The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Near East, by Robert Hichens.

Miramar faded across the pale waters of the Adriatic, which lay like a dream at the foot of the hills where Triest seemed sleeping, all its activities stilled at the summons of peace. Beneath its tower the orange-colored sail of a fishing-boat caught the sunlight, and gleamed like some precious fabric, then faded, too, as the ship moved onward to the forgotten region of rocks and islands, of long, gray mountains, of little cities and ancient fortresses, of dim old churches, from whose campanile the medieval voices of bells ring out the angelus to a people still happily primitive, still unashamed to be picturesque. By the way of the sea we journeyed to a capital where no carriages roll through the narrow streets, where there is not a railway-station, where the citizens are content to go on foot about their business, and where three quarters of the blessings of civilization are blessedly unknown. We had still to touch at Pola, in whose great harbor the dull-green war-ships of Austria lay almost in the shadow of the vast Roman amphitheater, which has lifted its white walls, touched here and there with gold, above the sea for some sixteen hundred years, curiously graceful despite its gigantic bulk, the home now of grasses and thistles, where twenty thousand spectators used to assemble to take their pleasure.

But when Pola was left behind, the ship soon entered the watery paradise. Miramar, Triest, were forgotten. Dalmatia is a land of forgetting, seems happily far away, cut off by the sea from many banalities, many active annoyances of modern life.

Places that are, or that seem to be, remote often hold a certain melancholy, a tristesse of "old, unhappy, far-off things." But Dalmatia has a serene atmosphere, a cheerful purity, a clean and a cozy gaiety which reach out hands to the traveler, and take him at once into intimacy and the breast of a home. Before entering it the ship coasts along a naked region, in which pale, almost flesh-colored hills are backed by mountains of a ghastly grayness. Flesh-color and steel are almost cruelly blended. No habitations were visible. The sea, protected on our right by lines of islands, was waveless. No birds flew above it; no boats moved on it. We seemed to be creeping down into the ultimate desolation.

But presently the waters widened out. At the foot of the hills appeared here and there white groups of houses. A greater warmth, like a breath of hope, stole into the air. White and yellow sails showed on the breast of the sea. Two sturdy men, wearing red caps, and standing to ply their oars, hailed us in the Slav dialect as they passed on their way to the islands. The huge, gray Velebit Mountains still bore us company on our voyage to the South, but they were losing their almost wicked look of dreariness. In the golden light of afternoon romance was descending upon them. And now a long spur of green land thrust itself far out, as if to bar our way onward. The islands closed in upon us again. A white town smiled on us far off at the edge of the happy, green land. It looked full of promises, a little city not to be passed without regretting. It was Zara, the capital without a railway-station of the forgotten country.

Zara, Trau, Spalato, Ragusa, Castelnuovo, Cattaro, Sebenico—these, with two or three other places, represent Dalmatia to the average traveler. Ragusa is, perhaps, the most popular and interesting; Spalato the most populous and energetic; Cattaro the most remarkable scenically. Trau leaves a haunting memory in the mind of him who sees it. Castelnuovo is a little paradise marred in some degree by the soldiers who infest it, and who seem strangely out of place in its tiny ways and its tree-shaded piazza on the hilltop. But Zara has a peculiar charm, half gay, half brightly tender. And nowhere else in all Dalmatia are such exquisite effects of light wedded to water to be seen as on Zara's Canale.

Zara, like other sirens, is deceptive. The city has a face which gives little indication of its soul. Along the shore lie tall and cheerful houses,—almost palaces they are,—solid and big, modern, with windows opening to the sea, and separated from it only by a broad walk, edged by a strip of pavement, from which might be taken a dive into the limpid water. And here, when the ship tied up, a well-dressed throng of joyous citizens was taking the air. Children were playing and laughing. Two or three row-boats slipped through the gold and silver which the sun, just setting behind the island of Ugljan opposite, showered toward the city. Music came from some place of entertainment. A simple liveliness suggested prosperous homes, the well-being of a community apart, which chose to live "out of the world," away from railroads, motor-cars, and carriage traffic, but which knew how to be modern in its own quiet and decorous way.

Yet Zara had a great soaring campanile—it had been visible far off at sea—and tiny streets and old buildings, San Donato, the duomo, San Simeone; and five fountains,—the cinque pozzi,—and a Venetian tower,—the Torre di Buovo d'Antona,—and fortification gardens, and lion gateways. Where were all these? A sound of bells came from behind the palaces. And these bells seemed to be proclaiming the truth of Zara.

Bells ringing in hidden places behind the palaces; bells calling across strange gardens lifted high on mighty walls; bells whispering among pines and murmuring across green depths of glass-like water; bells chiming above the yellowing vines on tiny islands! Who that remembers Zara remembers not Zara's bells?

Walk a few steps from the sea, passing between the big houses which front it into the Piazza delle Erbe, and you come at once into a busy strangeness of Croatia girdled about by Italy. Dalmatia has been possessed wholly or in part by Romans, Goths, Slavs, Hungarians, Turks, Venetians. Now smart Austrian soldiers make themselves at home in Zara, but Italy seems still to rule there, stretching hands out of the past. Italian may be heard on all sides, but the peasants who throng the calle and the market-place and the harbor speak a Slavonic dialect, and in the piazza on any morning, almost in the shadow of the Romanesque cathedral, and watched over by a griffin perched on a high Corinthian column hung with chains, which announce its old service as a pillory, you may hear their chatter, and see the gay colors of costumes which to the untraveled might perhaps suggest comic opera.

