Lord Byron in Greece

 

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CHAPTER XVI

Vostizza—Battle of Lepanto—Parnassus—Livadia—Cave at Trophonius—The Fountains of Oblivion and Memory—Chæronéa—Thebes—Athens

Vostizza was then a considerable town, containing between three and four thousand inhabitants, chiefly Greeks.  It stands on a rising ground on the Peloponnesian side of the Gulf of Corinth.  I say stands, but I know not if it has survived the war.  The scenery around it will always make it delightful, while the associations connected with the Achaian League, and the important events which have happened in the vicinity, will ever render the site interesting.  The battle of Lepanto, in which Cervantes lost his hand, was fought within sight of it.

What a strange thing is glory!  Three hundred years ago all Christendom rang with the battle of Lepanto, and yet it is already probable that it will only be interesting to posterity as an incident in the life of one of the private soldiers engaged in it.  This is certainly no very mournful reflection to one who is of opinion that there is no permanent fame, but that which is obtained by adding to the comforts and pleasures of mankind.  Military transactions, after their immediate effects cease to be felt, are little productive of such a result.  Not that I value military virtues the less by being of this opinion; on the contrary, I am the more convinced of their excellence.  Burke has unguardedly said, ‘that vice loses half its malignity by losing its grossness’; but public virtue ceases to be useful when it sickens at the calamities of necessary war.  The moment that nations become confident of security, they give way to corruption.  The evils and dangers of war seem as requisite for the preservation of public morals as the laws themselves; at least it is the melancholy moral of history, that when nations resolve to be peaceful with respect to their neighbours, they begin to be vicious with respect to themselves.  But to return to the travellers.

On the 14th of December they hired a boat with fourteen men and ten oars, and sailed to Salona; thence they proceeded to Crisso, and rode on to Delphi, ascending the mountain on horseback, by a steep, craggy path towards the north-east.  After scaling the side of Parnassus for about an hour, they saw vast masses of rock, and fragments of stone, piled in a perilous manner above them, with niches and sepulchres, and relics, and remains on all sides.

They visited and drank of Castalia, and the prophetic font, Cassotis; but still, like every other traveller, they were disappointed.  Parnassus is an emblem of the fortune that attends the votaries of the Muses, harsh, rugged, and barren.  The woods that once waved on Delphi’s steep have all passed away, and may now be sought in vain.

A few traces of terraces may yet be discovered—here and there the stump of a column, while niches for receiving votive offerings are numerous among the cliffs, but it is a lone and dismal place; Desolation sits with Silence, and Ruin there is so decayed as to be almost Oblivion.

Parnassus is not so much a single mountain as the loftiest of a range; the cloven summit appears most conspicuous when seen from the south.  The northern view is, however, more remarkable, for the cleft is less distinguishable, and seven lower peaks suggest, in contemplation with the summits, the fancy of so many seats of the Muses.  These peaks, nine in all, are the first of the hills which receive the rising sun, and the last that in the evening part with his light.

From Delphi the travellers proceeded towards Livadia, passing in the course of the journey the confluence of the three roads where Œdipus slew his father, an event with its hideous train of fatalities which could not be recollected by Byron on the spot, even after the tales of guilt he had gathered in his Albanian journeys, without agitating associations.

At Livadia they remained the greater part of three days, during which they examined with more than ordinary minuteness the cave of Trophonius, and the streams of the Hercyna, composed of the mingled waters of the two fountains of Oblivion and Memory.

From Livadia, after visiting the battlefield of Chæronéa (the birthplace of Plutarch), and also many of the almost innumerable storied and consecrated spots in the neighbourhood, the travellers proceeded to Thebes—a poor town, containing about five hundred wooden houses, with two shabby mosques and four humble churches.  The only thing worthy of notice in it is a public clock, to which the inhabitants direct the attention of strangers as proudly as if it were indeed one of the wonders of the world.  There they still affect to show the fountain of Dirce and the ruins of the house of Pindar.  But it is unnecessary to describe the numberless relics of the famous things of Greece, which every hour, as they approached towards Athens, lay more and more in their way.  Not that many remarkable objects met their view; yet fragments of antiquity were often seen, though many of them were probably brought far from the edifices to which they had originally belonged; not for their beauty, or on account of the veneration which the sight of them inspired, but because they would burn into better lime than the coarser rock of the lulls.  Nevertheless, abased and returned into rudeness as all things were, the presence of Greece was felt, and Byron could not resist the inspirations of her genius.

   Fair Greece! sad relic of departed worth!
   Immortal! though no more; though fallen, great;
   Who now shall lead thy scatter’d children forth
   And long-accustom’d bondage uncreate?
   Not such thy Sons who whilom did await,
   The hopeless warriors of a willing doom,
   In bleak Thermopylæ’s sepulchral strait:
   Oh! who that gallant spirit shall resume,
Leap from Eurotas’ banks, and call thee from the tomb!

In the course of the afternoon of the day after they had left Thebes, in attaining the summit of a mountain over which their road lay, the travellers beheld Athens at a distance, rising loftily, crowned with the Acropolis in the midst of the plain, the sea beyond, and the misty hills of Egina blue in the distance.

On a rugged rock rising abruptly on the right, near to the spot where this interesting vista first opened, they beheld the remains of the ancient walls of Phyle, a fortress which commanded one of the passes from Bæotia into Attica, and famous as the retreat of the chief patriots concerned in destroying the thirty tyrants of Athens.

   Spirit of freedom! when on Phyle’s brow
   Thou sat’st with Thrasybulus and his train,
   Couldst thou forebode the dismal hour which now
   Dims the green beauties of thine Attic plain?
   Not thirty tyrants now enforce the chain,
   But every carle can lord it o’er thy land;
   Nor rise thy sons, but idly rail in vain,
   Trembling beneath the scourge of Turkish hand,
From birth till death enslaved; in word, in deed unmann’d.

Such was the condition in which the poet found the country as he approached Athens; and although the spirit he invoked has reanimated the dejected race he then beheld around him, the traveller who even now revisits the country will still look in vain for that lofty mien which characterises the children of liberty.  The fetters of the Greeks have been struck off, but the blains and excoriated marks of slavery are still conspicuous upon them; the sinister eye, the fawning voice, the skulking, crouching, base demeanour, time and many conflicts only can efface.

The first view of the city was fleeting and unsatisfactory; as the travellers descended from the mountains the windings of the road among the hills shut it out.  Having passed the village of Casha, they at last entered upon the slope, and thence into the plain of Attica but the intervening heights and the trees kept the town concealed, till a turn of the path brought it full again before them; the Acropolis crowned with the ruins of the Parthenon—the Museum hill—and the Monument of Philopappus—

   Ancient of Days—august Athena! where,
   Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul?
   Gone—glimmering through the dreams of things that were:
   First in the race that led to glory’s goal,
   They won, and pass’d away:—is this the whole?
   A schoolboy’s tale, the wonder of an hour!
   The warrior’s weapon, and the sophist’s stole
   Are sought in vain, and o’er each mouldering tower,
Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power.

