Mentone, Cairo, and Corfu

But Athens was before us; we must leave the groves; we must leave Nausicaa's shore. We did so at last in the wake of a departing storm. For several days the wind had been tempestuous. The signal, which is displayed from the Citadel, had become a riddle; it is an arrangement of flags by day and of lanterns by night, and no two of us ever deciphered it alike. If the order was thus and so, it meant that something belonging to the Austrian-Lloyd company was in sight; if so and thus, it meant the Florio line; if neither of these, then it might possibly be our boat – that is, the Greek coasting steamer which we had decided to take because we had been told that it was the best. I have never fathomed the mystery as to why our informant told us this. If he had been a Greek, it would have been at least a patriotic misrepresentation. We were dismayed when we reached the rough tub. But, after all, in one sense she was the best, for she dawdled in and out among the islands, never in the least hurry, and stopping to gossip with them all; this gave us a good chance to see them, if it gave us nothing else. I have said "when we reached her," for there were several false starts. We rose in the morning in a mood of regretful good-bye, expecting to be far away at night. And at night, with our good-bye on our hands, we were still in our hotel. But it is only fair to add that with its garlands of flowers and myrtle for the Christmas season; with its queer assemblage of Levantines in the dining-room; with its bath-room in the depths of the earth, to which one descended by stairway leading down underground; with its group of petticoated Greeks in the hall, and, in its rooms of honor above, a young Austrian princess of historic name and extraordinary beauty – with all this, and its cheerful lies, its smiling, gay-hearted irresponsibility, the Corfu inn was an entertaining place. The Greek steamer came at last. She had been driven out of her course by the gale, so said the pirate, ostensibly retired from business, who superintended the embarkations from the hotel. This lithe freebooter had presented himself at frequent intervals during the baffling days when we watched the signal, and he always entered without knocking. He could not grasp the idea, probably, that ceremonies would be required by persons who intended to sail by the coaster. When we reached this bark ourselves, later, we forgave him – a little. Her deck was the most democratic place I have ever seen. We think that we approve of equality in the United States. But the Greeks carry their approval further than we do. On this deck there were no reserved portions, no prohibitions; the persons who had paid for a first-class ticket had the same rights as those which were accorded to the steerage travellers, and no more; and as the latter were numerous, they obtained by far the larger share, eating the provisions which they had brought with them, sleeping on their coverlids, playing games, and smoking in the best places. There was no system, and little discipline; the sailors came up and washed the deck (a process which was very necessary) whenever and however they pleased, and we had to jump for our lives and mount a bench to escape the stream from the hose, as it suddenly appeared without warning from an unlooked-for quarter. The passengers, who came on board at various points during a cruise of several days, brought with them light personal luggage, which consisted of hens tied together by the legs, a live sheep, kitchen utensils, and bedding, all of which they placed everywhere and anywhere, according to their pleasure.

A Greek dressed in the full national costume accompanied us all the way to Missolonghi so closely that he was closer than a brother; save when we were locked in our small sleeping-cabins below (the one extra possession which a first-class ticket bestows), we were literally elbow to elbow with him. And his elbows were a weapon, like the closed umbrella held under the arm in a crowded street – that pleasant habit of persons who are not Greeks. The Greek elbow was clothed in a handsome sleeve covered with gold embroidery, for our friend was a dandy of dandies. His petticoats and his shirt were of fine linen, snowy in its whiteness; his small waist was encircled by a magnificent Syrian scarf; his cream-colored leggings were spotless; and his conspicuous garters new and brilliantly scarlet. He was an athletic young man of thirty, his good looks marred only by his over-eager eyes and his restlessness. It was his back which he presented to us, for his attention was given entirely to a party of his own friends, men and women. He talked to them; he read aloud to them from a small newspaper (they all had newspapers, and read them often); he stood up and argued; he grew excited and harangued; then he sat down, his inflated skirts puffing out over his chair, and went on with his argument, if argument it was, until, worn out by the hours of his eloquence, some of his companions fell asleep where they sat. His meals were astonishingly small. As everything went on under our eyes, we saw what they all ate, and it was unmistakable testimony to the Greek frugality. Our companion had brought with him from Corfu, by way of provisions for several days, a loaf of bread about as large as three muffins in one, a vial containing capers, a grapeleaf folded into a cornucopia and filled with olives, and a pint bottle of the light wine of the country. The only addition which he made to this store was a salted fish about four inches long, which he purchased daily from the steward. There was always a discussion before he went in search of this morsel, which represented, I suppose, the roast meat of his dinner, and when he returned after a long absence, bearing it triumphantly on the palm of his hand, it was passed from one to the next, turned over, inspected, and measured by each member of the group, amid the most animated, eager discussion. When comment was at last exhausted, the superb orator seated himself (always with his chair against our knees), and placed before him, on a newspaper spread over the bench, his precious fishlette divided into small slices, with a few capers and olives arranged in as many wee heaps as there were portions of fish, so that all should come out even. Then, with the diminutive loaf of bread by his side and the bottle of wine at his feet, he began his repast, using the point of his pocketknife as a fork, eating slowly and meditatively, and intently watched by all his friends, who sat in silence, following with their eyes each mouthful on its way from the newspaper to his lips. They had previously made their own repasts in the same meagre fashion, but perhaps they derived some small additional nourishment from watching the mastication of their friend. When his fish had disappeared, accompanied by one slender little slice of bread, our neighbor lifted the wine-bottle, and gave himself a swallow of wine; then, after a pause of a minute or two, another. This was all. The bottle was recorked, and with the remaining provisions put carefully away. All foreign residents in Greece, whether they like the people or dislike them, agree in pronouncing them extraordinarily abstemious. Drunkenness hardly exists among them.

