THE JOURNAL

OF

C. R. COCKERELL, R.A.

C. R. Cockerell.

TRAVELS IN SOUTHERN
EUROPE AND THE
LEVANT, 1810-1817.

THE JOURNAL OF C. R. COCKERELL, R.A.

EDITED BY HIS SON

SAMUEL PEPYS COCKERELL

With a Portrait

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK AND BOMBAY
1903

All rights reserved

PREFACE

My father, Charles Robert Cockerell, whose travels the following pages record, was the second son of Samuel Pepys Cockerell, a man of some means, architect to the East India Company and to one or more London estates. He was born on the 27th of April, 1788, and at a suitable age he went to Westminster, a fashionable school in those days. There he remained until he was sixteen. He was then set to study architecture, at first in his father's office, and later in that of Mr. Robert Smirke. His father must have had a great faith in the educational advantage of travel, as already in 1806, when he was only eighteen, he was sent a tour to study the chief architectural objects of the West of England and Wales. The sketches in the diary of this journey show him already the possessor of so light and graceful a touch in drawing that it is evident that he must have practised it from very early years. This no doubt was followed by other similar excursions, but his father's desire was that he should see foreign countries. Unfortunately, in 1810 most of the Continent was closed to Englishmen. Turkey, which included Greece, was, however, open. As it chanced, this was a happy exception. The current of taste for the moment was running strongly in the direction of Greek architecture; Smirke himself had but lately returned thence. When a scheme for making a tour there came to be discussed, Mr. William Hamilton, then Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, an intimate friend of the family, who had himself travelled in those parts, took a great interest in it, and offered to send him out as King's messenger with despatches for the fleet at Cadiz, Malta, and Constantinople. Such an offer was too good to refuse.

No definite tour had been or could be marked out in the then existing conditions of European politics. The traveller was to be guided by circumstances; but nothing approaching the length of absence, which extended itself to seven and a quarter years, was contemplated at the time of starting.

As far as possible I have used my father's own words in the following account of his journeys; but the letters and memoranda of a youth of twenty-two, who disliked and had no talent for writing, naturally require a great deal of editing.

His beautiful sketches form what may be called his real diary.

I should add that accounts of some of the episodes recorded in this Journal have seen the light already. For instance, the discovery of the Ægina Marbles and of the Phigaleian Marbles is narrated in my father's book, 'The Temples of Ægina and Bassæ,' and in Hughes's 'Travels' as well. Stackelberg gives his own account of the excavations at Bassæ in 'Der Apollotempel zu Bassæ &c.' So that I cannot flatter myself that the matter is either quite new or well presented. But in spite of these drawbacks I have thought the Journal in its entirety worth publishing. Sympathetic readers will find between the lines a fairly distinct picture of what travel was like in the early years of the last century, and also the portrait of a not uninteresting personality.

Samuel Pepys Cockerell.

CONTENTS

TRAVELS IN SOUTHERN EUROPE
AND THE LEVANT

CHAPTER I

LEAVES LONDON FOR PLYMOUTH—THE DESPATCH VESSEL—THEY TAKE A FRENCH PRIZE—THE PRISONERS—AN ALARM—CADIZ—MALTA—LIFE ON BOARD—THE DARDANELLES—TAKES BOAT FOR CONSTANTINOPLE.

"I started from London on Saturday, April the 14th, 1810, with 200l. in my pocket to pay expenses. By the favour of Mr. Hamilton I was to carry out despatches to Mr. Adair, our ambassador at Constantinople, so I had in prospect a free passage in fair security to the furthest point of my intended journey. As my good friend and master in Art, Mr. R. Smirke, accompanied me to Salisbury, we loitered there a little, but for the rest of my journey, night and day, I lost not one moment. Nevertheless I had forgotten that when on Government duty one has no business to stop at all anywhere, and when I was cross-examined as to my journey by the Admiral of the Port at Plymouth, I felt extremely awkward.

On the morning following my arrival, viz. April 16th, I embarked on board the vessel which was to carry me. She was a lugger-rigged despatch boat, hired by Government, named the Black Joke. She was very old, as she had been at the battle of Camperdown in 1797, but I was charmed with her neatness and tidiness. We had ten guns, thirty-five men, one sheep, two pigs and fowls. The commander's name was Mr. Cannady, and we were taking out two young midshipmen to join the squadron off Cadiz.

We did not set sail till the 19th. Once out in the open sea the two young midshipmen were very ill and so was our commander.

On the third day out, Sunday, April 22nd, while we were at dinner the boatswain suddenly sang out, 'Sail ahead!' We ran up to see what it might be, and the ship was pronounced to be a merchant brig. At the same time, to be prepared in case of deception, all things were cleared for action. It was not long before we came up with her, and the master went aboard. Presently we heard the report of two pistols. Great was our astonishment, and the expression of suspense on every face was a study till it was relieved by the voice of the master bawling through a trumpet that she was a British merchantman, the Frances, from Fiale (sic), laden with cotton, figs, and other things, that she had been captured by a French privateer, and was now our prize. At these words the joy of the sailors was such as you cannot conceive. When the master came aboard again we learnt that the two shots came from a brace of pistols which were handed to him by the captain of the Frances when she was boarded, and which he discharged for fear of accidents.

The French crew of eight men, all very ragged, was brought on board. As they manifested some unwillingness at first, Cannady thought fit to receive them with drawn cutlasses; but they made no sort of resistance. With them came an English boy, son of the owner of the Frances, and from him we got an interesting account of her being taken. As his father had but a short time before lost another ship, the boy showed a joy at this recovery which was delightful to see, but he behaved very nicely about recommending the Frenchmen to us. They had treated him very well, he said, and were good sailors. It was settled that the prize master should be sent with three or four men, the master's mate at their head, to Plymouth. I took the opportunity of sending a few words home, and off she went. With a fair wind she was out of sight in an hour. As I was the only man in our ship who could speak a word of French, I was made interpreter in examining the prisoners. If the account they give is correct, our sailors, who are entitled to an eighth part of the salvage, will share 3,645l. 10s. 8d. I took an early opportunity, when Cannady talked of our luck and anticipated more, to assure him that the only good fortune I desired was a safe and quick passage to Constantinople, for fear he should think I was looking out for prize-money. I don't know what my share would be, if indeed I have any, but if I find I have, I shall consider how to dispose of it in a handsome way.

The poor Frenchmen were very miserable, and I, partly out of pity, and more because I wanted to practise speaking, rather made friends with them. They are very different from our men. They lounge about anyhow in a disorderly fashion, are much dirtier—in fact filthy, so that our sailors complain of them loudly in this respect—and are much livelier. I saw three of them sitting yesterday all of a heap reading 'Télémaque' (fancy that!) with the utmost avidity, and when they see me drawing, they seem to crawl all over me to watch the operation. My special friend is one Esprit Augin, who appears to be superior to the rest and to speak better. We talk together every day till I am tired. In spite of his grief at being a prisoner—and he appeared to feel his position more than any of them—he began the very next day to talk to me of balls, masquerades, promenades, and so on with inexpressible delight, and I even thought at one moment that we should have had a pas seul on the deck. He sang me no end of songs. He was as vain as he was lively. I told him I should like to make a drawing of a youth named Jean Requette, a handsome, clever-looking boy of the party; at which he sighed deeply and said, 'Moi je ne suis pas joli.'

Amongst other things, Augin told us that he had great hopes of being set free again, for that there were two French privateer frigates off Ferrol; and when we came off that point on Sunday the 29th, and I heard the boatswain sing out 'Two sail ahead,' we made sure we had met them. All glasses were out in an instant, and sure enough there were two privateers.

Too proud to alter it, we held quietly on our course, and they came quickly up with us. We made the private signals to them, but as the sun was low and just behind them we could not make out the answer or what colours they flew.

Thereupon orders were given to clear for action. In a moment all was activity. The sailors stripped to their shirts. The guns were run out. Greville and I loaded the muskets and pistols. Every man had his place. Mine was at the stern in charge of the despatches, ready tied to a cannon shot, to sink them in case of necessity, and with orders to make the best use I could of the muskets. We were all ready by the time the first of the privateers came within speaking distance of us. There was a dead silence on both sides for a moment, a moment of intense suspense, then our commander spoke them, and the answer, to our delight, came in English. They were the Iris and Matchless privateers from Guernsey on the look-out for the Isle de France men going into Bordeaux. A boat came aboard us, and I was not sorry that they should see our deck and that I knew how to take care of despatches. It is wonderful how the animation of preparations for fighting takes away from the natural fear. If I had had to look on without anything to do, I should have been in a dreadful fright.

After this false alarm we went on to Cadiz without any event, beyond meeting with occasional merchantmen, whom we always thought proper to board.

I could not go ashore at Cadiz, and I shall never cease to regret it; but the orders of the naval authorities were peremptory that the lugger should proceed immediately with her despatches to Malta.[1] We deposited our prisoners with the fleet."

The next place the Black Joke touched at was Gibraltar, where she delivered letters and despatches. She could only stay four or five hours, but Cockerell was able to go ashore. As it was a market day, the scene Gibraltar, and this was the first time he had ever been in a foreign country, it is not to be wondered at that he was intoxicated with delight. He gushes over it in the style of the very young traveller.

"I like watching the sailors. Many of them are very fine fellows, and I have nearly filled my book with drawings of them and the Frenchmen. Self-consciousness had the most ludicrous effect upon them when I was doing their portraits, and great rough fellows who you might think would eat horseflesh would simper with downcast eyes, like a coquettish miss. Their ways of killing time are wonderful. Sometimes you see one whittling a piece of hard wood for some trifling purpose for hours and hours together. At another time, if an unfortunate little bird comes on to the vessel, they run about the rigging damning its eyes till they are tired out. There are some great singers amongst them, who treat us in the evenings. Their taste is to sing about two hundred verses to the same tune. I am told we have one highly accomplished, who can sing a song of three hundred. I only hope we shall never hear him.

We arrived at Malta overnight and awaited despatches, which we have received this morning. Everywhere the authorities are so solicitous that no time should be lost that we are sent on without mercy. I am told the despatches we brought here were of consequence; but, like all postmen, we know nothing of the contents of the letters we bring. Only we see that all rejoice and wish the commandant, General Oakes,[2] joy. I also hear that the French are advancing on Sicily.

The harbour here is full of prizes. A frigate came in this morning full of shot holes. She had cut out a brig from Taranto in the face of two brigs, a schooner, and a frigate."

From Malta it took the Black Joke over a month to get to Constantinople. Most of the letters written home during the time were sent back by the Black Joke on her return voyage. It will be seen why they never reached their destination.

Meanwhile some notes were despatched by other means, and from them I extract the following:

"We took a pilot from Malta, a decayed Ragusan captain. Had I made but the first steps in Italian as I had in French, I might have profited by this opportunity as I did by the French prisoners; for the man spoke no other language, and was to direct us through a dangerous sea by signs and grimace as the only means of communication between us.

At first we had a fair wind, but as we got nearer the Morea it became less favourable and blew us nearly up to Zante. Some ancient writer records the saying in his day, 'Let him who is to sail round Taenarus (Matapan) take a last farewell of his relations;' and it is still dangerous, on account of the eddies of wind about Taygetus for one thing, and on account of the cruel Mainiote pirates for another. We passed it securely; but the story of an English brig of war having been boarded and taken by them while the captain and crew were at dinner, and that not long ago, put us on our guard. We had nettings up at night, and a sharp look-out at all hours.

I shall never forget how we made our entrance into the Hellespont with sixteen sail of Greek and Turkish fruit-boats, all going up to Constantinople.

No yachting match could be so pretty as these boats, tacking and changing their figures, with their white sails, painted sides, and elegant forms, as compared with our northern sea boats. Our superior sailing, however, was soon confessed, and we went past them. As we did so, several goodnaturedly threw cucumbers and other fruits on board.

We cast anchor not far from the second castle near the northern side, and put ashore to water where we saw a spring. It was evening, and under the shade of a fine plane tree, by a pool lined and edged with marble, before a fountain of elegant architecture, sat on variegated carpets some majestic Turks. They were armed and richly dressed. Their composed, placid countenances seemed unmoved at our approach. One of them spoke and made me a sign to draw nearer. I did so, and with an air at once courteous and commanding he signed to me to sit near him and offered me a long pipe to smoke. After some pause he put questions, and smiled when I could not answer them. By their gestures and the word Inglis I saw they were aware of our nationality. They looked approbation and admired the quality of my grey cloth coat. After some minutes I rose and left them with a bow, enchanted with their politeness, and fancying myself in a scene of the 'Arabian Nights.'

Shortly after we were visited by our consul and his son. We learnt later that they were Jews, but their handsome appearance imposed completely on us, and, in spite of the mixture of Jewish obsequiousness, their Turkish dignity made us conceive a prodigious opinion of them. The consul understood quickly that I was a milordo, and taking from his pocket an antique intaglio he begged my acceptance of it with a manner I in my innocence thought I could not refuse. I was anxious to show my sense of his courtesy by the offer of a pound of best Dartford powder, which, after some pressing, he accepted; but at the same time added, so far as I understood through the interpreter, that he hoped I did not mean to pay him for his intaglio. I was overcome with confusion, shocked at my own indelicacy in giving so coarse an expression to my gratitude, and I would have given worlds to have undone the whole affair. Of course my embarrassment was perfectly needless. A little experience of them taught me that this was only the shallow finesse of the Orientals, and looking back I have laughed to think of my ingenuous greenness at that time.