CHAPTER XVII

Athens—Byron’s Character of the modern Athenians—Visit to Eleusis—Visit to the Caverns at Vary and Keratéa—Lost in the Labyrinths of the latter

It has been justly remarked, that were there no other vestiges of the ancient world in existence than those to be seen at Athens, they are still sufficient of themselves to justify the admiration entertained for the genius of Greece.  It is not, however, so much on account of their magnificence as of their exquisite beauty, that the fragments obtain such idolatrous homage from the pilgrims to the shattered shrines of antiquity.  But Lord Byron had no feeling for art, perhaps it would be more correct to say he affected none: still, Athens was to him a text, a theme; and when the first rush of curiosity has been satisfied, where else can the palled fancy find such a topic.

To the mere antiquary, this celebrated city cannot but long continue interesting, and to the classic enthusiast, just liberated from the cloisters of his college, the scenery and the ruins may for a season inspire delight.  Philosophy may there point her moral apophthegms with stronger emphasis, virtue receive new incitements to perseverance, by reflecting on the honour which still attends the memory of the ancient great, and patriotism there more pathetically deplore the inevitable effects of individual corruption on public glory; but to the man who seeks a solace from misfortune, or is “a-weary of the sun”; how wretched, how solitary, how empty is Athens!

   Yet to the remnants of thy splendour past
   Shall pilgrims, pensive, but unwearied throng;
   Long shall the voyager, with th’ Ionian blast,
   Hail the bright clime of battle and of song;
   Long shall thy annals and immortal tongue
   Fill with thy fame the youth of many a shore;
   Boast of the aged! lesson of the young!
   Which sages venerate and bards adore,
As Pallas and the Muse unveil their awful lore!

Of the existing race of Athenians Byron has observed, that they are remarkable for their cunning: “Among the various foreigners resident in Athens there was never a difference of opinion in their estimate of the Greek character, though on all other topics they disputed with great acrimony.  M. Fauvel, the French consul, who has passed thirty years at Athens, frequently declared in my hearing, that the Greeks do not deserve to be emancipated, reasoning on the ground of their national and individual depravity—while he forgot that such depravity is to be attributed to causes which can only be removed by the measures he reprobates.

“M. Roque, a French merchant of respectability long settled in Athens, asserted with the most amusing gravity, ‘Sir, they are the same canaille that existed in the days of Themistocles.’  The ancients banished Themistocles; the moderns cheat Monsieur Roque: thus great men have ever been treated.

“In short, all the Franks who are fixtures, and most of the Englishmen, Germans, Danes, etc., of passage, came over by degrees to their opinion, on much the same grounds that a Turk in England would condemn the nation by wholesale, because he was wronged by his lackey and overcharged by his washerwoman.  Certainly, it was not a little staggering when the Sieurs Fauvel and Lusieri, the two greatest demagogues of the day, who divide between them the power of Pericles and the popularity of Cleon, and puzzle the poor Waywode with perpetual differences, agreed in the utter condemnation of the Greeks in general, and of the Athenians in particular.”

I have quoted his Lordship thus particularly because after his arrival at Athens he laid down his pen.  Childe Harold there disappears.  Whether he had written the pilgrimage up to that point at Athens I have not been able to ascertain; while I am inclined to think it was so, as I recollect he told me there that he had then described or was describing the reception he had met with at Tepellené from Ali Pasha.

After having halted some time at Athens, where they established their headquarters, the travellers, when they had inspected the principal antiquities of the city (those things which all travellers must visit), made several excursions into the environs, and among other places went to Eleusis.

On the 13th of January they mounted earlier than usual, and set out on that road which has the site of the Academy and the Colonos, the retreat of Œdipus during his banishment, a little to the right; they then entered the Olive Groves, crossed the Cephessus, and came to an open, well-cultivated plain, extending on the left to the Piræus and the sea.  Having ascended by a gentle acclivity through a pass, at the distance of eight or ten miles from Athens, the ancient Corydallus, now called Daphnérouni, they came, at the bottom of a piney mountain, to the little monastery of Daphné, the appearance and situation of which are in agreeable unison.  The monastery was then fast verging into that state of the uninhabitable picturesque so much admired by young damsels and artists of a romantic vein.  The pines on the adjacent mountains hiss as they ever wave their boughs, and somehow, such is the lonely aspect of the place, that their hissing may be imagined to breathe satire against the pretensions of human vanity.

After passing through the hollow valley in which this monastic habitation is situated, the road sharply turns round an elbow of the mountain, and the Eleusinian plain opens immediately in front.  It is, however, for a plain, but of small dimensions.  On the left is the Island of Salamis, and the straits where the battle was fought; but neither of it nor of the mysteries for which the Temple of Ceres was for so many ages celebrated, has the poet given us description or suggestion; and yet few topics among all his wild and wonderful subjects were so likely to have furnished such “ample room, and verge enough” to his fancy.

The next excursion in any degree interesting, it a qualification of that kind can be applied to excursions, in Attica, was to Cape Colonna.  Crossing the bed of the Ilissus and keeping nearer to Mount Hymettus, the travellers arrived at Vary, a farm belonging to the monastery of Agios Asomatos, and under the charge of a caloyer.  Here they stopped for the night, and being furnished with lights, and attended by the caloyer’s servant as a guide, they proceeded to inspect the Paneum, or sculptured cavern in that neighbourhood, into which they descended.  Having satisfied their curiosity there, they proceeded, in the morning, to Keratéa, a small town containing about two hundred and fifty houses, chiefly inhabited by rural Albanians.

The wetness of the weather obliged them to remain several days at Keratéa, during which they took the opportunity of a few hours of sunshine to ascend the mountain of Parné in quest of a cave of which many wonderful things were reported in the country.  Having found the entrance, kindled their pine torches, and taken a supply of strips of the same wood, they let themselves down through a narrow aperture; creeping still farther down, they came into what seemed a large subterranean hall, arched as it were with high cupolas of crystal, and divided into long aisles by columns of glittering spar, in some parts spread into wide horizontal chambers, in others terminated by the dark mouths of deep and steep abysses receding into the interior of the mountain.

The travellers wandered from one grotto to another until they came to a fountain of pure water, by the side of which they lingered some time, till, observing that their torches were wasting, they resolved to return; but after exploring the labyrinth for a few minutes, they found themselves again close beside this mysterious spring.  It was not without reason they then became alarmed, for the guide confessed with trepidation that he had forgotten the intricacies of the cave, and knew not how to recover the outlet.

Byron often described this adventure with spirit and humour, magnifying both his own and his friend’s terrors; and though, of course, there was caricature in both, yet the distinction was characteristic.  Mr Hobhouse, being of a more solid disposition naturally, could discern nothing but a grave cause for dread in being thus lost in the bowels of the earth; Byron, however, described his own anxiety as a species of excitement and titillation which moved him to laughter.  Their escape from starvation and being buried alive was truly providential.

While roaming in a state of despair from cave to cell; climbing up narrow apertures; their last pine-torch fast consuming; totally ignorant of their position, and all around darkness, they discovered, as it were by accident, a ray of light gleaming towards them; they hastened towards it, and arrived at the mouth of the cave.