There is a wildness of the near East in this medieval Italian town, a wildness which blooms and fades between tall houses of stone, facing each other so closely that friend might almost clasp hand with friend leaning from window to opposite window. Against the somber grays and browns of façades, set in the deep shadows of the paved alleys which are Zara's streets, move brilliant colors, scarlet and silver, blue and crimson and silver. Multitudes of coins and curious heavy ornaments glitter on the caps and the dresses of women. Enormous boys and great, striding men, brave in embroidered jackets, with bright-red caps too small for the head, silver buttons, red sashes stuck full of weapons and other impedimenta, gaiters, and pointed shoes, march hither and thither, calmly intent on some business which has brought them in from the outlying districts. It varies, of course, with the changing seasons. In the latter part of October and beginning of November most of the male peasants were selling very large hares. Live cocks and hens were being disposed of by many of the women, and it is a common thing in Zara to see well-dressed people bearing about with them bunches of puffed-out and drearily blinking poultry, which they have bought casually at some corner; by the great Venetian tower; or near the round, two-storied church of San Donato, founded on the spot where once stood a Roman forum, whose pavement still remains; or perhaps by San Simeone, close to the palace of the governor, where under the black eagles of Austria the sentry, in blue and bright yellow, stands drowsily in the sunshine before his black and yellow box.

Sometimes the peasants bring live stock to church. One morning, on a week day, I went into San Simeone, to which Queen Elizabeth of Hungary gave the superb arca of silver gilt which contains, it is said, the remains of the saint. I found there a number of peasants, men and women, all in characteristic costumes. Only peasants were there. Some were quietly sitting, some kneeling, some standing, with their market-baskets set down on the pavement beside them. In a hidden place behind the high altar, above which is raised the great, carved sarcophagus, priests were droning the office. A peasant in red, with a gesture, invited me to sit beside him. I did so, and he whispered in my ear some words I could not understand; but I gathered that something very important was about to take place. Every face was expectant. All eyes were earnestly fixed upon the sarcophagus. A woman came in, carrying in her arms a turkey, which looked anxious-minded, crossed herself, and waited with us, gazing. The droning voices ceased. A sort of carillon sounded brightly. We all knelt, the woman with the turkey, too, as a priest in scarlet and white mounted the steps which divide the altar from the area. There was a moment of deep silence. Then the great, glittering, and sloping lid, with its recumbent figure of the saint, slowly rose between the bronze supporting figures. My peasant friend touched me, stood up, and led the way toward the altar. I followed him with the rest of the congregation, and we filed slowly up the steps, and one by one gazed down into the dim coffin. There I saw a skull, and the vague brown remains of what had once been a human being, lying in the midst of votive offerings. On the fingers of one hand, which looked as if made of tobacco leaf, were clusters of rings. The fat, bronze faces on each side seemed smiling. But the peasants stood in awe. And presently the great lid sank down. All made the sign of the cross. The market-baskets were picked up, and the turkey was restored to the sunlight.

Close to San Simeone are the cinque pozzi—five fountains in a row, with iron wheels above them. They are between four and five hundred years old, and lie almost at the foot of the Venetian tower, near a Corinthian column and the fragments of a Roman arch. Just behind them some steps lead up to one of the delicious shady places of Zara. Mount them, and you will have a happy surprise such as the little Dalmatian cities are always ready to give you.

You have been walking away from the sea, with your back to the harbor, and here is another, but minute, harbor nestling under a great fortress wall above which, in a garden, some young soldiers are idly leaning and laughing under trees with leaves of gold and red-brown. Brightly painted vessels, closely packed together, lie on the blue-green water. Beyond them are the trees of Blažeković Park. And just beneath you, on your right, is the great, yellow stone Porta di Terra Ferma, with its winged lion of St. Mark. Beyond, over the narrow exit from the harbor, the landlocked Canale di Zara, which sometimes, especially at evening, reminded me of the Venice lagoons, lies glittering in the sun. And a Venetian fort on the peak of Ugljan shows like a strange and determined shadow against the blue of the sky.

The great white campanile which dominates Zara, and which from the sea looks light and graceful, is the campanile of the duomo, Sant' Anastasia, and was partly built by the Venetians, and completed not many years ago. From the narrow street which skirts the duomo this campanile, though majestic, looks heavy and almost overwhelming, too huge, too tremendously solid, for the little town in which it is set. And, its blanched hue, beautiful from the sea, has a rather unpleasant effect against the deep, time-worn color of the church, the façade of which, with its two rose windows, one large, one small, its three beautiful, mellow-toned doorways, and its curious and somehow touching, though stolid, statues, is very fine. The interior, not specially interesting, contains some glorious Gothic stalls dating from the fifteenth century. They are of black wood, relieved with bosses and tiny statuettes of bright gold, and above each one is the half-length of a gilded and painted man, wearing a beard and holding a scroll. The Porta Marina, through which the chief harbor is gained, is remarkable for its carved, dark-gray lion, companioned by two white cherubs of stone brilliantly full of life despite their almost terrifying obesity. One of the most beautiful things in Zara is the delicate and lovely campanile of Santa Maria, over six hundred years old. St. Grisogono, the church of the city's patron saint, was in the hands of workmen and could not be visited when I was in Dalmatia.

Almost the whole of Zara is surrounded by water. On the great walls of the ancient fortifications are gardens, and from these gardens you look down on quiet inlets of the sea. Old buildings, old walls and gardens, tiny, medieval streets through which no carriage ever passes, fountains, lion gateways, painted boats lying on clear and apparently motionless waters shut in from the open sea by long lines of mountainous islands, pine-trees and olives and golden vineyards, and over all an ancient music of bells. It is difficult to say good-by to Zara, even though Spalato sends out a summons from the riviera of red and of gold, even though Ragusa calls from its leafy groves under the Fort Imperiale.

