush off your boots. One of the streets is named in honor of Æolus, the god of the winds, but he does not confine his attentions to that thoroughfare. In the old part of Athens is a well-preserved octagonal structure of marble called the Tower of the Winds, and one might suppose that it was the place where they originated, but the name seems to have been given merely because it was surmounted by a weather-vane. The tower was built about a hundred years before Christ by Andronicus of Syria, so an inscription tells us, as a compliment to the city of Athens, and was adorned with a sun-dial and a clock that was run by water-power in some ingenious manner; but the exact plan of its operation is not understood by modern mortals. An aqueduct supplied a cistern and the cistern fed machinery too complicated for modern horologists to comprehend.

The streets leading east from the Tower of the Winds enter a depression in the side of a hill, inclosed by a wall which was formerly the site of a school called the Diogeneion, supposed to have been founded by Diogenes, the famous cynic in the third century before Christ.

The palace of the king is an ugly modern structure, of which a nation with the taste of the Greeks ought to be ashamed. It looks like a factory, but the other public buildings are so imposing and appropriate, particularly a group of three--the university, the Academy of Sciences and the library--that they more than offset the atrocity in which the king resides. I doubt if there is a more beautiful combination of buildings in all the world. The academy, designed by a Vienna architect, is asserted to be the purest example of the classic school that has arisen in modern times. The surroundings are appropriate, and the entire street, called University Street, is worthy of the artistic traditions of the Athenians, as well as the spirit of modern enterprise.

A pretty park adjoins the palace grounds in the center of the city, and several of the residence streets are lined with pepper-trees, but there is no other shade in Athens--except the awnings stretched across the sidewalks in the business section to shelter show-windows and politicians who sit at little tables in front of the cafés. The gleam of the white marble is painful to the eyes. The architecture of most of the houses in the new quarter of the town is pure Greek; simple, dignified and stately; a striking contrast to the picturesque squalor and dilapidation of Constantinople and the ornate embellishment of the Italian cities. Some critics complain that the architecture of Athens is monotonous, but it is the monotony of pure and simple taste, and none can deny the beauty of the residences. Most of them are constructed upon modern plans, especially the interiors, to meet the demand for conveniences, and I am sure that the private buildings of Athens to-day are more comfortable and beautiful than in the days of Pericles and Phidias. The mountain Pentelikos can furnish all the marble that is necessary to meet the demands of the builders for twenty-five more centuries.

In the old part of the city the streets are narrow, dirty, and the odors rise to heaven. The modern Greek peasant is not a tidy person, nor is his wife, and the street that passes his dwelling, the house in which he lives and all his surroundings are repulsive to the eye, the nostrils and the sense of propriety.

There are three theaters in Athens, one of them a stately marble building of classic design, at which original plays in Greek are produced to encourage native literary genius. An opera company comes over from Italy for two or three weeks every winter, but otherwise there is very little music in Athens. Nor is there any modern art. The museum is not attractive to ordinary visitors, but it is a fountain of joy and never-ending bliss to archeologists, being filled with broken statuary and pottery, old bronzes and tablets bearing inscriptions that are half-effaced, leaving just enough to excite curiosity and controversy among students.

The classic spirit still prevails in Greece. It even pervades the common council of Athens, or whoever has the duty of naming the streets, for they are nearly all called in honor of the ancient gods, philosophers and poets of the golden age. The Boulevard of the University and the Boulevard of the Academy are the broadest and the finest avenues in the residence portion of the city, while the principal business street is named in honor of Mercury. Other streets are called after Solon, Æsculapius, Hippocrates, Aristotle, Thucydides, Pericles, Sophocles, Menander, Venus, Pan, Hebe, Apollo, Jupiter, Theseus, Philip, Constantine and most of the holy apostles. One of the principal hotels is the Minerva, and it is the fashion to christen shops in honor of the great men of the past. Classic names are also usual in baptizing children. You frequently hear of Hermes, Alcibiades and Homer, and the Athens city directory reads like the muster-roll of the army of Agamemnon, which you will find in the early part of Homer. Achilles, Ajax, Menelaus, Miltiades, Leonidas, Themistocles, and other names equally familiar to students of Greek, are in daily use among the people.

Greece is a true democracy. No other country in Europe, not even Norway, is so subject to the will of the people, and the democratic spirit is often shown in ways that are disagreeable. The feeling of equality is general, and there is an undisguised jealousy against one man rising above another. That is one of the great obstacles to progress--a sort of dead-line which no man can cross without being made the target of every selfish and dissatisfied citizen who construes the superiority of his neighbor as a personal grievance and an offense against the individual and the state. The king is a foreigner. Were he not a foreigner he might not be king. Those who know the Greek character best declare that it would be difficult, if not impossible, for the Greeks to permit one of their own citizens to rule over them. The king is democratic enough to suit their tastes. He mingles freely with the people, and while he maintains beyond criticism the dignity that becomes his position, he is nevertheless simple in his habits, unostentatious in his exercise of power and loves nothing so well as to be considered one of the Greeks. There have been no scandals or intrigues at his court. The scepter has not been wielded to the injury of any one. He treats everybody alike and perhaps goes a little too far that way, because the exercise of more severe discipline might do something to suppress crime. The king’s example is followed by his sons, his ministers and the attachés of the court, and therefore is imitated by the people. The children have inherited the spirit. The common schools of Athens are attended by boys and girls of all grades of society, the children of laborers sitting beside those of the ministers of state, reading from the same books and engaging in the same games.

Travelers in the country sometimes complain that the democratic spirit is offensive; that the “common people” sometimes are too aggressive and independent. I heard an English gentleman relate his experience with the villagers of the interior, which was evidence that they considered themselves quite as good as he, and he declared that such things could never have occurred in England, or in the United States, for that matter. A gentleman who has lived many years in Greece explained that the peasants did not intend to be impertinent, but were simply exercising what they believed to be their privileges, and demonstrating that a practical democracy was in working order. There is no lack of discipline among the servant class, but they assert their rights like the servant-girls of New England.

Athenian society is divided into sets, as it is everywhere; first, the court set, made up of the higher officials, members of the diplomatic corps, officers of the army and navy, rich residents both foreign and native who entertain extensively, and others who are honored with a personal acquaintance with the royal family. This set is more or less exclusive, and includes only a small fraction of those who are entitled to invitations to court functions. The king’s balls and receptions are very much like those at the White House in Washington, and people with shabby clothes and muddy boots are often present, because their political influence, if not their social position entitles them to invitations. There are no orders of nobility in Greece. There is only one order of knighthood--the Order of the Savior, which is conferred by the king for distinguished services of any character. About one-half of the honors go to the army and navy; the next in number are to those who have distinguished themselves in the service of the state, either as executives, legislators or members of the diplomatic corps, and after them come the scientists, who esteem the ribbon very highly. Some of the descendants of the ancient nobility try to retain their titles, but are laughed at. Men whose ancestors played a conspicuous part in patriotic movements are much more admired and envied, but even they have to give way to learning, for scholars stand higher in Greece to-day than any other class of the community, and learning is considered of more value than great riches.

The education of women is gradually reaching a level with that of men. There are still certain social restraints, due to tradition and the influence of the neighboring countries of Europe, and the old-fashioned method of contracting marriages between families still prevails; but, speaking generally, the women of Greece are to-day quite as independent, quite as influential and quite as well educated as any on the continent, south of Sweden, and it is gratifying to know that the queen herself has been one of the most active and influential agents in bringing about the emancipation of her sex.

Athens has more than her share of newspapers, dailies, weeklies and those of occasional publication, which are not intended for news purposes, but to express the opinions of the different owners or editors upon public affairs. Even these are not sufficient, however, and the politicians and the editors visit the cafés every evening, and often in the afternoon, in order to proclaim their views to whomsoever it may concern. Coffee-houses have taken the place of the ancient forums, and one of the largest in Athens is called “Public Opinion Coffee-house.” Instead of referring to a man as a demagogue or a pot-house politician, over here they call him a coffee-house politician, and nowhere in the country is there such an abundance of oratorical talent and public sentiment as in these institutions. They are the resort of would-be leaders who cannot afford to maintain newspapers and are reduced to the necessity of communicating their thoughts by word of mouth. The newspapers contain very little news--a few brief telegrams from London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna and Constantinople, relating to the most important events of the day; a report of the proceedings of parliament; a review of the decisions of the courts; a few paragraphs of local news; personal items concerning the royal family and prominent citizens; half a column of market quotations, an installment of a continued story, and a few miscellaneous items clipped from other European newspapers. The remainder of the sheet is filled with editorials and communications upon political topics, which are discussed with the greatest freedom, for in Greece the liberty of the press is not abridged. Both editors and correspondents seem to feel as much at liberty as in the United States to criticise or condemn the policy of the government, the extravagance of the officials, the inefficiency of the army, the corruption of parliament, and even the personal habits of public men.

Visitors to Greece are always amazed at the criminal statistics, particularly at the number of murders, and can scarcely believe them to be accurate, because the number seems to be so much in excess of that of any other country in Europe. Ordinary crimes--dishonesty and the vices that prevail in other countries--are not general, but murders occur almost daily, and the frequent attempts at murder and the number of mysterious deaths are shocking in the stage of civilization to which Greece has attained. In the province in which Athens is located homicides average annually almost one to 1,000 of population. It is not without significance that the province of Attica should be the scene of many homicides, for it is the center of learning and education, the seat of the government and the headquarters of the national police. The causes lie mostly in politics. The government has forbidden the carrying of concealed weapons, but the law is not enforced. A pouch or sheath for a knife and a revolver is a part of the national costume, and both are worn openly. You see them upon almost every Greek who wears the old-fashioned garments of his race, and those who have adopted the modern dress have hip pockets.

When two Greeks quarrel the first act is to draw their knives, and unless they are separated instantly there is either a homicide or a case for the hospital, and the hospitals of Athens, which are extensive and up-to-date, are abundantly supplied with patients, especially during periods of political excitement. If a man is killed in a controversy it usually begins a feud which does not end until several graves are filled, because the unwritten law requires a life for a life, and the Greeks adhere to the vendetta as do the Corsicans and the people of Sicily.

In the provinces of Arcadia, which is a synonym of peace and happiness, and in Laconia, the southernmost section of the Grecian peninsula, the vendetta is as strictly observed as it ever was in Corsica. One murder is usually followed by half a dozen, and sometimes they continue until families are extinct. If there are no sons to take revenge, the duty passes to the nearest relative, and the code is understood by children. Singularly enough the obligation to kill ceases when the offending person leaves the province. The code prohibits attacks upon enemies when they remove to another part of the country. The cause of this extraordinary condition can be traced to the days of Turkish domination, when murder and other crimes committed upon Christians were allowed to remain unpunished. The Turkish officials took no notice of injuries suffered by unbelievers and never attempted to punish the perpetrators.

The indifference of the government down to the present day has encouraged murder. Capital punishment is seldom inflicted, and the verdict of a court is generally acquittal. Those who happen to be convicted are soon pardoned through political influence.

