In The Levant

We were all day among the Ionian Islands, and were able to see all of them except Cythera, off Cape Malea, esteemed for its honey and its magnificent temple to the foam-born Venus. They lay in such a light as the reader of Homer likes to think of them. We sailed past them as in a dream, not caring to distinguish history from fable. It was off the little Echinades, near the coast, by the mouth of the Achelous, that Don John, three hundred years ago, broke the European onset of the Ottoman arms; it was nearly a dear victory for Christendom, for among the severely wounded was Cervantes, and Don Quixote had not yet been written. But this battle is not more real to us than the story of Ulysses and Penelope which the rocky surface of Ithaca recalls. And as we lingered along the shores of Cephalonia and Leucadia, it was not of any Cæsar or Byzantine emperor or Norman chieftain that we thought, but of the poet whose verses will outlast all their renown. Leucadia still harbors, it is said, the breed of wolves that, perhaps, of all the inhabitants of these islands preserve in purity the Hellenic blood. We sailed close to the long promontory, “Leucadia’s far-projecting rock of woe,” and saw, if any one may see, the very precipice from which Sappho, leaping, quenched in brine the amatory flames of a heart that sixty years of song and trouble had not cooled.

Through the strait of Actium we looked upon the smooth inland sea of Ambracia, while our steamer churned along the very waters that saw the flight of the purple sails of Cleopatra, whom the enamored Antony followed and left the world to Augustus. The world was a small affair then, when its possession could be decided on a bit of water where, as Byron says, two frigates could hardly manouvre. These historical empires were fleeting shows at the best, not to be compared to the permanent conquests and empire of the mind. The voyager from the Bosphorus to Corfu feels that it is not any Alexander or Cæsar, Chagan or Caliph, but Homer, who rules over the innumerable islands and sunny mainlands of Greece.

It was deep twilight when we passed the barren rock of Anti-paxos, and the mountain in the sea called Paxos. There is no island in all these seas that has not its legend; that connected with Paxos, and recorded by Plutarch, I am tempted to transcribe from the handbook, in the quaint language in which it is quoted, for it expresses not only the spirit of this wild coast, but also our own passage out of the domain of mythology into the sunlight of Christian countries: “Here, about the time that our Lord suffered his most bitter passion, certain persons sailing from Italy to Cyprus at night heard a voice calling aloud, Thamus! Thamus! who giving ear to the cry was bidden (for he was pilot of the ship), when he came near to Pelodes to tell that the great god Pan was dead, which he doubting to do, yet for that when he came to Pelodes there was such a calm of wind that the ship stood still in the sea unmoored, he was forced to cry aloud that Pan was dead; wherewithal there were such piteous outcries and dreadful shrieking as hath not been the like. By which Pan, of some is understood the great Sathanas, whose kingdom was at that time by Christ conquered, and the gates of hell broken up; for at that time all oracles surceased, and enchanted spirits that were wont to delude the people henceforth held their peace.”

It was ten o’clock at night when we reached Corfu, and sailed in under the starlight by the frowning hill of the fortress, gliding spectrally among the shipping, with steam shut off, and at a signal given by the bowsman letting go the anchor in front of the old battery.

Corfu, in the opinion of Napoleon, enjoys the most beautiful situation in the world. Its loveliness is in no danger of being overpraised. Shut in by the Albanian coast opposite, the town appears to lie upon a lake, surrounded by the noblest hills and decorated with a tropical vegetation. Very picturesque in its moss-grown rock is the half-dismantled old double fortress, which the English, in surrendering to the weak Greek state, endeavored to render as weak as possible. It and a part of the town occupy a bold promontory; the remainder of the city lies around a little bay formed by this promontory and Quarantine Island. The more we see of the charming situation, and become familiar with the delicious mountain outlines, we regret that we can tarry but a day, and almost envy those who make it a winter home. The interior of the city itself, when we ascend the height and walk in the palace square, appears bright and cheerful, but retains something of the dull and decorous aspect of an English garrison town. In the shops the traveller does not find much to interest him, except the high prices of all antiquities. We drove five miles into the country, to the conical hill and garden of Gasturi, whose mistress gathered for us flowers and let us pluck from the trees the ripe and rather tasteless nespoli. From this summit is an extraordinary prospect of blue sea, mountains, snowy summits, the town, and the island, broken into sharp peaks and most luxuriant valleys and hillsides. Ancient, gnarled olive-trees abound, thousands of acres of grapevines were in sight, the hedges were the prickly-pear cactus, and groves of walnuts and most vigorous fig-trees interspersed the landscape. There was even here and there a palm. A lovely land, most poetical in its contours.