Bora, the wind of the dead, blew when our ship rounded the lighthouse of Spalato long after darkness had fallen. And the following day was the "giorno dei morti." The strange cathedral, octagonal without, circular within, once the mausoleum of the Emperor Diocletian, was crowded with citizens and peasants devoutly praying. Incense rose between the dark, hoary walls, the columns of granite and porphyry, to the dome of brick. Outside in the wind the black hornblende sphinx kept watch on those who came and went, mourning for their departed. The sky was a heavy gray, and the temple was dark, and looked wrinkled and seared with age, and sad despite its pagan frieze showing the wild joys of the chase, despite the loveliness of its thirteenth-century pulpit of limestone and marble, raised high on wonderfully graceful columns with elaborately carved capitals.

Spalato is the biggest, most bustling town of Dalmatia. Much of it is built into the great palace of Diocletian, which lies over against the sea, huge, massive, powerful, once probably noble, but now disfigured by the paltry windows and the green shutters of modern dwellings, by a triviality of common commercial life, sparrows where eagles should be. When nature takes a ruin, she usually glorifies it, or touches it with a tenderness of romance. But when people in the wine trade lay hold upon it, hang out their washing in it, and establish their cafés and their bakeries and their butchers' shops in the midst of its rugged walls, its arches, and its columns, the ruin suffers, and the people in the wine trade seem to lose in value instead of gaining in importance.

Spalato is a strange confusion of old and new. It lacks the delicacy of Zara, the harmonious beauty of Ragusa. One era seems to fight with another within it. Here is a noble twelfth-century campanile, nearly a hundred and eighty feet high, there a common row of little shops full of cheap and uninviting articles. Turning a corner, one comes unexpectedly upon a Corinthian temple. It is the Battistero di San Giovanni, once perhaps the private temple of Diocletian. For the moment no one is near it, and despite the icy breath of Bora raging through the city and crying, "This is the day of the dead!" a calm of dead years infolds you as you enter the massive doorway and pass into the shadow beneath the stone wagon-roof. A few steps, and the smell of fish assails you, hundreds of strings of onions greet your eyes, and the heavy rolling of enormous barrels of wine over stone pavements breaks through the noise of the wind. You have come unexpectedly out through a gateway of the palace on to the quay to the south, and are in the midst of commercial activities. The contrasts are picturesque, but they are rough, and, when complicated by Bora, are confusing, almost distressing. Nevertheless, Spalato is well worth a visit. It contains a small, but remarkable, museum, specially interesting for its sarcophagi found at Salona and its collection of inscriptions. The sarcophagus showing the passage of the Red Sea is very curious. Apart from the now disfigured palace, the Battistero, the very interesting and peculiar cathedral, with its vestibule, its rotunda, and its Piazza of the Sphinx, like nothing else I have seen, the town is full of picturesque nooks and corners; and its fruit market at the foot of the massive octagonal Hrvoja Tower, which dates from 1481, is perhaps even more animated, more full of strangeness and color, than Zara's Piazza delle Erbe. Here may be seen turbans of crimson on the handsome heads of men, elaborately embroidered crimson jackets covering immense shoulders and chests, women dressed in blue and red, white and silver, or with heads and busts draped in the most brilliant shade of orange color. When Bora blows, the men look like monks or Mephistopheles; for some—the greater number—wrap themselves from head to foot in long cloaks and hoods of brown, while others of a more lively temperament shroud themselves in red. They are a handsome people, rustic-looking, yet often noble, with kind yet bold faces, steady eyes, and a magnificent physique. Their gait is large and loose. There are giants in Dalmatia in our days. And many of the women are not only pretty, but have delightful expressions, open, pure, and gay. There seems to be nothing to fear in Dalmatia. I have driven through the wilds, and over the flanks of the mountains, both in Dalmatia and Herzegovina, in the dead of the night, and had no unpleasant experience. The peasants have a high reputation for honesty and general probity as well as for courage. And beggars are scarce, if they exist at all, in Dalmatia.

Trau has a unique charm. The riviera of the Sette Castelli stretches between it and Spalato, along the shore of an inlet of the sea which is exactly like a blue lake. And what a marvelous blue it is on a cloudless autumn day! Every one knows what is meant by a rapture of spring. Those who traverse that riviera at the end of October, or even in the opening days of November, will know what a rapture of autumn can be.

Miles upon miles of bright-golden and rose-red vineyards edge the startling blue of the sea. And the vines are not stunted and ugly, but large, leafy, growing with a rank luxuriance. Among them, with trunks caught as it were in the warm embraces of these troops of bacchantes, are thousands of silver-green olive-trees. And peasants in red, peasants in orange-color, move waist-deep, sometimes shoulder-deep, through the glory, under the glory of the sun. Here and there in a grass-grown clearing, like a small islet in the ocean of vines, appears a hut of brushwood and woven grasses, and under the trees before it sit peasants eating the grapes they have just picked warm from the plants. Now and then a sportsman may be seen, in peasant costume, smoking a cigarette, his gun over his shoulder, passing slowly with his red-brown dog among the red-gold vines. Now and then a distant report rings out among the olives. Then the warm silence falls again over this rapture of autumn. And so, you come to Trau.