The following day Captain Cannady and myself, with my despatches and baggage, the Black Joke not being allowed to approach the capital,[3] embarked in a Turkish rowboat with a reis and twelve men, to go up to Constantinople. Now for the first time I felt myself thoroughly divided from England.

The wind and current were against us, and we were forced to put ashore early in the evening of the first day. I pitched my tent on the shore opposite Abydos. It soon attracted the notice of an aga who appeared on a fine Arab horse, and sent a message to know who and what we were. We made a fire and stayed there all night sitting round it, and I felt as if I was at the theatre, passing my first night on foreign soil among strange bearded faces and curious costumes lit up by the flames. I refused a bed and slept on a rug, but next day I thought I should have dropped with faintness and fatigue.

I soon got accustomed to lying on hard ground, and, in after times, I have slept for many a three months running without even taking off my clothes except to bathe, or having any other bed than my pamplona or my pelisse. The second night we slept at Gallipoli, and altogether, owing to the strong wind, we were no less than five days getting to Constantinople.

Our Turks were obliging and cheerful, but had very little air of discipline, and the work they did they seemed to do by courtesy. The reis was a grave, mild old man, who sang us Turkish songs.

We approached Constantinople as the sun rose, and as it shone on its glorious piles of mosques and minarets, golden points and crescents, painted houses, kiosks and gardens, our Turks pulled harder at their oars, shouting 'Stamboul, guzel azem Stamboul!' The scene grew more and more brilliant as we drew nearer, till it became overwhelming as we entered the crowded port. Nothing but my despatches under my arm recalled me from a sense of being in a dream. In forty days, spent as it were, in the main, in the sameness of shipboard, I had jumped from sombre London to this fantastic paradise.

I left my boat and walked at once to the English palace with my despatches, which I then and there delivered."

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The British fleet was at this time co-operating with the Spaniards in defending Cadiz against the French.

[2] Afterwards Sir Hildebrand Oakes, Bart., G.C.B. Served with distinction in India, Egypt, America, and elsewhere.

[3] No ships of war were ever allowed up to Constantinople in those days, and, indeed, much later.

CHAPTER II

CONSTANTINOPLE—CAPTURE OF THE BLACK JOKE—LIFE IN CONSTANTINOPLE—ITS DANGERS—FRIENDS—AUDIENCE OF CAIMACAM—TRIP UP THE BOSPHORUS.

"My first few days were spent in writing, executing commissions, and fitting out my good Cannady, who was to return with the answers to the despatches; all as it turned out to no purpose, for off Algiers the poor old Black Joke was taken by two French privateers, one of ten, the other of eight guns. Becalmed off that place, she was attacked on either side by these lighter vessels, which, with oars and a superior number of men, had an irresistible advantage. After being gallantly defended by Cannady, she was taken with the loss of several fine fellows, and her guns dismounted in the discharging them, for she was a very old vessel. With her were taken a number of little Turkish purses and trifles, souvenirs to friends at home, and two fine carpets I paid 30l. for, which were to have made a figure at Westbourne[4]—I had made a present of the same kind also to our commander—and all my letters home and sketches made up till then.

Mr. Adair[5] and Canning[6] have been very polite, and I have dined frequently at the Palace, and although this is not the sort of society I very much covet, I find it so extremely useful that I cannot be too careful to keep up my acquaintance there. Mr. Canning, of whose kindness on all occasions I cannot speak too highly, has obliged me exceedingly in lending me a large collection of fairly faithful drawings of the interiors of mosques, some of them never drawn before, as well as other curious buildings here, made by a Greek of this place. In copying them I have been closely employed, as when Mr. Adair leaves, which will be shortly, they will be sent off to England. I had a scheme of drawing from windows, but it has failed. I find no Jew or Christian who is bold enough to admit me into his house for that purpose, so I have to work from memory. After having made a memorandum, I develop it at home, and then return again and again to make more notes, till at length the drawing gets finished. In arriving here just in time to take advantage of Mr. Adair's firman to see the mosques I was most fortunate. It is a favour granted to ambassadors only once, and Mr. Adair thinks himself lucky to get it before going away; but I will tell you in confidence that I regret very little the impossibility of drawing in them. They seem to me to be ill-built and barbarous.

Lord Byron and Mr. Hobhouse[7] were of the party."

The Djerid, a mimic fight with javelins on horseback, now, I believe, entirely disused in Turkey, was still the favourite pastime of young Turks, and Cockerell speaks of it as being constantly played on the high open ground or park above Pera, and of his going to watch it.

"One day I was persuaded by an English traveller of my acquaintance to go a walk through Constantinople without our usual protection of a janissary, but the adventures which befell us in consequence made me very much repent of it, and put me a good deal out of conceit with the Turks. We walked to the gate of the Seraglio, in front of which there is a piazza with a very beautiful fountain in it. This lovely object was so attractive that I could not resist going up to it and examining the marble sculpture, painting, and gilding. Hereupon an old Turk who guarded the gate of the Seraglio, offended, I suppose, at my presuming to come so near, strode up with a long knotted stick and a volley of language which I could not understand, but which it was easy to see the drift of. I should have been glad to run away, but in the presence of Turks and other bystanders I resolved to fall a martyr rather than compromise my nation. So, waving my hand in token of assent to his desire for my withdrawal, I slowly paced my way back with as much dignity as I could assume. I heard my Turk behind coming on faster and more noisy, and I shall never forget the screwing up of the sinews of my back for the expected blow. It did not fall, or there would have ended my travels; for, either astonished at my coolness or satisfied with my assent, he desisted.

A little further on, in passing through the court of a mosque, I was gazing at some of the architectural enrichments of it, when I felt a violent blow on the neck. I looked down, and there was a sturdy little figure, with a face full of fury, preparing to repeat the dose. He was of such indescribably droll proportions that in spite of the annoyance I could hardly help laughing. I held out my hand to stop him, and at the same time some Turks luckily came up and appeased my assailant. He was an idiot, one of those to whom it is the custom among the Turks to give their liberty, and who are generally, it appears, to be found hanging about the mosques.

One more unpleasantness occurred in the same unfortunate walk. As we were looking at some carpets, I observed my servant Dimitri growing pale; he said he was so weak he could hardly stand, and he thought he must have caught the plague. I supported him out of the bazaar, but afterwards kept him at arm's length till we got home, sent him to bed, changed from top to toe, and smoked. I was to have dined at the Palace, but sent and made my excuses. Meeting the English consul, good old Morier, I refused to shake hands with him. He, however, would have none of it, laughed at me and carried me home to dinner quietly with him. Dimitri reappeared later on, and all was well; but the day is memorable as having been odious."

The usual sights of Constantinople in 1810 were the same as now—viz. the dancing dervishes, the howling dervishes, the Turkish bath, and the Sultan's visit to the Mosque. They are what every traveller has seen and every young one thought it his duty to give an account of, and I shall not transcribe Cockerell's description of them. Only the last can have been at all different from what may be seen now. It was remarkable for the startling costumes of the janissaries, and for the fact that instead of a fez, the universal and mean headdress of to-day, every Turk wore a turban, which made a crowd worth seeing. The janissaries wore a singular cap, from the centre of which sprang a tree of feathers which, rising to a certain height, fell again like a weeping willow and occupied an enormous space. On these occasions about fifty of them surrounded the Sultan with wands in their hands, and no doubt had a very striking effect.

"I have made several useful friends. One is a brother artist, the Greek who did the mosques for Canning. We have paid each other several visits, and become fairly intimate by dint of dragoman, mutual admiration, and what was a superb present from me, a little Indian ink and two English pencils. He has been specially attentive in his visits here, hoping, as he confessed, to find out some secret in the art from such a connoisseur as myself. Another is an old gentleman in a long grey beard, who a few days ago walked into my room, telling me he had been induced to call upon me by hearing of my great reputation. He is an artist, and I showed him my colours and instruments, with which he was greatly delighted. I have not yet returned his visit, but I am shortly to do so, and he is to introduce me to some houses out of which I can draw. I have found a most elegant and useful friend in the Sicilian ambassador, who has many beautiful books and drawings. The young men I chiefly live with are Sir William Ingilby; Foster, an English architect, and a most amusing youth; and a Mr. Charnaud, son of a consul at Salonica. We meet at dinner very often, but they are all, even architect Foster, too idle to be companions any further than that. If I chose I could make numbers of acquaintance among the Greeks and Armenians, who all speak French. Their ladies are very agreeable, but the information I should glean amongst them would not pay for the time.

Canning is very much liked here among the merchants, though they say they will never get such another man as Adair. For me he is rather too grand to be agreeable.

This is a most interesting time among the Turks. All is bustle and the sound of arms in every street. The Grand Signor is going to the Russian war next week. His procession will, of course, be a grand sight, but they despond throughout. The Turks have a prophecy that the empire will expire with the last of the line of Mahomet, and the present Sultan has no children.

The number of troops passing to Adrianople is incredible, and such barbarousness and total absence of discipline could, one would think, never have been known even in the Crusades; but they are unbelievably picturesque. A warrior disposed to defend his country (for none are compelled; only, happily for the empire, the Turks are naturally inclined that way) goes to the Government and demands whatever he thinks will fit him out for the purpose. He gets 200 or 300 piastres, which is to find him in arms and ammunition. These will consist of a brace of pistols, a broadsword, and a musket, more often chosen for its silver inlay than for its efficiency. He is confined to no particular dress. He wears what he likes, and goes when and how he likes. The Government finds him in provisions. One may see them everywhere about, reposing in small parties in the shade or near a fountain and looking like banditti, which, indeed, if they catch you out of sight of the town, they are. They commit the most wanton cruelties and robberies in their march, and at present there is no such thing as travelling in the country. As you meet these independent ruffians in the street they look at you with the most supercilious contempt and always expect you to make way for them. Even yet the Turks have not lost the air of invaders, and look upon the Greeks as conquered slaves, while these feel it as strongly as if they had just lost their country. The other day I went to sketch some antiquities under the walls. In the garden of a poor Greek we gathered some fruit for which we meant to pay, but with the greatest kindness he pressed us to eat more, and filled our pockets with cucumbers, saying we were Christians, and he would take no money.

The English have the best reputation of any Franks in this country.

In walking out the other day our guide was insulted by a drunken janissary. On the man's answering him the janissary came up, threatening him with his sword. At this our man said he was surprised at such behaviour to an Englishman; but the janissary declared he was a Frenchman, and that unless he came and swept the street where he (the janissary) sat we should not pass. Fortunately another janissary came up, who was not drunk, and dragged him off, or there is no knowing how the dispute would have ended. I hear a great deal of Sir Sidney Smith, who, on account of his gallant co-operation with the Turks at Acre, has gained the English much credit. Any Turk who has ever seen him is proud of it, and whenever we meet a soldier the next question to whether we are English is whether we know Sir Sidney Smith. I always say 'Yes,' to which they say 'Buono.' The other day we overheard a Turk saying that there were but two Generals in the world—Sir Sidney Smith and the one-eyed captain (Lord Nelson). The Turks are so fond of Sir Sidney for his wearing a Turkish dress, as well as for his gallantry, that he might do what he pleased with them.

On July the 30th Canning had his audience of the Caimacam, who is substitute for the Grand Vizir while the latter is away with the army. I thought it my duty as an Englishman to attend him to the audience, and therefore went to his secretary to inquire if I was right in thinking so, although no other of the English travellers did, and I suppose Canning thought I had done rightly, for he did me the great honour of ordering that of the pelisses presented to the English gentlemen at the audience, I should receive one of the four handsomest, the others being of very inferior quality.[8]

We rode through the streets as before, much admired by the populace, who seemed, in these narrow streets, as though they would have fallen on us from the roofs on which they stood. On our way we met quantities of soldiers straggling about the town, waiting for the departure of the Grand Signor. One of them, who took care to let himself be well seen, in bravado had run his sword through the fleshy part of his shoulder, and held the hilt in the hand of the same arm. When we saw it, it had been done some hours, for the blood which had escaped from the wound was clotted and dried. We proceeded, not to the Sublime Porte, for that has been burnt, but to a palace which the Caimacam inhabits at present. Here we scrambled up a wide staircase in a crowd of Turks and other intruders who had no business in our train. The ceremony of the audience was very short. The Caimacam appeared amidst cries of 'Marshalla! Marshalla!' Then Canning and he sat face to face and delivered their speeches. I thought Canning delivered his with a very manly good manner. After the answer had been given, coffee, sweetmeats, and essence were brought to our minister only, and when we had each put on our cloaks we returned, as before, to Pera. I afterwards dined at the palace. I have this moment heard that of sixteen fine sail of the line I lately saw in the Bosphorus three are returned disabled. The Russians had but five, and two corvettes, yet they got the best of the engagement. It only shows what the naval discipline of the Turks is like.

