I have for some time neglected our servant. When we separated, the question was who should _not_ keep him. We were all heartily tired of him, and I would not have had him with me on any account. Still, at the moment of parting in that wild and distant region, never expecting to see him again, I felt some slight leaning toward him. Touching the matter of shirts, it will not be surprising to a man of the world that, at the moment of parting, I had one of M."s on my back; and, in justice to him, I must say it was a very good one, and lasted a long time. A friend once wrote to me on a like occasion not to wear his out of its turn, but M. laid no such restriction upon me. But this trifling gain did not indemnify me for the loss of my friends. I had broken the only link that connected me with home, and was setting out alone for I knew not where. I felt at once the great loss I had sustained, for my young muleteer could speak only his own language, and, as Queen Elizabeth said to Sir Walter Raleigh of her Hebrew, we had "forgotten our" Greek.
But on that cla.s.sical soil I ought not to have been lonely. I should have conjured up the ghosts of the departed Atridae, and held converse on their own ground with Homer"s heroes. Nevertheless, I was not in the mood; and, entirely forgetting the glories of the past, I started my horse into a gallop. My companion followed on a full run, close at my heels, belabouring my horse with a stick, which when he broke, he pelted him with stones; indeed, this mode of scampering over the ground seemed to hit his humour, for he shouted, hurraed, and whipped, and sometimes laying hold of the tail of the beast, was dragged along several paces with little effort of his own. I soon tired of this, and made signs to him to stop; but it was his turn now, and I was obliged to lean back till I reached him with my cane before I could make him let go his hold, and then he commenced shouting and pelting again with stones.
In this way we approached the village of Krabata, about a mile below the ruins of Mycenae, and the most miserable place I had seen in Greece.
With the fertile plain of Argos uncultivated before them, the inhabitants exhibited a melancholy picture of the most abject poverty.
As I rode through, crowds beset me with outstretched arms imploring charity; and a miserable old woman, darting out of a wretched hovel, laid her gaunt and bony hand upon my leg, and attempted to stop me. I shrunk from her grasp, and, under the effect of a sudden impulse, threw myself off on the other side, and left my horse in her hands.
Hurrying through the village, a group of boys ran before me, crying out "Agamemnon," "Agamemnon." I followed, and they conducted me to the tomb of "the king of kings," a gigantic structure, still in good preservation, of a conical form, covered with turf; the stone over the door is twenty-seven feet long and seventeen wide, larger than any hewn stone in the world except Pompey"s Pillar. I entered, my young guides going before with torches, and walked within and around this ancient sepulchre. A worthy Dutchman, Herman Van Creutzer, has broached a theory that the Trojan war is a mere allegory, and that no such person as Agamemnon ever existed. Shame upon the cold-blooded heretic. I have my own sins to answer for in that way, for I have laid my destroying hand upon many cherished illusions; but I would not, if I could, destroy the mystery that overhangs the heroic ages. The royal sepulchre was forsaken and empty; the shepherd drives within it his flock for shelter; the traveller sits under its shade to his noonday meal; and, at the moment, a goat was dozing quietly in one corner. He started as I entered, and seemed to regard me as an intruder; and when I flared before him the light of my torch, he rose up to b.u.t.t me. I turned away and left him in quiet possession. The boys were waiting outside, and crying "Mycenae,"
"Mycenae," led me away. All was solitude, and I saw no marks of a city until I reached the relics of her Cyclopean walls. I never felt a greater degree of reverence than when I approached the lonely ruins of Mycenae. At Argos I spent most of my time in the horsemarket, and I had galloped over the great plain as carelessly as if it had been the road to Harlem; but all the a.s.sociations connected with this most interesting ground here pressed upon me at once. Its extraordinary antiquity, its gigantic remains, and its utter and long-continued desolation, came home to my heart. I moved on to the Gate of the Lions, and stood before it a long time without entering. A broad street led to it between two immense parallel walls; and this street may, perhaps, have been a market-place.
Over the gate are two lions rampant, like the supporters of a modern coat-of-arms, rudely carved, and supposed to be the oldest sculptured stone in Greece. Under this very gate Agamemnon led out his forces for the siege of Troy; three thousand years ago he saw them filing before him, glittering in bra.s.s, in all the pomp and panoply of war; and I held in my hand a book which told me that this city was so old that, more than seventeen hundred years ago, travellers came as I did to visit its ruins; and that Pausanias had found the Gate of the Lions in the same state in which I beheld it now. A great part is buried by the rubbish of the fallen city. I crawled under, and found myself within the walls, and then mounted to the height on which the city stood. It was covered with a thick soil and a rich carpet of gra.s.s. My boys left me, and I was alone. I walked all over it, following the line of the walls. I paused at the great blocks of stone, the remnants of Cyclopic masonry, the work of wandering giants. The heavens were unclouded, and the sun was beaming upon it with genial warmth. Nothing could exceed the quiet beauty of the scene. I became entangled in the long gra.s.s, and picked up wild flowers growing over long-buried dwellings. Under it are immense caverns, their uses now unknown; and the earth sounded hollow under my feet, as if I were treading on the sepulchre of a buried city. I looked across the plain to Argos; all was as beautiful as when Homer sang its praises; the plain, and the mountains, and the sea were the same, but the once magnificent city, her numerous statues and gigantic temples, were gone for ever; and but a few remains were left to tell the pa.s.sing traveller the story of her fallen greatness. I could have remained there for hours; I could have gone again and again, for I had not found a more interesting spot in Greece; but my reveries were disturbed by the appearance of my muleteer and my juvenile escort. They pointed to the sun as an intimation that the day was pa.s.sing; and crying "Cavallo,"
"Cavallo," hurried me away. To them the ruined city was a playground; they followed capering behind; and, in descending, three or four of them rolled down upon me; they hurried me through the Gate of the Lions, and I came out with my pantaloons, my only pantaloons, rent across the knee almost irreparably. In an instant I was another man; I railed at the ruins for their strain upon wearing apparel, and bemoaned my unhappy lot in not having with me a needle and thread. I looked up to the old gate with a sneer. This was the city that Homer had made such a noise about; a man could stand on the citadel and almost throw a stone beyond the boundary-line of Agamemnon"s kingdom. In full sight, and just at the other side of the plain, was the kingdom of Argos. The little state of Rhode Island would make a bigger kingdom than both of them together.