Trau is a tiny town set on a tiny island approached by bridges, medieval, sleepy, yet happy, almost drowsily joyous, in appearance, with that air of half-gentle, half-blithe satisfaction with self which makes so many Dalmatian places characteristic and almost touching. How odd to live in Trau! Yet might it not be a delicious experience to live in dear little Trau with the right person, separated from the world by the shining water,—for who comes over the bridges, when all is said?—guarded by the lion and the statue which crown the gateway, cradled in peace and mellow fruitfulness?

The gateway passed, a narrow alley or two threaded, a corner turned, and, lo! a piazza, a loggia with fine old columns, a tiled roof and a clock-tower, a campanile and a cathedral with a great porch, and underneath the porch a marvel of a doorway! Can tiny Trau on its tiny island really possess all this?

The lion doorway of the duomo at Trau is certainly one of the finest things in Dalmatia. The duomo dates from the thirteenth century, but has been twice enlarged. It is not large now, but small and high, dim, full of the smell of stale incense, blackened by age, almost strangely silent, almost strangely secluded. In the choir is a deep well with an old well-head. There are many tombs in the pavement. The finely carved pulpit, with its little lion, and the fifteenth-century choir-stalls are well worth seeing, and the roof of the chapel of St. Giovanni Orsini, which contains a great marble tomb, has been made wonderful by age, like an old face made wonderful by wrinkles. But Radovan's doorway is certainly the marvel of Trau. In color it is a rich, deep, dusty brown, and it is elaborately and splendidly carved with two big lions, with Adam on a lion and with Eve on a lioness. The lioness is grasping a lamb. There is a multiplicity of other detail. The two big lions, which stick out on each side of the round-arched doorway, as if about to step forth into the alleys of Trau, have a fine air of life, though they both look tame. Their mouths are open, but almost smiling.

When you leave the duomo, wander through the Venetian streets of this wonderful little island city, where Gothic windows and beautifully carved balconies look out to, lean forth to, the calm, blue waters, edged by the red and the gold of the vines. For this place is unique and has an unique charm. Peace dwells here, and beauty has found a quiet abiding-place, where it lingers, and will linger, I hope, for many centuries yet, girdled by olive-groves, by vineyards, by sun-kissed waters, guarded by the lions of Venice.

From Spalato I visited the white ruins of Salona, where the Emperor Diocletian was born, and near which, in his palace at Spalato, he spent the last eight years of his life, cultivating his garden, seeking after philosophy, and, let us hope, repenting of his bitter persecution of the Christians. From the hill, on the site of the Basilica Urbana, I saw one of those frigid and almost terrible lemon sunsets which come with the wind of the dead. I stayed till night despite the intense cold, till the fragments of the city, scattered far over the sloping ground above the riviera of the Sette Castelli, and creeping up to the solitary dwelling-house built by Professor Bulic of old Roman stones, took on sad and unnatural pallors in the darkness, till lonely columns stood up like watching specters, and fragments of wall were like specters crouching. For a long while the lemon hue persisted in the western sky, and the voice of the wind rose with the night, crying among the burial-places.

A few hours' voyage on a splendid ship, and you step ashore at Gravosa, the port for Ragusa, the most popular place in Dalmatia, and in many ways the most attractive. For it is embowered in woods and gardens; contains remarkable old buildings; is girdled about by tremendous fortress walls, and by forts perched on bastions of rock overlooking the sea and the isle of Lacroma, where Richard Cœur de Lion touched land and founded a monastery; is thoroughly and deliciously medieval, yet full of Slav and Austrian life; possesses a railway-station, many well-built villas, and a good hotel, and is surrounded by delightful country. Perhaps in all Dalmatia Ragusa is the best center from which to take long walks and make expeditions. It is cheery, cozy, and wonderful at the same time. The terrific walls of the fortresses do not appal or overwhelm, for all about them cluster the gardens. Ivy climbs over the archways. In what was once a moat the grass grows thickly, the flowers bloom, and many trees give shade. This is a medieval paradise, and its inhabitants have reason to rejoice in it and to say there is no place like it.

Though small, it is intricate. At every moment one is surprised by some unexpected view, by some marvel of masonry, militant or ecclesiastical; by a fountain or a statue, an old doorway, a courtyard, a campanile, an exquisite façade, with arches and lovely columns, balconies and carved window-frames; by cloisters, a strange alley ending in flights of steps, which lead to a mountain from which a fort looks down; by a secret harbor, or a secret garden, or a little magical grove nestling beneath a protecting wall which dates from the Middle Ages, when Ragusa was a proud republic.

Was Burne-Jones ever in Ragusa? It is like one of the little enchanted towns he loved to paint in the backgrounds of his pictures. Was William Morris ever there? It is like a city in one of his poems. It is full of churches, and their towers are full of bells. Monks and priests pass perpetually through the narrow streets with smartly dressed Austrian soldiers. And military music, the triumph of bugles and trumpets, the beat and rattle of drums, joins with the drowsy sound of church organs, and the old voices of clocks chiming the hours, to make the symphony of Ragusa. Men and women from the Breno Valley, from Canali the golden, where oaks grow among the rocks, and the autumn vineyards are a wonder forever to haunt the memory, from Melada and the Stag Islands, from the Ombla and Herzegovina, pass all day down "the Stradone," stroll in the Brsalje, a piazza with mulberry-trees overlooking the sea, talk by the Amerling fountain, or sit on the wall by Porta Pille under the statue of San Biagio, the patron saint of the town. And each one is in a picturesque, perhaps even a brilliant, costume. The men often wear long chains, and carry handsomely chased weapons and long, elaborate pipes. Some have sheepskins flung jauntily over their shoulders, and bright-red caps. The women wear golden ornaments, embroidered jackets, and marvelous aprons almost like prayer-rugs, handsome pins, pleated head-dresses, bright-colored handkerchiefs or tiny caps, coins hanging on chains over their thickly growing hair.