Buyukdere.—Here are the country residences of all the foreign ambassadors and merchants, and hard by, at Therapia, are the palaces (such as they are, for the Turks allow them no colour but black) of the Greek princes. I have taken a ride to see the scenes described by Lady M. W. Montagu[9] about Belgrade, and in a gush of patriotic pride I sat down and made a careful sketch and plan of what I was told was her house. When I had done it I found to my disgust that it had been built by her husband's successor, Sir Richard Worsley,[10] a very dull man, whose house could interest nobody.

I had Foster with me as companion. We went in a boat up to the mouth of the Black Sea, where it was very rough, and in landing on one of the rocks I was in great danger."

FOOTNOTES:

[4] His father's home, Westbourne House, Paddington, a country residence on the site of the present Westbourne Park.

[5] The British ambassador, afterwards Sir Robert Adair.

[6] Stratford Canning (1776-1880), afterwards Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe. Secretary to the Embassy at this time, and later the well known ambassador to the Porte.

[7] John Cam Hobhouse (1786-1869), afterwards Baron Broughton Best man at Lord Byron's wedding. He was more than once a member of the Government.

[8] In every present from a Turk to a Christian there is something insulting implied. When a foreign minister is to be introduced at the Ottoman Court the embassy is stopped in the outer apartment of the serai, and when announced to the Despot his literal expression is: "Feed and clothe these Christian dogs and then bring them into my presence." Such is the real meaning of the dinner and pelisses given to ambassadors and their suites.—Beaufort.

[9] Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762), authoress of the famous "Letters." Her husband, Edward Wortley Montagu, went to Constantinople as British Ambassador in 1716.

[10] 1751-1805. Traveller and collector of antiquities.

CHAPTER III

CONSTANTINOPLE CONTINUED—DANGERS OF SKETCHING—TURKISH ARCHITECTURE—A TURKISH ACQUAINTANCE—SOCIETY IN CONSTANTINOPLE—VISIT TO THE PRINCES' ISLANDS.

Cockerell's mother had wished him to take out an English manservant with him, but the common sense of the rest of the family had overruled this scheme. He writes, therefore, speaking of a man he had engaged at Constantinople:

"As a servant I think Dimitri will suit me very well. He is well informed, willing, and civil, knows all the countries I propose to visit, is not extravagant, and does not seem afraid of danger. I must confess he is very small, but so much the more is he subject to my fist. The wages he asks are enormous—60l. a year—but I think I shall get him for 45l. or 50l., and at that figure it will, I think, be worth while to engage him; at any rate, he will be better than such an English lubber as my mother proposed I should take, who would have cost me more and have been of no use. I find I am living now for rather over 7s. 6d. a day, servant included. Everything is at least as dear as in London.

The drawings I told you of are finished, and I am now doing a set of palaces, serais, &c., but the difficulty and really the danger I have had to incur to do them you would not believe. As for insult, a Christian has always to put up with that. Perhaps the Turks, pressed as they are by the Russians, were never in a more sensitive or inflammatory condition than at present, nor the country under less discipline and order. In consequence they are more insolent to, and more suspicious of foreigners than usual. The other day I was in the upper part of a shop making some memoranda of a curious fountain while my servant waited below in a coffee-house. He assured me that no less than forty Turks came in, one after another, to ask who was that infidel, and what he might be doing there. Again, I offered some bostangis from five to ten piastres to admit me into a kiosk of the Grand Signors, now never used. The poor men trembled at the risk, but they took us, and we were obliged to steal along as they did, more as if we were going to commit a burglary than visit a deserted palace.

As we were rowing to it we saw a soldier armed at all points, with his arms bare—a savage figure—rowing by the Greek and Armenian houses at the water's edge. My servant knew his occupation well. He was searching after some open door through which he could get into a house, and, if he found the master of it, he would demand a hundred or two piastres, saying he had occasion for the money as he was going to the wars. The poor man would have had to submit; to kill such a robber, even if he could, would be to incur the vengeance of all his regiment, with the risk of getting his house and half the neighbourhood burnt down. The Greek tavern-keepers dare not open their doors now, for these scoundrels swagger in and eat and drink and refuse to pay. The Turks themselves, however, are enthusiastic about the army. I saw the other day, as a colonel of one of the regiments was passing through Tophana, the people rushing forward to bless him, and kissing the hem of his garment. They like fighting and, I may add, blood, and cruelties to their fellow-men; although to animals they are remarkably humane. The number of people with slit or otherwise injured noses is a thing one cannot help remarking. The other day I saw one man who had patched his, which was still unhealed, with cotton, and he was fanning away the flies from it. When I walked up to the gate of the Seraglio to see the five tails[11] hanging up, there was the block of stone on which the heads of offenders are put, and the blood still there.

To architecture in the highest sense, viz. elegant construction in stone, the Turks have no pretension. The mosques are always copies of Santa Sophia with trifling variations, and have no claim to originality. The bazaars are large buildings, but hardly architectural. The imarets, or hospitals, are next in size (there are about fifty of them in Constantinople, in which D'Ohson says 30,000 people daily are fed), but neither have they anything artistic about them.

The aqueducts, finally, are either reparations or imitations of old Roman work.

These are all the buildings of a permanent character. The dwelling-houses have the air of temporary habitations. They are constructed mainly of wood, and are divided into very few chambers. Turks eat and drink, live and sleep in one room. The sofa is their seat and their bed, and when that is full they lay quilts, which are kept in every room in cupboards, on the floor, and sleep about in them half dressed. As ornaments to the walls they hang up their arms. They live in this way even in the highest ranks. The men have no desire for privacy, and the women's apartments are altogether separated off. The space covered by each house is what we should consider immense. It has usually only one storey—never more than two. The ground floor, used for stables, storage, and offices, stands open on columns. A staircase, often outside, leads up to an open balcony, out of which the effendi's apartments open. These seldom consist of more than three—one for audience and for living in; another for business, the secretary, &c.; and the third for upper servants, the preparation of coffee, pipes, &c. The harem, as I said, is parted off by a high wall with a separate court, garden, and, often, exit to the street; but all one sees of a house outside is generally a high wall and a capacious door into a court with a hoodwink shade over it, and the gentlemen's apartments hanging over one end of the premises. Sometimes there is a kiosk leading out of the gallery to a rather higher level when there is a view to be got by it, but externally there is nothing pretending to architectural effect in the private house of a Turk.

The really ornamental buildings in which anything that may be called Turkish architecture is displayed, are the fountains and the grand kiosks or summer residences.

The fountains are commonly square reservoirs, the four sides enriched with marble, carved, panelled, and gilt, with all the resources of genuine Turkish taste. The forms are generally flowers and fruits and texts from the Koran, with perhaps an inscription in memory of the founder, such as 'Drink of my limpid waters and pray for the soul of Achmet.' The tank is covered with a dome and gilt cullices with great eaves which cast a broad shade over anyone who comes for water or repose.

But the most charming things are the kiosks. You can imagine nothing slighter than their architecture is. They are entirely of wood, and even the most extensive are finished in about two months. They display the customs of the Sultans, and they are such as you might imagine from reading the 'Arabian Nights'—golden halls with cupolas, domes and cullices hanging over pools of water, with fountains and little falls of water, all in the genuine Turkish taste.

Moreover, although it is a subject no one has hitherto condescended to treat of, they do show an artistic taste in the cheerful disposition of their apartments, gardens, courts, and fountains, which is worth attention.

The rooms are all so contrived as to have windows on two sides at least, and sometimes on three, and the windows are so large that the effect is like that of a glass-house. The Turks seem to be the only people who properly appreciate broad sunshine and the pleasure of a fine view. Unfortunately, the Turkish, which is something like the Persian style, only appears in the architecture. As to decoration, I was bitterly disappointed to find that now they have no manner peculiar to themselves of ornamenting these fanciful interiors. They are done in the old French crinkum-crankum [? Louis XV.—Ed.] style by rascally renegades, and very badly.

On a green lawn, in a shady valley partly surrounded by fine trees, partly hanging over the Bosphorus to catch the cool of the sea-breeze, there stands one of the kiosks of the Sultan, a real summer-house consisting of one room only, with several small entering rooms for the Sultan, one for his suite and some small ones for service.

This is known as the Chebuble kiosk. In the valley near are various marble columns put up to commemorate shots made by the Grand Signor in practising at a mark.

Another we saw was the serai of the Sultan's sister. It was at the peril of the poor gardener's head, and I was obliged to bribe him well for the sight. I was able to make a running sketch of the place, and to glance at the furnishing, which was all newly done up for the Sultana's reception. The sofas were all splendidly embroidered by native work-people, and there was a magnificent profusion of Lyons silk, the colours and the gilding on the ceilings and walls as brilliant as you can imagine. One room was entirely, as I was told, of gold plaque. There was frosted and embossed work as a relief to the colours, and the effect, if very gaudy, was striking. Generally this sort of splendour in Turkey is expended on the carved ceilings, but in this case the sofas and window frames were as rich as the rest, and the niches with shelves for flowers on either side of the entrance.

The baths, which form a principal feature in every serai, are very elegant here. The pavement, the fountains, and the pillars are all marble, and carved and gilded and painted besides.

But the apartment which gave me most pleasure is the reception hall. It has something the form of a cross, with a great oval centre which is 72 feet by 51 feet, and to the extremities, looking, one on the garden, the other on the port, the range is 114 feet by 105 feet. I do assure you the effect of the room, with its gorgeous ceiling and the suspended chandelier, is enchanting—quite one's ideal of what ought to be found in the Oriental style. I am told that the Sultana entertains her brother here by displaying all the beauties of her household. The most lovely girls are assembled here to dance, and the Sultan watches them from a window with a gold grating. When Sébastiani[12] assisted in the defence of Constantinople, at the time of Admiral Duckworth's forcing of the Dardanelles, the Sultana invited his wife here and received her with the greatest honours. On landing from her boat she was passed through a crowd of eunuchs richly dressed in gold and silk, and on entering the house she found the staircase lined with the most beautiful young women, who handed her up to the presence of the Sultana, where she was entertained with sweetmeats, dancing, &c., as was Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.

Near this serai, and communicating with it, is the palace of the Pasha to whom this Sultana was married; and his living here is an extraordinary exception to the rule, which is that the husband of a Sultana should never be allowed to live within twenty miles of the capital—for political reasons, no doubt. When it is her pleasure to see him she sends him a note in a pocket handkerchief, the corners of which are folded over with a seal, so that it makes a bag. Sometimes the invitation is conveyed by a hint: a slave is sent by the passage of communication to open the door of his apartment, which the Pasha would perfectly understand.

The other parts of the palace are entirely for the use of slaves. There are, as appears to be usual in Turkish palaces, several escapes, and to these I looked with peculiar interest; since, if we had been caught, there is no knowing what might have happened to the poor gardener, or, for the matter of that, to myself. However, we were not interrupted, I paid him 30 piastres and we slunk away together.

We had not got home, however, before we met the boats of the Sultana, which, if we had stayed there ten minutes longer, might have surprised us.

It is not easy to get into any intimacy with Turks; but if I have not seen much of their society, I have seen more than any of my fellow-travellers have. With those who have no manners at all it is not difficult to get acquainted. For instance, an imam (priest), a neighbour of ours, often drops in at the dinner hour, taking compassion on me when I am alone. He plays at billiards, drinks and swears, and is very troublesome; but he has a great respect for my art, and my plans above all things excite his astonishment. I scraped acquaintance, too, with a Turk architect, in the hope of getting to see more palaces; but he also is too great a rogue to keep company with, for he gets drunk and stabs his friends; and as for his art he is not worth cultivating for that, for it is confined to the chisel and mallet. And his promises are false promises; for with all my hopes I have never got him to show me anything. My specimen friend hitherto is Beki-Beki Effendi, who seems to be a real Turkish gentleman. He had been brought up in the Seraglio as one of the attendants on the Grand Signor, and his manners struck me as very fine, having a cheerfulness and regard for his visitors, mixed with great dignity. My host, who has already shown me great kindnesses, presented me to him and explained my mission. He expressed himself much pleased to be made acquainted with an English traveller, hoped I was well, liked Constantinople, &c., and presented me with a little bottle of oil of aloes, the scent of which was nice. We smoked, ate sweetmeats, and conversed by interpreter, and after two mortal hours' stay (conceive such a visit!) were preparing to go when his father-in-law arrived. I was told it would be grossly impolite to persist in going, so we stopped on. Beki sent his slaves forward to usher in the new arrival, and then stood in a particular spot and position to receive him, and touched his garment with his hand, which he then kissed. He then paid him the highest marks of attention, inquired after his health, &c. The father then walked upstairs, attended by two slaves, one on each side holding him under the arm, as if assisting him, although he was not at all old. We stayed another half-hour, and then at last tore ourselves away.

In return for taking me to see a certain palace, Beki begged me show him the English embassy. He accordingly called on me on an appointed day at ten o'clock. Taking a hint from my host I had a breakfast prepared which we should call a solid dinner; and a parasite living in the inn, a common animal in these countries, assisted my party. My visitors made a big day of it, and got very merry over their fare, drinking copiously of rum punch, which, as it is not wine, is not forbidden to the Mussulman, and at the end paid me a string of compliments. I presented my visitor with one of those new phosphoric contrivances [? a tinder-box.—Ed.], and never was an effendi more delighted. 'If you had given me a casket of jewels,' said he, 'I should not have been better pleased.'