Although the poet has not made any use of this incident in description, the actual experience which it gave him of what despair is, could not but enrich his metaphysical store, and increase his knowledge of terrible feelings; of the workings of the darkest and dreadest anticipations—slow famishing death—cannibalism and the rage of self-devouring hunger.

CHAPTER XVIII

Proceed from Keratéa to Cape Colonna—Associations connected with the Spot—Second-hearing of the Albanians—Journey to Marathon—Effect of his Adventures on the Mind of the Poet—Return to Athens—I join the Travellers there—Maid of Athens

From Keratéa the travellers proceeded to Cape Colonna, by the way of Katapheke.  The road was wild and rude, but the distant view of the ruins of the temple of Minerva, standing on the loneliness of the promontory, would have repaid them for the trouble, had the road been even rougher.

This once elegant edifice was of the Doric order, a hexastyle, the columns twenty-seven feet in height.  It was built entirely of white marble, and esteemed one of the finest specimens of architecture.  The rocks on which the remains stand are celebrated alike by the English and the Grecian muses; for it was amid them that Falconer laid the scene of his Shipwreck; and the unequalled description of the climate of Greece, in The Giaour, was probably inspired there, although the poem was written in London.  It was also here, but not on this occasion, that the poet first became acquainted with the Albanian belief in second-hearing, to which he alludes in the same poem:

   Deep in whose darkly-boding ear
   The death-shot peal’d of murder near.

“This superstition of a second-hearing,” says Lord Byron, “fell once under my own observation.  On my third journey to Cape Colonna, as we passed through the defile that leads from the hamlet between Keratéa and Colonna, I observed Dervish Tahiri (one of his Albanian servants) riding rather out of the path, and leaning his head upon his hand as if in pain.  I rode up and inquired.  ‘We are in peril!’ he answered.  ‘What peril? we are not now in Albania, nor in the passes to Ephesus, Missolonghi, or Lepanto; there are plenty of us well armed, and the Choriotes have not courage to be thieves.’—‘True, Affendi; but, nevertheless, the shot is ringing in my ears.’—‘The shot! not a tophaike has been fired this morning.’—‘I hear it, notwithstanding—bom—bom—as plainly as I hear your voice.’—‘Bah.’—‘As you please, Affendi; if it is written, so will it be.’

“I left this quick-eared predestinarian, and rode up to Basili, his Christian compatriot, whose ears, though not at all prophetic, by no means relished the intelligence.  We all arrived at Colonna, remained some hours, and returned leisurely, saying a variety of brilliant things, in more languages than spoiled the building of Babel, upon the mistaken seer; Romaic, Arnaout, Turkish, Italian, and English were all exercised, in various conceits, upon the unfortunate Mussulman.  While we were contemplating the beautiful prospect, Dervish was occupied about the columns.  I thought he was deranged into an antiquarian, and asked him if he had become a palaocastro man.  ‘No,’ said he, ‘but these pillars will be useful in making a stand’ and added some remarks, which at least evinced his own belief in his troublesome faculty of fore-hearing.

“On our return to Athens we heard from Leoné (a prisoner set on shore some days after) of the intended attack of the Mainotes, with the cause of its not taking place.  I was at some pains to question the man, and he described the dresses, arms, and marks of the horses of our party so accurately, that, with other circumstances, we could not doubt of his having been in ‘villainous company,’ and ourselves in a bad neighbourhood.  Dervish became a soothsayer for life, and I dare say is now hearing more musketry than ever will be fired, to the great refreshment of the Arnaouts of Berat and his native mountains.

“In all Attica, if we except Athens itself, and Marathon,” Byron remarks, “there is no scene more interesting than Cape Colonna.  To the antiquary and artist, sixteen columns are an inexhaustible source of observation and design; to the philosopher the supposed scene of some of Plato’s conversations will not be unwelcome; and the traveller will be struck with the prospect over ‘Isles that crown the Ægean deep.’  But, for an Englishman, Colonna has yet an additional interest in being the actual spot of Falconer’s Shipwreck.  Pallas and Plato are forgotten in the recollection of Falconer and Campbell.

“There, in the dead of night, by Donna’s steep,
The seamen’s cry was heard along the deep.”

From the ruins of the temple the travellers returned to Keratéa, by the eastern coast of Attica, passing through that district of country where the silver mines are situated; which, according to Sir George Wheler, were worked with some success about a hundred and fifty years ago.  They then set out for Marathon, taking Rapthi in their way; where, in the lesser port, on a steep rocky island, they beheld, from a distance, the remains of a colossal statue.  They did not, however, actually inspect it, but it has been visited by other travellers, who have described it to be of white marble, sedent on a pedestal.  The head and arms are broken off; but when entire, it is conjectured to have been twelve feet in height.  As they were passing round the shore they heard the barking of dogs, and a shout from a shepherd, and on looking round saw a large dun-coloured wolf, galloping slowly through the bushes.

Such incidents and circumstances, in the midst of the most romantic scenery of the world, with wild and lawless companions, and a constant sense of danger, were full of poetry, and undoubtedly contributed to the formation of the peculiar taste of Byron’s genius.  As it has been said of Salvator Rosa, the painter, that he derived the characteristic savage force of his pencil from his youthful adventures with banditti; it may be added of Byron, that much of his most distinguished power was the result of his adventures as a traveller in Greece.  His mind and memory were filled with stores of the fittest imagery, to supply becoming backgrounds and appendages, to the characters and enterprises which he afterward depicted with such truth of nature and poetical effect.

After leaving Rapthi, keeping Mount Pentilicus on the left, the travellers came in sight of the ever-celebrated Plain of Marathon.  The evening being advanced, they passed the barrow of the Athenian slain unnoticed, but next morning they examined minutely the field of battle, and fancied they had made antiquarian discoveries.  In their return to Athens they inspected the different objects of research and fragments of antiquity, which still attract travellers, and with the help of Chandler and Pausanias, endeavoured to determine the local habitation and the name of many things, of which the traditions have perished and the forms have relapsed into rock.

Soon after their arrival at Athens, Mr Hobhouse left Lord Byron to visit the Negropont, where he was absent some few days.  I think he had only been back three or four when I arrived from Zante.  My visit to Athens at that period was accidental.  I had left Malta with the intention of proceeding to Candia, by Specia, and Idra; but a dreadful storm drove us up the Adriatic, as far as Valona; and in returning, being becalmed off the Island of Zante, I landed there, and allowed the ship, with my luggage, to proceed to her destination, having been advised to go on by the Gulf of Corinth to Athens; from which place, I was informed, there would be no difficulty in recovering my trunks.

In carrying this arrangement into effect, I was induced to go aside from the direct route, and to visit Velhi Pasha, at Tripolizza, to whom I had letters.  Returning by Argos and Corinth, I crossed the isthmus, and taking the road by Megara, reached Athens on the 20th of February.  In the course of this journey, I heard of two English travellers being in the city; and on reaching the convent of the Propaganda, where I had been advised to take up my lodgings, the friar in charge of the house informed me of their names.  Next morning, Mr Hobhouse, having heard of my arrival, kindly called on me, and I accompanied him to Lord Byron, who then lodged with the widow of a Greek, who had been British Consul.  She was, I believe, a respectable person, with several daughters; one of whom has been rendered more famous by his Lordship’s verses than her degree of beauty deserved.  She was a pale and pensive-looking girl, with regular Grecian features.  Whether he really cherished any sincere attachment to her I much doubt.  I believe his passion was equally innocent and poetical, though he spoke of buying her from her mother.  It was to this damsel that he addressed the stanzas beginning,

   Maid of Athens, ere we part,
   Give, oh! give me back my heart.