Politics is the influential factor in this problem. When a man is arrested for murder, his friends and family naturally use every effort to secure his acquittal, and appeal to their representatives in the chamber of deputies and other officials of the government who are supposed to have a “pull” with the courts, and skill in convincing juries. If the defendants are convicted and sent to prison their confinement must be made as short and as easy as possible. Hence members of the Greek parliament are kept quite as busy looking after constituents who have committed homicides as the members of our Congress are in getting an increase of pensions for old soldiers.

Persons who have served a term for murder bear no stigma. On the contrary, as every man in Greece is likely to suffer a similar experience sooner or later, the contrary is the case. The prisons are generally dirty, uncomfortable and without ventilation or sanitary appliances, but they are no worse in these respects than the homes from which the prisoners come. No labor is required, and there is very little discipline. Except in a few cases, where solitary confinement is the penalty, the prisoners congregate in one room during the daytime, and the social enjoyment is almost as great as if they were in their village cafés instead. Friends are allowed to bring them delicacies and bedding and to see them frequently. Thus a lazy man is sometimes more comfortable and happy in prison than out, for in the latter case he would be compelled to support himself. As long as he is in prison for such a crime as homicide, public opinion requires his friends and family to support him. Hence he can loaf, gossip, argue, smoke cigarettes and drink coffee all day long, which is the Greek ideal of happiness. If the laws could be amended so as to require the prisoners to work and cut off their enjoyments entirely, no doubt it would go far to diminish crime.

Somebody has said that what Greece wants is not men of culture, but men of agriculture, and that is probably true. There are plenty of men to till the limited area between the mountains and the rocky plateaus if they would devote themselves to it, but it is the ambition of every Greek youth to obtain a classical education and to engage in one of the learned professions. No country in the world has so few children in the primary schools in proportion to the young men and women in the academies and universities. One class of the population is under-educated and the other over-educated. Intellectual culture therefore is not properly distributed. A compulsory education law is not enforced because of the interference of the politicians, and thousands of children of school age in the country districts who should attend school are assisting their parents on the farms and in the homes and adding a little to the family income.

There has been no census lately, but estimates based upon the young men who come into the army place the illiterates at thirty per cent of the population in the country and fifteen per cent in the towns. Those who go to school, however, show remarkable eagerness for learning, and when a boy has passed through the secondary schools nothing will stop him from going to the university, where education is free. Then it is necessary for him to select a professional career, because the labor of the farm is too arduous and the society of the peasants is uncongenial. The students in the University of Athens to-day number more than three thousand, and the larger part of them come from the peasant class. As a consequence, Greece is oversupplied with lawyers, doctors and other professional young men, who are compelled to get a living the best way they can, because there is no parental allowance to support them. Many of them go in for politics and seek offices under the government. Many go into the army, and more are engaged in humble clerical employment and are living upon crusts until something turns up. There are said to be more university graduates in Athens in proportion to the population than in any other city in the world, and the number of unemployed is very large. A few of them drift off into Turkey and other countries of the Orient, where the opportunities are greater, but so many remain and make a business of politics that they are the curse of Greece.

The traveler who comes to Greece from Italy or from Turkey or the Oriental countries is always gratified at the absence of beggars. You may live there for years and never see one, except a few cripples, blind and decrepit old crones, who sit at the doors of the churches and hold out their hands, pleading pitifully for alms. There are excellent hospitals and asylums for all the ills and woes that humankind suffer, and, although there are many poor and afflicted people and much misery and degradation in Greece, the pride and independence of the people will not permit them to beg, and the benevolent spirit of those who are more prosperous makes good provision for them. Philanthropy is a Greek word. In Greece children never run after strangers in the street and beg for pennies as they do in other countries of southern Europe. If a stranger stops on the sidewalk in Italy he is immediately surrounded by a crowd of urchins, ragged, dirty and impudent, who follow him for blocks with importunities. In Turkey and Egypt it is even worse. In Greece travelers are never troubled in that way.

A long time ago a hermit made his home upon the top of the columns of the temple of Jupiter at Athens, and lived there, exposed to the sun and the wind and the storms, until compelled to come down. He had an arrangement with a woman in the neighborhood to provide him with food, and she used to appear every morning with a basket of supplies, which he was accustomed to haul up to his eyrie with a clothes-line.

In the Odeum of Herodes Atticus, one of the loftiest and most conspicuous of the ruins at the base of the Acropolis, which was formerly a theater accommodating six thousand spectators, erected by an Athenian millionaire in memory of his wife, Appia Annia Regilla, a noble Roman lady, there is an enormous earthen wine-jar called a _pithos_. For several years a half-witted man named Demetrius lived in it, just as Diogenes lived in his jar. A kind woman in the neighborhood furnished him food whenever he called for it, and in stormy weather he covered the mouth of his curious dwelling with a curtain of canvas, which gave him adequate shelter.

The parliament of Greece occupies a conspicuous building in the center of the city of Athens, which is the scene of frequent exciting episodes and heated debates. After observing the behavior of the German, Austrian, Hungarian, French, Italian and Greek chambers of deputies, I have deliberately reached the conclusion that the House of Representatives at Washington is the most orderly, dignified and statesmanlike legislative body elected by popular suffrage--not excepting the House of Commons. This is a recent opinion, and is contrary to what I have often written. From the reporter’s gallery of the House of Representatives I have witnessed some very stormy scenes during the last quarter of a century, but they have been incidental. Confusion and boisterous behavior in the European parliaments are chronic. The Greeks are so fond of debate that they ought to have several legislative chambers instead of one, in order to give the eloquent members of that body a chance to express their views; but, failing to get a hearing in the house, they go to the nearest café immediately after adjournment, where they are able to discourse to their heart’s content without interruption.

Politics is the curse of Greece. The country is so small, its financial and other interests are so limited, and its influence in the affairs of nations so insignificant, that one would suppose the people would devote themselves to the development of their material resources and the encouragement of their industries instead of wasting their time in useless discussions and quarrels. But I have always noticed that the smaller the country the hotter the political contests. In Servia, Bulgaria, and certain American republics, where the population is less than in Greece, political agitation is even more bitter and a larger number of people give their exclusive time to it.

I have been trying to discover the political issues in Greece, but have given up in despair. They seem to be numerous, but are not well defined. The local complications are too intricate to be untangled by a stranger, and when you bore through into the pith of the thing you find that the ambition to hold office is the ruling motive, as it is almost everywhere else. There are few offices in Greece and many men who desire to fill them. Hence the outs are opposed to the ins and attempt to justify their demands for authority by proclaiming political principles and promising administrative reforms.

King George is a wise, liberal and tactful ruler. He has a turbulent population to deal with, but is discreet, judicious, generous, and never mixes in political affairs. He always selects his ministers from the party which has a majority in the parliament and is usually able to handle them without difficulty. He holds the confidence of the parliament and the people. Everybody trusts him as a safe man. The only criticism I heard in Greece was that he is too merciful with violators of the law, and perhaps it would be to the advantage of the country if the criminal courts were more severe in their penalties and the pardoning power were not so freely exercised.

The political riots in Athens in the spring of 1902 were due to an unusual cause. Greek scholars are very jealous of the language and are trying to restore ancient Greek to common use. Modern Greek is not taught at the university, and whether it shall be taught in the public schools is a political issue. The advocates of a return to the classic tongue insist that the only way to restore it is to teach it to the children in the primary schools. Their opponents argue that if the children are taught nothing but ancient Greek they can not read modern newspapers, magazines or books. Modern Greek is a corruption of the ancient language, which has become debased by common usage, as the modern Italian is a corruption of the ancient Latin. While it is possible for the native of one province to understand another in conversation, just as a man from New England can understand the lingo of the Arizona miner, very few of the common people are able to read the pure classic. Some of the literary men of the country and many politicians are so democratic in their notions that they would use nothing but the vulgar, modern Athenian dialect, and one man in particular has made himself conspicuous in support of that proposition. He has been bitterly denounced, however, by the university faculties and the serious scholars of the country, and is held up to students as an enemy of their language and their race. So he resides in England.

This controversy is hot and cold according as provocation occurs, and volumes have been written upon one side and the other. During the recent war with Turkey, Queen Olga, who is a noble woman, famous for her good works, and a niece of the late Czar of Russia, found that the sick and wounded soldiers in the hospitals she visited were not able to read the Bibles she gave them, which were printed only in the classic Greek. She was greatly grieved at this, and arranged with two eminent members of the theological faculty to translate the gospels into the modern Greek. They were hastily printed and circulated in large numbers in the army at the queen’s expense. She paid the translators handsomely for their work and bore all the cost of the enterprise from her private purse. Before the war with Turkey had ended every soldier in the Greek army had one of Queen Olga’s Testaments in his knapsack.

The excitement was so great in those days that the matter was overlooked and nothing was said about it until last spring, when somehow or other the students of the university provoked an agitation and held a series of meetings at which inflammatory speeches were made against the desecration of the Holy Scriptures and the words of the Redeemer by translating them into modern Greek. As is often the case, the police authorities used unwise measures to suppress the agitation, which only made it worse, and it culminated in a mass-meeting called at the ruins of the Temple of Jupiter, near the base of the Acropolis and near the edge of the park which surrounds the palace. This is the usual place for public demonstrations. Political meetings of all kinds are held at the Olympieion, which Aristotle describes as a “work of despotic grandeur.” The ruins are the favorite place of promenade on summer evenings, and demagogues, fanatics and cranks take the opportunity to declaim their views there as they do at Hyde Park in London.

There were originally more than one hundred columns of Pentelic marble, fifty-six feet high and five and a half feet in diameter, of the second largest Greek temple known, being three hundred and fifty-three feet in length and one hundred and thirty-four feet in width, dimensions exceeded only by those of the Temple of Diana at Ephesus. Only sixteen of the columns remain. Several of them are said to have been taken to Rome by the emperors; more have been broken up for building-material, and at least sixteen are now supporting the domes of mosques in Constantinople.

The meeting called to discuss the queen’s translations of the gospels was a very large one, many people attending purely out of curiosity. It was managed by the students of the university, who, to emphasize their objections, secured several copies of the book and burned them over a slow fire in a dramatic manner. The police attempted to disperse the crowd; stones were thrown, shots were fired, and an infuriated populace showed its resentment against the authorities by driving the policemen off the ground and using some of them very roughly. A general alarm was given, soldiers were called out and for two days it was a question whether the military or the mob would rule the city. The number of killed and wounded was quite large. At least seven students died in the streets or were fatally wounded, and their funerals were made occasions for political demonstrations. The result has been to strengthen the support of the classic language and to make the good queen very unpopular. Before this incident she was beloved and admired by everybody, and since no one except the demagogues has ever accused her of more than indiscretion. She was evidently unaware of the philological controversy, and the professors who made her translation should have advised her of it. Her translation, however, was never offered to the public; no copy was ever sold, and it was used simply for the purpose intended. Her Majesty’s critics, however, made the most of the fact that she is a foreigner and a Russian.