We walked up to the embassy and sauntered about the rooms. What best pleased Beki were the pictures of the King and Queen, which he pronounced very beautiful (Chouk Guzul), and the cut-glass chandeliers; but the few windows seemed dull to his Turkish taste.

We got home and regaled again, and on his proposal to retire, I returned him his compliment and begged him to stay and sleep, which I am happy to say he refused, for where we should have stowed him I know not.

So passed an idle, odious day. I was worn out with trying to do the agreeable through an interpreter, but—I had seen a Turkish gentleman.

And when I reflect upon him, I cannot help feeling that, as a contrast to what I am accustomed to, there was something very fascinating about him. I have been used to see men slaves to their affairs, still wearing themselves with work when they possess every requisite of life, and not knowing how to enjoy the blessings their exertions have procured them. Whereas here was a man who calmly enjoyed what he had, doing his best to make himself and those around him happy. With any but absolute paupers contentment is the common frame of mind in this country. The poor tradesman in the bazaar works his hours of business, and then sits cross-legged on his shop-board and enjoys his pipe like an emperor. There is no mean cringeing for patronage. The very porters in their services have an air of condescension, and never seem to feel inferiority.

The climate, of course, has a great deal to do with it. One may sleep in the open air most of the year, and if one does little work, a bit of water-melon and slice of bread dipped in salt and water is an excellent repast. Temperance is hardly a virtue where rich food could only make one unwell.

Whatever be the attraction—the tenets of the Faith, or the leisurely life, or the desire to live in Turkey without the inconveniences of nonconformity—conversion to Mahommedanism is a very common thing. I have met several French renegades, and some English have been pointed out to me. Our frigates have frequent quarrels with the Turks on this head; and even of the Spaniards, who are supposed to be so bigoted, an incredible number turned Turks at the time that their ships of war first came up here.

As for society amongst the foreigners, diplomatic and others, although there is a complete Frank quarter, and it is said to have been at one time very pleasant, there is hardly any now. For one thing, in these times of general war, the ministers of countries at variance at home now hold no communication, nor do their families; in the case of the French this is by a peremptory order of their Government. So there is little meeting and next to no entertainment, and for lack of other amusement a vast deal of scandal, of mining and countermining of each other's reputations, with the result that they come to be nearly as mean in character as they try to make each other out to be; and another reason is that among the merchants who formerly vied in magnificence with the ministers, there is now great distress, and hardly one could give a decent dinner. Their ships lie rotting in the ports, and the hands, Ragusans mostly, hang about gnawing their fingers with hunger.

Among the few families one could visit was that of the Charnowskis, Poles, the ladies of which are the admired of all the English here, and especially of my two companions, Sir W. Ingilby and Foster, who have fallen completely under the thumbs of these beautiful sirens. I saw enough of them to feel compassion for my friends and almost to need it myself.

Another family we know, of the name of Hubsch, who are amusing. The Baron, as he styles himself, is a sort of minister of a number of little Powers which have no earthly relation with the Turks, as Denmark, Prussia, Norway, &c., and as he hoists all their flags over his house, the Turks believe him to be a very mighty person. He affects to be in the secrets of all the Cabinets of Europe, and assumes an air of prodigious mystery in politics. He is banker and manager of all things and all persons who will be imposed upon by him.

I imagine him to be a regular adventurer; but adventurers are common in Constantinople. It seems to be one of their last resorts."

From notes in a sketch-book it appears that in the interval between the writing of this letter and the next, which is dated from Salonica, my father made an expedition to the Princes' Islands, in the Sea of Marmora, in company with Foster and a Mr. Hume,[13] who had lately returned from Egypt. His object in going was chiefly to visit the scene of the death of his cousin, George Belli, R.N., lieutenant of the Royal George, who was killed with four sailors of Admiral Duckworth's fleet in attacking a monastery held by some Turks on the Island of Chalcis.

An entry made on the same day gives one some idea of Turkish misgovernment. "On the Princes' Islands they have lately discovered an excellent earth for making crockery; but they dare not use it, for fear the authorities should get ear of it and heavily tax them. With such encouragement to industry, no wonder that Turkey should be bankrupt."

A man's career is immensely influenced by his personal appearance. My father's passport, made out at this time at Constantinople for his voyage in the Levant, gives, as was usual in those days, for identification, a description under several printed heads, as "stature," "face," "eyes," &c., of the bearer.

It is a large form printed in Italian, beginning "Noi Stratford Canning ministro plenipotenziario di sua Maestà il re della Gran Bretagna," and so on presently to Cockerell's name and the date, 8 September, 1810. At the bottom is the description—"Statura, mezzana; viso, triangolare; occhi, negri e splendenti; naso, fino; bocca di vermiglia; fronte, di marmo," and below "in somma Apollo lui stesso." This was Canning's jocose extravagance. Nevertheless it indicates that the bearer possessed a fortunate exterior, which had probably something to do with the good reception he generally met with in society throughout his life.

FOOTNOTES:

[11] Horse-tail standards, the symbols of the sultan's rank.

[12] François Horace Bastien Sébastiani (1772-1851), a Corsican adherent of Napoleon, under whom he rose to be general of division. In 1806 he was sent as Ambassador to Constantinople. Later he fought in Spain, Austria, Russia, Germany, and France in 1814. After the fall of Napoleon he took service under the Bourbons, was Minister of Marine and Minister for Foreign Affairs under Louis Philippe, Ambassador to England, 1835-1840, and was made finally a marshal of France.

[13] Joseph Hume (1777-1855), a Scotchman of humble origin. Having made money in India, he took to political life, sat in Parliament for various constituencies, and for thirty years was leader of the Radical party.

CHAPTER IV

LEAVES CONSTANTINOPLE—BY TROY, SALONICA, MYCONE, DELOS, TO ATHENS—LIFE IN ATHENS—ACQUAINTANCES—BYRON, ETC.

About the middle of September, Cockerell, with Ingilby[14] and Foster, set sail for Greece. They stopped on their way to pay a visit to the Plain of Troy. The facilities for travelling nowadays have made us calmly familiar with the scenes of the past, but in 1810 to stand upon classic ground was to plant one's feet in a fairyland of romance, and a traveller who had got so unusually far might well permit his enthusiasm to find vent. When Cockerell was pointed out the tomb of Patroclus, he took off his clothes and, in imitation of Achilles, ran three times round it, naked. Thence they went by Tenedos and Lemnos to Salonica. Nothing in the notes of this journey is worth recording except perhaps the mention he makes of Tenedos as being still in a state of desolation from the cruel Russian attack upon it in the year 1807.

"I ought to give you a notion of the political state of this part of the country. Ali Pasha of Yanina rules over the Morea, Albania, and Thessaly nearly up to Salonica, while the Pasha of Serres has Salonica and Macedonia nearly up to Constantinople, and both are practically independent of the Porte, obeying it or assisting it only as far as they please. Now, Ali Pasha has sent his son Veli with 15,000 men to join the Sultan's army against the Russians, but he on his way has encamped near Salonica and threatens to take possession of it. The Bey accordingly pays every sort of court to him, and sends out presents and provisions to mollify him. In the meanwhile the Sultan has given to another pasha a firman to take the Morea in Veli Pasha's absence, and he (Veli) is now waiting for his father Ali's advice as to whether he should proceed to the war, recover the Morea, or take Salonica. Fancy, what a state for a country to be in! The Sultan is a puppet in the hands of the janissaries, who on their side are powerless outside the city, so that the country without and within is in a state of anarchy."

The party took a passage from Salonica to Athens in a Greek merchantman.

"We passed Zagora, until lately a rich and prosperous commercial town, but it has been taken by Ali Pasha and he has reduced it to utter ruin. Off Scopolo a boat came out and fired a gun for us to heave to. The crew told me she was a pirate, but when we fired a gun in return to show that we also were armed, the crew of the boat merely wished us a happy journey.

The wind falling light, we anchored in a small bay and landed, and there we made fire in a cave and cooked our dinner. It was most romantic. After touching at Scyros, we put into Andros. While our ship was lying here in the port our sailors became mutinous. They began by stealing a pig from the land, and then went on to ransack our baggage and steal from it knives, clothes, and other things. All this happened while we ourselves were on shore, but our servants remonstrated, whereupon the scoundrels threatened to throw them overboard. There was nothing for us to do but apply to the English consul for protection. He sent for the chief instigator of the troubles, but he, as soon as he got ashore, ran away and was lost sight of. Under the circumstances, what we did was to deduct from the captain's pay the value of our losses and shift our goods from on board his vessel into another boat, a small one, in which we set sail for the island of Tinos.

We slept at San Nicolo on the bare ground, having made ourselves a fire in a tiny chapel. Fop, my dog, fell into a well and was rescued with great difficulty. One of the peasants, who had never seen anything like a Skye terrier before, when he saw him pulled out took him for a fiend or a goblin, and crossed himself devoutly.

We sailed in the open boat all through a very stormy day, and arrived at last at Tinos (the town), thoroughly chilled and wet. The island, once highly prosperous, is now poor and depopulated.

From Tinos we sailed across to Great Delos (Rhenea), slept in a hut, and next day went on to Little Delos. Here there was nothing to sleep in but the sail of the boat, and nothing to eat at all. Everything on the island had been bought up by an English frigate a few days before. We were obliged to send across to Great Delos for a kid, which was killed and roasted by us in the Temple of Apollo. I spent my time sketching and measuring everything I could see in the way of architectural remains, and copying every inscription. I had to work hard, but without house or food we could not stop where we were, and in the evening we sailed to Mycone.

Next day I went back to Delos, and after much consideration resolved to try to dig there. I had to sleep in the open air, for the company of the diggers in the hut was too much for me. First I made out the columns of the temple and drew a restoration of the plan. Then we went on digging, but discovered next to nothing—a beautiful fragment of a hand, a dial, some glass, copper, lead, &c., and vast masses of marble chips, as though it had once been a marble-mason's shop. At last it seemed to promise so little that I gave it up and went back to Mycone; but on the 28th, not liking to be beaten, I went back alone to have a last look. But I could discover no indications to make further digging hopeful, so I came away."

From Mycone the travellers sailed to Syra, and from thence to Zea, where they stayed some days at least; for there is in Bronstedt's "Voyages et recherches en Grèce" a drawing by my father of a colossal lion which must have been made at this time. Ingilby had left them, but my father and Foster must have arrived in Athens about the beginning of December 1810. Not long after he made acquaintance with a brother craftsman, Baron Haller von Hallerstein, a studious and accomplished artist, about fourteen years his senior, and a gentleman by birth and nature; altogether a valuable companion. The two struck up a great intimacy, and henceforth were inseparable. They could be of service to each other. Haller was travelling on a very small allowance from his patron, Prince Louis of Bavaria; and my father, while he profited by the company of a man of greater learning and experience, was able in return to add to his comfort by getting commissions for him to do drawings for some of his English friends,[15] and in other ways supplementing his means. He had come to Athens from Rome with one Linckh, a painter from Cannstadt, Baron Stackelberg,[16] an Esthonian from Revel, Bronstedt,[17] a Dane, and Koes, another Dane, all of them accomplished men, seriously engaged in antiquarian studies. Together they formed a society suited to my father's tastes and pursuits.

In the way of Englishmen there were Messrs. Graham and Haygarth and Lord Byron, all three young Cambridge men of fortune, with whom, especially the two first, he was intimate.

His only other friends, except Greeks, were Fauvel, the French consul, who had taste and information, and was owner of a good collection of Greek antiquities; and Lusieri,[18] the Italian draughtsman to Lord Elgin, an individual of indifferent character.

Athens was a small place. There was a khan, of course, but nothing in the shape of an hotel. The better class of travellers lived in lodgings, the best known of which were those of Madame Makri, a Greek lady, the widow of a Scotchman of the name of Macree, who had been British consul in Athens in his day. She had three pretty daughters known to travellers as "les Consulines" or "les trois Grâces," of whom the eldest was immortalised as "the Maid of Athens" in a much overrated lyric by Lord Byron, who was one of their lodgers.

As they were going to stop some time in the town, instead of going into an apartment, Foster and my father took a house together.

"There is hardly anything that can be called society among the Greeks. I know a few families, but I very rarely visit them, for such society as theirs is hateful.

As for the Greek men, in their slavery they have become utterly contemptible, bigoted, narrow-minded, lying, and treacherous. They have nothing to do but pull their neighbours' characters to pieces. Retired as I am, you would hardly believe there is not a thing I do that is not known and worse represented. Apropos of an act of insolence of the Disdar aga's (which I made him repair before the waiwode, the governor of the town), I heard that it was reported that I had been bastinadoed. This report I had to answer by spreading another, viz. that I should promptly shoot anyone, Turk or Christian, who should venture to lay a hand upon me. This had its effect, and I heard no more of bastinadoing. I do not think we are in much danger here. The Franks are highly esteemed by the governor, and the English especially.