CHAPTER XIX

Occupation at Athens—Mount Pentilicus—We descend into the Caverns—Return to Athens—A Greek Contract of Marriage—Various Athenian and Albanian Superstitions—Effect of their Impression on the Genius of the Poet

During his residence at Athens, Lord Byron made almost daily excursions on horseback, chiefly for exercise and to see the localities of celebrated spots.  He affected to have no taste for the arts, and he certainly took but little pleasure in the examination of the ruins.

The marble quarry of Mount Pentilicus, from which the materials for the temples and principal edifices of Athens are supposed to have been brought, was, in those days, one of the regular staple curiosities of Greece.  This quarry is a vast excavation in the side of the hill; a drapery of woodbine hangs like the festoons of a curtain over the entrance; the effect of which, seen from the outside, is really worth looking at, but not worth the trouble of riding three hours over a road of rude and rough fragments to see: the interior is like that of any other cavern.  To this place I one day was induced to accompany the two travellers.

We halted at a monastery close by the foot of the mountain, where we procured a guide, and ate a repast of olives and fried eggs.  Dr Chandler says that the monks, or caloyers, of this convent are summoned to prayers by a tune which is played on a piece of an iron hoop; and, on the outside of the church, we certainly saw a piece of crooked iron suspended.  When struck, it uttered a bell-like sound, by which the hour of prayer was announced.  What sort of tune could be played on such an instrument the doctor has judiciously left his readers to imagine.

When we reached the mouth of the grotto, by that “very bad track” which the learned personage above mentioned clambered up, we saw the ruins of the building which the doctor at first thought had been possibly a hermit’s cell; but which, upon more deliberate reflection, he became of opinion “was designed, perhaps, for a sentinel to look out, and regulate, by signals, the approach of the men and teams employed in carrying marble to the city.”  This, we agreed, was a very sagacious conjecture.  It was, indeed, highly probable that sentinels were appointed to regulate, by signals, the manoeuvres of carts coming to fetch away stones.

Having looked at the outside of the quarry, and the guide having lighted candles, we entered into the interior, and beheld on all sides what Dr Chandler saw, “chippings of marble.”  We then descended, consecutively, into a hole, just wide enough to let a man pass; and when we had descended far enough, we found ourselves in a cell, or cave; it might be some ten or twelve feet square.  Here we stopped, and, like many others who had been there before us, attempted to engrave our names.  Mine was without success; Lord Byron’s was not much better; but Mr Hobhouse was making some progress to immortality, when the blade of his knife snapped, or shutting suddenly, cut his finger.  These attempts having failed, we inscribed our initials on the ceiling with the smoke of our candles.  After accomplishing this notable feat, we got as well out of the scrape as we could, and returned to Athens by the village of Callandris.  In the evening, after dinner, as there happened to be a contract of marriage performing in the neighbourhood, we went to see the ceremony.

Between the contract and espousal two years are generally permitted to elapse among the Greeks in the course of which the bride, according to the circumstances of her relations, prepares domestic chattels for her future family.  The affections are rarely consulted on either side, for the mother of the bridegroom commonly arranges the match for her son.  In this case, the choice had been evidently made according to the principle on which Mrs Primrose chose her wedding gown; viz. for the qualities that would wear well.  For the bride was a stout household quean; her face painted with vermilion, and her person arrayed in uncouth embroidered garments.  Unfortunately, we were disappointed of seeing the ceremony, as it was over before we arrived.

This incident led me to inquire particularly into the existing usages and customs of the Athenians; and I find in the notes of my journal of the evening of that day’s adventures, a memorandum of a curious practice among the Athenian maidens when they become anxious to get husbands.  On the first evening of the new moon, they put a little honey, a little salt, and a piece of bread on a plate, which they leave at a particular spot on the east bank of the Ilissus, near the Stadium, and muttering some ancient words, to the effect that Fate may send them a handsome young man, return home, and long for the fulfilment of the charm.  On mentioning this circumstance to the travellers, one of them informed me, that above the spot where these offerings are made, a statue of Venus, according to Pausanias, formerly stood.  It is, therefore, highly probable that what is now a superstitious, was anciently a religious rite.

At this period my fellow-passengers were full of their adventures in Albania.  The country was new, and the inhabitants had appeared to them a bold and singular race.  In addition to the characteristic descriptions which I have extracted from Lord Byron’s notes, as well as Mr Hobhouse’s travels, I am indebted to them, as well as to others, for a number of memoranda obtained in conversation, which they have themselves neglected to record, but which probably became unconsciously mingled with the recollections of both; at least, I can discern traces of them in different parts of the poet’s works.

The Albanians are a race of mountaineers, and it has been often remarked that mountaineers, more than any other people, are attached to their native land, while no other have so strong a thirst of adventure.  The affection which they cherish for the scenes of their youth tends, perhaps, to excite their migratory spirit.  For the motive of their adventures is to procure the means of subsisting in ease at home.

This migratory humour is not, however, universal to the Albanians, but applies only to those who go in quest of rural employment, and who are found in a state of servitude among even the Greeks.  It deserves, however, to be noticed, that with the Greeks they rarely ever mix or intermarry, and that they retain both their own national dress and manners unchanged among them.  Several of their customs are singular.  It is, for example, in vain to ask a light or any fire from the houses of the Albanians after sunset, if the husband or head of the family be still afield; a custom in which there is more of police regulation than of superstition, as it interdicts a plausible pretext for entering the cottages in the obscurity of twilight, when the women are defenceless by the absence of the men.

Some of their usages, with respect to births, baptisms, and burials, are also curious.  When the mother feels the fulness of time at hand, the priestess of Lucina, the midwife, is duly summoned, and she comes bearing in her hand a tripod, better known as a three-legged stool, the uses of which are only revealed to the initiated.  She is received by the matronly friends of the mother, and begins the mysteries by opening every lock and lid in the house.  During this ceremony the maiden females are excluded.

The rites which succeed the baptism of a child are still more recondite.  Four or five days after the christening, the midwife prepares, with her own mystical hands, certain savoury messes, spreads a table, and places them on it.  She then departs, and all the family, leaving the door open, in silence retire to sleep.  This table is covered for the Miri of the child, an occult being, that is supposed to have the care of its destiny.  In the course of the night, if the child is to be fortunate, the Miri comes and partakes of the feast, generally in the shape of a cat; but if the Miri do not come, nor taste of the food, the child is considered to have been doomed to misfortune and misery; and no doubt the treatment it afterwards receives is consonant to its evil predestination.