But I had no time for deep meditation, having a long journey to Corinth before me. Fortunately, my young Greek had no tire in him; he started me off on a gallop, whipping and pelting my horse with stones, and would have hurried me on, over rough and smooth, till either he, or I, or the horse broke down, if I had not jumped off and walked. As soon as I dismounted he mounted, and then he moved so leisurely that I had to hurry him on in turn. In this way we approached the range of mountains separating the plain of Argos from the Isthmus of Corinth. Entering the pa.s.s, we rode along a mountain torrent, of which the channel-bed was then dry, and ascended to the summit of the first range. Looking back, the scene was magnificent. On my right and left were the ruined heights of Argos and Mycenae; before me, the towering Acropolis of Napoli di Romania; at my feet, the rich plain of Argos, extending to the sh.o.r.e of the sea; and beyond, the island-studded aegean. I turned away with a feeling of regret that, in all probability, I should never see it more.
I moved on, and in a narrow pa.s.s, not wide enough to turn my horse if I had been disposed to take to my heels, three men rose up from behind a rock, armed to the teeth with long guns, pistols, yataghans, and sheepskin cloaks--the dress of the klept or mountain robber--and altogether presenting a most diabolically cutthroat appearance. If they had asked me for my purse I should have considered it all regular, and given up the remnant of my stock of borrowed money without a murmur; but I was relieved from immediate apprehension by the cry of pa.s.se porta. King Otho has begun the benefits of civilized government in Greece by introducing pa.s.sports, and mountain warriors were stationed in the different pa.s.ses to examine strangers. They acted, however, as if they were more used to demanding purses than pa.s.sports, for they sprang into the road and rattled the b.u.t.ts of their guns on the rock with a violence that was somewhat startling. Unluckily, my pa.s.sport had been made out with those of my companions, and was in their possession, and when we parted neither thought of it; and this demand to me, who had nothing to lose, was worse than that of my purse. A few words of explanation might have relieved me from all difficulty, but my friends could not understand a word I said. I was vexed at the idea of being sent back, and thought I would try the effect of a little impudence; so, crying out "Americanos," I attempted to pa.s.s on; but they answered me "Nix," and turned my horse"s head toward Argos. The scene, which a few moments before had seemed so beautiful, was now perfectly detestable.
Finding that bravado had not the desired effect, I lowered my tone and tried a bribe; this was touching the right chord; half a dollar removed all suspicions from the minds of these trusty guardians of the pa.s.s; and, released from their attentions, I hurried on.
The whole road across the mountain is one of the wildest in Greece. It is cut up by numerous ravines, sufficiently deep and dangerous, which at every step threaten destruction to the incautious traveller. During the late revolution the soil of Greece had been drenched with blood; and my whole journey had been through cities and over battle-fields memorable for scenes of slaughter unparalleled in the annals of modern war. In the narrowest pa.s.s of the mountains my guide made gestures indicating that it had been the scene of a desperate battle. When the Turks, having penetrated to the plain of Argos, were compelled to fall back again upon Corinth, a small band of Greeks, under Niketas and Demetrius Ypsilanti, waylaid them in this pa.s.s. Concealing themselves behind the rocks, and waiting till the pa.s.s was filled, all at once they opened a tremendous fire upon the solid column below, and the pa.s.s was instantly filled with slain. Six thousand were cut down in a few hours. The terrified survivers recoiled for a moment; but, as if impelled by an invisible power, rushed on to meet their fate. "The Mussulman rode into the pa.s.ses with his sabre in his sheath and his hands before his eyes, the victim of destiny." The Greeks again poured upon them a shower of lead, and several thousand more were cut down before the Moslem army accomplished the pa.s.sage of this terrible defile.
It was nearly dark when we rose to the summit of the last range of mountains, and saw, under the rich l.u.s.tre of the setting sun, the Acropolis of Corinth, with its walls and turrets, towering to the sky, the plain forming the Isthmus of Corinth; the dark, quiet waters of the Gulf of Lepanto; and the gloomy mountains of Cithaeron, and Helicon, and Parna.s.sus covered with snow. It was after dark when we pa.s.sed the region of the Nemean Grove, celebrated as the haunt of the lion and the scene of the first of the twelve labours of Hercules. We were yet three hours from Corinth; and, if the old lion had still been prowling in the grove, we could not have made more haste to escape its gloomy solitude.