Queen Olga’s nobility of character, her pure life, her charitable works and her spotless dignity as a queen, wife and mother will outlive the criticisms upon her indiscretion, which would be soon forgotten if the demagogues would drop the subject. She is a member of the Greek Church, sincere and earnest in the performance of her religious duties, and a strong believer in the miraculous power of an image of the Holy Virgin which attracts many pilgrims to a little town in the southern part of Greece. She is actively interested in charitable work also and rarely fails to visit some hospital or asylum or other benevolent institution. She walks upon the streets like the wife of any ordinary citizen, is unassuming in her manners and democratic in her habits, and if a stranger should meet her upon an errand of mercy or when she is taking her constitutional he would never suspect her to be a queen. The court of Greece is said to be the purest in all Europe, for Queen Olga is even more critical than Queen Victoria used to be concerning the character and reputation of those who are presented to her. There are no adventurers, either men or women, about the palace at Athens. She has brought up her boys under her own eye and according to her own religion, and everybody agrees that they are young men of exemplary character and habits, very different from the ordinary prince.

The king is a Protestant. He is a son of old King Christian of Denmark, “the father-in-law of Europe;” a brother of Queen Alexandra of England, and of Dagmar, the empress mother of Russia. When he accepted the throne of Greece he agreed that his children should be brought up in the religion of the country, but declined to change his own faith. He does not try to proselyte the Greeks, however, but his Lutheran chaplain holds services on Sunday very quietly in a little chapel connected with the palace. Protestants connected with the court have an opportunity to attend, but outsiders are never admitted.

The wife of the crown prince and the future queen of Greece, is the Princess Sophia, a sister of the Kaiser of Germany. When the latter consented to her marriage it was with the understanding that she should not be required to renounce Protestantism, although it was stipulated that her children were to be educated in the Greek faith. Two years ago, however, she voluntarily left the Lutheran Church and was baptized in the Greek communion. Her august brother was furious and did not hesitate to censure his sister openly for renouncing the religion of her fathers. Nor has he forgiven her. She has not been in Germany since, and it is the general understanding that she has not been invited. No Protestant missionary work is now done in Greece, although there are several Protestant churches in different parts of the country, and two in Athens.

Everyone who knows the facts testifies that the priests of the Greek Church are useful, morally and spiritually, but there are altogether too many of them. According to the census of 1889 there were over eight thousand priests for a population of 2,187,208, and the number has rapidly increased since that date, so that the ratio is even larger. There are probably ten thousand priests and monks in Greece to-day, while the membership of the Greek church is 2,138,609. A slight calculation will show you that this is an average of about one priest to every two hundred souls, so that the clerical profession, like all others, is suffering from an oversupply, and the people are required to support it. There are one hundred and seventy monasteries with over nineteen hundred monks, and nine nunneries with two hundred and twenty nuns. The head of the church is called the Metropolitan, who is elected by the Holy Synod, composed of twenty-one archbishops and twenty-nine bishops; and all these have to be supported by the taxpayers. Nominally the church is under the care of the Patriarch of Constantinople, but while his jurisdiction is never questioned in theory, he does not attempt to exercise more than formal ecclesiastical authority. The compensation of the clergy is insignificant. The Metropolitan receives only $120 a month and the bishops only $50. In Athens the most prominent of the parish clergy do not receive more than $500 a year, while country parsons are obliged to subsist upon a mere pittance, many of them being paid only in the produce of the farms of their parishes. The monks belong to orders which own property, and are, therefore, much better off. For these reasons the regular clergy in the country are compelled to earn a living like their parishioners.

The priests in the Greek Church are allowed to marry. Most of them have large families, and according to the customs of the country it is the rule for the sons to follow in the profession of their father. As they cannot marry a second wife under the canon law, they imitate Dr. Primrose, and take good care of their first. It is the uniform testimony of people familiar with the facts that the country parsons of Greece as a rule are honorable, sincere and well-meaning men, living lives of self-sacrifice and comforting those who are worse off than themselves. The Greek priests wear their hair and beards long in imitation of the Saviour. The ecclesiastical dress is a frock similar to that of the Roman Catholic priests, which reaches to the heels, and a black chimney-pot hat without a brim. Sometimes a veil is worn, falling over the shoulders. They are generally men of fine appearance and excellent manners. There are even more chapels than priests, because every village must have a church or a chapel, and sometimes villages are deserted. The inhabitants, for some reason or another, remove to another location, but the chapel must stand. The peasants naturally have a deep religious sentiment, mingled with superstition, and, as in the days of St. Paul, worship unknown gods. They are strong believers in the miraculous also, and consequently there are several miracle-working images of the Holy Virgin and certain saints.

The patriotism of the Greeks is proverbial, and evidences of the munificence of the prosperous children of this classic country are on every side. I do not know of any other city or any other land of similar population which shows so many public buildings and benevolent institutions founded by private individuals. Most of the fortunes have been made abroad. Greece is not a money-making country. The opportunities for gaining wealth are limited. Agriculture is still in a primitive condition; there is comparatively little manufacturing; the mining resources are insignificant, and the commerce and mercantile trade can never amount to much because of the meager population. Therefore, Greeks who are ambitious for wealth go elsewhere. They are a migrating race. There are Greek communities in every important city of the world, and they use the same methods, practice the same economy and show the same skill in trade as the Jews. It is a proverb that one Greek is as good as two Jews in a bargain. They often begin in a small way, peddling fruit, knickknacks and other trifles, but gradually extend their commercial horizons until many of them become mercantile princes. You find them in London, Paris, St. Petersburg, Vienna and especially in Constantinople, where nearly one-third of the population is Greek, and the richest residents belong to that race. Throughout Syria, Egypt and along the coast of Africa the larger share of the mercantile business is in the hands of Greeks. In the Black Sea country they monopolize the grain trade, and throughout the East, from Italy to Egypt and as far north as Budapest and Odessa they practically control commercial affairs.

Greece has no naturalization treaties. Like Russia, the government never releases its subjects from their obligations--once a Greek, always a Greek. Any naturalized Greek citizen of the United States who returns to his native country may be impressed into the army without ceremony if he did not serve his term before he left the country. The same rule applies to the Greek residents of England, France and all other countries. Hence the chief business of the United States minister at Athens is to help our naturalized Greeks out of trouble.

Many Greeks are found in South America also, and in the Transvaal and other parts of South Africa. During the Boer War several Greeks had important contracts for furnishing supplies to the British government and made more money during the troubles than they did while the country was at peace. In the Argentine Republic are several important Greek families. In fact wherever they go they make money, and it is the ambition of every Greek to return to Athens and live among his own people. The long streets of fine mansions and other evidences of wealth and luxury demonstrate that many have been able to do so.

There are many reasons for the working classes as well as the tradesmen to emigrate. Wages are low, although laborers are scarce, and particularly mechanics. The earnings of those who remain in the country have not improved since the war with Turkey, but are lower than before because wages are paid in a depreciated paper currency worth not more than sixty per cent of its former value. The wages of ordinary laborers run from twenty to fifty cents a day, and those of skilled mechanics from fifty to eighty cents a day. The law which requires military service of every citizen drives a good many young men from the country, for it compels them to waste the best years of their life. There is no reason why Greece should have an army. If she had none she would be much better off. Her military history is not at all flattering, and during the late war with Turkey it was clearly demonstrated that the people had neither military skill nor courage. If the parliament would abolish the army and navy, leaving just enough soldiers to preserve the peace, and rest entirely upon the protection of the great Powers of Europe, it would be a blessing to the people and relieve them from an enormous burden of taxation. Many thousand able-bodied young men would be released from a military servitude which not only keeps them from the fields and factories, but unfits them for labor after their term of duty has expired. It would also remove from the sons of the upper classes a temptation which often proves fatal to success in life. Opportunities are so few in Greece that educated young men must seek employment under the government or obtain commissions in the army. Under the present system of politics the former can only look forward to an uncertain and an unprofitable career, while there is even less to encourage the ambitious in the army. The number of officers is so much in excess of the requirements that there is nothing for them to do but to spend their time in the coffee-houses and in worse forms of dissipation. The streets of Athens and other cities of Greece are crowded with men in uniform, and if you will enter any café or stop at one of the many groups of idlers in public places you may notice that at least one-third and sometimes more than half of all those present wear the uniform of officers of high rank. I have been told that there is an officer for every three privates in the Greek army, and certainly that proportion exists in Athens, although it may not be so large in other parts of the country.

Most of the public institutions at Athens were founded and endowed by the private means of Greeks who have made fortunes abroad. Others have left large legacies directly to the government. That has occurred several times in the United States, but not often in other countries. Several men in their wills have left money to be applied toward the payment of the Greek national debt. One man, not long ago, who evidently feared that his money might be stolen, required his executors to purchase a stated amount of government bonds and burn them in the presence of a committee. Some years ago a man left two hotels to the Greek government. They stand on the Place de la Concorde, and yield a good rental, which goes into the public treasury.

One of the most notable acts of patriotism is told of a Greek barber in the city of New York, who, dying, left his entire estate to the University of Athens. He was not an educated man, but was proud of the classic traditions of his country, and gave more than Carnegie or Rockefeller to the cause of education. The amount was only $150, the proceeds of the sale of the equipment of his barber shop, his razors, and doubtless the bottles of hair-tonic that ornamented its shelves, but it was all that he had.

Somebody should give something for repairing the streets and roads. With the exception of the principal thoroughfares, they are very bad, and often impassable.

The University of Athens was founded about 1835. It is conducted on the German plan. Many of the professors are graduates of German universities, and the German language is heard about the building more frequently than any other except Greek. The institution has a large amount of property, from which it draws a considerable revenue, but several of the chairs have been handsomely endowed by private individuals.

The National Library, which has one of the most beautiful modern buildings in the world, is the legacy of the Vallianos brothers, grain-merchants doing business at Odessa and the ports of the Black Sea. A marble statue of one of them stands in front of the building.

The National Museum was given to the people by George Averof, a cotton-merchant in Egypt, who also founded a military school and established a model reformatory for children.

The exposition building, called the Zappeion, intended for temporary exhibitions of art and industry, is the gift of the Zappas brothers, grain-merchants in Roumania.

The building of the Academy of Sciences, which is the most beautiful modern structure in Europe, and the Royal Observatory were erected and endowed by Baron Sina, a Greek banker in Vienna.

The Arsakion, a college for young women, was founded and richly endowed by Mr. Arsakis, a Greek merchant in Vienna. The Varvakion, a manual training-school and gymnasium for boys, was founded by Mr. Varvakes, a raisin merchant. The Polytechnic Institute was the gift of Mr. Metzorios, a merchant of Epirus. The Aretesian, a surgical institute, was founded by Dr. Areteas, a poor boy, who became an eminent surgeon and left 1,000,000 francs for the institution. Dr. Anagnostokes, another eminent surgeon, founded a hospital for eye and ear diseases. George and Mathos Rhizares founded a theological seminary. The late Mr. Syngros, a banker, built an opera-house and gave it to the city; he also founded a model prison for first offenders, a house for impoverished women of rank, a home with a factory for light employment for poor working women, and also a home for the aged of both sexes. The Royal Theater was erected by a stock company, organized by King George, who owns three-fourths of the stock, and was intended to encourage native writers and actors.