The Albanians have, like the vulgar of all countries, a species of hearth or household superstitions, distinct from their wild and imperfect religion.  They imagine that mankind, after death, become voorthoolakases, and often pay visits to their friends and foes for the same reasons, and in the same way, that our own country ghosts walk abroad; and their visiting hour is, also, midnight.  But the collyvillory is another sort of personage.  He delights in mischief and pranks, and is, besides, a lewd and foul spirit; and, therefore, very properly detested.  He is let loose on the night of the nativity, with licence for twelve nights to plague men’s wives; at which time some one of the family must keep wakeful vigil all the livelong night, beside a clear and cheerful fire, otherwise this naughty imp would pour such an aqueous stream on the hearth, that fire could never be kindled there again.

The Albanians are also pestered with another species of malignant creatures; men and women whose gifts are followed by misfortunes, whose eyes glimpse evil, and by whose touch the most prosperous affairs are blasted.  They work their malicious sorceries in the dark, collect herbs of baleful influence; by the help of which, they strike their enemies with palsy, and cattle with distemper.  The males are called maissi, and the females maissa—witches and warlocks.

Besides these curious superstitious peculiarities, they have among them persons who pretend to know the character of approaching events by hearing sounds which resemble those that shall accompany the actual occurrence.  Having, however, given Lord Byron’s account of the adventure of his servant Dervish, at Cape Colonna, it is unnecessary to be more particular with the subject here.  Indeed, but for the great impression which everything about the Albanians made on the mind of the poet, the insertion of these memoranda would be irrelevant.  They will, however, serve to elucidate several allusions, not otherwise very clear, in those poems of which the scenes are laid in Greece; and tend, in some measure, to confirm the correctness of the opinion, that his genius is much more indebted to facts and actual adventures, than to the force of his imagination.  Many things regarded in his most original productions, as fancies and invention, may be traced to transactions in which he was himself a spectator or an actor.  The impress of experience is vivid upon them all.

CHAPTER XX

Local Pleasures—Byron’s Grecian Poems—His Departure from Athens—Description of Evening in “The Corsair”—The Opening of “The Giaour”—State of Patriotic Feeling then in Greece—Smyrna—Change in Lord Byron’s Manners

The genii that preside over famous places have less influence on the imagination than on the memory.  The pleasures enjoyed on the spot spring from the reminiscences of reading; and the subsequent enjoyment derived from having visited celebrated scenes, comes again from the remembrance of objects seen there, and the associations connected with them.

A residence at Athens, day after day, is but little more interesting than in a common country town: but afterwards, in reading either of the ancient or of the modern inhabitants, it is surprising to find how much local knowledge the memory had unconsciously acquired on the spot, arising from the variety of objects to which the attention had been directed.

The best of all Byron’s works, the most racy and original, are undoubtedly those which relate to Greece; but it is only travellers who have visited the scenes that can appreciate them properly.  In them his peculiar style and faculty are most eminent; in all his other productions, imitation, even mere translation may be often traced, and though, without question, everything he touched became transmuted into something more beautiful and precious, yet he was never so masterly as in describing the scenery of Greece, and Albanian manners.  In a general estimate of his works, it may be found that he has produced as fine or finer passages than any in his Grecian poems; but their excellence, either as respects his own, or the productions of others, is comparative.  In the Grecian poems he is only truly original; in them the excellence is all his own, and they possess the rare and distinguished quality of being as true to fact and nature, as they are brilliant in poetical expression.  Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage is the most faithful descriptive poem which has been written since the Odyssey; and the occasional scenes introduced into the other poems, when the action is laid in Greece, are equally vivid and glowing.

When I saw him at Athens, the spring was still shrinking in the bud.  It was not until he returned from Constantinople in the following autumn, that he saw the climate and country with those delightful aspects which he has delineated with so much felicity in The Giaour and The Corsair.  It may, however, be mentioned, that the fine description of a calm sunset, with which the third canto of The Corsair opens, has always reminded me of the evening before his departure from Athens, owing to the circumstance of my having, in the course of the day, visited the spot which probably suggested the scene described.

It was the 4th of March, 1810; the Pylades sloop of war came that morning into the Piræus, and landed Dr Darwin, a son of the poet, with his friend, Mr Galton, who had come out in her for a cruise.  Captain Ferguson, her commander, was so kind as to offer the English then in Athens, viz., Lord Byron, Mr Hobhouse, and myself, a passage to Smyrna.  As I had not received my luggage from Specia, I could not avail myself of the offer, but the other two did: I accompanied Captain Ferguson, however, and Dr Darwin, in a walk to the Straits of Salamis; the ship, in the meantime, after landing them, having been moored there.

It was one of those serene and cloudless days of the early spring, when the first indications of leaf and blossom may just be discerned.  The islands slept, as it were, on their glassy couch, and a slight dun haze hung upon the mountains, as if they too were drowsy.  After an easy walk of about two hours, passing through the olive groves, and along the bottom of the hill on which Xerxes sat to view the battle, we came opposite to a little cove near the ferry, and made a signal to the ship for a boat.  Having gone on board and partaken of some refreshment, the boat then carried us back to the Piræus, where we landed, about an hour before sundown—all the wide landscape presenting at the time the calm and genial tranquillity which is almost experienced anew in reading these delicious lines:

Slow sinks more lovely e’er his race be run,
Along Morea’s hills, the setting sun
Not, as in northern climes, obscurely bright,
But one unclouded blaze of living light.
O’er the hush’d deep the yellow beam he throws,
Gilds the green wave that trembles as it flows.
On old Egina’s rock, and Idra’s isle,
The god of gladness sheds his parting smile;
O’er his own regions lingering, loves to shine,
Though there his altars are no more divine;—
Descending fast, the mountain shadows kiss
Thy glorious gulf, unconquer’d Salamis!

Their azure arches, through the long expanse,
More deeply purpled meet his mellowing glance,
And tenderest tints, along their summits driven,
Mark his gay course, and own the hues of heaven;
Till darkly shaded from the land and deep,
Behind his Delphian cliff he sinks to sleep.

The opening of The Giaour is a more general description, but the locality is distinctly marked by reference to the tomb above the rocks of the promontory, commonly said to be that of Themistocles; and yet the scene included in it certainly is rather the view from Cape Colonna, than from the heights of Munychia.

No breath of air to break the wave
That rolls below the Athenian’s grave,
That tomb, which, gleaming o’er the cliff,
First greets the homeward-veering skiff,
High o’er the land he saved in vain—
When shall such hero live again!

The environs of the Piræus were indeed, at that time, well calculated to inspire those mournful reflections with which the poet introduces the Infidel’s impassioned tale.  The solitude, the relics, the decay, and sad uses to which the pirate and the slave-dealer had put the shores and waters so honoured by freedom, rendered a visit to the Piræus something near in feeling to a pilgrimage.

   Such is the aspect of this shore,
   ’Tis Greece, but living Greece no more!
   So coldly sweet, so deadly fair,
   We start, for soul is wanting there.
   Hers is the loveliness in death,
   That parts not quite with parting breath;
   But beauty with that fearful bloom,
   That hue which haunts it to the tomb,
   Expression’s last receding ray,
   A gilded halo hov’ring round decay,
   The farewell beam of feeling past away.
Spark of that flame, perchance of heavenly birth,
Which gleams, but warms no more its cherish’d earth.