Reaching the plain, we heard behind us the clattering of horses" hoofs, at first sounding in the stillness of evening as if a regiment of cavalry or a troop of banditti was at our heels, but it proved to be only a single traveller, belated like ourselves, and hurrying on to Corinth. I could see through the darkness the shining b.u.t.ts of his pistols and hilt of his yataghan, and took his dimensions with more anxiety, perhaps, than exact.i.tude. He recognised my Frank dress; and accosted me in bad Italian, which he had picked up at Padras (being just the Italian in which I could meet him on equal ground), and told me that he had met a party of Franks on the road to Padras, whom, from his description, I recognised as my friends.
It was nearly midnight when we rattled up to the gate of the old locanda. The yard was thronged with horses and baggage, and Greek and Bavarian soldiers. On the balcony stood my old brigand host, completely crestfallen, and literally turned out of doors in his own house; a detachment of Bavarian soldiers had arrived that afternoon from Padras, and taken entire possession, giving him and his wife the freedom of the outside. He did not recognise me, and, taking me for an Englishman, began, "Sono Inglesi Signor" (he had lived at Corfu under the British dominion); and, telling me the whole particulars of his unceremonious ouster, claimed, through me, the arm of the British government to resent the injury to a British subject; his wife was walking about in no very gentle mood, but, in truth, very much the contrary. I did not speak to her, and she did not trust herself to speak to me; but, addressing myself to the husband, introduced the subject of my own immediate wants, a supper and night"s lodging. The landlord told me, however, that the Bavarians had eaten everything in the house, and he had not a room, bed, blanket, or coverlet to give me; that I might lie down in the hall or the piazza, but there was no other place.
I was outrageous at the hard treatment he had received from the Bavarians. It was too bad to turn an honest innkeeper out of his house, and deny him the pleasure of accommodating a traveller who had toiled hard all day, with the perfect a.s.surance of finding a bed at night. I saw, however, that there was no help for it; and noticing an opening at one end of the hall, went into a sort of storeroom filled with all kinds of rubbish, particularly old barrels. An unhinged door was leaning against the wall, and this I laid across two of the barrels, pulled off my coat and waistcoat, and on this extemporaneous couch went to sleep.
I was roused from my first nap by a terrible fall against my door. I sprang up; the moon was shining through the broken cas.e.m.e.nt, and, seizing a billet of wood, I waited another attack. In the mean time I heard the noise of a violent scuffling on the floor of the hall, and, high above all, the voices of husband and wife, his evidently coming from the floor in a deprecating tone, and hers in a high towering pa.s.sion, and enforced with severe blows of a stick. As soon as I was fairly awake I saw through the thing at once. It was only a little matrimonial _tete-a-tete_. The unamiable humour in which I had left them against the Bavarians had ripened into a private quarrel between themselves, and she had got him down, and was pummelling him with a broomstick or something of that kind. It seemed natural and right enough, and was, moreover, no business of mine; and remembering that whoever interferes between man and wife is sure to have both against him, I kept quiet. Others, however, were not so considerate, and the occupants of the different rooms tumbled into the hall in every variety of fancy night-gear, among whom was one whose only clothing was a military coat and cap, with a sword in his hand. When the hubbub was at its highest I looked out, and found, as I expected, the husband and wife standing side by side, she still brandishing the stick, and both apparently outrageous at everything and everybody around them. I congratulated myself upon my superior knowledge of human nature, and went back to my bed on the door.
In the morning I was greatly surprised to find that, instead of whipping her husband, she had been taking his part. Two German soldiers, already half intoxicated, had come into the hall, and insisted upon having more wine; the host refused, and when they moved toward my sleeping place, where the wine was kept, he interposed, and all came down together with the noise which had woke me. His wife came to his aid, and the blows which, in my simplicity, I had supposed to be falling upon him, were bestowed on the two Bavarians. She told me the story herself; and when she complained to the officers, they had capped the climax of her pa.s.sion by telling her that her husband deserved more than he got. She was still in a perfect fury; and as she looked at them in the yard arranging for their departure, she added, in broken English, with deep and, as I thought, ominous pa.s.sion, ""Twas better to be under the Turks."
I learned all this while I was making my toilet on the piazza, that is, while she was pouring water on my hands for me to wash; and, just as I had finished, my eye fell upon my muleteer a.s.sisting the soldiers in loading their horses. At first I did not notice the subdued expression of his usually bright face, nor that he was loading my horse with some of their camp equipage; but all at once it struck me that they were pressing him into their service. I was already roused by what the woman had told me, and, resolving that they should not serve me as they did the Greeks, I sprang off the piazza, cleared my way through the crowd, and going up to my horse, already staggering under a burden poised on his back, but not yet fastened, put my hand under one side and tumbled it over with a crash on the other. The soldiers cried out furiously; and, while they were sputtering German at me, I sprang into the saddle.
I was in admirable pugilistic condition, with nothing on but pantaloons, boots, and shirt, and just in a humour to get a whipping, if nothing worse; but I detested the manner in which the Bavarians lorded it in Greece; and riding up to a group of officers who were staring at me, told them that I had just tumbled their luggage off my horse, and they must bear in mind that they could not deal with strangers quite so arbitrarily as they did with the Greeks. The commandant was disposed to be indignant and very magnificent; but some of the others making suggestions to him, he said he understood I had only hired my horse as far as Corinth; but, if I had taken him for Athens, he would not interfere; and, apologizing on the ground of the necessities of government, ordered him to be released. I apologized back again, returned the horse to my guide, whose eyes sparkled with pleasure, and went in for my hat and coat.