The other day we witnessed the departure of the old waiwode and the arrival of the new. Just as the former was leaving, the heroes from the Russian war arrived, brown and dusty. The leading man carried a banner. As they came into the court they were received with discharge of pistols, and embraced by their old friends with great demonstrations. I was very much affected. I heard afterwards that the rogues had never been further than Sofia, and had never smelt any powder but that which had gone to the killing of one of them by his companion in a brawl. So much for my feelings. The outgoing waiwode was escorted by the new one with great ceremony as far as the sacred wood.

March 13 is the Turkish New Year's Day, and is a great festival with them. The women go out to Asomatos and dance on the grass. Men are not admitted to the party, but Greek women are. Linckh, Haller, and I went to see them from a distance, taking with us a glass, the better to see them. We were discovered, and some Turkish boys, many of whom were armed, came in great force towards us, and began to throw stones at us from some way off. Instead of retreating, we stood up to receive them, which rather intimidated them, and they stopped throwing and came up. We laughed with them, which in some measure assuaged them, and when some one said 'Bakshish' we gave them some to scramble for, and so by degrees retired. Some of the Greek and Turkish women laughed at us for being driven off by boys; but it was a dangerous thing so to offend national prejudices, and I was very well pleased to be out of it. At best ours was an inglorious position.

Foster has received a love letter: a para with a hole in it, a morsel of charcoal, and a piece of the silk such as the women tie their hair with. This last signifies that the sender is reduced to the last extremities of love, and the idea is that a sympathetic passion will arise in the receiver and make him discover the sender within nine days."

These love letters are common to all the East, not to Turkey only. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu gives an account of one consisting of some dozen or twenty symbols, but she says she believes there are a million of recognised ones. Common people, however, were probably contented with very few. According to her, hair (and I suppose that which ties the hair) means, Crown of my head; coal, May I die and all my years be yours; gold wire, I die, come quickly. So Foster's letter reads, "Crown of my head, I am yours; come quickly."

"April 11th.—Lord Byron embarked to-day on board the transport (which is carrying Lord Elgin's Marbles) for Malta. He takes this letter with him, and will send it on to you, I trust, immediately on his arrival in England. I must close, as he is just off for the Piræus."

The ship did not leave the port, however, for some days, as we shall see below; and besides this delay, Lord Byron was laid up when he got to Malta and only arrived in England in July, so the letter was long on its way.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] Sir William Amcotte Ingilby, Bart. (died 1854), of Ripley Castle, Yorks.

[15] Lord Byron writes that he is having some views done by a famous Bavarian artist.—Letter 59. Life by T. Moore.

[16] Baron Otto Magnus von Stackelberg (1760-1836), antiquarian; author of Der Apollotempel zu Bassae and other works.

[17] Peter Oluf Bronstedt (1781-1842), Danish archæologist. Was made Chevalier Bronstedt and sent by his Government as minister to Rome.

[18] Lusieri, a Neapolitan, painter to the King of Naples; engaged as draughtsman by Lord Elgin. He was still in Athens in 1816.

CHAPTER V

TRIP TO ÆGINA—DISCOVERY AND TRANSPORTATION OF THE MARBLES TO ATHENS—EFFORTS TO SELL THEM.

"I told you we were going to make a tour in the Morea, but before doing so we determined to see the remains of the temple at Ægina, opposite Athens, a three hours' sail. Our party was to be Haller, Linckh, Foster, and myself. At the moment of our starting an absurd incident occurred. There had been for some time a smouldering war between our servants and our janissary. When the latter heard that he was not to go with us, it broke out into a blaze. He said it was because the servants had been undermining his character, which they equally angrily denied. But he was in a fury, went home, got drunk, and then came out into the street and fired off his pistols, bawling out that no one but he was the legitimate protector of the English. For fear he should hurt some one with his shooting, I went out to him and expostulated. He was very drunk, and professed to love us greatly and that he would defend us against six or seven or even eight Turks; but as for the servants, 'Why, my soul,' he said, 'have they thus treated me?' I contrived, however, to prevent his loading his pistols again, and as he worked the wine off, calm was at length restored; but the whole affair delayed us so long that we did not walk down to the Piræus till night. As we were sailing out of the port in our open boat we overtook the ship with Lord Byron on board. Passing under her stern we sang a favourite song of his, on which he looked out of the windows and invited us in. There we drank a glass of port with him, Colonel Travers, and two of the English officers, and talked of the three English frigates that had attacked five Turkish ones and a sloop of war off Corfu, and had taken and burnt three of them. We did not stay long, but bade them 'bon voyage' and slipped over the side. We slept very well in the boat, and next morning reached Ægina. The port is very picturesque. We went on at once from the town to the Temple of Jupiter, which stands at some distance above it; and having got together workmen to help us in turning stones, &c., we pitched our tents for ourselves, and took possession of a cave at the north-east angle of the platform on which the temple stands—which had once been, perhaps, the cave of a sacred oracle—as a lodging for the servants and the janissary. The seas hereabouts are still infested with pirates, as they always have been. One of the workmen pointed me out the pirate boats off Sunium, which is one of their favourite haunts, and which one can see from the temple platform. But they never molested us during the twenty days and nights we camped out there, for our party, with servants and janissary, was too strong to be meddled with. We got our provisions and labourers from the town, our fuel was the wild thyme, there were abundance of partridges to eat, and we bought kids of the shepherds; and when work was over for the day, there was a grand roasting of them over a blazing fire with an accompaniment of native music, singing and dancing. On the platform was growing a crop of barley, but on the actual ruins and fallen fragments of the temple itself no great amount of vegetable earth had collected, so that without very much labour we were able to find and examine all the stones necessary for a complete architectural analysis and restoration. At the end of a few days we had learnt all we could wish to know of the construction, from the stylobate to the tiles, and had done all we came to do.

But meanwhile a startling incident had occurred which wrought us all to the highest pitch of excitement. On the second day one of the excavators, working in the interior portico, struck on a piece of Parian marble which, as the building itself is of stone, arrested his attention. It turned out to be the head of a helmeted warrior, perfect in every feature. It lay with the face turned upwards, and as the features came out by degrees you can imagine nothing like the state of rapture and excitement to which we were wrought. Here was an altogether new interest, which set us to work with a will. Soon another head was turned up, then a leg and a foot, and finally, to make a long story short, we found under the fallen portions of the tympanum and the cornice of the eastern and western pediments no less than sixteen statues and thirteen heads, legs, arms, &c. (another account says seventeen and fragments of at least ten more), all in the highest preservation, not 3 feet below the surface of the ground.[19] It seems incredible, considering the number of travellers who have visited the temple, that they should have remained so long undisturbed.

It is evident that they were brought down with the pediment on the top of them by an earthquake, and all got broken in the fall; but we have found all the pieces and have now put together, as I say, sixteen entire figures.

The unusual bustle about the temple rapidly increased as the news of our operations spread. Many more men than we wanted began to congregate round us and gave me a good deal of trouble. Greek workmen have pretty ways. They bring you bunches of roses in the morning with pretty wishes for your good health; but they can be uncommonly insolent when there is no janissary to keep them in order. Once while Foster, being away at Athens, had taken the janissary with him, I had the greatest pother with them. A number that I did not want would hang about the diggings, now and then taking a hand themselves, but generally interfering with those who were labouring, and preventing any orderly and businesslike work. So at last I had to speak to them. I said we only required ten men, who should each receive one piastre per day, and that that was all I had to spend; and if more than ten chose to work, no matter how many they might be, there would still be only the ten piastres to divide amongst them. They must settle amongst themselves what they would choose to do. Upon this what did the idlers do? One of them produced a fiddle; they settled into a ring and were preparing to dance. This was more than I could put up with. We should get no work done at all. So I interfered and stopped it, declaring that only those who worked, and worked hard, should get paid anything whatever. This threat was made more efficacious by my evident anger, and gradually the superfluous men left us in peace, and we got to work again.

It was not to be expected that we should be allowed to carry away what we had found without opposition. However much people may neglect their own possessions, as soon as they see them coveted by others they begin to value them. The primates of the island came to us in a body and read a statement made by the council of the island in which they begged us to desist from our operations, for that heaven only knew what misfortunes might not fall on the island in general, and the immediately surrounding land in particular, if we continued them. Such a rubbishy pretence of superstitious fear was obviously a mere excuse to extort money, and as we felt that it was only fair that we should pay, we sent our dragoman with them to the village to treat about the sum; and meanwhile a boat which we had ordered from Athens having arrived, we embarked the marbles without delay and sent them off under the care of Foster and Linckh, with the janissary, to the Piræus, and from thence they were carried up to Athens by night to avoid exciting attention. Haller and I remained to carry on the digging, which we did with all possible vigour. The marbles being gone, the primates came to be easier to deal with. We completed our bargain with them to pay them 800 piastres, about 40l., for the antiquities we had found, with leave to continue the digging till we had explored the whole site. Altogether it took us sixteen days of very hard work, for besides watching and directing and generally managing the workmen, we had done a good deal of digging and handling of the marbles ourselves; all heads and specially delicate parts we were obliged to take out of the ground ourselves for fear of the workmen ruining them. On the whole we have been fortunate. Very few have been broken by carelessness. Besides all this, which was outside our own real business, we had been taking measurements and making careful drawings of every part and arrangement of the architecture till every detail of the construction and, as far as we could fathom it, of the art of the building itself was clearly understood by us. Meanwhile, after one or two days' absence, Foster and Linckh came back; and it then occurred to us that the receipt for the 800 piastres had only been given to the names of Foster and myself (who had paid it), and Linckh and Haller desired that theirs should be added. Linckh therefore went off to the town to get the matter rectified. But this was not so easy. The lawyer was a crafty rogue, and pretending to be drunk as soon as he had got back the receipt into his hands, refused to give it up, and did not do so until after a great deal of persuasion and threatening. When we fell in with him at dinner two days later he met us with the air of the most candid unconcern. It was at the table of a certain Chiouk aga who had been sent from Constantinople to receive the rayah tax. Linckh had met him in the town when he went about the receipt, and the Chiouk had paid us a visit at the temple next day and dined with us, eating and especially drinking a great deal. A compliment he paid us was to drink our healths firing off a pistol. I had to do the same in return. The man had been to England, and even to Oxford, and had come back with an odd jumble of ideas which amused us but are not worth repeating. Next day, as I have said, we dined with him and the rogue of a lawyer. He was very hospitable. Dinner consisted mainly of a whole lamb, off which with his fingers he tore entire limbs and threw them into our plates, which we, equally with our fingers, à la Turque, ate as best we could. We finished the evening with the Albanian dance, and walked up home to our tent."

The whole party with their treasures got back to Athens on the 9th or 10th of May 1811, and on the 13th he writes:

"We are now hard at work joining the broken pieces, and have taken a large house for the purpose. Some of the figures are already restored, and have a magnificent effect. Our council of artists here considers them as not inferior to the remains of the Parthenon, and certainly only in the second rank after the torso of the Vatican and other chefs d'œuvre. We conduct all our affairs with respect to them in the utmost secrecy, for fear the Turk should either reclaim them or put difficulties in the way of our exporting them. The few friends we have and consult are dying with jealousy, and one[20] who had meant to have farmed Ægina of the Captain Pasha has literally made himself quite ill with fretting. Fauvel, the French consul, was also a good deal disappointed; but he is too good a fellow to let envy affect his actions, and he has given excellent help and advice. The finding of such a treasure has tried every character concerned with it. He saw that this would be the case, and for fear it should operate to the prejudice of our beautiful collection, he proposed our signing a contract of honour that no one should take any measures to sell or divide it without the consent of the other three parties. This was done. It is not to be divided. It is a collection which a king or great nobleman who had the arts of his country at heart should spare no effort to secure; for it would be a school of art as well as an ornament to any country. The Germans have accordingly written to their ministers, and I have written to Canning; while Fauvel, who has a general order for the purpose from his minister, will make an offer to us on the French account. I had hoped that Lord Sligo would have offered for it; but our Germans, who calculate by the price of marbles in Rome, have named such a monstrous figure that it has frightened him. They talk of from 6,000l. to 8,000l.; but as we are eager that they should go to our museum, Foster and I have undertaken to present our shares if the marbles go to England, and I have written to Canning to say so. It would make a sensible deduction.

The whole matter is still full of uncertainties, for the Turks may give us a good deal of trouble. But one thing seems clear—that these marbles may detain me here much longer than I proposed to stop; and though we have agreed not to divide the collection, it may come to that if we cannot get away without; and if we can get them to England, even Foster's and my portions would make a noble acquisition to the museum.

We have been very busy getting the marbles into order, that Lord Sligo might be able to see them before leaving. He takes this letter with him."

It was shortly after this, viz. on June 13, that Messrs. Gaily-Knight[21] and Fazakerly arrived in Athens from Egypt and made an offer, which was to buy out Messrs. Haller and Linckh's shares in the marbles for 2,000l., and then, in conjunction with Mr. Foster and my father, to present the whole to the British Museum.