The Italian steamer for Brindisi was crowded with passengers. On the forward deck was a picturesque horde of Albanian gypsies. The captain said that he counted eighty, without the small ones, which, to avoid the payment of fare, were done up in handkerchiefs and carried in bags like kittens. The men, in broad, short breeches and the jackets of their country, were stout and fine fellows physically. The women, wearing no marked costume, but clad in any rags of dresses that may have been begged or stolen, were strikingly wild in appearance, and if it is true that the women of a race best preserve the primeval traits, these preserve, in their swarthy complexions, burning black eyes, and jet black hair, the characteristics of some savage Oriental tribe. The hair in front was woven into big braids, which were stiff with coins and other barbarous ornaments in silver. A few among them might be called handsome, since their profiles were classic; but it was a wild beauty which woman sometimes shares with the panther. They slept about the deck amidst their luggage, one family usually crawling into a single sack. In the morning there were nests of them all about, and, as they crawled forth, especially as the little ones swarmed out, it was difficult to believe that the number of passengers had not been miraculously increased in the night. The women carry the fortune of the family on their heads; certainly their raiment, which drapes but does not conceal their forms, would scarcely have a value in the rag-market of Naples. I bought of one of them a silver ornament, cutting it from the woman’s hair, but I observed that her husband appropriated the money.

It was like entering a new world of order and civilization, next morning, to sail through the vast outer harbor of Brindisi into the inner one, and lie, for the first time in the Mediterranean, at a dock. The gypsies made a more picturesque landing than the other passengers, trudging away with their hags, tags, rags, and tent-poles, the women and children lugging their share. It was almost touching to see their care for the heaps of rubbish which constitute all their worldly possessions. They come like locusts to plunder sunny Italy; on a pretence of seeking work in the fields, they will spend the summer in the open air, gaining health and living, as their betters like to live, upon the labor of others.

Brindisi has a beautiful Roman column, near it the house where Virgil is said to have died, and an ancient fortress, which is half crumbling walls and half dwelling-houses, and is surrounded, like the city wall, by a moat, now converted into a vegetable garden. As I was peacefully walking along the rampart, intending to surround the town, a soldier motioned me back, as if it had been time of war. I offered to stroll over the drawbridge into the mouldy fortress. A soldier objected. As I turned away, he changed his mind, and offered to show me the interior. But it was now my turn to decline; and I told him that, the idle impulse passed, I would rather not go in. Of all human works I care the least for fortresses, except to look at from the outside; it is not worth while to enter one except by storming it or strolling in, and when one must ask permission the charm is gone. You get sick to death almost of these soldier-folk who start up and bar your way with a bayonet wherever you seek to walk in Europe. No, soldier; I like the view from the wall of the moat, and the great fields of ripe wheat waving in the sweet north-wind, but I don’t care for you or your fortress.

Brindisi is clean, but dull. Yet it was characteristically Italian that I should encounter in the Duomo square a smart, smooth-tongued charlatan, who sold gold chains at a franc each,—which did not seem to be dear; and a jolly, almost hilarious cripple, who, having no use of his shrunken legs, had mounted himself on a wooden bottom, like a cheese-box, and, by the aid of his hands, went about as lively as a centipede.

I stepped into the cathedral; a service was droning on, with few listeners. On one side of the altar was a hideous, soiled wax image of the dead Christ. Over the altar, in the central place of worship, was a flaring figure of the Virgin, clad in the latest mode of French millinery, and underneath it was the legend, Viva Maria. This was the salutation of our return to a Christian land: Christ is dead; the Virgin lives!

Here our journey, which began on the other coast of Italy in November, ends in June. In ascending the Nile to the Second Cataract, and making the circuit of the Levant, we have seen a considerable portion of the Moslem Empire and of the nascent Greek kingdom, which aspires, at least in Europe, to displace it. We have seen both in a transition period, as marked as any since the Saracens trampled out the last remnants of the always sickly Greek Empire. The prospect is hopeful, although the picture of social and political life is far from agreeble. But for myself, now that we are out of the Orient and away from all its squalor and cheap magnificence, I turn again to it with a longing which I cannot explain; it is still the land of the imagination.