Queen Olga built a prison for women. The Crown Princess Sophia built a hospital for children and reorganized and reëquipped in German style the military hospital. The ex-Queen Amalia of Bavaria founded a free dispensary, and Haji Costa, a Greek merchant in Russia, founded the orphan asylum.

The ancient Stadium, originally built three hundred and thirty years before Christ by Lycurgus, the famous Athenian statesman, and one of the noblest, ablest and most practical rulers of Greece, is now being restored in pure white marble after the old style, by the generosity of the late George Averof, who founded the National Museum. His motive was the same as that of Lycurgus, to encourage physical culture among the Greeks, who are very deficient in that important particular. This was demonstrated at the Olympian games, which took place here in 1896. Every event with one exception was captured by strangers. The one exception was the long distance race, twenty-five miles, from the mound at Marathon to the Stadium at Athens, which was won by a young Greek shepherd named Spiridon Louis, and as a reward, in addition to the prize, the government gave him a monopoly of the sale of water from the springs of Marousi, the favorite drinking-water of the Greeks. This spring is a popular resort on the side of the Pentelikos Mountain, near Tatoi, the summer residence of the king. There is a large sale of the water in Athens, and it is brought in fresh from the spring every morning in sheepskins and in large earthen jars. Louis, the runner, is doing a good business, and has increased the demand by representing that its use gave him the strength and speed which won the Marathon race.

The representatives of American colleges who appeared in the games of 1896 acquitted themselves with distinguished honor and carried off their share of the prizes. One of the remarkable incidents was the capture by Robert Garrett of Baltimore, then of Princeton University, of the prize for discus-throwing, a classic Greek game. Mr. Garrett had never seen a discus until his arrival in Athens, but outplayed the Greeks in their own game on their own field.

The new Stadium will be a beautiful structure of marble, six hundred and seventy feet long and one hundred and nine feet broad, with sixty rows of seats of pure white marble, rising one upon the other and accommodating thirty thousand spectators. It is an ideal place for football and similar athletics, and when finished will surpass every other field for sports in ancient or modern times. The cost is comparatively small in Greece, because the extensive quarries of Pentelikos yield their marble treasures for only the cost of cutting and transportation, and no doubt Mr. Averof’s munificence will inspire an ambition among his countrymen to develop their physical as well as their intellectual qualities.

A shrine of history in which all lovers of liberty feel an interest is the little town of Mesolongion, in the western part of the kingdom, where, during the revolution against the Turks in 1823, Marco Bozzaris gained immortality. He is buried under an insignificant monument near a military hospital, and near by is a tomb containing the heart of Lord Byron, who died there. His body was conveyed to England. A monument was erected to Byron at Mesolongion in 1881, and a beautiful group in marble, representing him protecting a beautiful female, symbolizing Greece, from a ferocious barbarian, signifying Turkey, has recently been placed in one of the parks of Athens.

The connection of Lord Byron with the emancipation of Greece was more sentimental than otherwise. It is true that during the war for liberty he offered his services to the Greek patriots and brought them several thousand dollars of his own money, which was sadly needed by the revolutionary leaders. He loaned £4,000 toward the equipment of a Greek fleet, and assisted the patriots to borrow money in London, where he did much to awaken sympathy for the gallant struggle they were making against the Turks. He enlisted a company of adventurers and drilled them at Mesolongion for several months, but they made endless trouble, and he was finally compelled to pay them large sums of money and send them away. It was a motley gang of desperadoes, composed of Englishmen, Scotsmen, Irishmen, Americans, Swedes, Norwegians, Germans, Swiss, Belgians, Russians, Poles, Austrians, Hungarians, Danes, Italians, Frenchmen, Servians, Bulgarians and representatives of every other race and nation who were attracted to him by popular rumors that he had large sums of money to expend in the cause of Grecian liberty. But his plans were impracticable. It was a case of poetic genius and not military skill; but Byron died a hero. It redeemed his reputation, however, and there is no doubt that during the few weeks preceding his death he lived upon a sixpence a day, as his biographers claim, for he had stripped himself of every farthing and had forfeited all claims upon his friends in behalf of the Greek cause. His name will always be cherished by the Greeks.

“The Maid of Athens,” to whom Byron addressed the charming love-song with which we are all familiar, is said to have been Miss Theresa Macri, daughter of the English vice-consul, with whom he fell desperately in love while he was a guest of her father during his first visit to Greece in 1809. He was just twenty-one years old and was still unknown to fame, having published only his first volume of poems. He lived with the family for several months and wanted to marry the daughter, but her father seems to have been a sensible man and refused his consent. Byron returned to England, married Miss Milbanke, separated from her a few months later and left England forever. The next year he met the Countess Guicciolo at Venice and lived with her, without the formality of a marriage for seven years, until he went to Greece, where her father Count Gamba, accompanied him and remained with him until his death.

Some writers have asserted that ancient Greece had a population of at least 10,000,000, and certain antiquarians have estimated that the city of Athens, at the age of Pericles, had a population of 750,000. Now it has 117,000. But the best authorities believe that neither Athens nor Greece ever had a greater population than now. It is certainly true that the number of inhabitants gradually diminished during the Turkish tyranny until, at the outbreak of the revolution in 1821, there were only 766,747 people in Greece. After the revolution the population began to increase gradually until in 1890 it had passed two millions, more than three times the number when the present government was formed, notwithstanding the large emigration. The natural increase is about 2.4 per cent per year, very nearly the same as that of the United States. Seventy-eight per cent of the population live in the country and twenty-two per cent in the towns. A good many of the so-called towns are small villages of farmers. It is the custom in Greece for the people to live in communities and go to their farms every morning. This practice was necessary for mutual protection in the days of the Turks. You see few detached farmhouses, and few country-seats, although the number is rapidly increasing, now that brigandage is extinct. As a rule, however, even now, travelers find the farmhouses in clusters, and the farmers going out to their work every morning with a lunch of bread and olives in their pockets.

Nearly all the land that is capable of raising crops is under cultivation, but the methods are very primitive, and it does not produce anything like the crops that ought to come from such soil. The government has recently instituted a general movement for agricultural education, and has established schools in all the provinces, at which the science of farming is taught--only the rudiments at present, because the Greeks are very conservative, and the wise men who are at the head of this movement know better than to go too rapidly. The farms average about ten acres in extent, the great majority of them being less than two. They are cultivated entirely by hand, and with home-made implements. The soil is plowed with a crooked stick, similar to that used by the Egyptians in the days of Moses, and the grain is thrashed with the hoofs of animals trampling upon it. Near by every community can be seen a circular platform paved with stone, often with a post in the center. When the harvest comes the grain will be spread upon the surface, and three or four animals will be hitched to the post and driven round and round until they have trampled the kernels out of the husks. Greece does not grow enough food for her own consumption. At least sixty per cent of the meat, vegetables and grain consumed annually are imported, which is entirely unnecessary and a direct loss to the people, because the transportation has to be paid for, and so much more comes out of the pockets of the laboring classes.

On a few large estates the land is worked on shares, the peasants taking two-thirds of the produce, and giving the other third in lieu of the rental, the landlord sharing the losses, as well as the profits, when they occur. Olive groves are often managed on this plan, and it is generally satisfactory.

Although square miles of land are lying idle, it is a singular fact that the fields in the neighborhood of Athens do not produce enough vegetables to supply the local market. Nobody seems to know exactly why, although there is a general disposition to attribute the phenomenon to the natural characteristics of the people and to say that the Greeks are poor gardeners. The king sets a good example. He has an estate and country-house about fifteen miles from Athens, and several thousand acres of land under a high state of cultivation. It is a sort of experimental farm in more senses than one, at which he not only shows what can be done, but how to do it, and the advantages of intelligent farming. He has the best live stock in Greece, the most improved machinery, the best breeds of cattle, horses, sheep, swine and poultry, and he sells milk, vegetables and other farm-produce in the local market, as Victoria of England used to do on the Isle of Wight.

This example has done some good. It has made farming respectable, although the Greeks have not followed the fashion to any great extent. In fact, I could not learn of any native of wealth or influence who has imitated His Majesty and gone into the garden-truck business. In another direction the king has done great good. He furnishes seeds to all farmers who will apply for them, and applications are frequent. He has also done a good deal to improve the breeds of live stock and poultry, although the horses and cattle of Greece are comparatively poor. The sheep are much better.

Dairy farming is limited. More goat’s milk is sold than cow’s milk. The natives use comparatively little butter. The Greek butter must be used promptly, because it has a coarse grain and will not keep. It looks like “smear-kase” and tastes more like whipped cream than anything else. Cow’s milk cannot be obtained outside of the large cities, and even there it is scarce and expensive. Nearly all Greeks use goat’s milk. Both goats and cows are driven into town every morning and milked at the doors of the customers. This is not a new fashion, but, like nearly all the customs of the people, can be traced back through many centuries. The herdsman, shuffling through the streets with milk-measure in his hand, behind a herd of seven or eight solemn-looking goats, was probably as familiar to the ancients as he is to the Athenians of to-day, and, viewed in all its aspects, it is an excellent proposition, because all the customers along his route are sure to get their milk fresh and pure, and the goat-herd’s honesty is not tempted by the convenience of the pump. When he reaches the house of a customer he milks one of the goats into his measure and pours the contents into a bucket or the bowl that is brought for him. Some of the milkmen come in with a pair of cans strapped over the back of a donkey.

As in South America, you can buy turkeys and geese “on the hoof.” They are driven in from the country in flocks, so that customers may make selections as they pass through the streets. Everything else is peddled, not only food in the form of fruits, meats, cakes, bread, vegetables, fish, butter and cheese, but all sorts of dry goods and notions, shoes, stockings and even hats, tinware, hardware, stationery; sometimes on a tray suspended from the neck of a man, sometimes on a cart, but oftener upon the back of a donkey. You can frequently see in the streets show-cases with glass fronts containing all kinds of dry goods suspended from pack-saddles of donkeys and transported from house to house, while the owner or attendant bellows an inventory of his merchandise and describes its merits in a brazen voice. There are, however, several fine shops in Athens. Those in the new quarter of the city will compare with the best in our towns of the same size.

Other relics of ancient times are public cook-shops, found in the oldest quarter of the city, similar to those of Naples, where a variety of viands are prepared at the regular meal-hours and sold already cooked at the most extraordinarily low prices. Housewives go there for their supplies instead of to the market. It saves fuel and labor and nothing is wasted. This custom is said to have come down from the classic period before the Christian era, and then, as now, professional cooks used to go about the town with stoves on wheels, filled with bright fires of charcoal, over which persons who had no stoves or ranges in their houses could cook their meats or vegetables for a small fee. It is common to see a peripatetic cook standing in front of a prosperous-looking residence, while the soft and genial atmosphere is filled with the odor of frying fish or roasted rabbit.