The offer unfortunately could not be accepted, as it did not come up to the price demanded by the Germans.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] Only fifteen statues were pieced together by Thorwaldsen and Wagner, but there were numerous fragments besides those used by them, which are still the subject of conjectural restorations.

[20] I suppose Lusieri.—Ed.

[21] Henry Gally-Knight (1786-1846), M.P., writer of several works on architecture.

CHAPTER VI

LIFE IN ATHENS—ELEUSIS—TRANSPORTATION OF ÆGINA MARBLES TO ZANTE.

My father was now in for a long stay in the country, and seeing something more of it than the usual tourist, even of those days. One or two entries from his diary give one a slight insight into the barbarous condition of the country at this time.

"The Pasha of Negropont has sent a demand of a certain number of purses of the people of Athens. Logotheti, Greek Archon of Athens, excited the people to go to the cadi and present a protest, which he promised he would support. The people went as far as the house, when Logotheti stepped aside into a neighbouring house, whence he could see the cadi's countenance and judge how to speak to him. He saw he took it well, and then he spoke in support of the protest. This Pasha of Negropont, however, is a redoubtable person. It was expected that he would send troops to attack Athens, but it seems that was too strong a measure even for him. Instead, he has intercepted some poor Albanian cheese merchants, and detains them until some or all of the money has been paid him.[22]

One day I went to the waiwode on business. We had a long talk consisting mainly of questions about England, in which he displayed his ignorance to great advantage. After inquiring after his great friend Elfi Bey [? Lord Elgin], he asked what on earth we came here for, so far and at so much trouble, if not for money. Did it give us a preference in obtaining public situations, or were we paid? It was useless to assure him that we considered it part of education to travel, and that Athens was a very ancient place and much revered by us. He only thought the more that our object must be one we wished to conceal. I told him of the fuss made in London over the Persian ambassador, and that if he went all the world would wonder at him. At this he got very excited, and said he wished he had a good carico of oil which he could take to England, thereby paying his journey, and that once he was there he would make everyone pay to see him. All that he knew about England was that there were beautiful gardens there, especially one named Marcellias (Marseilles)! The man's one idea was money, and he kept on repeating that he was very poor. No wonder Greece is miserable under such rulers.

Veli Pasha, Governor of the Morea, passed through Athens a short time ago in a palankin of gold, while the country is in misery.

The Greeks, cringeing blackguards as they are, have often a sort of pride of their own. One of our servants, who received a piastre a day (1s.), has just left us. His amorosa, who lived close by, saw him carrying water and performing other menial offices and chaffed him, so he said he could stand it no longer and threw up a place the like of which he will not find again in Athens.

I went into the council of the Greek primates. There I saw the French proclamation on the birth of the Roi des Romains: 'The Immortal son of Buonaparte is born! Rejoice, ye people, our wishes are accomplished!' The primates, however, soberly objected that none but God was ἁθἁνατος [Greek: athanatos]. What took me there was to back an Englishman who had got into a quarrel with a neighbour, a Greek widow, about 'ancient lights' which were blocked by a new building he was putting up. The woman maintained her cause with much spirit and choice expressions: 'You rascal, who came to Athens with your mouth full of dung! I'll send you out without a shoe to your foot.' Our man retorted 'putana,' equally irrelevantly, and the affair ended in his favour.

One morning by agreement we rose at daybreak and walked to Eleusis, intending to dig, but we found the labourers very idle and insolent; and after a few days, discovering no trace of the temple, we gave it up. The better sort of Greeks have some respect for the superior knowledge of Franks as evinced in my drawings; one man, a papa or priest, asked me whether I thought the ancients, whom they revere, can have been Franks or Romaics.

An awkward incident occurred during our stay. We had in our service a handsome Greek lad to whom the cadi took a fancy and insisted on his taking service with him. The boy, much terrified, came and wept to us and Papa Nicola, with whom we lodged. We started off at once to the cadi, and gave him a piece of our mind, which considerably astonished and enraged him. He was afraid to touch us, but vowed to take it out of old Nicola, and the next day went off to Athens. One night, the last of our stay, arrived a man from the zabeti, or police, of Athens to take up Nicola to answer certain accusations brought against him by the cadi. This soldier, who was a fine type of the genuine Athenian blackguard, swaggered in and partook freely of our wine, having already got drunk at the cadi's. He offered wine to passers-by as if it was his own, boasted, called himself παλικαρ [Greek: 'palikar,'] roared out songs, and generally made himself most objectionable. He began to quiz a respectable Albanian who came in; and when the latter, who was very civil and called him 'Aga,' attempted to retort, flew into a rage, said he was a palikar again, and handled his sword and shook his pistols. I could stand it no longer at last, and said this was my house and no one was aga there but myself; that I should be glad to see him put his pistols down and let me have no more of his swaggering; otherwise I had pistols too, which I showed him, and would be ready to use them. I then treated our poor Albanian with great attention and him with contumely. This finished him and reduced the brute to absolute cringeing as far as his conduct to me went. The wretched papa he bullied as before, and when he got up to go he and all the rest were up in an instant; one prepared his papouches, another supported him, a third opened the door, and a fourth held a lamp to light him out. But he had not yet finished his evening. Soon I heard a noise of singing and roaring from another house hard by, and received a message from him to beg I would sup with him, for now he had a table of his own and could invite me. The table was provided by some wretched Greek he was tyrannising over. Of course I did not go, but I moralised over the state of the country. Next day he carried off Nicola.

Another instance of the tyranny of these scoundrels was told me as having occurred only a few days before. A zabetis man had arrived and pretended to have lost on the way a purse containing 80 piastres. All the inhabitants were sent to search for it, and if they did not find it he said it must be repaid by the town—and it was.

Among the people we met at Eleusis was a Greek merchant, a great beau from Hydra, at this time the most prosperous place in Greece; but away from his own town he had to cringe to the Turks like everyone else. On our way back to Athens we overtook him carrying an umbrella to shade his face, and with an Albanian boy behind him. When he saw our janissary Mahomet the umbrella was immediately lowered.

The population of Greece is so small now[23] that large spaces are left uncultivated and rights to land are very undefined. In the neighbourhood of towns there is always a considerable amount of cultivated ground, but although the cultivator of each patch hopes to reap it, there is nothing but fear of him to prevent another's doing it, so far as I can see. A field is ploughed and sown by an undefined set of people, and an equally or even less defined set may reap it. And in point of fact people do go and cut corn where they please or dare. We met a lot of Athenians on our way back, going to cut corn at Thebes."

By the middle of July the Æginetan Marbles had been thoroughly overhauled and pieced together, and it was pressing that something should be done about them. The schemes of selling them to Lord Sligo and Messrs. Knight and Fazakerly had fallen through, and it had come to be seen that the only fair way for all parties was to sell them by public auction. To do this they must first be got out of the country, and various schemes for effecting it were considered and abandoned.

As the proprietors meanwhile were in daily fear of their being pounced upon by the Turkish authorities, they agreed at length to put the whole matter into the hands of one Gropius, a common acquaintance. He was half a German, but born and bred amongst Orientals, and being conversant with their ways and languages, and a sharp fellow besides, they felt he was more likely than themselves, unassisted, to carry the business through successfully. They accordingly appointed him their agent, and settled that the collection should be got to Zante, as the nearest place of security.

Eight days were spent in packing, and on July 30 the first batch, on horses and mules, was sent off at night to a spot indicated on the Gulf of Corinth, near a town and castle [? Livadostro.—Ed.].

Cockerell followed two days afterwards with the rest, and sleeping two nights at Condoura, on the third day reached the rendezvous. There they found the first batch all laid out on the beach, and congratulated themselves on having got so far unmolested. Gropius went into the town to hire a vessel while the rest sketched and rested. The weather was furiously hot, and Cockerell, who was very fond of the water, went out for a long swim in the bay, but some fishermen he came up with frightened him back by telling him that they had seen sharks about. Gropius returned in the evening with a boat, and all set to work to get the packages aboard. It took them nearly the whole night to do it. When finally he had seen them all stowed, Cockerell, tired out, lay down to sleep. When he woke they were already gliding out of the bay.

They sailed along prosperously, and had long passed Corinth and Sicyon when, as evening came on, they heard the sound of firing ahead.

"Our first idea was pirates, and when we presently came up with a large ship, which summoned us to come to, we were rather anxious. Our felucca was sent aboard. She turned out to be a Zantiote merchantman, and had been attacked by four boats which had put out from the shore to examine the cargo in the name of Ali Pasha. She had refused to submit to overhauling, and when asked what her cargo consisted of had replied 'Bullets.' When the captain understood we had four milordi on board, he begged pardon for detaining us, and let us go on. Next day we made Patras, where we went ashore to see Strani, the consul, and get from him passports and letters for Zante. In the town we fell in with Bronstedt and the rest of that party, who were, of course, much interested and astonished to hear all our news and present business, and when we set sail in the evening gave us a grand salute of pistols as we went out of port. We had a spanking breeze.

A storm was brewing behind Calydon, and when at length it came upon us it burst the sail of a boat near us. We were a lot of boats sailing together, but when the rest saw this accident they took in their sails. Our skipper, however, insisted on carrying on, so we soon parted company with the others; and after a fair wind all night we arrived in the morning at Zante."

FOOTNOTES:

[22] In the end the city had to pay him 10,000 piastres, and they had spent 5,000 in putting themselves in a state of defence.

[23] According to De Pouqueville, 548,940, in 1814; it is now over 2,000,000.

CHAPTER VII

ZANTE—COLONEL CHURCH—LEAVES ZANTE TO MAKE TOUR OF THE MOREA—OLYMPIA—BASSÆ—DISCOVERY OF BAS-RELIEFS—FORCED TO DESIST FROM EXCAVATIONS.

"Hitherto we had had an anxious time, but once they were landed we felt at ease about the marbles. Henceforth the business is in Gropius' hands. The auction has been announced in English and continental papers to take place in Zante on November 1, 1812. It took us some time to install them, and altogether we passed an odious fortnight on the island. The Zantiotes, as they have been more under Western influence—for Zante belonged to Venice for about three centuries—are detestable. They are much less ignorant than the rest of the Greeks, but their half-knowledge only makes them the more hateful. Until the island was taken in hand by the English, murder was of constant occurrence, and so long as a small sum of money was paid to the proveditor no notice was taken of it. For accomplishing it without bloodshed they had a special method of their own. It was to fill a long narrow bag with sand, with which, with a blow on the back scientifically delivered, there could be given, without fuss or noise, a shock certain sooner or later to prove fatal. Socially they have all the faults of the West as well as those of the East without the virtues of either. But their crowning defect in my eyes is that they have not the picturesque costumes or appearance of the mainland Greeks.

The most interesting thing in Zante for the moment is Major Church's[24] Greek contingent. He has enrolled and disciplined a number of refugee Greeks, part patriots, part criminals, and generally both, and has taken an immense deal of pains with them. He flatters them by calling them Hellenes, shows them the heads of their heroes and philosophers painted on every wall in his house, and endeavours generally to rouse their enthusiasm. He himself adopts the Albanian costume, to which he has added a helmet which he fancies is like that of the ancient Greeks, although it is certainly very unlike those of the heroes we brought into Zante. Altogether, with a great deal of good management and more fustian, he has contrived to attach to himself some thousand excellent troops which under his command would really be capable of doing great things.

[25]At last, on the evening of the 18th of August, we considered ourselves fortunate in being able to get away, and we started to make the tour of the Morea. Gropius, Haller, Foster, Linckh, and I left Zante in a small boat and arrived next morning at Pyrgi, the port of Pyrgo, from which it is distant two hours and a half. We obtained horses at a monastery not far from where we landed, and rode through a low marshy country, well cultivated, chiefly in corn and melon grounds, and fairly well peopled up to the town.

Pyrgo itself lies just above the marshes which border the Alpheus, and, as it happened to our subsequent cost, there was a good deal of water out at this moment. We ordered horses, and while they were being brought in we entered the house of an old Greek, a primate of the place. I had been so disgusted with the thinly veneered civilisation of the Zantiotes and bored with the affectations of our garrison officers there, that I was congratulating myself on having got back to the frank barbarism of the Morea, when my admiration for it received a check. The old Greek in whose house we were waiting seemed anxious to be rid of us, and, the better to do so, assured me that Meraca, or Olympia, was only 2½ hours distant, equal at the ordinary rate of Turkish travelling, which is 3 miles an hour, to 7½ miles. The horses were so long in coming, on account of their being out among the marshes and the men having to go up to their knees to get them, that Haller and I got impatient and resolved to go on foot as the distance was so little. It turned out, however, to be 7 hours instead of 2½, and at nightfall we arrived dead-beat at a marsh, through which in a pitch darkness, I may thank my stars, although invisible, for having struggled safely. We wandered about, lost our way, waded in pools to our knees, and finally took 8 hours instead of 2½ to get to our destination.

It was two o'clock in the morning when we got to Meraca, utterly tired out, and with our lodging still to seek. We were directed to a tower in which lived an Albanian aga. The entrance was at the top of a staircase running up the side of the house and ending in a drawbridge which led to the door on the first floor. Once inside we went up two other flights of stairs to a room in which we found two Albanians, by whom we were kindly received. When they heard how tired we were they offered us some rasky. Besides that there was some miserable bread, but no coffee or meat to refresh us. We had to lie down and go to sleep without.