I dressed myself, and, telling him to be ready when I had finished my breakfast, went out expecting to start forthwith; but, to my surprise, my host told me that the lad refused to go any farther without an increase of pay; and, sure enough, there he stood, making no preparation for moving. The cavalcade of soldiers had gone, and taken with them every horse in Corinth, and the young rascal intended to take advantage of my necessity. I told him that I had hired him to Athens for such a price, and that I had saved him from impressment, and consequent loss of wages, by the soldiers, which he admitted. I added that he was a young rascal, which he neither admitted nor denied, but answered with a roguish laugh. The extra price was no object compared with the vexation of a day"s detention; but a traveller is apt to think that all the world is conspiring to impose upon him, and, at times, to be very resolute in resisting. I was peculiarly so then, and, after a few words, set off to complain to the head of the police. Without any ado he trotted along with me, and we proceeded together, followed by a troup of idlers, I in something of a pa.s.sion, he perfectly cool, good-natured, and considerate, merely keeping out of the way of my stick. Hurrying along near the columns of the old temple, I stumbled, and he sprang forward to a.s.sist me, his face expressing great interest, and a fear that I had hurt myself; and when I walked toward a house which I had mistaken for the bureau of the police department, he ran after me to direct me right.
All this mollified me considerably; and, before we reached the door, the affair began to strike me as rather ludicrous.
I stated my case, however, to the eparchos, a Greek in Frank dress, who spoke French with great facility, and treated me with the greatest consideration. He was so full of professions that I felt quite sure of a decision in my favour; but, a.s.suming my story to be true, and without asking the lad for his excuse, he shrugged his shoulders, and said it would take time to examine the matter, and, if I was in a hurry, I had better submit. To be sure, he said, the fellow was a great rogue, and he gave his countrymen in general a character that would not tell well in print; but added, in their justification, that they were imposed upon and oppressed by everybody, and therefore considered that they had a right to take their advantage whenever an opportunity offered. The young man sat down on the floor, and looked at me with the most frank, honest, and open expression, as if perfectly unconscious that he was doing anything wrong. I could not but acknowledge that some excuse for him was to be drawn from the nature of the school in which he had been brought up, and, after a little parley, agreed to pay him the additional price, if, at the end of the journey, I was satisfied with his conduct. This was enough; his face brightened, he sprang up and took my hand, and we left the house the best friends in the world. He seemed to be hurt as well as surprised at my finding fault with him, for to him all seemed perfectly natural; and, to seal the reconciliation, he hurried on ahead, and had the horse ready when I reached the locanda. I took leave of my host with a better feeling than before, and set out a second time on the road to Athens.
At Kalamaki, while walking along the sh.o.r.e, a Greek who spoke the lingua Franca came from on board one of the little caiques, and, when he learned that I was an American, described to me the scene that had taken place on that beach upon the arrival of provisions from America; when thousands of miserable beings who had fled from the blaze of their dwellings, and lived for months upon plants and roots; grayheaded men, mothers with infants at their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, emaciated with hunger and almost frantic with despair, came down from their mountain retreats to receive the welcome relief. He might well remember the scene, for he had been one of that starving people; and he took me to his house, and showed me his wife and four children, now nearly all grown, telling me that they had all been rescued from death by the generosity of my countrymen. I do not know why, but in those countries it did not seem unmanly for a bearded and whiskered man to weep; I felt anything but contempt for him when, with his heart overflowing and his eyes filled with tears, he told me, when I returned home, to say to my countrymen that I had seen and talked with a recipient of their bounty; and though the Greeks might never repay us, they could never forget what we had done for them. I remembered the excitement in our country in their behalf, in colleges and schools, from the graybearded senator to the prattling schoolboy, and reflected that, perhaps, my mite, cast carelessly upon the waters, had saved from the extremity of misery this grateful family. I wish that the cold-blooded prudence which would have checked our honest enthusiasm in favour of a people, under calamities and horrors worse than ever fell to the lot of man struggling to be free, could have listened to the grat.i.tude of this Greek family. With deep interest I bade them farewell, and, telling my guide to follow with my horse, walked over to the foot of the mountain.
Ascending, I saw in one of the openings of the road a packhorse and a soldier in the Bavarian uniform, and, hoping to find some one to talk with, I hailed him. He was on the top of the mountain, so far off that he did not hear me; and when, with the help of my Greek, I had succeeded in gaining his attention, he looked for some time without being able to see me. When he did, however, he waited; but, to my no small disappointment, he answered my first question with the odious "Nix." We tried each other in two or three dialects; but, finding it of no use, I sat down to rest, and he, for courtesy, joined me; my young Greek, in the spirit of good-fellowship, doing the same. He was a tall, n.o.ble-looking fellow, and, like myself, a stranger in Greece; and, though we could not say so, it was understood that we were glad to meet and travel together as comrades. The tongue causes more evils than the sword; and, as we were debarred the use of this mischievous member, and walked all day side by side, seldom three paces apart, before night we were sworn friends.