At that time Lord Byron, if he did pity the condition of the Greeks, evinced very little confidence in the resurrection of the nation, even although symptoms of change and reanimation were here and there perceptible, and could not have escaped his observation.  Greece had indeed been so long ruined, that even her desolation was then in a state of decay.  The new cycle in her fortunes had certainly not commenced, but it was manifest, by many a sign, that the course of the old was concluding, and that the whole country felt the assuring auguries of undivulged renovation.  The influence of that period did not, however, penetrate the bosom of the poet; and when he first quitted Athens, assuredly he cared as little about the destinies of the Greeks, as he did for those of the Portuguese and Spaniards, when he arrived at Gibraltar.

About three weeks or a month after he had left Athens, I went by a circuitous route to Smyrna, where I found him waiting with Mr Hobhouse, to proceed with the Salsette frigate, then ordered to Constantinople, to bring away Mr Adair, the ambassador.  He had, in the meantime, visited Ephesus, and acquired some knowledge of the environs of Smyrna; but he appeared to have been less interested by what he had seen there than by the adventures of his Albanian tour.  Perhaps I did him injustice, but I thought he was also, in that short space, something changed, and not with improvement.  Towards Mr Hobhouse, he seemed less cordial, and was altogether, I should say, having no better phrase to express what I would describe, more of a Captain Grand than improved in his manners, and more disposed to hold his own opinion than I had ever before observed in him.  I was particularly struck with this at dinner, on the day after my arrival.  We dined together with a large party at the consul’s, and he seemed inclined to exact a deference to his dogmas, that was more lordly than philosophical.  One of the naval officers present, I think the captain of the Salsette, felt, as well as others, this overweening, and announced a contrary opinion on some question connected with the politics of the late Mr Pitt with so much firm good sense, that Lord Byron was perceptibly rebuked by it, and became reserved, as if he deemed that sullenness enhanced dignity.  I never in the whole course of my acquaintance saw him kithe so unfavourably as he did on that occasion.  In the course of the evening, however, he condescended to thaw, and before the party broke up, his austerity began to leaf, and hide its thorns under the influence of a relenting temperament.  It was, however, too evident—at least it was so to me—that without intending wrong, or any offence, the unchecked humour of his temper was, by its caprices, calculated to prevent him from ever gaining that regard to which his talents and freer moods, independently of his rank, ought to have entitled him.  Such men become objects of solicitude, but never of esteem.

I was also on this occasion struck with another new phase in his character; he seemed to be actuated by no purpose—he spoke no more of passing “beyond Aurora and the Ganges,” but seemed disposed to let the current of chances carry him as it might.  If he had any specific object in view, it was something that made him hesitate between going home and returning to Athens when he should have reached Constantinople, now become the ultimate goal of his intended travels.  To what cause this sudden and singular change, both in demeanour and design, was owing, I was on the point of saying, it would be fruitless to conjecture; but a letter to his mother, written a few days before my arrival at Smyrna, throws some light on the sources of his unsatisfied state.  He appears by it to have been disappointed of letters and remittances from his agent, and says:

“When I arrive at Constantinople, I shall determine whether to proceed into Persia, or return—which latter I do not wish if I can avoid it.  But I have no intelligence from Mr H., and but one letter from yourself.  I shall stand in need of remittances, whether I proceed or return.  I have written to him repeatedly, that he may not plead ignorance of my situation for neglect.”

Here is sufficient evidence that the cause of the undetermined state of his mind, which struck me so forcibly, was owing to the incertitude of his affairs at home; and it is easy to conceive that the false dignity he assumed, and which seemed so like arrogance, was the natural effect of the anxiety and embarrassment he suffered, and of the apprehension of a person of his rank being, on account of his remittances, exposed to require assistance among strangers.  But as the scope of my task relates more to the history of his mind, than of his private affairs, I shall resume the narrative of his travels, in which the curiosity of the reader ought to be more legitimately interested.

CHAPTER XXI

Smyrna—The Sport of the Djerid—Journey to Ephesus—The dead City—The desolate Country—The Ruins and Obliteration of the Temple—The slight Impression of all on Byron

The passage in the Pylades from Athens to Smyrna was performed without accident or adventure.

At Smyrna Lord Byron remained several days, and saw for the first time the Turkish pastime of the Djerid, a species of tournament to which he more than once alludes.  I shall therefore describe the amusement.

The Musselim or Governor, with the chief agas of the city, mounted on horses superbly caparisoned, and attended by slaves, meet, commonly on Sunday morning, on their playground.  Each of the riders is furnished with one or two djerids, straight white sticks, a little thinner than an umbrella-stick, less at one end than at the other and about an ell in length, together with a thin cane crooked at the head.  The horsemen, perhaps a hundred in number, gallop about in as narrow a space as possible, throwing the djerids at each other and shouting.  Each man then selects an opponent who has darted his djerid or is for the moment without a weapon, and rushes furiously towards him, screaming “Olloh!  Olloh!”  The other flies, looking behind him, and the instant the dart is launched stoops downwards as low as possible, or wields his horse with inconceivable rapidity, and picking up a djerid with his cane, or taking one from a running slave, pursues in his turn the enemy, who wheels on the instant he darts his weapon.  The greatest dexterity is requisite in these mimic battles to avoid the concurrence of the “javelin-darting crowd,” and to escape the random blows of the flying djerids.

Byron, having satisfied his curiosity with Smyrna, which is so like every other Turkish town as to excite but little interest, set out with Mr Hobhouse on the 13th of March, for Ephesus.  As I soon after passed along the same road, I shall here describe what I met with myself in the course of the journey, it being probable that the incidents were in few respects different from those which they encountered.

On ascending the heights after leaving Smyrna, the road was remarkable in being formed of the broken relics of ancient edifices partly macadamised.  On the brow of the hill I met a numerous caravan of camels coming from the interior of Asia.  These ships of the desert, variously loaded, were moving slowly to their port, and it seemed to me as I rode past them, that the composed docile look of the animals possessed a sort of domesticated grace which lessened the effect of their deformity.

A caravan, owing to the oriental dresses of the passengers and attendants, with the numerous grotesque circumstances which it presents to the stranger, affords an amusing spectacle.  On the back of one camel three or four children were squabbling in a basket; in another cooking utensils were clattering; and from a crib on a third a young camel looked forth inquiringly on the world: a long desultory train of foot-passengers and cattle brought up the rear.

On reaching the summit of the hills behind Smyrna the road lies through fields and cotton-grounds, well cultivated and interspersed with country houses.  After an easy ride of three or four hours I passed through the ruins of a considerable Turkish town, containing four or five mosques, one of them, a handsome building, still entire; about twenty houses or so might be described as tenantable, but only a place of sepulchres could be more awful: it had been depopulated by the plague—all was silent, and the streets were matted with thick grass.  In passing through an open space, which reminded me of a market-place, I heard the cuckoo with an indescribable sensation of pleasure mingled with solemnity.  The sudden presence of a raven at a bridal banquet could scarcely have been a greater phantasma.