Foreigners are always shocked at the sight of a Greek funeral. It is a spectacle which most people desire to avoid, because the body of the dead is exposed in an open hearse. The coffin is shallow, so that not only the face and head but the hands and much of the body can be distinctly seen from the sidewalk as the procession passes through the streets. The lid of the coffin, richly upholstered and often decorated with garlands and wreaths, is carried on the hearse by the undertaker. The priest, the relatives and other mourners follow, and as the ghastly spectacle passes it is customary for bystanders to remove their hats and cross themselves. Men sitting around the cafés always rise out of respect for the dead and stand bareheaded until the procession has passed. In case of an officer of the army, a horse with an empty saddle, heavily draped with crape, is led by an orderly in advance of the hearse.

When the body is lowered to the grave the coffin-lid is placed upon it, but does not close down, and the earth is allowed to come in direct contact, to hasten decay. The superstition in the popular mind is that the soul of the departed is in a state of suspense until the temple it formerly inhabited has turned to dust. Graves are rented in the Athens cemeteries for terms of years, just like the habitations of the living. None but the rich own burial lots. It is an evidence of wealth and aristocracy. The poor never think of buying a lot or a tomb. It would be considered an unnecessary luxury. At the end of the term for which a grave is rented the bones are dug up, put into a bag, labeled with the name and dates, and deposited in a general receptacle.

The custom of carrying the body to the grave in the full sight of the people is said to have originated during the Turkish occupation of Greece. The country was in a state of chronic revolution. The importation of arms and ammunition was forbidden, and the revolutionists were in the habit of importing them in coffins. Frequently people who were “wanted” by the police were assisted to escape in a similar manner, and revolutionary leaders who had been banished were brought back in coffins. Therefore, as a precaution, the Turks required that dead bodies should be exposed.

XVII SHRINES AND TEMPLES

The Acropolis of Athens is the most famous hill in the universe. The columns of the Parthenon are familiar to all the world. They are the remains of the most majestic monument ever erected by human hands, and did it ever occur to you that it was intended for the honor and the worship of a woman? The lord mayor of an Irish city, in accepting the honor of an election, declared that if it had not been for his mother he would not have stood before his constituents that day. We might all pay a similar tribute to Eve, yet no monument has ever been erected to her memory, and the place of her burial has been forgotten, if anybody ever knew where it was. Three graves of Adam are pointed out to tourists in the East, but not even one of Eve.

We estimate the Greeks of the age of Pericles as having reached the highest degree of development in intellect, philosophy and wisdom. We teach our children their precepts. Our students of medicine, art, science and theology must study them in preparation for their life-work. It is a popular belief that the summit of human culture was reached at the period of the building of the Parthenon. Yet the ancient Greeks believed that the source of their learning, wisdom and strength was a woman, and to her they raised that matchless tribute, the admiration of all ages, the most perfect example of architecture ever conceived, and in it they not only worshiped a woman, Athena, but made sacrifices to one whom they had deified. Its ruined columns stand to-day as a testimonial to womanhood. An old friend used to say that the best rule he ever found in life was, “When in doubt, do as your wife tells you,” and for his authority he might have referred to the ancient Greeks.

The Acropolis is a mighty rock which rises five hundred feet in what was the center of ancient Athens, when that city had 200,000 population. On all sides but one the walls are perpendicular. Toward the west there is a slope by which the summit is reached by a winding roadway. In ancient times there was a series of stairways, and the Propylaea, or gateway, was as remarkable as the temples at the top. There was also a road for chariots, and we can see the ruts made by the wheels in the pavements. The Acropolis is visible from a long distance. It looms up in majesty as the city is approached from all directions, and the columns of the Parthenon are dwarfed by its height. The first effect, therefore, upon strangers is disappointing. The ruins are not as grand as they expected, and they feel a little sorry that they came, but familiarity breeds respect in this instance. The columns grow larger and grander and more beautiful every time you look at them, and those who have had the privilege of visiting the Acropolis by moonlight will retain an impression that cannot be effaced from their memory by anything else that may remain for their enjoyment. Age and the salt air from the sea have given the marble a rusty color, which detracts from its purity, but gives it a tone of richness and ripeness entirely appropriate to a ruin. You would not like to see a ruin of pure white marble. It would look incongruous, although you can imagine how beautiful the Parthenon and the surrounding buildings must have been when they were fresh and new.

The temple to Athena (Minerva) and the surrounding buildings were destroyed when the Venetians bombarded Athens to drive out the Turks. The latter, who held the city, intrenched themselves on the Acropolis and concealed their store of powder in the Parthenon. The Acropolis, therefore, became the target for the Venetian artillerymen, and on Friday, September 26, 1687, a German lieutenant fired a bomb which fell into the magazine and was followed by an explosion which destroyed forever the most glorious architectural triumph of men. Three hundred Turkish soldiers lost their lives in the explosion and their commander, having no ammunition, was compelled to surrender three days later. No attempt was ever made to restore the building. On the contrary, the Acropolis has been plundered century after century for building-material, and for works of art. Some of the finest of the marbles were burned to make lime for the masonry in building modern Athens, and Lord Elgin, the British minister to Greece, in the earlier part of the last century, removed the most beautiful and valuable of the sculptures, which are now exhibited in the British Museum, under the name of “The Elgin Marbles.” Within late years much care has been taken in protecting and preserving the treasures that remain, and the Grecian government is exceedingly anxious to recover the works of art which have been taken from the Acropolis to foreign lands. On several occasions during the last half-century overtures have been made to the British government to restore the Elgin marbles, but they have met with no favorable response. Mr. Gladstone gave the Ionian Islands back to Greece when he was prime minister and received the gratitude of a nation. The Athenians would be equally grateful if King Edward would return to them the sculptures which once decorated the temple of Minerva, and were taken away with the authority of the Turkish government, and not with the consent of Greece.

It is difficult to avoid moralizing about the Acropolis. I do not know of any other place on earth, unless it be Bethlehem, Jerusalem, or St. Peter’s at Rome, or Westminster Abbey in London, which furnishes such food for thought. The columns of the Parthenon are older than anything in Rome except the obelisk in the center of the Piazza del Popolo, and older than anything in London except a similar obelisk that stands on the Thames embankment. Both of those were transplanted from the soil in which the Pharaohs originally erected them, to show how Christian nations sometimes despoil the heathen. It is an old trick. Rome is filled with objects of art of which her emperors robbed the Athenians. The Parthenon has had a varied experience. It was first a temple to the Goddess of Wisdom; for several hundred years it was a church for the worship of a Jewish peasant; and at the time of its destruction it had been for centuries a mosque dedicated to a camel-driver.

The most important incident that has occurred upon the Acropolis in recent times, and it has a personal interest for us, was the discovery in 1900 by Mr. Eugene P. Andrews of Oswego, New York, then a student at the American School of Classical Studies and now an instructor at Cornell University, of an inscription to Nero upon the architrave of the Parthenon, which had been unknown for a dozen centuries. It was a great achievement, one of the most notable events in modern archeology. He thought that certain small holes in the marble must have served some useful purpose, and so he let himself down from the top by a rope ladder similar to those that sailors use, and discovered that they had once been occupied by nails which supported brass letters. By taking a series of impressions with damp wrapping-paper, he secured a diagram, from which he was able to trace the Greek letters, and the inscription, which had never been suspected, was announced to the scholars of the world by Professor Richardson, the director of the American school.

The American Archeological Institute has a school in Athens similar to that in Rome, which was founded several years later. The object is to furnish American scholars an opportunity to study art, archeology, ancient history, literature and the classic languages upon the ground and in the atmosphere in which they were developed.

He who would the poet understand Most read him in the poet’s land.

I may not have the quotation exact, but that is the idea. In addition to the branches of study I have named, the students hear lectures on Greek law, religion, philosophy and upon all subjects dealing with the institutions, the social life and the industrial activity of the ancients. They are conducted about the country to various points of historic and archeological interest, such as Thebes, Delphi, Olympia, Mycenae, Sparta and Thessaly, and are allowed to tread in the footsteps of the old philosophers. They hear lectures in the museums, which are illustrated by object-lessons. The museums of Athens are particularly rich in relics of the archaic period of Greece--before the Persian war, 480 B.C.--and the director gives that branch his special attention. Other members of the faculty lecture on history, poetry, politics and kindred subjects. The students also have the advantage of similar institutions founded by the English, French, German and Austrian governments. All the national schools of archeology are affiliated, and each has its special line of investigation, selected after a consultation, in order that they may not interfere with or duplicate the work of each other. The American school is the strongest of all, the French next, then the German, and last the English. The German school, however, is particularly fortunate in having for its director Dr. Doerpfeld, who succeeded Dr. Schliemann in the archeological work at Troy. The students of one school are admitted to the lectures of the others and also have the use of their libraries. Most of them are fitting themselves for instructors in Greek and archeology, and nearly all of the graduates since the school was founded in 1882 now occupy chairs in the faculties of American colleges and universities.

The present director is Professor Richardson, who was graduated from Yale in the class of ’69, and was for a long time professor of Greek language and literature at Dartmouth College. He has been at Athens since 1893. Each year an assistant is selected from one of the contributing colleges. Professor Thomas Day Seymour, of Yale, was chairman of the Managing Committee of the school for fourteen years, but recently has been succeeded by Professor Wheeler, of Columbia. Part of its income is precarious, consisting of contributions from various colleges and private individuals, and if they should withdraw it would leave the institution without funds. There ought to be a larger endowment, so as to secure permanency. At present the endowment amounts to about $65,000. The society owns a fine building, well adapted to its purposes, and a considerable area of ground which may be found available in the future. Among the most generous donors for excavations is Colonel Hay, secretary of state, who has recently placed a considerable sum of money in the hands of the trustees, to be used as a foundation for the library in memory of his son, the late Adelbert Stone Hay. There is no limit to the number of students. Anyone is received who has had a thorough classical training at an American college. It is important that applicants should gain as great command as possible of the German, French and modern Greek languages before entering the school in order that they may enjoy the full benefit of their opportunities. The tuition fee is nominal, and the cost of living at Athens is anything that one may choose to make it. At the large hotels board and lodging can be obtained for $14 a week and upward, and at the smaller hotels and in private families, from $5 and upward. Six fellowships with stipends of $600 each, and one with a stipend of $1,000, will be awarded annually, upon competitive examination, to bachelors of art of the universities and colleges of the United States, and may be extended for two years, upon the recommendation of the faculty, to students in the Schools of Classical Studies at Athens and in Rome, and in the School of Oriental Study in Palestine--all under the general care of the Archeological Institute of America.

The fellows are required to pursue original investigations and twice a year to report the results.

Everyone can appreciate the advantages offered by the American school to those who are seeking a career as scholars or instructors. It gives a vitality to their learning which they cannot get in books, and the same books read in Greece are much more luminous than in the class-rooms at home. The original work done by the students is also of great importance to them, and it is gratifying to know that this institution has taken the lead and is recognized as the most important among the several national colleges at Athens. The Greek government is liberal in its encouragement and the king feels a deep interest in all its concerns.