About five o"clock in the afternoon we arrived at Megara. A group of Bavarian soldiers was lounging round the door of the khan, who welcomed their expected comrade and me as his companion. My friend left me, and soon returned with the compliments of the commandant, and an invitation to visit him in the evening. I had, however, accepted a prior invitation from the soldiers for a rendezvous in the locanda. I wandered till dark among the ruined houses of the town, thought of Euclid and Alexander the Great, and returning, went up to the same room in which I had slept with my friends, pored over an old map of Greece hanging on the wall, made a few notes, and throwing myself back on a sort of divan, while thinking what I should do fell asleep.
About ten o"clock I was roused by the loud roar of a chorus, not like a sudden burst, but a thing that seemed to have swelled up to that point by degrees; and rubbing my eyes, and stumbling down stairs, I entered the banqueting hall; a long, rough wooden table extended the whole length of the room, supplied with only two articles, wine-flagons and tobacco-pouches; forty or fifty soldiers were sitting round it, smoking pipes and singing with all their souls, and, at the moment I entered, waving their pipes to the dying cadence of a hunting chorus. Then followed a long thump on the table, and they all rose; my long travelling friend, with a young soldier who spoke a little French, came up, and, escorting me to the head of the table, gave me a seat by the side of the chairman. One of them attempted to administer a cup of wine, and the other thrust at me the end of a pipe, and I should have been obliged to kick and abscond but for the relief afforded me by the entrance of another new-comer. This was no other than the corporal"s wife; and if I had been received warmly, she was greeted with enthusiasm. Half the table sprang forward to escort her, two of them collared the president and hauled him off his seat, and the whole company, by acclamation, installed her in his place. She accepted it without any hesitation, while two of them, with clumsy courtesy, took off her bonnet, which I, sitting at her right hand, took charge of. All then resumed their places, and the revel went on more gayly than ever.
The lady president was about thirty, plainly but neatly dressed, and, though not handsome, had a frank, amiable, and good-tempered expression, indicating that greatest of woman"s attributes, a good heart. In fact, she looked what the young man at my side told me she was, the peacemaker of the regiment; and he added, that they always tried to have her at their convivial meetings, for when she was among them the brawling spirits were kept down, and every man would be ashamed to quarrel in her presence. There was no chivalry, no heroic devotion about them, but their manner toward her was as speaking a tribute as was ever paid to the influence of woman; and I question whether beauty in her bower, surrounded by belted knights and barons bold, ever exercised in her more exalted sphere a more happy influence. I talked with her, and with the utmost simplicity she told me that the soldiers all loved her; that they were all kind to her, and she looked upon them all as brothers. We broke up at about twelve o"clock with a song, requiring each person to take the hand of his neighbour; one of her hands fell to me, and I took it with a respect seldom surpa.s.sed in touching the hand of woman; for I felt that she was cheering the rough path of a soldier"s life, and, among scenes calculated to harden the heart, reminding them of mothers, and sisters, and sweethearts at home.
CHAPTER VII.
A Dreary Funeral.--Marathon.--Mount Pentelicus.--A Mystery.--Woes of a Lover.--Reveries of Glory.--Scio"s Rocky Isle.--A blood-stained Page of History.--A Greek Prelate.--Desolation.--The Exile"s Return.
EARLY in the morning I again started. In a little khan at Eleusis I saw three or four Bavarian soldiers drinking, and ridiculing the Greek proprietor, calling him patrioti and capitani. The Greek bore their gibes and sneers without a word; but there was a deadly expression in his look, which seemed to say, "I bide my time;" and I remember then thinking that the Bavarians were running up an account which would one day be settled with blood. In fact, the soldiers went too far; and, as I thought, to show off before me, one of them slapped the Greek on the back, and made him spill a measure of wine which he was carrying to a customer, when the latter turned upon him like lightning, threw him down, and would have strangled him if he had not been pulled off by the by-standers. Indeed, the Greeks had already learned both their intellectual and physical superiority over the Bavarians; and, a short time before, a party of soldiers sent to subdue a band of Maniote insurgents had been captured, and, after a farce of selling them at auction at a dollar a head, were kicked, and whipped, and sent off.
About four o"clock I arrived once more at Athens, dined at my old hotel, and pa.s.sed the evening at Mr. Hill"s.