There are few visible remains of the once famous Olympia,[26] and not a trace of stadium or theatre that I could make out. The general opinion is that the Alpheus has silted up and buried many of the buildings to a depth of 8 or 10 feet, and our small researches point in the same direction. We dug in the temple, but what we could do amounted to next to nothing. To do it completely would be a work for a king. I had had some difficulty with the Greek labourers at Ægina, but the Turks here were much worse. In the first place, instead of one piastre apiece per day they asked 2½, and in the next they had no proper tools. The earth was as hard as brick, and when with extreme difficulty it had been broken up they had no proper shovels; and when the earth, which they piled along the trench as they dug it out, ran into the hole again, they scooped it out with their hands. The thing was too ludicrous. Worst of all, as soon as we turned our backs for a moment they either did nothing or went away. This happened when we left them to cross the river and try for a better view of the place. We got over in a caique, which the aga himself, from the village across the water, punted over to us; but the view over there was disappointing, and we came back to find, as I say, our workmen all idling. The long and short of our excavations was that we measured the columns of the temple to be 7 feet in diameter, and we found some attached columns and other fragments of marble from the interior, the whole of which I suppose was of marble, that of the pavement being of various colours. Such stone as is used is of a rough kind, made up entirely of small shells and covered with a very white and fine plaster. And that is about all the information we got for a largish outlay.

From Meraca we rode through romantic scenery to Andritzena, a charming village in a very beautiful and romantic situation; and next morning we settled to go on to the Temple of Bassæ—the stylæ or columns, the natives call it. But before we started the primates of Andritzena came in, and after turning over our things and examining and asking the price of our arms, they began to try and frighten us with tremendous stories of a certain Barulli, captain of a company of klephts or robbers who haunted the neighbourhood of the stylæ. They begged us to come back the same evening, and to take a guard with us. As for the first, we flatly refused; and for the second, we reflected that our guards must be Greeks, while the klephts might be Turks, and if so the former would never stand against them, so it was as well for us to take the risk alone. We did, however, take one of their suggestions, and that was to take with us two men of the country who would know who was who, and act as guides and go-betweens; for they assured us that it is not only the professional klephts who rob, but that all the inhabitants of the villages thereabouts are dilettante brigands on occasion.

Our janissary Mahomet also did not at all fancy the notion of living up in the mountain, and added what he could to dissuade us. However, we turned a deaf ear to all objections and set out. Our way lay over some high ground, and rising almost all the way, for 2½ hours.

It is impossible to give an idea of the romantic beauty of the situation of the temple. It stands on a high ridge looking over lofty barren mountains and an extensive country below them. The ground is rocky, thinly patched with vegetation, and spotted with splendid ilexes. The view gives one Ithome, the stronghold and last defence of the Messenians against Sparta, to the south-west; Arcadia, with its many hills, to the east; and to the south the range of Taygetus, with still beyond them the sea.

Haller had engagements, which I had got him, to make four drawings for English travellers. I made some on my own account, and there were measurements to be taken and a few stones moved for the purpose, all of which took time. We spent altogether ten days there, living on sheep and butter, the only good butter I have tasted since leaving England, sold to us by the few Albanian shepherds who lived near. Of an evening we used to sit and smoke by a fire, talking to the shepherds till we were ready for sleep, when we turned into our tent, which, though not exactly comfortable, protected us from weather and from wolves. For there are wolves—one of them one night tore a sheep to pieces close to us. We pitched our tent under the north front. On the next day after our arrival, the 25th, one of the primates of Andritzena came begging us to desist from digging or moving stones, for that it might bring harm on the town. This was very much what happened at Ægina. He did not specify what harm, but asked who we were. We in reply said that we had firmans, that it was not civil, therefore, to ask who we were, and that we were not going to carry away the columns. When he heard of the firmans he said he would do anything he could to help us. All the same, he seemed to have given some orders to our guide against digging; for the shepherds we engaged kept talking of the fear they were in, and at last went away, one of them saying the work was distasteful to him. They were no great loss, for they were so stupid that I was obliged to be always with them and work too, in doing which I tore my hand and got exceedingly fatigued. I was repaid by getting some important measurements.

In looking about I found two very beautiful bas-reliefs under some stones, which I took care to conceal again immediately."

This incident is described in greater detail by Stackelberg in the preface to his book.[27] The interior of the temple—that is to say, the space inside the columns—was a mass of fallen blocks of some depth. While Haller and Cockerell with the labourers were scrambling about among the ruins to get their measurements, a fox that had made its home deep down amongst the stones, disturbed by the unusual noise, got up and ran away. It is not quite a pleasant task to crawl down among such insecure and ponderous masses of stone with the possibility of finding another fox at the bottom; but Cockerell ventured in, and on scraping away the accumulations where the fox had its lair, he saw by the light which came down a crack among the stones, a bas-relief. I have heard this story also from his own lips. Stackelberg further says that the particular relief was that numbered 530 in the Phigaleian Marbles at the British Museum, and naïvely adds, "indeed one may still trace on the marble the injuries done by the fox's claws." He managed to make a rough sketch of the slab and carefully covered it over again. From the position in which it lay it was inferable that the whole frieze would probably be found under the dilapidations.

"Early one morning some armed shepherds came looking about for a lost sheep. They eventually found it dead not far from our tent, and torn to pieces by a wolf—as I mentioned before. The day being Sunday we saw some grand specimens of the Arcadian shepherds. They stalk about with a gun over their shoulders and a long pistol in the waist, looking very savage and wild—and so they are: but, wild as they may be, they still retain the names which poetry has connected with all that is idyllic and peaceful. Alexis is one of the commonest.

As our labourers had left us, there was nothing for it but to work ourselves. We were doing so and had just lit upon some beautiful caissons, when a man on horseback, Greek or Turk (they dress so much alike there is no distinguishing them), rode up accompanied by four Albanians all armed. He told us he was the owner of the land, and, although he was very civil about it, he forbade our digging any more. We asked him to eat with us, but being a fast day in the Greek Church, he declined. Finally, after writing to Andritzena, he left us.

After so many objections being made to our excavations we felt it would be too dangerous to go on at present, and promised ourselves to come again next year in a stronger party and armed with more peremptory and explicit authority to dig, and in the meantime there was nothing to do but to get through our drawings and studies as quickly as we could.

The uneasiness of our janissary Mahomet, since our camping out began, gave us serious doubts of his courage, and a plan was invented for testing it. This was to raise an alarm at night that we were attacked by klephts. Our Arcadian shepherds entered into the joke with surprising alacrity and kept it up well. Just after supper a cry was heard from the mountain above that robbers were near. In an instant we all sprang up, seized pistols and swords, and made a feint as though we would go up the hill. Our janissary, thunderstruck, was following, when we proposed that he should go on alone.

But he would not do that. In the first place he was ill; in the next place, Would it not be better to go to Andritzena? He begged we might go to Andritzena."

FOOTNOTES:

[24] Afterwards Sir Richard Church, and commander-in-chief of the Greek forces up to his death in 1872.

[25] An epitome of the following appears in Hughes's Travels in Sicily, Greece, and Albania, p. 190.

[26] Olympia was thoroughly excavated by the Germans in 1875-76, when the Hermes of Praxiteles and the Victory of Pæonios were discovered.

[27] Der Apollotempel zu Bassae.

CHAPTER VIII

ANDRITZENA—CARITZENA—MEGALOPOLIS—BENIGHTED—KALAMATA.

"We left the stylæ and went down to Andritzena by a shorter road. In going up, the drivers, to be able to charge us more, had taken us round a longer way. Andritzena is not only beautiful in its situation, the people who live in it are charming. Everyone seemed to think it the proper thing to show some attention to the strangers. The girls—and some of them were very pretty—brought us each as a present a fruit of some kind, pears or figs, and did it in the prettiest and most engaging manner; so that we had more than we could carry home with us. Disinterested urbanity is so unusual a feature in Greek character that we were surprised, and I must confess that it was the only time such a thing ever occurred to us in Greece.

The Turks tax these poor wretches unmercifully. To begin with, they have to pay the Government one-fourth of their produce. Then there is the karatch or poll tax, which seems to be rather variable in amount, and the chrea or local tax levied for the local government, which together make up about another fourth; so that the taxes amount to half the yearly produce. Of course the people complain. I can't tell you how often I have been asked 'When will the English come and deliver us from the Turks, who eat out our souls?' 'And why do they delay?' One Greek told me he prayed daily that the Franks might come; and while I am on the subject I may as well mention here, though it was said a few weeks later, when we were near Corinth, by a shepherd, 'I pray to God I may live to see the Morea filled with such Franks.' They like us better than they do the French, because they have heard from Zante and elsewhere that we treat our dependencies more honourably than they do.

We were five days at Andritzena. Haller made drawings of the village, and I finished up my memoranda of Phigaleia. Besides that, as I thought we ought not to leave the neighbourhood without making a final effort to complete our explorations at the stylæ, and that, the Pasha Veli being absent from the Morea, we might perhaps get leave from the Waiwode of Fanari, Foster and I rode over to see him. We found him exceedingly courteous, perfectly a man of the world; and although his house and the two old cushions in the corner of a dilapidated gallery on which he was propped when he received us did not bespeak great affluence, his manner was not that of a man to whom one could offer a bribe. He said he regretted very much having had to write the letter we had received forbidding us to go on digging, but that it was absolutely necessary that we should cease, and there was an end of the matter. At the same time he hoped there had been no expression in it to offend us. 'Veli,' said he, 'is very peremptory about no bouyuruldu or permission being given by anyone but himself; for he insists on knowing all about travellers who move about in his pashalik, and upon periodically inspecting them and their firman and approving it. The mere fact of my having allowed your party to remain ten days at Phigaleia, no matter whether you dug or not, was enough to ruin me; for these Albanians [that is, Ali Pasha and his sons] ask but few questions [listen to no excuses].' So we had to go back to Andritzena without having effected anything beyond seeing an Albanian Turkish wedding on our way. When we came upon them they were gorgeously dressed, playing the djerid and brandishing their swords. I never saw anything so picturesque. The party were on their way to fetch the bride from Fanari. They had an Albanian red and white banner, with a silk handkerchief tied to the top of it, which was the token sent by the bride to her lover as an invitation to him to come and fetch her. After sunset she is taken to his house on horseback, closely veiled.

Hearing of some columns in an old castle not far off, as the account was a tolerably rational one, I resolved, although I ought to have had experience enough of Greek lies to warn me, to go and see them. There was the hope of making some discovery of interest; for my informant insisted that no milords had ever been there before. So I girt myself with sword and pistol, and walked 2½ hours to a hill or mountain called Sultané. I only found a few miserable columns, a considerable fortress and cyclopean walls, and I made two sketches on the road. I was very tired when I got back. The Greek shoemaker, our landlord, came and supped with us, and got very maudlin over the wine.

We went next to Caritzena. The waiwode insisted on our putting up with him, and gave up a room to us, begging that we would order whatever best pleased us; that his servants would prepare anything, and we should purchase nothing. 'Our king at Stamboul is rich enough to receive our friends and allies, the English,' he said. We were preparing to go out and draw when a message came to say the waiwode would pay us a visit. Haller, however, would not stop for anybody. Foster had to ride back to a place where he had changed his coat and in so doing had dropped a ring he valued, and which, by the by, he managed to find. So Linckh and I, though I felt very unwell with a bilious attack, had to stop in and receive our visitor. He was very polite, and his manners really very fine. He told us he had been with the ambassador at Vienna and at Berlin, and spoke a few words of German, which enchanted Linckh. He presently remarked that I seemed unwell, and I told him that I was bilious, and had a pain in my head; whereupon he took hold of my temples in his right hand, while an old Turk who sat near doubled down his little finger and repeated a charm, which he began in a whisper and finished aloud, leaning forward and pronouncing something like 'Osman Odoo—o—o.' Then he asked me if I was better; because if I was not he would double down his next finger and the next till he came to the thumb, which he said was infallible. This prospect seemed more than I could quite bear; so I thought best to sacrifice my principles, and said 'Yes, I was,' to get rid of the matter, but I was not.

Some Greeks came and joined in our conversation. Really, if one had not some pity for their condition, one could not suffer them, their manners are so odious. Nevertheless, as they seem to have all the power here and elect their own governor and give him an allowance, the waiwode would not join me in criticising them.

The waiwode continued to be as civil as ever, but I could not help thinking he looked anxiously for presents, and we had none to give him. All I could do was to offer him one of the common little brass English boxes with a head of King George on it, filled with bark. He took it with every expression of delight, but I could see it was put on. We could only thank him heartily, fee the servants handsomely, and bow ourselves out with the best grace we could assume. He especially coveted a miniature Foster wore of a lady, and this Foster promised to have copied for him and sent him from England; but he could not part with the original. He gave us strong letters of recommendation for Kalamata.

