Part 25

Passing from the quay through a highly ornamented Gothic gateway, we ascended the famous historic street, still called the Street of the Knights, the massive houses of which have withstood the shocks of earthquakes and the devastation of Saracenic and Turkish occupation. At this hour the street was as deserted as it was three centuries and a half ago, when the Knights sorrowfully sailed out of the harbor in search of a new home. Their four months' defence of the city., against the overwhelming force of Suleiman the Magnificent, added a new lustre to their valor, and extorted the admiration of the victor and the most honorable terms of surrender. With them departed the prosperity of Rhodes. This street, of whose palaces we have heard so much, is not imposing; it is not wide, its solid stone houses are only two stories high, and their fronts are now disfigured by cheap Arab balconies, but the façades are gray with age. All along are remains of carved windows. Gothic sculptured doorways, and shields and coats of arms, crosses and armorial legends, are set in the walls, partially defaced by time and accident; for the Moslems, apparently inheriting the respect of Suleiman for the Knights, have spared the mementos of their faith and prowess. I saw no inscriptions that are intact, but made out upon one shield the words voluntas mei est. The carving is all beautiful.

We went through the silent streets, waking only echoes of the past, out to the ruins of the once elegant church of St. John, which was shaken down by a powder-explosion some thirty years ago, and utterly flattened by an earthquake some years afterwards. Outside the ramparts we met, and saluted frith the freedom of travellers, a gorgeous Turk who was taking the morning air, and whom our guide in bated breath said was the governor. In this part of the town is the Mosque of Suleiman; in the portal are two lovely marble columns, rich with age; the lintels are exquisitely carved with flowers, arms, casques, musical instruments, the crossed sword and the torch, and the mandolin, perhaps the emblem of some troubadour knight. Wherever we went we found bits of old carving, remains of columns, sections of battlemented roofs. The town is saturated with the old Knights. Near the mosque is a foundation of charity, a public kitchen, at which the poor were fed or were free to come and cook their food; it is in decay now, and the rooks were sailing about its old round-topped chimneys.

There are no Hellenic remains in the city, and the only remembrance of that past which we searched for was the antique coin, which has upon one side the head of Medusa and upon the other the rose (rhoda) which gave the town its name. The town was quiet; but in pursuit of this coin in the Jews' quarter we started up swarms of traders, were sent from Isaac to Jacob, and invaded dark shops and private houses where Jewish women and children were just beginning to complain of the morning light. Our guide was a jolly Greek, who was willing to awaken the whole town in search of a silver coin. The traders, when we had routed them out, had little to show in the way of antiquities. Perhaps the best representative of the modern manufactures of Rhodes is the wooden shoe, which is in form like the Damascus clog, but is inlaid with more taste. The people whom we encountered in our morning walk were Greeks or Jews.

The morning atmosphere was delicious, and we could well believe that the climate of Rhodes is the finest in the Mediterranean, and also that it is the least exciting of cities.

“Is it always so peaceful here?” we asked the guide.

“Nothing, if you please,” said he, “has happened here since the powder-explosion, nothing in the least.”

“And is the town as healthy as they say?”

“Nobody dies.”

The town is certainly clean, if it is in decay. In one street we found a row of mulberry-trees down the centre, but they were half decayed, like the street. I shall always think of Rhodes as a silent city,—except in the Jews' quarter, where the hope of selling an old coin set the whole hive humming,—and I suspect that is its normal condition.

XX.—AMONG THE ÆGEAN ISLANDS.

OUR sail all day among the Ægean islands was surpassingly lovely; our course was constantly changing to wind among them; their beautiful outlines and the soft atmosphere that enwrapped them disposed us to regard them in the light of Homeric history, and we did not struggle against the illusion. They are all treeless, and for the most part have scant traces of vegetation, except a thin green grass which seems rather a color than a substance. Here are the little islands of Chalce and Syme, once seats of Grecian culture, now the abode of a few thousand sponge-fishers. We pass Telos, and Nisyros, which was once ruled by Queen Artemisia, and had its share in the fortunes of the wars of Athens and Sparta. It is a small round mass of rock, but it rises twenty-two hundred feet out of the sea, and its volcanic soil is favorable to the grape. Opposite is the site of the ruins of Cnidus, a Dorian city of great renown, and famous for its shrine of Venus, and her statue by Praxiteles. We get an idea of the indentation of this coast of Asia Minor (and its consequent accessibility to early settlement and civilization) from the fact that Cnidus is situated on a very narrow peninsula ninety miles long.