The chief hotels, the villas, and the railway-station, where a row of victorias is drawn up,—for this is no Zara, but a city which believes that it "moves with the times,"—lie among roses, oleanders, single rhododendrons, trees, and masses of luxuriant vegetation outside Porta Pille. As soon as you have passed beneath San Biagio and descended the hill, you are in a bright, medieval world, in the heart of one of the most original and fascinating little cities that exists in Europe.

On the left of the Stradone, the chief street and the newest, between two and three hundred years old, at right angles to it, shadowed by tall and ancient houses, tiny alleys, ending in steep flights of steps, lead up toward the mountain. On the flat to its right is a happy maze of alleys, clean, strange, old, yet never sad. A delicious cheerfulness reigns in Ragusa. From the dimness of venerable doorways smiling faces look forth. They lean down from carved stone balconies. Gay voices chatter at the foot of frowning walls, huge bastions, mighty watch-towers; before the statue of Roland, near the Dogana which has a loggia and Gothic windows; by the fine and massive Onofrio fountain, which for over four hundred and seventy years has given water to the inhabitants; among the doves by Porta Place, which leads to the harbor. The wide, but intimate, Stradone toward noon and evening is thronged with cheerful and neatly dressed citizens, strolling to and fro in the soft air between the delicious little shops full of fine rugs, weapons, chains, and filigree ornaments.

Opposite the fountain of Onofrio are the church, monastery, and cloisters of the Franciscans, with a courtyard and an old pharmacy containing some wonderful vases. At the east end of the Stradone, away to the right, are the church of San Biagio, the cathedral, and the Palazzo dei Rettori. On the other side of the street are the military hospital and the church of the Jesuits. Not far away is the Dominican monastery.

Of these the most remarkable is the rector's palace. But the cloisters of the Franciscans are beautiful and hold an extraordinary charm and peace. The rector's palace is a noble Renaissance building, with a courtyard containing a very handsome staircase, and with a really splendid fifteenth-century colonnade fronting the piazza. The carving of the capitals of the columns is wonderfully effective. Three are said to be inferior to the remaining four, which were the work of an architect of Naples, Onofrio. But all are remarkable. The little winged boys have a tenderness and liveliness, a softness and activity, which are quite exquisite. The windows of Venetian Gothic are beautiful; and the whole effect of this façade, with its carved doorway, the round arches, richly dark, with notes of white, the two tiers of stone seats raised one above the other, and the double rows of windows, square and arched, in the shadow of the colonnade, is absolutely noble.

The cathedral is not very interesting, and the "Assumption" over the high altar, though attributed to Titian, cannot be by him. Much more attractive is a copy of the Madonna della Sedia of Raphael. The treasury contains some remarkable jewels and silver and many relics.

In the Dominican church there is a genuine Titian, and there are some very curious and interesting pictures by Nicolo Ragusano, a painter of Ragusa who lived in the fifteenth century. The cloisters contain a white well-head, guarded by graceful columns, orange-trees, and flowers, above which peer the small windows of the monks. But if one had to be a monk in Ragusa, surely it would be wise to cast in your lot with the Franciscans at the other end of the street, whose Romanesque fourteenth-century cloisters with octagonal columns are quite beautiful and in excellent preservation. The capitals of the columns are carved with animals. Palms flourish there, and roses. Above, a terrace, with a wonderful balustrade—a series of tiny arches resting on tiny columns, a sort of stone echo of the arches and columns below,—runs all round the court. The peace is profound, but not sad. As one lingers there one can understand, indeed one can scarcely help understanding, the very peculiar charm which must often attach to the monkish life.

Ragusa contains some nine thousand inhabitants. One of them remarked that eight hundred of these were ecclesiastics. And he was unsympathetic enough to add, "E molto troppo!" Perhaps his statement was untrue. But certainly the ways of Ragusa swarm with religious. Nevertheless,—one thinks of Rome, with its crowds of priests and its crowds of free-thinkers,—the inhabitants of Ragusa seem to be very devout. In almost all of the many churches, at all times of the day, people may be found praying, meditating, telling their beads, worshiping at shrines of the saints.

Around Ragusa there are many beautiful walks, on Lacroma, on Lapad by Gravosa, on Monte Sergio, on Monte Petka. A really superb drive is the expedition to Castelnuovo in the Bocche di Cattaro, along the Dalmatian riviera, which is as fine as almost any part of the French riviera, and which is still wild and natural, not yet turned into a vanity-box. Those who take this glorious drive will cross the frontier into Herzegovina, and, best of all, they will pass by the wonderful vineyards of Canali, which roll in waves of gold to the very feet of a chain of naked and savage mountains.

The voyage from Ragusa to Cattaro is one of the finest in Europe. The entrance into the bocche, the journey through them, and the arrival at Cattaro, hidden away like some precious thing that must not be revealed to the dull gaze of the ordinary world, almost, but mercifully not quite, under the giant shadow of the Black Mountain, make for the voyager what comes to seem at length a deliberately planned, and triumphantly carried out, scenic crescendo, which closes in sheer magic.

The coast of Dalmatia is guarded by chains of islands and is pierced by many long and narrow inlets. During the voyage from Triest or Fiume to the extreme south of the country, the ship, often for many hours, seems to be traveling over a series of lakes. Rarely does she emerge into open water. But between Gravosa and the bocche there is open sea. Nature has not neglected to make her preparations. She gives you the stretch of open sea as a contrast to what is coming. And just when you are beginning to feel its monotony, the prow of the vessel veers to the left, seems to be sensitively searching for some unseen opening in the rugged coast. She finds that opening between Punta d'Ostro and Punta d'Arza, leaving the little isle of Rondoni, with its round, yellow fort, on the right and the open sea behind.