Proceeding briskly from this forsaken and dead city, I arrived in the course of about half an hour at a coffee-house on the banks of a small stream, where I partook of some refreshment in the shade of three or four trees, on which several storks were conjugally building their nests.  While resting there, I became interested in their work, and observed, that when any of their acquaintances happened to fly past with a stick, they chattered a sort of How-d’ye-do to one another.  This civility was so uniformly and reciprocally performed, that the politeness of the stork may be regarded as even less disputable than its piety.

The road from that coffee-house lies for a mile or two along the side of a marshy lake, the environs of which are equally dreary and barren; an extensive plain succeeds, on which I noticed several broken columns of marble, and the evident traces of an ancient causeway, which apparently led through the water.  Near the extremity of the lake was another small coffee-house, with a burial-ground and a mosque near it; and about four or five miles beyond I passed a spot, to which several Turks brought a coffinless corpse, and laid it on the grass while they silently dug a grave to receive it.

The road then ascended the hills on the south side of the plain, of which the marshy lake was the centre, and passed through a tract of country calculated to inspire only apprehension and melancholy.  Not a habitation nor vestige of living man was in sight, but several cemeteries, with their dull funereal cypresses and tombstones served to show that the country had once been inhabited.

Just as the earliest stars began to twinkle I arrived at a third coffee-house on the roadside, with a little mosque before it, a spreading beech tree for travellers to recline under in the spring, and a rude shed for them in showers or the more intense sunshine of summer.  Here I rested for the night, and in the morning at daybreak resumed my journey.

After a short ride I reached the borders of the plain of Ephesus, across which I passed along a road rudely constructed, and raised above the marsh, consisting of broken pillars, entablatures, and inscriptions, at the end of which two other paths diverge; one strikes off to the left, and leads over the Cayster by a bridge above the castle of Aiasaluk—the other, leading to the right, or west, goes directly to Scala Nuova, the ancient Neapolis.  By the latter Byron and his friend proceeded towards the ferry, which they crossed, and where they found the river about the size of the Cam at Cambridge, but more rapid and deeper.  They then rode up the south bank, and about three o’clock in the afternoon arrived at Aiasaluk, the miserable village which now represents the city of Ephesus.

Having put up their beds in a mean khan, the only one in the town, they partook of some cold provisions which they had brought with them on a stone seat by the side of a fountain, on an open green near to a mosque, shaded with tall cypresses.  During their repast a young Turk approached the fountain, and after washing his feet and hands, mounted a flat stone, placed evidently for the purpose on the top of the wall surrounding the mosque, and devoutly said his prayers, totally regardless of their appearance and operations.

The remainder of the afternoon was spent in exploring the ruins of Aiasaluk, and next morning they proceeded to examine those of the castle, and the mouldering magnificence of Ephesus.  The remains of the celebrated temple of Diana, one of the wonders of the ancient world, could not be satisfactorily traced; fragments of walls and arches, which had been plated with marble, were all they could discover, with many broken columns that had once been mighty in their altitude and strength: several fragments were fifteen feet long, and of enormous circumference.  Such is the condition of that superb edifice, which was, in its glory, four hundred and twenty feet long by two hundred and twenty feet broad, and adorned with more than a hundred and twenty columns sixty feet high.

When the travellers had satisfied their curiosity, if that can be called satisfaction which found no entire form, but saw only the rubbish of desolation and the fragments of destruction, they returned to Smyrna.

The investigation of the ruins of Ephesus was doubtless interesting at the time, but the visit produced no such impression on the mind of Byron as might have been expected.  He never directly refers to it in his works: indeed, after Athens, the relics of Ephesus are things but of small import, especially to an imagination which, like that of the poet, required the action of living characters to awaken its dormant sympathies.

CHAPTER XXII

Embarks for Constantinople—Touches at Tenedos—Visits Alexandria—Trees—The Trojan Plain—Swims the Hellespont—Arrival at Constantinople

On the 11th of April Lord Byron embarked at Smyrna, in the Salsette frigate for Constantinople.  The wind was fair during the night, and at half past six next morning, the ship was off the Sygean promontory, the north end of the ancient Lesbos or Mitylene.  Having passed the headland, north of the little town of Baba, she came in sight of Tenedos, where she anchored, and the poet went on shore to view the island.

The port was full of small craft, which in their voyage to the Archipelago had put in to wait for a change of wind, and a crowd of Turks belonging to these vessels were lounging about on the shore.  The town was then in ruins, having been burned to the ground by a Russian squadron in the year 1807.

Next morning, Byron, with a party of officers, left the ship to visit the ruins of Alexandria Troas, and landed at an open port, about six or seven miles to the south of where the Salsette was at anchor.  The spot near to where they disembarked was marked by several large cannon-balls of granite; for the ruins of Alexandria have long supplied the fortresses of the Dardanelles with these gigantic missiles.

They rambled some time through the shaggy woods, with which the country is covered, and the first vestiges of antiquity which attracted their attention were two large granite sarcophagi; a little beyond they found two or three fragments of granite pillars, one of them about twenty-five feet in length, and at least five in diameter.  Near these they saw arches of brick-work, and on the east of them those magnificent remains, to which early travellers have given the name of the palace of Priam, but which are, in fact, the ruins of ancient baths.  An earthquake in the course of the preceding winter had thrown down large portions of them, and the internal divisions of the edifice were, in consequence, choked with huge masses of mural wrecks and marbles.

The visitors entered the interior through a gap, and found themselves in the midst of enormous ruins, enclosed on two sides by walls, raised on arches, and by piles of ponderous fragments.  The fallen blocks were of vast dimensions, and showed that no cement had been used in the construction—an evidence of their great antiquity.  In the midst of this crushed magnificence stood several lofty portals and arches, pedestals of gigantic columns and broken steps and marble cornices, heaped in desolate confusion.

From these baths the distance to the sea is between two and three miles—a gentle declivity covered with low woods, and partially interspersed with spots of cultivated ground.  On this slope the ancient city of Alexandria Troas was built.  On the north-west, part of the walls, to the extent of a mile, may yet be traced; the remains of a theatre are also still to be seen on the side of the hill fronting the sea, commanding a view of Tenedos, Lemnos, and the whole expanse of the Ægean.

Having been conducted by the guide, whom they had brought with them from Tenedos, to the principal antiquities of Alexandria Troas, the visitors returned to the frigate, which immediately after got under way.  On the 14th of April she came to anchor about a mile and a half from Cape Janissary, the Sygean promontory, where she remained about a fortnight; during which ample opportunity was afforded to inspect the plain of Troy, that scene of heroism, which, for three thousand years, has attracted the attention and interested the feelings and fancy of the civilized world.

Whether Lord Byron entertained any doubt of Homer’s Troy ever having existed, is not very clear.  It is probable, from the little he says on the subject, that he took no interest in the question.  For although no traveller could enter with more sensibility into the local associations of celebrated places, he yet never seemed to care much about the visible features of antiquity, and was always more inclined to indulge in reflections than to puzzle his learning with dates or dimensions.  His ruminations on the Troad, in Don Juan, afford an instance of this, and are conceived in the very spirit of Childe Harold.