Kos is celebrated not only for its size, loveliness, and fertility, but as the birthplace of Apelles and of Hippocrates; the inhabitants still venerate an enormous plane-tree under which the good physician is said to have dispensed his knowledge of healing. The city of Kos is on a fine plain, which gradually slopes from the mountain to the sea and is well covered with trees. The attractive town lies prettily along the shore, and is distinguished by a massive square mediaeval fortress, and by round stone windmills with specially long arms.

As we came around the corner of Kos, we had a view, distant but interesting, of the site of Halicarnassus, the modern town of Boudroum, with its splendid fortress, which the Turks wrested from the Knights of St. John. We sail by it with regret, for the student and traveller in the East comes to have a tender feeling for the simple nature of the father of history, and would forego some other pleasant experiences to make a pilgrimage to the birthplace of Herodotus. Here, also, was born the historian Dionysius. And here, a few years ago, were identified the exact site and rescued the remains of another of the Seven Wonders, the Tomb of Mausolus, built in honor of her husband by the Carian Artemisia, who sustained to him the double relation of sister and queen. This monument, which exhibited the perfection of Greek art, was four hundred and eleven feet in circumference and one hundred and forty feet high. It consisted of a round building, surrounded by thirty-six columns surmounted by a pyramid, and upon the latter stood a colossal group of a chariot and four horses. Some of the beautiful sculpture of this mausoleum can be seen in the British Museum.

We were all the afternoon endeavoring to get sight of Patinos, which the intervening islands hid from view. Every half-hour some one was discovering it, and announcing the fact. No doubt half the passengers will go to their graves comforted by the belief that they saw it. Some of them actually did have a glimpse of it towards night, between the islands of Lipso and Arki. It is a larger island than we expected to see; and as we had understood that the Revelations were written on a small rocky island, in fact a mere piece of rock, the feat seemed less difficult on a good-sized island. Its height is now crowned by the celebrated monastery of St. John, but the island is as barren and uninviting as it was when the Romans used it as a place of banishment.

We passed Astypatæa, Kalyminos, Leros, and a sprinkling of islets (as if a giant had sown this sea with rocks), each of which has a history, or is graced by a legend; but their glory is of the past. The chief support of their poor inhabitants is now the sponge-fishery. At sunset we had before us Icaria and Samos, and on the mainland the site of Miletus, now a fever-smitten place, whose vast theatre is almost the sole remains of the metropolis of the Ionic confederacy. Perhaps the centre of Ionic art and culture was, however, the island of Samos, but I doubt not the fame of its Samian wine has carried its name further than the exploits of its warriors, the works of its artists, or the thoughts of its philosophers. It was the birthplace of Pythagoras; it was once governed by Polycrates; there for a time Antony and Cleopatra established their court of love and luxury. In the evening we sailed close under its high cliffs, and saw dimly opposite Icaria, whose only merit or interest lies in its association with the ill-judged aerial voyage of Icarus, the soil of Daedalus.

Although the voyager amid these islands and along this historic coast profoundly feels the influence of the past, and, as he reads and looks and reflects, becomes saturated with its half-mysterious and delicious romance, he is nevertheless scarcely able to believe that these denuded shores and purple, rocky islets were the homes of heroes, the theatres of world-renowned exploits, the seats of wealth and luxury and power; that the marble of splendid temples gleamed from every summit and headland; that rich cities clustered on every island and studded the mainland; and that this region, bounteous in the fruits of the liberal earth, was not less prolific in vigorous men and beautiful women, who planted adventurous and remote colonies, and sowed around the Mediterranean the seeds of our modern civilization. In the present desolation and soft decay it is difficult to recall the wealth, the diversified industry, the martial spirit, the refinement of the races whose art and literature are still our emulation and despair. Here, indeed, were the beginnings of our era, of our modern life,—separated by a great gulf from the ancient civilization of the Nile,—the life of the people, the attempts at self-government, the individual adventure, the new development of human relations consequent upon commerce, and the freer exchange of products and ideas.

What these islands and this variegated and genial coast of Asia Minor might become under a government that did not paralyze effort and rob industry, it is impossible to say; but the impression is made upon the traveller that Nature herself is exhausted in these regions, and that it will need the rest or change of a geologic era to restore her pristine vigor. The prodigality and avarice of thousands of years have left the land—now that the flame of civilization has burned out—like the crater of an extinct volcano. But probably it is society and not nature that is dead. The island of Rhodes, for an example, might in a few years of culture again produce the forests that once supplied her hardy sons with fleets of vessels, and her genial soil, under any intelligent agriculture, would yield abundant harvests. The land is now divided into petty holdings, and each poor proprietor scratches it just enough to make it yield a scanty return.