The next day I lounged about the city. I had been more than a month without my carpet-bag, and the way in which I managed during that time is a thing between my travelling companions and myself. A prudent Scotchman used to boast of a careful nephew, who, in travelling, instead of leaving some of his clothes at every hotel on the road, always brought home _more_ than he took away with him. I was a model of this kind of carefulness while my opportunities lasted; but my companions had left me, and this morning I went to the bazars and bought a couple of shirts. Dressed up in one of them, I strolled outside the walls; and, while sitting in the shadow of a column of the Temple of Jupiter, I saw coming from the city, through Hadrian"s Gate, four men, carrying a burden by the corners of a coverlet, followed by another having in his hands a bottle and spade. As they approached I saw they were bearing the dead body of a woman, whom, on joining them, I found to be the wife of the man who followed. He was an Englishman or an American (for he called himself either, as occasion required) whom I had seen at my hotel and at Mr. Hill"s; had been a sailor, and probably deserted from his ship, and many years a resident of Athens, where he married a Greek woman. He was a thriftless fellow, and, as he told me, had lived princ.i.p.ally by the labour of his wife, who washed for European travellers. He had been so long in Greece, and his connexions and a.s.sociations were so thoroughly Greek, that he had lost that sacredness of feeling so powerful both in Englishmen and Americans of every cla.s.s in regard to the decent burial of the dead, though he did say that he had expected to procure a coffin, but the police of the city had sent officers to take her away and bury her. There was something so forlorn in the appearance of this rude funeral, that my first impulse was to turn away; but I checked myself and followed. Several times the Greeks laid the corpse on the ground and stopped to rest, chattering indifferently on various subjects. We crossed the Ilissus, and at some distance came to a little Greek chapel excavated in the rock. The door was so low that we were obliged to stoop on entering, and when within we could hardly stand upright. The Greeks laid down the body in front of the altar; the husband went for the priest, the Greeks to select a place for a grave, and I remained alone with the dead. I sat in the doorway, looking inside upon the corpse, and out upon the Greeks digging the grave. In a short time the husband returned with a priest, one of the most miserable of that cla.s.s of "blind teachers" who swarm in Greece. He immediately commenced the funeral service, which continued nearly an hour, by which time the Greeks returned and, taking up the body, carried it to the graveside and laid it within. I knew the hollow sound of the first clod of earth which falls upon the lid of a coffin, and shrunk from its leaden fall upon the uncovered body. I turned away, and, when at some distance, looked back and saw them packing the earth over the grave. I never saw so dreary a burial-scene.
Returning, I pa.s.sed by the ancient stadium of Herodes Atticus, once capable of containing twenty-five thousand spectators; the whole structure was covered with the purest white marble. All remains of its magnificence are now gone; but I could still trace on the excavated side of the hill its ancient form of a horseshoe, and walked through the subterraneous pa.s.sage by which the vanquished in the games retreated from the presence of the spectators.
Returning to the city, I learned that an affray had just taken place between some Greeks and Bavarians, and, hurrying to the place near the bazars, found a crowd gathered round a soldier who had been stabbed by a Greek. According to the Greeks, the affair had been caused by the habitual insults and provocation given by the Bavarians, the soldier having wantonly knocked a drinking-cup out of the Greek"s hand while he was drinking. In the crowd I met a lounging Italian (the same who wanted me to come up from Padras by water), a good-natured and good-for-nothing fellow, and skilled in tongues; and going with him into a coffee-house thronged with Bavarians and Europeans of various nations in the service of government, heard another story, by which it appeared that the Greeks, as usual, were in the wrong, and that the poor Bavarian had been stabbed without the slightest provocation, purely from the Greeks" love of stabbing. Tired of this, I left the scene of contention, and a few streets off met an Athenian, a friend of two or three days" standing, and, stopping under a window illuminated by a pair of bright eyes from above, happened to express my admiration of the lady who owned them, when he tested the strength of my feelings on the subject by asking me if I would like to marry her. I was not prepared at the moment to give precisely that proof, and he followed up his blow by telling me that, if I wished it, he would engage to secure her for me before the next morning. The Greeks are almost universally poor. With them every traveller is rich, and they are so thoroughly civilized as to think that a rich man is, of course, a good match.
Toward evening I paid my last visit to the Acropolis. Solitude, silence, and sunset are the nursery of sentiment. I sat down on a broken capital of the Parthenon; the owl was already flitting among the ruins. I looked up at the majestic temple and down at the ruined and newly-regenerated city, and said to myself, "Lots must rise in Athens!" I traced the line of the ancient walls, ran a railroad to the Piraeus, and calculated the increase on "up-town lots" from building the king"s palace near the Garden of Plato. Shall I or shall I not "make an operation" in Athens?
The court has removed here, the country is beautiful, climate fine, government fixed, steamboats are running, all the world is coming, and lots must rise. I bought (in imagination) a tract of good tillable land, laid it out in streets, had my Plato, and Homer, and Washington Places, and Jackson Avenue, built a row of houses to improve the neighbourhood where n.o.body lived, got maps lithographed, and sold off at auction. I was in the right condition to "go in," for I had nothing to lose; but, unfortunately, the Greeks were very far behind the spirit of the age, knew nothing of the beauties of the credit system, and could not be brought to dispose of their consecrated soil "on the usual terms," _ten per cent. down, balance on bond and mortgage_, so, giving up the idea, at dark I bade farewell to the ruins of the Acropolis, and went to my hotel to dinner.
Early the next morning I started for the field of Marathon. I engaged a servant at the hotel to accompany me, but he disappointed me, and I set out alone with my muleteer. Our road lay along the base of Mount Hymettus, on the borders of the plain of Attica, shaded by thick groves of olives. At noon I was on the summit of a lofty mountain, at the base of which, still and quiet as if it had never resounded with the shock of war, the great battle-ground of the Greeks and Persians extended to the sea. The descent was one of the finest things I met with in Greece; wild, rugged, and, in fact, the most magnificent kind of mountain scenery. At the foot of the mountain we came to a ruined convent, occupied by an old white-bearded monk. I stopped there and lunched, the old man laying before me his simple store of bread and olives, and looking on with pleasure at my voracious appet.i.te.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Mound of Marathon.]
This over, I hurried to the battle-field. Toward the centre is a large mound of earth, erected over the Athenians who fell in the battle. I made directly for this mound, ascended it, and threw the reins loose over my horse"s neck; and, sitting on the top, read the account of the battle in Herodotus.