And so great names are nothing more than nominal,
   And love of glory’s but an airy lust,
Too often in its fury overcoming all
   Who would, as ’twere, identify their dust
From out the wide destruction which, entombing all,
   Leaves nothing till the coming of the just,
Save change.  I’ve stood upon Achilles’ tomb,
And heard Troy doubted—time will doubt of Rome.

The very generations of the dead
   Are swept away, and tomb inherits tomb,
Until the memory of an age is fled,
   And buried, sinks beneath its offspring’s doom.
Where are the epitaphs our fathers read,
   Save a few glean’d from the sepulchral gloom,
Which once named myriads, nameless, lie beneath,
And lose their own in universal death?

No task of curiosity can indeed be less satisfactory that the examination of the sites of ancient cities; for the guides, not content with leading the traveller to the spot, often attempt to mislead his imagination, by directing his attention to circumstances which they suppose to be evidence that verifies their traditions.  Thus, on the Trojan plain, several objects are still shown which are described as the self-same mentioned in the Iliad.  The wild fig-trees, and the tomb of Ilus, are yet there—if the guides may be credited.  But they were seen with incredulous eyes by the poet; even the tomb of Achilles appears to have been regarded by him with equal scepticism; still his description of the scene around is striking, and tinted with some of his happiest touches.

There on the green and village-cotted hill is
   Flanked by the Hellespont, and by the sea,
Entomb’d the bravest of the brave, Achilles—
   They say so.  Bryant says the contrary.
And farther downward tall and towering still is
   The tumulus, of whom Heaven knows it may be,
Patroclus, Ajax, or Protesilaus,—
All heroes, who, if living still, would slay us.

High barrows without marble or a name,
   A vast untill’d and mountain-skirted plain,
And Ida in the distance still the same,
   And old Scamander, if ’tis he, remain;
The situation seems still form’d for fame,
   A hundred thousand men might fight again
With ease.  But where I sought for Ilion’s walls
The quiet sheep feeds, and the tortoise crawls.

Troops of untended horses; here and there
   Some little hamlets, with new names uncouth,
Some shepherds unlike Paris, led to stare
   A moment at the European youth,
Whom to the spot their schoolboy feelings bear;
   A Turk with beads in hand and pipe in mouth,
Extremely taken with his own religion,
Are what I found there, but the devil a Phrygian.

It was during the time that the Salsette lay off Cape Janissary that Lord Byron first undertook to swim across the Hellespont.  Having crossed from the castle of Chanak-Kalessi, in a boat manned by four Turks, he landed at five o’clock in the evening half a mile above the castle of Chelit-Bauri, where, with an officer of the frigate who accompanied him, they began their enterprise, emulous of the renown of Leander.  At first they swam obliquely upwards, rather towards Nagara Point than the Dardanelles, but notwithstanding their skill and efforts they made little progress.  Finding it useless to struggle with {156} the current, they then turned and went with the stream, still however endeavouring to cross.  It was not until they had been half an hour in the water, and found themselves in the middle of the strait, about a mile and a half below the castles, that they consented to be taken into the boat, which had followed them.  By that time the coldness of the water had so benumbed their limbs that they were unable to stand, and were otherwise much exhausted.  The second attempt was made on the 3rd of May, when the weather was warmer.  They entered the water at the distance of a mile and a-half above Chelit-Bauri, near a point of land on the western bank of the Bay of Maito, and swam against the stream as before, but not for so long a time.  In less than half an hour they came floating down the current close to the ship, which was then anchored at the Dardanelles, and in passing her steered for the bay behind the castle, which they soon succeeded in reaching, and landed about a mile and a-half below the ship.  Lord Byron has recorded that he found the current very strong and the water cold; that some large fish passed him in the middle of the channel, and though a little chilled he was not fatigued, and performed the feat without much difficulty, but not with impunity, for by the verses in which he commemorated the exploit it appears he incurred the ague.

WRITTEN AFTER SWIMMING FROM SESTOS TO ABYDOS

If in the month of dark December
   Leander who was nightly wont
(What maid will not the tale remember)
   To cross thy stream, broad Hellespont,

If when the wintry tempest roar’d
   He sped to Hero nothing loath,
And thus of old thy current pour’d,
   Fair Venus! how I pity both.

For me, degenerate modern wretch,
   Though in the genial month of May,
My dripping limbs I faintly stretch,
   And think I’ve done a feat to-day.

But since he crossed the rapid tide,
   According to the doubtful story,
To woo, and—Lord knows what beside,
   And swam for love as I for glory,

’Twere hard to say who fared the best;
   Sad mortals thus the gods still plague you;
He lost his labour, I my jest—
   For he was drown’d, and I’ve the ague.

“The whole distance,” says his Lordship, “from the place whence we started to our landing on the other side, including the length we were carried by the current, was computed by those on board the frigate at upwards of four English miles, though the actual breadth is barely one.  The rapidity of the current is such that no boat can row directly across, and it may in some measure be estimated from the circumstance of the whole distance being accomplished by one of the parties in an hour and five, and by the other (Byron) in an hour and ten minutes.  The water was extremely cold from the melting of the mountain snows.  About three weeks before, in April, we had made an attempt; but having ridden all the way from the Troad the same morning, and the water being of an icy chilliness, we found it necessary to postpone the completion till the frigate anchored below the castles, when we swam the straits as just stated, entering a considerable way above the European, and landing below the Asiatic fort.  Chevallier says that a young Jew swam the same distance for his mistress; and Oliver mentions it having been done by a Neapolitan; but our consul (at the Dardanelles), Tarragona, remembered neither of these circumstances, and tried to dissuade us from the attempt.  A number of the Salsette’s crew were known to have accomplished a greater distance and the only thing that surprised me was, that as doubts had been entertained of the truth of Leander’s story, no traveller had ever endeavoured to ascertain its practicability.”

While the Salsette lay off the Dardanelles, Lord Byron saw the body of a man who had been executed by being cast into the sea, floating on the stream, moving to and fro with the tumbling of the water, which gave to his arms the effect of scaring away several sea-fowl that were hovering to devour.  This incident he has strikingly depicted in The Bride of Abydos.

The sea-birds shriek above the prey
O’er which their hungry beaks delay,
As shaken on his restless pillow,
His head heaves with the heaving billow;
That hand whose motion is not life,
Yet feebly seems to menace strife,
Flung by the tossing tide on high,
   Then levell’d with the wave—
What reeks it tho’ that corse shall lie
   Within a living grave.
The bird that tears that prostrate form
Hath only robb’d the meaner worm.
The only heart, the only eye,
That bled or wept to see him die,
Had seen those scatter’d limbs composed,
   And mourned above his turban stone;
That heart hath burst—that eye was closed—
   Yea—closed before his own.

Between the Dardanelles and Constantinople no other adventure was undertaken or befel the poet.  On the 13th of May, the frigate came to anchor at sunset, near the headland to the west of the Seraglio Point; and when the night closed in, the silence and the darkness were so complete “that we might have believed ourselves,” says Mr Hobhouse, “moored in the lonely cove of some desert island, and not at the foot of a city which, from its vast extent and countless population, is fondly imagined by its present masters to be worthy to be called ‘The Refuge of the World.’”

Greece

World

Index

Hellenica World - Scientific Library