During the night the steamer had come to Chios (Scio), and I rose at dawn to see—for we had no opportunity to land—the spot almost equally famous as the birthplace of Homer and the land of the Chian wine. The town lies along the water for a mile or more around a shallow bay opening to the east, a city of small white houses, relieved by a minaret or two; close to the water's edge are some three-story edifices, and in front is an ancient square fort, which has a mole extending into the water, terminated by a mediaeval bastion, behind which small vessels find shelter. Low by the shore, on the north, are some of the sturdy windmills peculiar to these islands, and I can distinguish with a glass a few fragments of Byzantine and mediaeval architecture among the common buildings. Staring at us from the middle of the town were two big signs, with the word “Hotel.”

To the south of the town, amid a grove of trees, are the white stones of the cemetery; the city of the dead is nearly as large as that of the living. Behind the city are orange orchards and many a bright spot of verdure, but the space for it is not broad. Sharp, bare, serrated, perpendicular ridges of mountain rise behind the town, encircling it like an amphitheatre. In the morning light these mountains are tawny and rich in color, tinged with purple and red. Chios is a pretty picture in the shelter of these hills, which gather for it the rays of the rising sun.

It is now half a century since the name of Scio rang through the civilized world as the theatre of a deed which Turkish history itself can scarcely parallel, and the island is vigorously regaining its prosperity. It only needs to recall the outlines of the story. The fertile island, which is four times the extent of the Isle of Wight, was the home of one hundred and ten thousand inhabitants, of whom only six thousand were Turks. The Greeks of Scio were said to differ physically and morally from all their kindred; their merchants were princes at home and abroad, art and literature flourished, with grace and refinement of manner, and there probably nowhere existed a society more industrious, gay, contented, and intelligent. Tempted by some adventurers from Samos to rebel, they drew down upon themselves the vengeance of the Turks, who retaliated the bloody massacre of Turkish men, women, and children by the insurrectionists, with a universal destruction. The city of Scio, with its thirty thousand inhabitants, and seventy villages, were reduced to ashes; twenty-five thousand of all ages and both sexes were slain, forty-five thousand were carried away as slaves, among them women and children who had been reared in luxury, and most of the remainder escaped, in a destitute state, into other parts of Greece. At the end of the summer's harvest of death, only two thousand Sciotes were left on the island. An apologist for the Turks could only urge that the Greeks would have been as unmerciful under like circumstances.

None of the first-class passengers were up to see Chios,—not one for poor Homer's sake; but the second-class were stirring for their own, crawling out of their comfortables, giving the babies a turn, and the vigilant flea a taste of the morning air. When the Russian peasant, who sleeps in the high truncated frieze cap, and in the coat which he wore in Jerusalem,—a garment short in the waist, gathered in pleats underneath the shoulders, and falling in stiff expanding folds below,—when he first gets up and rubs his eyes, he is an astonished being. His short-legged wife is already astir, and beginning to collect the materials of breakfast. Some of the Greeks are making coffee; there is a smell of coffee, and there are various other unanalyzed odors. But for pilgrims, and pilgrims so closely packed that no one can stir without moving the entire mass, these are much cleaner than they might be expected to be, and cleaner, indeed, than they can continue to be, and keep up their reputation. And yet, half an hour among them, looking out from the bow for a comprehensive view of Chios, is quite enough. I wished, then, that these people would change either their religion or their clothes.

Last night we had singing on deck by an extemporized quartette of young Americans, with harmonious and well-blended voices, and it was a most delightful contrast to the caterwauling, accompanied by the darabouka, which we constantly hear on the forward deck, and which the Arabs call singing. Even the fat, good-humored little Moslem from Damascus, who lives in the pen with the merchant-prince of that city, listened with delight and declared that it was tyeb kateer. Who knows but these people, who are always singing, have some appreciation of music after all?

XXI.—SMYRNA AND EPHESUS.

WHEN we left Chios we sailed at first east, right into the sun, gradually turned north and rounded the promontory of the mainland, and then, east by south, came into the beautiful landlocked bay of Smyrna, in which the blue water changes into a muddy green. At length we passed on the right a Turkish fortress, which appeared as formidable as a bathing establishment, and Smyrna lay at the bottom of the gulf, circling the shore,—white houses, fruit-trees, and hills beyond.