The mountains which guard the bocche are nearly six thousand feet high, bare, cruelly precipitous, in color a peculiar, almost ashy, gray. When you are at a long distance from them they seem to descend sheer into the water; but as you draw nearer over the waveless sea, you find that along their bases runs a strip of beautiful fertile country, green, thickly wooded in many places, with gay little villages set among radiant gardens, with a white highroad, along which peasants are passing. There is Castelnuovo on its hill among leafy groves, with its old, narrow fortress on the rock fought for by Turks and Venetians; near by is Zelenika; and there another large fortress, with the Austrian flag above it. The sensitive prow of the ship veers again, this time to the southeast, where the ash-gray precipices surely hold the sea forever in check. But the ship knows better. The Canale di Kumbur shows itself, leading to the splendid Bay of Teodo surreptitiously observed from afar by the mountains of Montenegro. If you held your breath and listened, might you not hear the boom of guns by the lake of Scutari? All sense of being at sea fades from you as the ship penetrates ever more deeply into the secret recesses of the mountains. This is like superb lake scenery, austere, grand, almost terrible, and yet radiant. Nature is even coquettish on this perfect morning of autumn, for in these remoter regions she has cast a swathe of the lightest and whitest possible mist, like one of those scarfs of Tunis, over the cultivated land which edges the precipices. As the ship draws near, the mist seems to disperse in a sparkle of gold, revealing intimate beauties, full of charming detail: a little Byzantine church with a pale-green cupola, a priest in a sunny garden leaning over a creeper-covered wall, white horses trotting briskly along a curly, white road, soldiers marching through a village with a faint beat of drums, children perhaps going to school through a riot of green. But the mist is ever there in the distance, part of the spirit of autumn.

Do not miss the tiny twin islands with their two little churches. One of them, Santa Maria dello Scalpello, is a place of pilgrimage. Old, gray, minute yet dignified, with its few tall cypresses about it, it so completely covers the island that you see only a church with cypresses apparently floating upon the water. Now there is a scatter of ivory-white birds on the steel-colored surface, a glint of powder-blue on the ridges made by the ship. Marvelous harmonies of pearl color, gray, and blue, with here and there faint dashes of primrose-yellow, make magic in the distance before you. This is really an enchanted place, home of a peace that seems touched with eternity. And the ship creeps on, as if fearing perhaps to disturb it, farther and farther into places more secret still, and of a peace even more profound, till the pearl color and the gray, with their hints of yellow and blue, begin to give way to another dominion. The last bay has been gained. The secret of Cattaro is to be at length revealed. Through the wondrous delicacies of the now rather suggested than actually seen mist, and above them, dawns a marvelous pageant of autumn, which bears a curiously exact resemblance to one of Turner's superb visions.

It is like a dream, but a dream of ardor and power, in which browns, reds, russets, greens, and many shades of gold and of yellow march together from the circle of the waters through climbing valleys to the mountains, which here at last give pause to the sea. And bells are ringing in this great, this triumphant dream. And now surely faint outlines are becoming visible, as of turrets and cupolas striving to break in glory through the mist. The fires of autumn glow more fiercely, like a furnace fanned. Trails of smoke show here and there. Mist, smoke, and fire—it is like a grand conflagration. The turrets reveal themselves as great groups of trees. But the smoke rises from household fires; the cupolas are cupolas of churches; and the bells are the bells of Cattaro, calling from this vale of enchantment to the cannon which are thundering before Scutari beyond the mountains of Montenegro.

IN AND NEAR ATHENS

Chapter II

IN AND NEAR ATHENS

What Greece is like in spring, I do not know, when rains have fallen, and round Athens the country is green, when the white dust perhaps does not whirl through Constitution Square and over the garden about the Zappeion, when the intensity of the sun is not fierce on the road to the bare Acropolis, and the guardians of the Parthenon, in their long coats the color of a dervish's hat, do not fall asleep in the patches of shade cast on the hot ground by Doric columns. I was there at the end of the summer, and many said to me, "You should come in spring, when it is green."

Disembark at the Piræus at dawn, take a carriage, and drive by Phalerum, the bathing-place of the Athenians, to Athens at the end of the summer, and though for just six months no rain has fallen, you will enter a bath of dew. The road is dry and dusty, but there is no wind, and the dust lies still. The atmosphere is marvelously clear, as it is, say, at Ismailia in the early morning. The Hellenes, when they are talking quite naturally, if they speak of Europe, always speak of it as a continent in which Greece is not included. They talk of "going to Europe." They say to the English stranger, "You come to us fresh from Europe." And as you drive toward Athens you understand.

This country is part of the East, although the Greeks were the people who saved Europe from being dominated by the races of Asia. All about you—you have not yet reached Phalerum—you see country that looks like the beginning of a desert, that holds a fascination of the desert. The few trees stand up like carved things. The small, Eastern-looking houses, many of them with flat roofs, earth-colored, white, or tinted with mauve and pale colors, scattered casually and apparently without any plan over the absolutely bare and tawny ground, look from a distance as if they, too, were carved, as if they were actually a part of the substance of their environment, not imposed upon it by an outside force. The moving figure of a man, wearing the white fustanella, has the strange beauty of an Arab moving alone in the vast sands. And yet there is something here that is certainly not of Europe, but that is not wholly of the East—something very delicate, very pure, very sensitive, very individual, free from the Eastern drowsiness, from the heavy Eastern perfume which disposes the soul of man to inertia.