We left early next day. There was an awkward little episode of a box of instruments belonging to Foster, which he missed off a certain sofa. The Boluk bashi had admired them very much. Presently, when the inquiry was made, an officer of the Boluk bashi came in and searched near the sofa, and then suddenly went out. We did the same, and lo! there was the case. And the Boluk bashi looked very disconcerted as we bade him adieu.

We followed the course of the Gyrtinas. These are mountains which on all hands are celebrated among the modern Greeks for the exploits of the Colocotroni[28] and other captains who lived among the hills and maintained a sort of independence of the Turks ever since they have held the Morea. The peasants delight to sing the ballads composed on these heroes, and, exulting in their bravery, forget the horrible barbarities they committed. When Smirke was here the country must really have been in a fearful state of anarchy; and whatever we may say against him, it must be laid at any rate to the credit of Veli Pasha that he has cleared the Morea of banditti. The Colocotroni and the rest of them have had to fly the country and enlist in Church's contingent at Zante.

We spent some time at Megalopolis, and with Pausanias in our hands were able to identify remnants of almost everything he mentions, in especial the spring near the theatre, which only runs part of the year. At Lycosura the ruins are disappointingly modern, and there is not much of them; nothing left of the ancient temple at all. The situation is very fine. Two and a half hours' journey up a stream through woods brought us to Dervine, the boundary of Messenia. Then we crossed the Plain of Messenia, admiring, even in the rain, the mountains, Ithome especially, and at dusk got to a village two hours short of Kalamata. Our agroati did not know the road on, and it was too late to get a guide; but as they told us the road was quite straight we went on in the dark. At the end of an hour we had lost the track; it was pitch black, raining still, and we on the edge of a river in a marsh. There I thought we should have stayed. For four hours we groped about, looking first for the lost path, and then for any path to any shelter. First we tried giving Haller's horse, who had been to Kalamata before, a loose rein and letting him lead the way. At first it promised well, for the horse went ahead willingly; but the agroati took upon him to change his course, and then we were as lost as ever. We could hardly see each other. Then we sent off the agroati to try and reach a light we could see. He came back with awful accounts of bogs and ditches he had met in his path. Finally, after standing still for a time in the pelting rain, we resolved to reach the light; and so we did, over hedge and ditch and through bogs, and Indian corn above our heads as we sat on horseback, and at length, wet through and wearied, reached a cottage in which were some Greeks. They, however, refused to lead us to any house; for, said they, 'we know not what men ye are.' At last one good man took us into his house and gave us a room, and figs and brandy for supper. We were thankful for anything. He was a poor peasant with a pretty wife and a perfectly lovely daughter.

We got to Kalamata next day, meeting on the way numbers of Mainiotes coming to buy figs &c. in the Messenian plain, all armed. Our baggage had arrived very late overnight. We went to the so-called consul, an agent of the consul at Patras, and sent the letter of recommendation of the Waiwode of Caritzena to the Waiwode of Kalamata; but he took no notice of it, and did nothing whatever for us, so we had to find a house for ourselves. We pitched upon a lofty Turkish tower commanding the city, with a very rotten floor which threatened at any moment to let us through from the second storey to the base. The only way up to our room was by a crazy ladder. The shutters were riddled with bullets. Some time before there had been a grand engagement between this tower and the cupola of a neighbouring church, where some Mainiotes in the service of one of their great captains, a certain Benachi, had defended themselves. Kalamata seems to be a constant scene of fights between the party of the Bey appointed by the Porte, or rather the Capitan Pasha, and the party who want to appoint a Bey of their own, and this is the way they fight, each party from its own tower.

From our tower we made panoramic sketches of the city, but were much interrupted by visitors. Among them came a young Mainiote Albanian officer from Church's contingent, who was here recruiting. He was accompanied by two armed Mainiotes, and said he had twenty more concealed about the town in case of danger. He invited us to come with him into Maina as far as Dolus, where his family lived, a proposal we eagerly closed with, and appointed the next morning."

FOOTNOTE:

[28] One Colocotronis, a chief of klephts, attained great influence in the War of Independence.

CHAPTER IX

TRIP TO MAINA—ITS RELATIVE PROSPERITY—RETURN TO KALAMATA. SECOND TRIP TO MAINA—MURGINOS—SPARTA—NAPOLI TO ATHENS.

"The Mainiote border comes to within half a mile of Kalamata, and the neighbourhood of its ferocious population, who are as savage and even braver than the Turks, makes the latter much meeker here than in other parts of the country—that is, in a general way, for they can be very fierce still on occasions. A ghastly thing happened during our stay. We heard one evening the report of a pistol in the house of the Albanian guard which stood just under our windows. It seemed one of the brutes had shot his brother in a quarrel. Here was a gruesome example under our eyes; and besides I was told all sorts of hideous stories of Mainiote and Albanian cruelties which made my blood run cold, and still spoils all my pleasure in thinking of this barbarous region.

Early in the morning we embarked on a Zantiote felucca, lent us for the occasion, and in an hour and a half reached the opposite coast of the bay, near the ruins of a village, of which we were told that it was destroyed and its inhabitants carried off for slaves by the Barbary pirates. Ever since this event the villages have been built farther from the coast. The village of Dolus, to which we were going, is an hour's walk from the shore.

Our friend's brother and a number of other men, all armed to the teeth, met us on the beach and saluted us, as soon as we were recognised, with a discharge of guns and pistols. Then we landed, and set off for the village. A difference in the appearance of the country struck me at once. Instead of the deserted languid air of other parts of Greece, here was a vigorous prosperity. Not an inch of available ground but was tilled and planted with careful husbandry, poor and rocky as the soil was. The villages were neater and less poverty-stricken, and the population evidently much thicker than in the rest of Greece. The faces of the men were cheerful and open; the women handsomer, and their costume more becoming.

Liberty seemed to have changed the whole countenance and manner of the people to gaiety and happiness. Everyone saluted us as we passed along, and when we arrived at Dolus the mother of our entertainer came out with the greatest frankness to meet us. Others came, and with very engaging manners wished us many years, a rare civility in Greece. The boys crowded round, and said Englishmen were fine fellows, but why had we no arms? How could we defend ourselves? Then they shook their fists at the Turkish shore, saying those ruffians dared not come amongst Mainiotes.

Our host's family had cooked us some chickens. While we were sitting eating them a multitude of visitors, women especially, who had never seen Franks before, came in, gazed, and asked questions. There was a great deal of laughing and talking, but every man was heavily armed. After dinner we went out for a walk and visited some remarkably pretty villages. The name of one was Malta, the others I could not make out; all more in the interior. The churches were very pretty. Each had a tall steeple in the Gothic style with bells, which a boy, proud of his freedom and anxious to show it, running on, would ring as we came up; for, as you know, neither bells nor steeples are allowed by the Turks. We saw a new tower, the tower of the beyzesday, or captain of the Mainiotes, armed with two thirty-pounders which had been given him, and though not very solidly built, standing in a fine position. We were told that all these towers are provisioned for a siege, and one of those near Kalamata has food for five years—not that I believe it. All slept together, ten of us covering the whole floor of a tiny room.

We went back in the morning to Kalamata, leaving behind us our host. He had been warned by letter from Kalamata not to go back there, for reports had been circulated by the Turks that he was gone to Maina to raise recruits and he would probably be arrested if he landed.

We had been so interested with our glimpse of the free Greeks—the Greeks who had always been free from the days of Sparta, who had maintained their independence against Rome, Byzantium, the Franks, Venetians, and Turks—that we longed to see more of them; and the reports we heard of a temple near Cape Matapan gave us hopes of a return for the expense of an excursion. We therefore agreed with a certain Captain Basili of Dolus, owner of a boat, that he should take us to Cyparissa and protect us into the interior. Meanwhile we went home to get our baggage &c. As we rowed along the shore a storm hung on Mount Elias, rolling in huge coils among the high perched villages, and the awful grandeur and air of savage romance it gave to the whole country whetted our appetites to the utmost.

When we landed at Kalamata, however, a dispute about payment for the present trip led us to refer to the consul for a settlement, and incidentally to our telling him our plans. As soon as he heard them he objected vigorously. The man we had engaged was, he said, a notorious murderer; it was well known that he had assassinated a certain Greek doctor for his money when he was bringing him from Coron, and he might do the same for us on the way to Cyparissa. It would be better if we insisted on going into Maina to write to a certain Captain Murgino at Scardamula and put ourselves under his protection. As he was one of the heads of the Mainiote clans, and a man of power, he would be able to guarantee our safety.

As this advice was supported by a French gentleman of Cervu, a Monsieur Shauvere, who seemed to be reliable, we took it, and wrote that same evening to Murgino; but the first engagement had to be got rid of, and that was not so easy. Whatever his intentions had been, the boatman from Dolus thought he had made a profitable engagement, for he demanded 50 piastres indemnity, first for expenses incurred and next for the slight. He threatened to attack us on the way if we ventured to engage another boat. Finally we agreed to refer the dispute for settlement to the Albanian Mainiote, our late host.

We received an answer from Murgino to say that we should be very welcome, and that he would send a guard to meet us four hours from his house.

We accordingly set off in the evening to go by land, and arrived at night at a village called Mandinié; and there we had to sleep, for the road was too breakneck for us to go on in the dark. Our host was exceedingly hospitable, and gave one a good impression of the free Greeks.

Early in the morning we went on to Malta, and met four of Murgino's men come to meet us. We also fell in with the young captain or chieftain of Mainiotes on his way to Kalamata. He had a guard of eight or ten men, all armed and handsomely dressed, their hair trailing down their backs like true descendants of the Spartans, who combed their long hair before going into battle.

As regarding the origin of the name Malta, it may be called to mind that the Venetians during their occupation mortgaged part of the Morea to the Knights of St. John, and this may have been one of their fortresses.

Having hired mules to carry our luggage, as the road is too bad for horses, we proceeded to Scardamula, a distance of 1½ hour. There we were rejoined by my servant Dimitri, whom I had sent on to arrange the affair of Captain Basili, the Dolus boatman. He had found the man in a state of exasperation, refusing to accept any accommodation, saying it was an affair of honour, and vowing that we should pay in another way. The wife and mother of the Albanian officer, dreading his resentment, had hung terrified on his (Dimitri's) arm, assuring him that we should be assassinated on the road. He himself arrived hardly able to speak with terror and pale as paper.

We did all we could to inspire him with a little courage, both natural and Dutch. First we appealed to him as a man to show a good face, and for the second we gave him a good and ample dinner, and, relying on our guard and on ourselves, set out.

But before starting we begged our Albanian friend to come, if he could, next day to Scardamula, bringing Captain Basili with him, and the dispute should be referred to Captain Murgino for arbitration.

The path to Scardamula—for there was nothing in the shape of a road—was now so difficult that we had to get off; and, even so, it was to me perfectly wonderful how the mules ever got along. There was nothing but rock, and that all fissured and jagged limestone, but they climbed over it like goats.

The situation of Scardamula is infinitely striking. At the gate of his castle Captain Murgino waited to receive us—a fat, handsome old man.

At the first our rather strange appearance seemed to put him a little out of countenance, and he received us awkwardly although kindly; but after a time he appeared to regain confidence and became very cordial. 'Eat a good supper, Ingles archi mas' ('my little Englishman'), he said to me, and gave me the example. He talked freely on the political state of Maina. He owned and regretted that the Greeks had no leader, and said he trusted that would not long be wanting, and that shortly the great object of his desires would be realised; but what that object was he would not explain. It might be an invasion of the Morea by the English, seconded by a native insurrection which he would take a leading part in—or what not; but he was careful to give me no hint.[29] His son was absent at a council of the [Greek] chiefs at Marathonisi.

The next morning we walked about his lands, which were indescribably picturesque. His castle stands on a rock in the bed of a river, about a quarter of a mile from the bank. It consists of a courtyard and a church surrounded by various towers. There is a stone bench at his door, where he sits surrounded by his vassals and his relations, who all stand unless invited to sit. The village people bring him presents, tribute as it were, of fruits, fowls, &c. On a lofty rock close by is a watch-tower, where watch is kept night and day. The whole gave us a picture of feudal life new and hardly credible to a nineteenth-century Englishman.

Behind the tower the mountains rise precipitously, and culminate in the Pentedactylon—a prodigious mountain of the Taygetus range.

Murgino made us an estimate of his dependents. He has about 1,000 men, over whom he has absolute authority to call them out or to punish them as he thinks fit. A few days before we came he had had an obstreperous subject, who refused to obey orders, executed. Moreover, he showed a well in which he said he put those from whom he desired to extort money. When times are hard and the olives fail he makes war upon his neighbours, and either robs or blackmails them. The old man assured me that one winter they brought back from 1,000 to 1,500 piastres, from 50l. to 80l., a day.

Such was our host and his surroundings.

As I told you, our object was to examine some remains we had heard rumours of, especially of a Doric temple said to exist in the southern part of Maina, and, by all we could hear, in a tolerable state of preservation; but when we saw the tremendous preparations made by our good captain we found the enterprise beyond all our calculations or means. He declared he could not ensure our safety without his own attendance with a guard of forty men at the least. At this we thought it best, however regrettable, to retire before the expenses we should incur should embarrass us in our return to Athens. So we only stayed two days with Murgino, and then returned to Kalamata.