The wind was north, as it always is here in the morning, and the landing was difficult. We had the usual excitement of swarming boats and clamorous boatmen and lively waves. One passenger went into the water instead of the boat, but was easily fished out by his baggy trousers, and, as he was a Greek pilgrim, it was thought that a little water would n't injure him. Coming to the shore we climbed with difficulty out of the bobbing boat upon the sea-wall; the shiftless Turkish government will do nothing to improve the landing at this great port,—if the Sultan can borrow any money he builds a new palace on the Bosphorus, or an ironclad to anchor in front of it.

Smyrna may be said to have a character of its own in not having any character of its own. One of the most ancient cities on the globe, it has no appearance of antiquity; containing all nationalities, it has no nationality; the second commercial city of the East, it has no chamber of commerce, no Bourse, no commercial unity; its citizens are of no country and have no impulse of patriotism; it is an Asiatic city with a European face; it produces nothing, it exchanges everything,—the fabrics of Europe, the luxuries of the Orient; the children of the East are sent to its schools, but it has no literary character nor any influence of culture; it is hospitable to all religions, and conspicuous for none; it is the paradise of the Turks, the home of luxury and of beautiful women, but it is also a favorite of the mosquito, and, until recently, it has been the yearly camp of the plague; it is not the most healthful city in the world, and yet it is the metropolis of the drug-trade.

Smyrna can be compared to Damascus in its age and in its perpetuity under all discouragements and changes,—the shocks of earthquakes, the constant visitations of pestilence, and the rule of a hundred masters. It was a great city before the migration of the Ionians into Asia Minor, it saw the rise and fall of Sardis, it was restored from a paralysis of four centuries by Alexander. Under all vicissitudes it seems to have retained its character of a great mart of exchange, a necessity for the trade of Asia; and perhaps the indifference of its conglomerate inhabitants to freedom and to creeds contributed to its safety. Certainly it thrived as well under the Christians, when it was the seat of one of the seven churches, as it did under the Romans, when it was a seat of a great school of sophists and rhetoricians, and it is equally prosperous under the sway of the successor of Mohammed. During the thousand years of the always decaying Byzantine Empire it had its share of misfortunes, and its walls alternately, at a later day, displayed the star and crescent, and the equal arms of the cross of St. John. Yet, in all its history, I seem to see the trading, gay, free, but not disorderly Smyrna passing on its even way of traffic and of pleasure.

Of its two hundred thousand and more inhabitants, about ninety thousand are Rayah Greeks, and about eighty thousand are Turks. There is a changing population of perhaps a thousand Europeans, there are large bodies of Jews and Armenians, and it was recently estimated to have as many as fifteen thousand Levantines. These latter are the descendants of the marriage of Europeans with Greek and Jewish women; and whatever moral reputation the Levantines enjoy in the Levant, the women of this mixture are famous for their beauty. But the race is said to be not self-sustaining, and is yielding to the original types. The languages spoken in Smyrna are Turkish, a Greek dialect (the Romaic), Spanish, Italian, Trench, English, and Arabic, probably prevailing in the order named. Our own steamer was much more Oriental than the city of Smyrna. As soon as we stepped ashore we seemed to have come into a European city; the people almost all wear the Frank dress, the shops offer little that is peculiar. One who was unfamiliar with bazaars might wonder at the tangle of various lanes, but we saw nothing calling for comment. A walk through the Jewish quarter, here as everywhere else the dirtiest and most picturesque in the city, will reward the philosophic traveller with the sight of lovely women lolling at every window. It is not the fashion for Smyrniote ladies to promenade the streets, but they mercifully array themselves in full toilet and stand in their doorways.

The programme of the voyage of the Achille promised us a day and a half in Smyrna, which would give us time to visit Ephesus. We were due Friday noon; we did not arrive till Saturday noon. This vexatious delay had caused much agitation on board; to be cheated out of Ephesus was an outrage which the tourists could not submit to; they had come this way on purpose to see Ephesus. They would rather give up anything else in the East. The captain said he had no discretion, he must sail at 4 p. M. The passengers then prepared a handsome petition to the agent, begging him to detain the steamer till eight o'clock, in order to permit them to visit Ephesus by a special train. There is a proclivity in all those who can write to sign any and every thing except a subscription paper, and this petition received fifty-six eager and first-class signatures. The agent at Smyrna plumply refused our request, with unnecessary surliness; but upon the arrival of the captain, and a consultation which no doubt had more reference to freight than to the petition, the official agreed, as a special favor, to detain the steamer till eight o'clock, but not a moment longer.