It is the exquisite, vital, one might almost say intellectual, freshness of Greece which, between Europe and Asia, preserves its eternal dewdrops—those dewdrops which still make it the land of the early morning.

Your carriage turns to the right, and in a moment you are driving along the shore of a sea without wave or even ripple. In the distance, across the purple water, is the calm mountain of the island of Ægina. Over there, along the curve of the sandy bay, are the clustering houses of old Phalerum. This is new Phalerum, with its wooden bath-houses, its one great hotel, its kiosks and cafés, its shadeless plage, deserted now except for one old gentleman who, like almost every Greek all over the country, is at this moment reading a newspaper in the sun.

Is there any special charm in new Phalerum, bare of trees, a little cockney of aspect, any exceptional beauty in this bay? When you have bathed there a few times, when you have walked along the shore in the quiet evening, breathing the exquisite air, when you have dined in a café of old Phalerum built out into the sea, and come back by boat through the silver of a moon to the little tram station whence you return to Athens, you will probably find that there is. And from what other bay can you see the temple of the Parthenon as you see it from the bay of Phalerum?

You have your first vision of it now, as you look away from the sea, lifted very high on its great rock of the Acropolis as on a throne. Though far off, nevertheless its majesty is essentially the same, casts the same tremendous influence upon you here as it does when you stand at the very feet of its mighty columns. At once you know, not because of the legend of greatness attaching to it, or because of the historical associations clinging about it, but simply because of the feeling in your own soul roused by its white silhouette in this morning hour, that the soul of Greece—eternal majesty, supreme greatness, divine calm, and that remoteness from which, perhaps, no perfect thing, either God-made or, because of God's breath in him, man-made, is wholly exempt—is lifted high before you under the cloudless heaven of dawn.

You may even realize at once and forever, as you send on your carriage and stand for a while quite alone on the sands, gazing, that to you the soul of Greece must always seem to be Doric. From afar the Doric conquers.

The ancient Hellenes, divided, at enmity, incessantly warring among themselves, were united in one sentiment: they called all the rest of the nations "barbarians." The Parthenon gives them reason. "Unintelligible folk" to this day must acknowledge it, using the word "barbarian" strictly in our modern sense.

But the sun is higher, the morning draws on; you must be gone to Athens. Down the long, straight, new road, between rows of pepper-trees, passing a little church which marks the spot where a miscreant tried to assassinate King George, and always through beautiful, bare country like the desert, you drive. And presently you see a few houses, like the houses of a quiet village; a few great Corinthian columns rising up in a lonely place beyond an arch tawny with old gold; a public garden looking new but pleasant,—not unlike a desert garden at the edge of the Suez Canal,—with a white statue (it is the statue of Byron) before it; then a long, thick tangle of trees stretching far, and separated from the road and a line of large apartment-houses only by an old and slight wooden paling; a big square with a garden sunken below the level you are on, and on your right a huge, bare white building rather like a barracks. You are in Athens, and you have seen already the Olympieion, the Arch of Hadrian, the Zappeion garden, Constitution Square, and the garden and the palace of the king.

Coming to Athens for the first time by this route, it is difficult to believe one is in the famous capital, even though one has seen the Acropolis. And I never quite lost the feeling there that I was in a delightful village, containing a cheery, bustling life, some fine modern buildings, and many wonders of the past. Yet Athens is large and is continually growing. One of the best and most complete views of it is obtained from the terrace near the Acropolis Museum, behind the Parthenon. Other fine views can be had from Lycabettus, the solitary and fierce-looking hill against whose rocks the town seems almost to surge, like a wave striving to overwhelm it, and from that other hill, immediately facing the Acropolis, on which stands the monument of Philopappos.

It is easy to ascend to the summit of the Acropolis, even in the fierce heat of a summer day. A stroll up a curving road, the mounting of some steps, and you are there, five hundred and ten feet only above the level of the sea. But on account of the solitary situation of the plateau of rock on which the temples are grouped and of its precipitous sides, it seems very much higher than it is. Whenever I stood on the summit of the Acropolis I felt as if I were on the peak of a mountain, as if from there one must be able to see all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them.

What one does see is marvelously, almost ineffably beautiful. Herodotus called this land, with its stony soil and its multitudes of bare mountains, the "rugged nurse of liberty." Though rugged, and often naked, nevertheless its loveliness—and that soft word must be used—is so great and so pure that, as we give to Greek art the crown of wild olive, so we must give it surely also to the scenery of Greece. It is a loveliness of outline, of color, and above all of light.

Almost everywhere in Greece you see mountains, range upon range, closing about you or, more often, melting away into far distances, into outlines of shadows and dreams. Almost everywhere, or so it seemed to me, you look upon the sea. And as the outlines of the mountains of Greece are nearly always divinely calm, so the colors of the seas of Greece are magically deep and radiant and varied. And over mountains and seas fall changing wonders of light, giving to outline eternal meanings, to color the depth of a soul.

When you stand upon the Acropolis you see not only ruins which, taking everything into consideration, are perhaps the most wonderful in the world, but also one of the most beautiful views of the world. It is asserted as a fact by authorities that the ancient Greeks had little or no feeling for beauty of landscape. One famous writer on things Greek states that "a fine view as such had little attraction for them," that is, the Greeks. It is very difficult for those who are familiar with the sites the Greeks selected for their great temples and theaters, such as the rock of the Acropolis, the heights at Sunium and at Argos, the hill at Taormina in Sicily, etc., to feel assured of this, however lacking in allusion to the beauty of nature, unless in connection with supposed animating intelligences, Greek literature may be. It is almost impossible to believe it as you stand on the Acropolis.