After all, is not our reverence misplaced, or, rather does not our respect for deeds hallowed by time render us comparatively unjust? The Greek revolution teems with instances of as desperate courage, as great love of country, as patriotic devotion, as animated the men of Marathon, and yet the actors in these scenes are not known beyond the boundaries of their native land. Thousands whose names were never heard of, and whose bones, perhaps, never received burial, were as worthy of an eternal monument as they upon whose grave I sat. Still that mound is a hallowed sepulchre; and the shepherd who looks at it from his mountain home, the husbandman who drives his plough to its base, and the sailor who hails it as a landmark from the deck of his caique, are all reminded of the glory of their ancestors. But away with the mouldering relics of the past. Give me the green grave of Marco Bozzaris. I put Herodotus in my pocket, gathered a few blades of gra.s.s as a memorial, descended the mound, betook myself to my saddle, and swept the plain on a gallop, from the mountain to the sea.
It is about two miles in width, and bounded by rocky heights enclosing it at either extremity. Toward the sh.o.r.e the ground is marshy, and at the place where the Persians escaped to their ships are some unknown ruins; in several places the field is cultivated, and toward evening, on my way to the village of Marathon, I saw a Greek ploughing; and when I told him that I was an American, he greeted me as the friend of Greece.
It is the last time I shall recur to this feeling; but it was music to my heart to hear a ploughman on immortal Marathon sound in my ears the praises of my country.
I intended to pa.s.s the night at the village of Marathon; but every khan was so cluttered up with goats, chickens, and children, that I rode back to the monastery at the foot of the mountain. It was nearly dark when I reached it. The old monk was on a little eminence at the door of his chapel, clapping two boards together to call his flock to vespers.
With his long white beard, his black cap and long black gown, his picturesque position and primitive occupation, he seemed a guardian spirit hovering on the borders of Marathon in memory of its ancient glory. He came down to the monastery to receive me, and, giving me a paternal welcome, and spreading a mat on the floor, returned to his chapel. I followed, and saw his little flock a.s.semble. The ploughman came up from the plain and the shepherd came down from the mountain; the old monk led the way to the altar, and all kneeled down and prostrated themselves on the rocky floor. I looked at them with deep interest. I had seen much of Greek devotion in cities and villages, but it was a spectacle of extraordinary interest to see these wild and lawless men a.s.sembled on this lonely mountain to worship in all sincerity, according to the best light they had, the G.o.d of their fathers. I could not follow them in their long and repeated kneelings and prostrations; but my young Greek, as if to make amends for me, and, at the same time, to show how they did things in Athens, led the van. The service over, several of them descended with us to the monastery; the old monk spread his mat, and again brought out his frugal store of bread and olives. I contributed what I had brought from Athens, and we made our evening meal. If I had judged from appearances, I should have felt rather uneasy at sleeping among such companions; but the simple fact of having seen them at their devotions gave me confidence. Though I had read and heard that the Italian bandit went to the altar to pray forgiveness for the crimes he intended to commit, and, before washing the stains from his hands, hung up the b.l.o.o.d.y poniard upon a pillar of the church, and asked pardon for murder, I always felt a certain degree of confidence in him who practised the duties of his religion, whatever that religion might be. I leaned on my elbow, and, by the blaze of the fire, read Herodotus, while my muleteer, as I judged from the frequent repet.i.tion of the word Americanos, entertained them with long stories about me. By degrees the blaze of the fire died away, the Greeks stretched themselves out for sleep, the old monk handed me a bench about four inches high for a pillow, and, wrapping myself in my cloak, in a few moments I was wandering in the land of dreams.
Before daylight my companions were in motion. I intended to return by the marble quarries on the Pentelican Mountain; and crying "Cavallo" in the ear of my still sleeping muleteer, in a few minutes I bade farewell for ever to the good old monk of Marathon. Almost from the door of the monastery we commenced ascending the mountain. It was just peep of day, the weather raw and cold, the top of the mountain covered with clouds, and in an hour I found myself in the midst of them. The road was so steep and dangerous that I could not ride; a false step of my horse might have thrown me over a precipice several hundred feet deep; and the air was so keen and penetrating, that, notwithstanding the violent exercise of walking, I was perfectly chilled. The mist was so dense, too, that, when my guide was a few paces in advance, I could not see him, and I was literally groping my way through the clouds. I had no idea where I was nor of the scene around me, but I felt that I was in a measure lifted above the earth. The cold blasts drove furiously along the sides of the mountain, whistled against the precipices, and bellowed in the hollows of the rocks, sometimes driving so furiously that my horse staggered and fell back. I was almost bewildered in struggling blindly against them; but, just before reaching the top of the mountain, the thick clouds were lifted as if by an invisible hand, and I saw once more the glorious sun pouring his morning beams upon a rich valley extending a great distance to the foot of the Pentelican Mountain. About half way down we came to a beautiful stream, on the banks of which we took out our bread and olives. Our appet.i.tes were stimulated by the mountain air, and we divided till our last morsel was gone.
At the foot of the mountain, lying between it and Mount Pentelicus, was a large monastery, occupied by a fraternity of monks. We entered and walked through it, but found no one to receive us. In a field near by we saw one of the monks, from whom we obtained a direction to the quarries.