Original work has been going on since 1886, and the results of the excavations may be seen in the National Museum, at the Argive Heraeum, at Athens, and in a volume recently published by Professor Waldstein, now lecturer at King’s College, Cambridge, who was the director for some years. Some of the most interesting of the explorations have been at Icaria, the first seat of the worship of Bacchus, and the home of Thespis, the inventor of the theater. He was the first man to present a play to the public. There had been recitations and declamations upon the platform before his time, but he introduced dialogues and plots, and invented the mask so that one man-actor could take two parts. Women never appeared on the stage in those days. The feminine parts were always taken by men. The director of the American school discovered the original home of Thespis and it was excavated under his direction. The Americans were not allowed, however, to take anything away. Under the laws of Greece the finder is protected in publishing reports of his discoveries, and may receive the honor and the credit, but the tangible results are the property of the government or of the owner of the land, who, however, to retain them, must erect a museum upon the ground for their public exhibition.

The American School has done a good deal of work at Plataea, the scene of a great battle between the Greeks and the Persians in 479 B.C., but found little of value. The excavations were more successful at Eretria, at one time an important city, which was destroyed by the Persians before the battle of Marathon. Here they uncovered a theater, a temple to Bacchus, a fine lot of baths, and the most perfect gymnasium that has ever been found.

Near Argos the American School, under Dr. Waldstein, discovered and excavated the ruins of a magnificent temple of Hera, which was destroyed in the year 423 B.C., when one of the priestesses went to sleep without blowing out her candle; the decorations caught fire and the temple was burned. This was a rich find, for, in addition to the temple, they uncovered several other buildings of interest, and brought to the National Museum at Athens a number of valuable statues and a large quantity of bronze and terra-cotta work.

The excavations of the American students at Corinth I have referred to in a previous chapter. They began work there in 1896, and will continue in a systematic manner until the old city is entirely uncovered and opened to the public, as Pompeii is to-day. Old Corinth was a very populous city, larger than Athens, and, at the height of its glory in 325 B.C., had a population of nearly 200,000, with many magnificent structures, which suffered from earthquakes, and were plundered and destroyed by the Romans and other invaders. Julius Caesar rebuilt a portion of the old city, but it was again destroyed by his successors, and finally disappeared and was covered from the sight of men by the drifting sands. The American School has purchased part of the site, and, with the encouragement of the Greek government, is working as rapidly as its funds will permit; but is entirely dependent, as I have said, upon the generosity of private supporters. The German Institute receives $5,000 a year from its government for excavations; the French have an even larger allowance, and the English are spending large sums. The American explorers alone lack funds, yet from them the most important results are expected.

Mars Hill, from which Paul delivered the eloquent address of which we have an account in Chapter xvii of the Acts of the Apostles, beginning, “Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are very religious”--not “too superstitious,” as the old version has it--stands across a little gully from the Acropolis at Athens. It was then occupied by the Athenian courts, called the Areopagus, and the learned men, lawyers, philosophers, teachers and orators of the city met there every day to exchange ideas and talk politics. The ancient court of the Areopagus, composed of the most venerable and eminent Athenians, and exercising supreme jurisdiction in certain cases involving life, sat there regularly to hear arguments and announce their decisions. The hill is said to have derived its name from the fact that Ares, or Mars, was the first person tried there for murder. It was there also that Orestes was arraigned and acquitted of criminal responsibility for the murder of his mother, Clytemnestra. Many other famous trials took place upon the hill. Lawyers were never allowed to appear before an Athenian court, still less the Areopagus. Every man had to plead his own case.

St. Paul appeared upon the Areopagus five hundred and twenty years after the birth of Socrates and three hundred and seventy years after the death of Demosthenes, but Greece was still filled with learned men. Upon its stage the masterpieces of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes were first presented to the public.

Phaleron, the summer-resort of the Athenians upon the bay, where there are several hotels and bathing establishments and a little villa for the pleasure of the royal family, is the place where Demosthenes used to go to practice speaking. It was there, according to the legend, that he picked up pebbles and put them under his tongue to prevent him from stammering.

Near by are two tombs hewn in the living rock, accessible at low tide but often submerged by the sea. One of them is popularly believed to be the tomb of Themistocles, one of the greatest men of ancient Greece, who persuaded his fellow citizens to devote the proceeds of the silver mine of Laurion to the construction of a naval fleet, which made Athens for a time preëminent upon the sea. But this fleet did not last very long, and Athens absolutely had her ships taken from her at the close of the fifth century B.C.

Across the bay is the island of Salamis, the scene of one of the most famous sea battles in all history, when Xerxes, King of Persia, witnessed the destruction of his fleet of one thousand vessels from a rocky promontory which projects into the bay. The point is called “the throne of Xerxes.” The poet Aeschylus was on one of the ships and distinguished himself in the battle. Eight years later, in March, 472, his tragedy, based upon it, was performed in the theater of Dionysus at Athens.

Socrates was born in Athens in the year 469 B.C. He was originally a sculptor, but abandoned art and became an astrologer. He afterwards taught in the market-place, surrounded by his students and disciples, and it was to them that he delivered the opinions which brought him into collision with the authorities, and particularly the priests. The trial of Socrates was similar to that of Christ. Both were accused of sedition, of denying the gods, of introducing a new religion, of corrupting the minds of the youth and disturbing the tranquillity of the people. Socrates was arraigned for this crime before the courts, as Christ was before the Sanhedrin. Both admitted the truth of the charge, while they denied the criminality. The answer of Socrates to his accusers was almost the same as that of Jesus before Pilate, four hundred years later. He was convicted, however, and condemned to die. Owing to a superstition about putting men to death during a festival, the execution of his sentence was postponed, and in the meantime he drank his cup of hemlock juice. Near the Areopagus are two chambers about sixteen feet square, hewn in the side of a rocky cliff. They are divided by a partition with a narrow door and are protected by gratings of iron bars, like the cage of a wild beast. The guide-book calls them “the prison of Socrates,” and it is generally understood among the people that he was imprisoned and died there, but there is no evidence to sustain such a supposition.

Demosthenes had a country home on the other side of Mount Hymettus, which is as famous for its honey to-day as it was two thousand years ago. The wild flowers that grow in the soil of that mountain contain an unusual amount of saccharine and give a flavor to the honey which is not found in that made elsewhere. The ancient Greeks considered it a great luxury, and it still sustains its reputation and is sold to-day in all the markets of Europe for high prices. Tourists buy it at the hotels and curiosity-shops of Athens.

Demosthenes was the son of a rich furniture-dealer, and was a statesman, lawyer, orator and patriot. He lived nearly a century after Socrates, and in the year 322 B.C., when the Macedonians secured control of the government, fled from Athens across the sea into the Peloponnesus. There he was followed by an officer of the police with a warrant for his arrest. Demosthenes was prepared for him and received him in the temple of Poseidon in Calauria. Rather than suffer the humiliation of trial and imprisonment, he decided to take his own life. Suspecting such an intention, the authorities ordered the police officials to take precautions to prevent suicide, and they watched him very closely. After the arrest was made Demosthenes asked the officers to allow him to write a note to his family, and sat down at his desk to do so. It was noticed that he frequently moistened the tip of his pen with his lips, and when the note was finished he fell lifeless from his seat. The ink had been poisoned.

The field of Marathon, where the great battle with the Persians was fought in 490 B.C., about twenty-five miles from Athens, is marked by a great mound, under which the bones of the slain were buried.

Tanagra, where, in 455 B.C., the Athenians first measured strength and valor with the Spartans, is a little further north and has been one of the most prolific sources of satisfaction to archeologists. From the graves around it have come those charming figurines in painted terra-cotta that are so highly prized by collectors. The quantity of figures discovered there during the excavations has been so great that fine examples are now to be found in nearly every museum, and tourists can purchase for a small sum imitations largely made up of the fragments, which are quite as pretty as the genuine.

West from Tanagra is Thebes, a famous old town founded by Cadmus, the home of Pindar, the poet, and Epaminondas, the soldier and statesman. It was the rival of Athens until Alexander the Great sacked it in 336 B.C., when six thousand of the citizens were slain and thirty thousand carried away as slaves. It is now a sleepy little town of about twenty-five hundred inhabitants who grow fruit and do other kinds of farming. The ruins of the ancient town are covered with rubbish and the topography has been considerably changed by earthquakes. There is no hotel, and very little to interest the traveler.

From Thebes one can go west to Delphi, the seat of the famous oracle and the headquarters of the cult of Apollo, but it is a difficult and uncomfortable journey, requiring several days on horseback. The easier route is from Corinth by boat, twice a week, to a little town called Itea. From there to Delphi is only a ride of two and a half hours. The grandeur of the scenery and the magnificent view of Parnassus are full compensation for the time and fatigue, and even in these modern times the gorges in the mountains are filled with a mysterious atmosphere which must have affected the imagination of the ancients. The oracle was consulted, you remember, upon all affairs of importance, both by the people and the state, and its influence was not diminished by the ambiguity of its utterances. The voice of the oracle came from a chasm in the rocks which can not be identified these days, probably because of earthquakes. Above the chasm the prophetic virgin sat upon a golden tripod and uttered responses which none but the priests could understand. Altogether the oracle was a good scheme and its influence was wholesome among the people. Solon, the great law-giver; Plato, the philosopher; Aeschylus, Pindar, and Sophocles all spoke of it with great respect.

Modern Delphi is called Castri, and stands on part of the ancient site, at an altitude of twenty-one hundred and thirty feet above the gulf of Corinth and among the cliffs of Parnassus. There has been an enormous amount of excavating done there by the French School of Archeology which has been rewarded by many interesting and important discoveries.

The classic mountain Parnassus, which rises eight thousand and seventy feet, may be comfortably climbed from Delphi, the ascent being made most of the way on horseback. Every foot of the journey is crowded with historic and mythical associations.

The pass of Thermopylae, known to every schoolboy as the place where Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans held the whole Persian army at bay, is thirty miles in a straight line directly north from Delphi, on the other side of Parnassus, but nearly three times that distance by the circuitous route which must be traveled. There are no roads and it takes several days to make the journey on horseback. The pass is a narrow ravine or defile between two wooded hills and its strategic advantages are perfectly apparent, although the guide-books say that a rocky eminence which formerly overhung the defile has been thrown down by earthquakes and the gorge has been considerably filled up by alluvial deposits brought down by mountain torrents, so that the present appearance of the pass gives very little idea of what it must have been. It resembles hundreds of similar gorges in Colorado and other parts of the Rocky Mountains. Here Leonidas detained the Persian army under Xerxes until the Greeks were able to make a safe retreat. The exact spot was afterwards marked by a monument with this inscription:

STRANGER, TELL THE SPARTANS THAT WE ARE LYING HERE IN OBEDIENCE TO THEIR COMMANDS.