At one of the islands a prisoner was brought on board by two policemen. He was a slender youth – an apprentice to a mason, probably, for his poor clothes were stained with mortar and lime. He held himself stiffly erect, making a determined effort to present a brave countenance to the world. He was led to a place in the centre of the deck, and then one of his guardians departed, leaving the second in charge. The steamer lay in the harbor for an hour or more, and four times skiffs put out from the shore, each bringing two or three young men – or, rather, boys – who came up the ladder furtively. Reaching the deck, they edged their way along, first to the right, then to the left, until they perceived their comrade. Even then they did not approach him directly; they assumed an air of indifference, and walked about a little among the other passengers. But after a while, one by one, they came to him, and, taking bread from under their jackets, they put it hastily and silently into his pockets, the policeman watching them, but not interfering. Then, moving off quickly, they disappeared down the ladder in the same stealthy way, and returned to the shore. Through all their manœuvres the prisoner did not once look at them; he kept his eyes fixed upon a distant point in the bay, as though there was something out there which he was obliged to watch without an instant's cessation. All his pockets meanwhile, and the space under his jacket, grew so full that he was swathed in bread. Finally came the whistle, and the steamer started. Then, as the island began to recede, the set young face quivered, and the arm in its ragged sleeve went up to cover the eyes – a touching gesture, because it is the child's when in trouble, the instinctive movement of the grief-stricken little boy.

Ten miles south of Corfu one meets the second of the Ionian Islands, Paxo, with the tiny, severe Anti-Paxo lying off its southern point, like a summary period set to any romantic legend which the larger isle may wish to tell. As it happens, the legend is a striking one, and we all know it without going to Paxo. But it is impossible to pass the actual scene without relating it once more, and, for the telling, no modern words can possibly approach those of the old annotator. "Here at the coast of Paxo, about the time that our Lord suffered His most bitter Passion, certain persons sailing from Italy at night heard a voice calling aloud: 'Thamus?' 'Thamus?' Who, giving ear to the cry (for he was the pilot of the ship), was bidden when he came near to Portus Pelodes" (the Bay of Butrinto) "to tell that the great god Pan was dead. Which he, doubting to do, yet when he came to Portus Pelodes there was such a calm of wind that the ship stood still in the sea, unmoored, and he was forced to cry aloud that Pan was dead. Whereupon there were such piteous outcries and dreadful shrieking as hath not been the like. By the which Pan, of some is understood the great Sathanas, whose kingdom was at that time by Christ conquered; for at that moment all oracles surceased, and enchanted spirits, that were wont to delude the people, henceforth held their peace."

Those of us who read Milton's Ode on Christmas Eve will recall his allusion to this Paxo legend:

"The lonely mountains o'er,
And the enchanted shore,
A voice of weeping heard, and loud lament;
From haunted spring and dale,
Edged with poplar pale,
The parting Genius is with sighing sent."

Anti-Paxo is one of the oddest spots I have seen. It is a small, bare, stone plain, elevated but slightly above the surface of the water. The rock is of a tawny hue, and there is a queer odor of asphaltum. At certain seasons of the year it is covered so thickly with quail that "you could not put a paper-cutter between them." There were no quail when we passed the rock. The sun shone on the flat surface, bringing out its rich tint against the azure of the sea, and in its strange desolation it looked like a picture which might have been painted by a man of genius who had gone mad in his passion for color. Though I mention the Ionian group only, it must not be supposed that there were no other islands. Those of us who like to turn over maps, to search out routes though we may never follow them except on paper – innocent stay-at-home geographers of this sort have supposed that it was a simple matter to learn the names of the islands which one meets in any well-known track across well-known seas. This is a mistake. From Corfu to Patras, and, later, on the way to Egypt and Syria, and back through the Strait of Messina to Genoa, I saw many islands – it seemed to me that they could have been counted by hundreds – which are not indicated in the ordinary guide-books, and whose names no one on the steamers appeared to know, not even the captains. The captains, the pilots, and all the officers were of course aware of the exact position in the sea of each one; that was part of their business. But as to names, these mariners, whether Englishmen, Germans, Italians, Turks, or Greeks (and we sailed with all), appeared to share the common opinion that they had none; their manner was that they deserved none. But I have never met a steamer captain who felt anything but profound contempt for small islands; he appears to regard them simply as interruptions – as some Ohio farmers of my acquaintance regard the occasional single tree in their broad, level fields.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And now before my eyes was Helicon itself.

THE END