Moving on to the foot of the mountain, which rises with a peaked summit into the clouds, we commenced ascending, and soon came upon the strata of beautiful white marble for which Mount Pentelicus has been celebrated thousands of years. Excavations appear to have been made along the whole route, and on the roadside were blocks, and marks caused by the friction of the heavy ma.s.ses transported to Athens. The great quarries are toward the summit. The surface has been cut perpendicularly smooth, perhaps eighty or a hundred feet high, and one hundred and fifty or two hundred feet in width, and excavations have been made within to an unknown extent. Whole cities might have been built with the materials taken away, and yet by comparison with what is left, there is nothing gone. In front are entrances to a large chamber, in one corner of which, on the right, is a chapel with the painted figure of the Virgin to receive the Greeks" prayers. Within are vast humid caverns, over which the wide roof awfully extends, adorned with hollow tubes like icicles, while a small transparent petrifying stream trickles down the rock. On one side are small chambers communicating with subterraneous avenues, used, no doubt, as places of refuge during the revolution, or as the haunts of robbers.
Bones of animals and stones blackened with smoke showed that but lately some part had been occupied as a habitation. The great excavations around, blocks of marble lying as they fell, perhaps, two thousand years ago, and the appearances of having been once a scene of immense industry and labour, stand in striking contrast with the desolation and solitude now existing. Probably the hammer and chisel will never be heard there more, great temples will no more be raised, and modern genius will never, like the Greeks of old, make the rude blocks of marble speak.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Quarries of Pentelicus.]
At dark I was dining at the Hotel de France, when Mr. Hill came over with the welcome intelligence that my carpet-bag had arrived. On it was pinned a large paper, with the words "Huzzah!" "Huzzah!" "Huzzah!" by my friend Maxwell, who had met it on horse back on the sh.o.r.es of the Gulf of Lepanto, travelling under the charge of a Greek in search of me. I opened it with apprehension, and, to my great satisfaction, found undisturbed the object of my greatest anxiety, the precious notebook from which I now write, saved from the peril of an anonymous publication or of being used up for gun-waddings.
The next morning, before I was up, I heard a gentle rap at my door, which was followed by the entrance of a German, a missionary, whom I had met several times at Mr. Hill"s, and who had dined with me once at my hotel. I apologized for being caught in bed, and told him that he must possess a troubled spirit to send him so early from his pillow. He answered that I was right; that he did indeed possess a troubled spirit; and closing the door carefully, came to my bedside, and said he had conceived a great regard for me, and intended confiding in me an important trust. I had several times held long conversations with him at Mr. Hill"s, and very little to my edification, as his English was hardly intelligible; but I felt pleased at having, without particularly striving for it, gained the favourable opinion of one who bore the character of a very learned and a very good man. I requested him to step into the dining-room while I rose and dressed myself; but he put his hand upon my breast to keep me down, and drawing a chair, began, "You are going to Smyrna." He then paused, but, after some moments of hesitation, proceeded to say that the first name I would hear on my arrival there would be his own; that, unfortunately, it was in everybody"s mouth. My friend was a short and very ugly middle-aged man, with a very large mouth, speaking English with the most disagreeable German sputter, lame from a fall, and, altogether, of a most uninteresting and unsentimental aspect; and he surprised me much by laying before me a veritable _affaire du coeur_. It was so foreign to my expectations, that I should as soon have expected to be made a confidant in a love affair by the Archbishop of York. After a few preliminaries he went into particulars; lavished upon the lady the usual quota of charms "in such case made and provided," but was uncertain, rambling, and discursive in regard to the position he held in her regard. At first I understood that it was merely the old story, a flirtation and a victim; then that they were very near being married, which I afterward understood to be only so near as this, that he was willing and she not; and, finally, it settled down into the every-day occurrence, the lady smiled, while the parents and a stout two-fisted brother frowned. I could but think, if such a homely expression may be introduced in describing these tender pa.s.sages, that he had the boot on the wrong leg, and that the parents were much more likely than the daughter to favour such a suitor. However, on this point I held my peace. The precise business he wished to impose on me was, immediately on my arrival in Smyrna to form the acquaintance of the lady and her family, and use all my exertions in his favour. I told him I was an entire stranger in Smyrna, and could not possibly have any influence with the parties; but, being urged, promised him that, if I could interfere without intruding myself improperly, he should have the benefit of my mediation. At first he intended giving me a letter to the lady, but afterward determined to give me one to the Rev. Mr. Brewer, an American missionary, who, he said, was a particular friend of his, and intimate with the beloved and her family, and acquainted with the whole affair. Placing himself at my table, on which were pens, ink, and paper, he proceeded to write his letter, while I lay quietly till he turned over the first side, when, tired of waiting, I rose, dressed myself, packed up, and, before he had finished, stood by the table with my carpet-bag, waiting until he should have done to throw in my writing materials. He bade me good-by after I had mounted my horse to leave, and, when I turned back to look at him, I could not but feel for the crippled, limping victim of the tender pa.s.sion, though, in honesty, and with the best wishes for his success, I did not think it would help his suit for the lady to see him.
An account of my journey from Athens to Smyrna, given in a letter to friends at home, was published during my absence and without my knowledge, in successive numbers of the American Monthly Magazine, and perhaps the favourable notice taken of it had some influence in inducing me to write a book. I give the papers as they were then published.
_Smyrna, April_, 1835.