Due north from Thermopylae is the famous Mount Olympus, 9,754 feet high, the home of the gods, which, unfortunately, is now on Turkish soil, much to the sorrow and mortification of the Greeks. If they had their territorial rights they would still include that noble peak within their jurisdiction.

Mount Ossa, 6,398 feet high, lies immediately south of Olympus; Mount Pelion is farther to the south, rising 5,308 feet above the sea.

Going westward from Athens, crossing the peninsula by railroad to Corinth, and then turning southward for fifteen or sixteen miles, we come to Mycenae, which was the scene of so much activity in mythological times, but its importance dwindled long before the dawn of history. It was founded by Perseus, who raised the massive walls of the city with the aid of the Cyclops. Agamemnon, the great soldier, had his seat there, and was not only the ruler of that district but the chieftain of all the Greeks, of the islands as well as the mainland. He led them against Troy and after his return was murdered by Aegisthos, the lover of his wife, Clytemnestra. Although Orestes, his only son, avenged his father’s death and his mother’s shame, when he grew up, the legends do not tell us that he regained the throne.

The tomb of the great Grecian chieftain is well preserved and is one of the most striking examples of ancient masonry. It is a sort of underground temple in the shape of a bee-hive, fifty feet high, and near it is another vaulted sepulcher, supposed to have been the tomb of Clytemnestra. Extensive excavations have been made at Mycenae by Grecian archeologists under the direction of Dr. Schliemann, who disclosed to the world the ruins of Troy. It is one of the most interesting places in Greece.

Near the western boundary of Peloponnesus is Olympia, the scene of the celebrated games, which may be reached by railway from Patras, the western port of the Gulf of Corinth, more easily than from Athens. It was never properly a town, but was a group of temples, shrines, palaces, amphitheaters and public buildings where the entire Hellenic world used to assemble periodically, for more than a thousand years, and engage in semi-sacred games founded by Hercules in the mythical ages. The Olympic games reached their greatest importance immediately after the Persian wars, when they were partially divested of their religious character and became a national festival in honor of Hellenic unity. Competitors came from all the states, the islands and the colonies of greater Greece; the functions lasted for five days, and a list of the victors was kept in the archives of the state. The record begins B.C. 776 and is continued for several centuries after the Roman occupation. The winners enjoyed life-long distinction, were entertained annually at banquets and festivals at the public expense, and were exempt from taxation.

During the Roman period Tiberius and Nero themselves engaged in the games, but about the third century after Christ athletic sports were degraded by the entrance of professionals, and became a trade. The Olympic games were finally suppressed by the Roman Emperor Theodosius in the year 394.

Extensive excavations have been made at Olympia by the Germans, who have spent several hundred thousand dollars uncovering the ruins of temples, palaces and amphitheaters which were buried from fifteen to twenty feet deep under deposits of sand and gravel, washed down by cloud-bursts and floods from the mountains, which also undermined the walls of the Hippodrome, the Stadium and other of the ancient structures. The interest in the excavations at one time was as great as that excited at Pompeii, but very little of artistic interest was found.

Still south of Olympia, near the extreme end of the peninsula, is the old town of Sparta, which is still the capital of the province of Laconia, and a place of considerable importance. The remains of ancient Sparta, however, are scanty and insignificant and, although the modern town is beautifully located, it is said to be very unhealthy. There is a museum there containing a large collection of antiquities, and several of great importance. The guides show you an open plain, surrounded with ditches, where the youthful Spartans used to wage their mimic warfare. They show you also a rectangular enclosure of massive stones which they claim to be the ruins of the tomb of Leonidas, and several other fictitious scenes of interest.

For the classical scholar, the historian, the archeologist, and lovers of the picturesque, there is no country more abundant in interest than Greece, and although the accommodations are primitive and the means of transportation are limited, even the shortest visit to the country will be full of gratification. Greece is now only four days from London and three days from Paris, and in these times, when many people have exhausted the novelties of northern Europe, they will find the classic grounds of the Hellenic peninsula a most satisfactory place of resort. Excepting Japan, southern Italy and the Tyrol, no country compares with Greece in the beauty of its landscapes. The remarkable purity of the atmosphere at Athens enhances the effect of artificial as well as natural objects of interest. As in Arizona, distances are very deceptive. Far-off mountains are brought close to the eye as with a field-glass, and as you approach them they recede in a most provoking way. Hymettus and Pentelikos, the two famous mountains which lie on either side of Athens, are often enveloped in a curious pink glow at sunset, and then, as the flame fades out of the sky, they take on a deep violet tinge. The Greek sunset is something that cannot be represented on canvas. Artists and poets rave about it, but it is beyond their power to reproduce.

It is not a land for luxurious people, however. The climate is more to be recommended than the hotels, but the natural scenery has a variety, a richness and a color that no other part of Europe affords. The foliage and the flowers are abundant and beautiful, and in the rural districts the people are picturesque in manners, customs and dress. Their habits and social life have not been affected by what we call the advances of modern civilization. In public conveniences, however, Greece is still far behind the times. Athens is the only place where the hotels are tolerable, and travelers who go into the interior must take their own provisions and bedding. Even those who make little excursions by carriage for a single day in the neighborhood of Athens must carry a lunch-basket, because the inns are primitive and filthy. Railway facilities are limited. With a few exceptions the roads are bad, but they are gradually improving, and several of the centers of great interest to tourists may now be reached by carriage. Only a few years ago travelers had to go on horseback or on foot, as they do in the Holy Land. Even now those who visit some of the most interesting places have to put up with discomforts, inconveniences and a good deal of dirt and bad smells, although they are fully repaid.

FINIS.

INDEX

Abduction, Prince Alexander of Bulgaria, 174

Abdul Aziz, 67

Abdul Hamid II, 54

Abdul Medjid, 67

Abraham, Founder of the Turkish Race, 55

Acropolis of Athens, 369

Adossides, George, 62

Adriatic Coast, 303

Agamemnon, Tomb of, 384

Agriculture in Bulgaria, 194 in Bosnia, 290 in Servia, 261 in Greece, 342, 363

Alexander the Great, 14

Alexander of Battenberg, 169, 174, 186, 196

Alexander of Servia, 248

Alexander II. of Russia, 167, 173, 207

Alexander III. of Russia, 173

Alix, Czarina, 251

Americans in Bulgaria, 209

American Board of Foreign Missions, 142, 148, 209, 224

American School at Athens, 328, 372

Anarchy in Bosnia, 274

Andrews, Eugene P., Discovery by, 372

Archaeological Institute, American, 328, 372

Architecture of Constantinople, 94

Areopagus, the, 379

Armenians in Constantinople, 103

Armenian Massacres, 161

Army, Bosnian, 280 Bulgarian, 200 Servian, 260, 269 Turkish, 84

Assassination of Stambouloff, 182

Assassinations of Sultans, 55, 67

Athens, Modern, 332 Streets of, 333 Climate of, 333 Parks of, 334 Public Buildings of, 357 the Acropolis of, 369 Riots in, 349

Athletic Sports in Greece, 360

Atrocities, Bulgarian, 14, 27, 167

Attar of Roses, 194, 207

Auctions in Constantinople, 124

Austria, Political Attitude of, 17, 34

Austrian Soldiers in Bosnia, 280 Administration in Bosnia, 273

Baird, Rev. Dr., 234

Bakhmeteff, Mr., Russian Agent, Sofia, 185, 216

Baldwin I., 190

Bazaars of Constantinople, 119 of Sarajevo, 284

Beet-Sugar in Bosnia, 290

Belgrade, City of, 257

Berlin Conference 1878, 14, 27, 273, 304

Beyler Bey Palace, 132

Bible in Turkish, 152, 212

Biography of Sultan, 62

Blackmail in Macedonia, 228 in Turkey, 46

Bosnia, Development of, 296 Population of, 276 Regeneration of, 273 Soldiers, 281

Boundaries of Bulgaria, 193

Bosphorus, the, 91, 105, 142

Bribery in Turkey, 97

Bridges, Constantinople, 40, 107

Brigandage in Macedonia, 227

Brindisi, Port of, 311

Brothers, the Sultan’s, 68

Bulgaria, Conditions in, 20 History, 165, 195 Relation to European Politics, 166, 171

Business in Turkey, 57, 96, 110, 120

Byron, Lord, 360

Castles on the Bosphorus, 143

Castle at Belgrade, 267

Cattaro, Town of, 303

Cattle in Bosnia, 290 Servian, 261

Cemeteries, Turkish, 112

Censorship in Turkey, 154

Ceremonies, Mohammedan, 82, 136

Chambers, the Sultan’s, 76

Churches, Protestant in Turkey, 149 in Bosnia, 281

Children, Sultan’s, 72, 85

Cistern of 1,001 Pillars, 161

Cities of Bulgaria, 193

Civilization, Early, in Balkans, 13

Clark, Rev. Mr., 224

Classic Spirit of Greece, 335

Clytemnestra, Tomb of, 385

Coat of Arms, Turkish, 53

Coffee-Houses, Turkish, 47

College for Girls, Scutari, 153

Commerce of Constantinople, 111

Concessions, German, in Turkey, 18

Conference, Berlin, of 1878, 14, 27, 273, 304

Consular Trials in Turkey, 156

Conspiracies in Turkey, 56 in Servia, 250

Constantinople, Picturesqueness, 91 Filth of, 40

Corfu, Island of, 312 Population of, 315 Climate of, 315

Corinth, Gulf of, 318, 325 Ancient, 322 Modern, 322 Canal of, 322 Excavations at, 328

Corruption among Turkish Officials, 97

Costumes, Servian, 263 Bulgarian, 198 Greek, 319

Cosmopolitan Population of Constantinople, 101, 107

Courts in Bosnia, 289 Turkish, 157

Cowardice of Sultan, 55

Crescent as a Symbol, 53

Crime in Bosnia, 274 in Greece, 340

Crown Prince of Greece, 351

Currant Culture in Greece, 318

Custom House, Constantinople, 97, 111 Belgrade, 257

Customs of Bosnia, 279, 287

Dalmatian Coast, 303

Damascus, Political Exiles in, 60

Danube River, the, 191

Dardanelles, the, 91

Delphi, the Oracle of, 382

Demosthenes, Home of, 380

Dickinson, Consul-General, 222, 230, 234

Diocletian, Palace of, 306

Diogenes, Home of, 328

Diplomatic Protests to Turkey, 18

Dishonesty in Turkey, 41, 97

Dogs of Constantinople, 113

Dolma-Baghtcheh Palace, 69, 131, 135

Dorys, George, Biographer of Sultan, 62

Draga, Queen of Servia, 248

Education in Bulgaria, 200, 213 in Greece, 338

Education in Servia, 265 in Turkey, 152

Editors in Turkey, 154

Electricity Forbidden in Turkey, 61

Embassies in Constantinople, 95, 158

Emigration from Greece, 355

England, Attitude of, 14, 34

Eunuchs, Turkish, 85

Excavations at Corinth, 328 Agamemnon’s Tomb, 384 Bosnia, 295 Delphi, 382 Diocletian’s Palace, 306 Mycenae, 384 Olympia, 385 the Acropolis, 369 Thebes, 382 Tanagra, 381

Exiles, Turkish, 59

Extra-Territoriality, 156

Eyub, Mosque of, 89

Fanaticism, Religious, 26

Ferdinand, Prince of Bulgaria, 178, 184, 197 Children of, 186

Firemen of Constantinople, 116

Football in Turkey, Dangers of, 58

Foreigners in Constantinople, 97

France, Political Attitude, 19

Franchises in Bosnia, 296

Fruits in Bulgaria, 207

Fuad, Pasha, 59

Funerals, Greek, 367

Galata, City of, 93

Gargiulo, Mr., 232

George, King of Greece, 313, 346, 351

Germany, Political Attitude of, 17, 34

Gladstone and Bulgaria, 167 and Greece, 314

Golden Horn, 36, 92

Government, Turkish System of, 35, 49, 97, 102

Grant, General, 64

Green Vaults of Constantine, 137

Greeks in Constantinople, 104

Greek Church in Constantinople, 352 in Bulgaria, 186 in Bosnia, 296

Greece, Climate of, 387 Costume of Natives, 319 Crime in, 340 Currant Culture, 318 Education in, 338 Hotels of, 387 Journey to, 312 Newspapers of, 338 Olive Trees in, 319 Peasants, 343, 363 Politics, 336, 346 Population, 362 Prisons, 342 Professions, 343 Railways, 311 Society, 337

Guilds in Turkey, 121

Habits, Turkish, 45, 109

Hadji, Rank of, 51

Hamlin, Dr. Cyrus, 146

Harem, The Sultan’s, 64, 70, 85

Haskell, Rev. Dr., 234

Hassan Pasha, 37

Heir to Servian Throne, 251 to Turkish Throne, 68

Helena, Queen of Italy, 252

Hellespont, the, 92

Historical Review, 13

Homer’s School at Stavros, 316

Holy Banner, Bosnian, 55, 136

Holy Mantle, 40, 55, 136

Hotel at Belgrade, 259

Hotels, Government, in Bosnia, 297

Horses, Bulgarian, 201 in Constantinople, 111 the Sultan’s, 88

House, Rev. John Henry, 211, 217, 232

Household, the Sultan’s, 79, 68, 85

Hymettus, Mount, 380

Intemperance in Turkey, 46

Ismet Bey, Sultan’s Foster-Brother, 75

Ithaca, Island of, 313

Jajce, Bosnia, 301

Janissaries, 135

Jews in Bosnia, 299 in Bulgaria, 203 in Servia, 264 in Constantinople, 104

John, St., of Ryle, 186

Justice, Turkish, 157

Kallay, Count von, Administration of, in Bosnia, 273

Kalpak, Bulgarian Headdress, 209

Karageorgeovitch Family, 244, 253

Kassuroff, Mrs. Ivan B., 214

Khans of Constantinople, 119

Kidnaping in Macedonia, 227

Kindergarten in Sofia, 212

Labor Unions in Turkey, 121

Lamsdorff, Count, 251

Land Laws in Bosnia, 289

Language, Bulgarian, 194 Modern Greek, 348 Servian, 266

Law Schools in Bosnia, 294

Law, Turkish, 157

Leishman, Minister, 232

Leonidas, Battle of, 382

Ludskanoff, Bulgarian Minister, 183

Luke, St., Tomb of, 302

Macedonia, Conditions in, 15, 30, 168

Macedonian Committee, 26, 239

Mahmoud Pasha, 69, 314

Manufacturing in Bosnia, 292

Marathon, Battle of, 381

Marco Bozzaris, 360

Mark Antony, Scene of Battle, 315

Market at Belgrade, 261

Marmora, Sea of, 91

Mars Hill, 378

Marsh, Rev. Geo. L., 211

Massacres, Armenian, 41, 103, 161 in Bosnia, 293 in Bulgaria, 15, 27, 31 in Macedonia, 15, 30, 168

Mecca, Pilgrimages to, 51, 83

Methodists in Bulgaria, 210

Metkovic, Town of, 304

Michael, King of Servia, 245, 269

Milan, King of Servia, 247

Milos, King of Servia, 245

Military Policy in Bosnia, 281

Minarets of Constantinople, 93

Mirko, Prince of Montenegro, 251

Missionaries in Constantinople, 148

Mohammedans Converted to Christianity, 151

Mohammedan Fanaticism, 26, 44, 49, 63, 188 Religion, 43, 54, 83, 112, 286

Monastery of Ryle, 186

Mosques of Constantinople, 82, 94, 111, 118, 126, 136

Mosques of Sarajevo, 286

Montenegro, Royal Family of, 251, 303

Moulahs, 43

Mountains of Bosnia, 278

Murad V., 67

Music, Sultan’s Love of, 77

Mycenae, 384

Natalie, Queen of Servia, 247

Naturalized Americans in Turkey, 100

Navy, Turkish, 36

Nephews, the Sultan’s, 71

Newspapers, the Sultan’s Ideas of, 80 in Turkey, 154 Greek, 338

Odyssey, Scenes of the, 316

Oil of Roses, 207

Olga, Queen of Greece, 348

Olive Trees in Greece, 319

Olympia, Games of, 385

Orient Express, 191

Ossa, Mount, 384

Ottoman Bank Affair, 42

Palace at Athens, 333 Belgrade, 260 Beyler-Bey, 132 Dolma-Baghtcheh, 69, 131, 135 Tcheragan, 67 Yildiz Kiosk, 55, 79, 131

Parliament, Bulgarian, 170 of Greece, 345

Parnassus, Mount, 324, 383

Parthenon, the, 369

Passports in Turkey, 100

Patras, Town of, 317

Patrick, Miss Mary M., 153

Paul, St., at Corinth, 330

Peasants in Bulgaria, 204 Greek, 325, 343

Peddlers in Constantinople, 110

Peet, W. W., 232

Pelion, Mount, 384

Pentelikos, Quarries of, 332

Pera, City of, 93

Philip of Macedon, 13, 53, 208

Philippopolis, 208

Photographs of Moslems, 50

Pigeons in Turkey, 118

Pilgrims, Moslem, 51, 83

Police, Bosnian, 282

Political Jealousies in Europe, 14, 34

Politics, Turkish, 56 in Greece, 336, 346

Popoff, Rev. Marko, 211

Population of Bosnia, 276 of Bulgaria, 193, 209 of Constantinople, 102 of Corfu, 315 of Greece, 362 of Macedonia, 32 of Servia, 264

Porter, General Horace, 362

Porte, the Sublime, 92, 135

Postal Service in Turkey, 160

Priests in Greece, 352 Mohammedan, 43, 102, 111

Prisons in Bosnia, 277 in Greece, 342 in Servia, 268

Products of Bulgaria, 203

Professions in Greece, 343

Protestants in Bulgaria, 209 in Constantinople, 149

Prunes, Servian, 261

Public Buildings in Athens, 357

Ragusa, Town of, 304

Railways in Balkans, 191 in Bosnia, 277 in Greece, 311, 325 in Turkey, 105

Ransoms paid in Macedonia, 228

Rebellion in Balkans, 15, 30

Religious Character, Sultan’s, 83

Religions in Balkans, 32, 34

Richardson, Professor, 374

Riots in Athens, 349

Robert College, 70, 142

Roman Occupation of Balkans, 14

Roman Remains in Bosnia, 295

Roman Catholics in Bosnia, 298

Roumania, Conditions in, 20

Rugs, Turkish, 112

Rumelia, Eastern, 15

Rumili Hisar, 143

Russian Interference in Balkans, 14, 34, 165

Russo-Turkish War, 14, 34

Said Pasha, 38

Salona, Town of, 306

Salamis, Island of, 379

San Stefano, Treaty of, 14, 168

Sarafoff, Boris, 28, 230

Sarajevo, Capital of Bosnia, 277

Schools, Protestant in Turkey, 150 in Bulgaria, 213 Mohammedan, 43

Scutari, City of, 93 Women’s College, 153

Schuyler, Eugene, 167, 172

Selamlik, the, 82

Seraglio, the, 55, 92, 132

Servia, Independence of, 244 Conditions in, 20 Kings of, 245, 269 Conspiracies, 250 Capital of, 257 Palace of, 260 Population of, 264 Political Situation, 243

Sheik-ul-Islam, 44, 83, 101

Shepherd, a Greek, 321

Shipka, Battle of, 207

Shopping in Constantinople, 120

Sisters, the Sultan’s, 70

Skupshtina, Servian Parliament, 259

Sobranje, the Bulgarian, 170, 176

St. Sophia, Mosque of, 126

Sofia, City of, 195

Softas, 43

Society in Greece, 336

Socrates, Prison of, 380

Spalato, Town of, 306

Stadium at Athens, 359

Stambouloff, Stepan, 175, 182, 196

Stamboul, City of, 92

Stavreff, the Assassin, 182

Stoiloff, Minister of Bulgaria, 180

Stone, Miss Ellen M., 16, 187, 217, 235

Streets of Constantinople, 95

Students in Constantinople, 147

Sublime Porte, the, 92, 135

Sultan, Family of, 54 Habits of, 35, 49, 50, 54, 61, 63, 75, 82 Jewels, 139 Policy of, 23, 63 Skill in Diplomacy, 17

Superstitions, 61, 75

Superstitions, Turkish, 118

Sultanas, the, 65, 85

Tanagra, Excavations at, 381

Taxes in Bulgaria, 202

Telephones in the Balkans, 192 in Turkey, 61

Temperance of Moslems, 46

Tesla, Nikola, 300

Thebes, 382

Themistocles, Tomb of, 379

Thermopylae, Pass of, 383

Timotheus at Corinth, 330

Tirnova, Ancient Capital, 188

Titles of the Sultan, 55

Tobacco in Bosnia, 290

Tombs of the Sultans, 89

Trajan, Emperor, 14

Travel in Greece, 312

Treasury of the Sultan, 137

Treaty of Berlin, 14, 27, 273, 304

Tsilka, Mr. and Mrs., 218

Turkish Characteristics, 45, 109, 112 Cruelties, 293 Virtues, 289 Invasion of Balkans, 14

Ulysses, Landing Place, 313

Vaciloff, Cyril, 222

Vatralsky, Stoyan, 216

Virtues of the Turks, 289

Vulkovitch, Assassination of, 182

Wealth of Greeks, 354

Wages in Bulgaria, 202

Washburn, Rev. Dr., 144

Women of Constantinople, 109

Worship in Bosnia, 296

Yachts, the Embassy, 159

Yildiz Kiosk, 55, 79, 80, 131

“Young Turkey” Party, 24, 67

* * * * *

Transcriber’s Notes:

Illustrations have been moved to paragraph breaks near where they are mentioned, except for the frontispiece.

Punctuation has been made consistent.

Variations in spelling and hyphenation were retained as they appear in the original publication, except that obvious typographical errors have been corrected.