All Athens lies beneath you, pale, almost white, with hints of mauve and yellow, gray and brown, with its dominating palace, its tiny Byzantine churches, its tiled and flat roofs, its solitary cypress-trees and gardens. Lycabettus stands out, small, but bold, almost defiant. Beyond, and on every side, stretches the calm plain of Attica. That winding river of dust marks the Via Sacra, along which the great processions used to pass to Eleusis by the water. There are the dark groves of Academe, a place of rest in a bare land. The marble quarries gleam white on the long flanks of Mount Pentelicus, and the great range of Parnes leads on to Ægaleos. Near you are the Hill of the Nymphs, with its observatory; the rocky plateau from which the apostle Paul spoke of Christ to the doubting Athenians; the new plantation at the foot of Philopappos which surrounds the so-called "Prison of Socrates." Honey-famed Hymettus, gray and patient, stretches toward the sea—toward the shining Saronic Gulf and the bay of Phalerum. And there, beyond Phalerum, are the Piræus and Salamis. Mount Elias rules over the midmost isle of Ægina. Beneath the height of Sunium, where the Temple of Poseidon still lifts blanched columns above the passing mariners who have no care for the sea-god's glory, lies the islet of Gaidaronisi, and the mountains of Megara and of Argolis lie like dreaming shadows in the sunlight. Very pure, very perfect, is this great view. Nature here seems purged of all excesses, and even nature in certain places can look almost theatrical, though never in Greece. The sea shines with gold, is decked with marvelous purple, glimmers afar with silver, fades into the color of shadow. The shapes of the mountains are as serene as the shapes of Greek statues. Though bare, these mountains are not savage, are not desolate or sad. Nor is there here any suggestion of that "oppressive beauty" against which the American painter-poet Frederic Crowninshield cries out in a recent poem—of that beauty which weighs upon, rather than releases, the heart of man.

From this view you turn to behold the Parthenon. A writer who loved Greece more than all other countries, who was steeped in Greek knowledge, and who was deeply learned in archæology, has left it on record that on his first visit to the Acropolis he was aware of a feeling of disappointment. His heart bled over the ravages wrought by man in this sacred place—that Turkish powder-magazine in the Parthenon which a shell from Venetians blew up, the stolen lions which saw Italy, the marbles carried to an English museum, the statues by Phidias which clumsy workmen destroyed.

But so incomparably noble, so majestically grand is this sublime ruin, that the first near view of it must surely fill many hearts with an awe which can leave no room for any other feeling. It is incomplete, but not the impression it creates.

The Parthenon, as it exists to-day, shattered, almost entirely roofless, deprived of its gilding and color, its glorious statues, its elaborate and wonderful friezes, its lions, its golden oil-jars, its Athene Parthenos of gold and ivory, the mere naked shell of what it once was, is stupendous. No memory of the gigantic ruins of Egypt, however familiarly known, can live in the mind, can make even the puniest fight for existence, before this Doric front of Pentelic marble, simple, even plain, but still in its devastation supreme. The size is great, but one has seen far greater ruins. The fluted columns, lifted up on the marble stylobate which has been trodden by the feet of Pericles and Phidias, are huge in girth, and rise to a height of between thirty and forty feet. The architrave above their plain capitals, with its projecting molding, is tremendously massive. The walls of the cella, or sanctuary of the temple, where they still remain, are immense. But now, where dimness reigned,—for in the days when the temple was complete no light could enter it except through the doorway,—the sunlight has full possession. And from what was once a hidden place the passing traveler can look out over land and sea.

Some learned men have called the Parthenon severe. It is wonderfully simple, so simple that it is not easy to say exactly why it produces such an overpowering impression of sublimity and grandeur. But it is not severe, for in severity there is something repellent, something that frowns. It seems to me that the impression created by the Parthenon as a building is akin to that created by the Sphinx as a statue. It suggests—seems actually to send out like an atmosphere—a tremendous calm, far beyond the limits of any severity.

The whole of the Parthenon, except the foundations, is of Pentelic marble. And this marble is so beautiful a substance now after centuries of exposure on a bare height to the fires of the sun, to the sea-winds and the rains of winter, that it is impossible to wish it gilded, and painted with blue and crimson. From below in the plain, and from a long distance, the temple looks very pale in color, often indeed white. But when you stand on the Acropolis, you find that the marble holds many hues, among others pale yellow, cocoa color, honey color, and old gold. I have seen the columns at noonday, when they were bathed by the rays of the sun, glow with something of the luster of amber, and look almost transparent. I have seen them, when evening was falling, look almost black.

The temple, which is approached through the colossal marble Propylæa, or state entrance, with Doric colonnades and steps of marble and black and deep-blue Eleusinian stone, is placed on the very summit of the Acropolis, at the top of a slope, now covered with fragments of ruin, scattered blocks of stone and marble, sections of columns, slabs which once formed parts of altars, and broken bits of painted ceiling, but which was once a place of shrines and of splendid statues, among them the great statue of Athena Promachos, in armor, and holding the lance whose glittering point was visible from the sea. The columns are all fluted, and all taper gradually as they rise to the architrave. And the flutes narrow as they draw nearer and nearer to the capitals of the columns. The architrave was once hung with wreaths and decorated with shields. The famous frieze of the cella, which represented in marble a great procession, and which ran round the external wall of the sanctuary, is now in pieces, some of which are in the British Museum, and some in Athens. A portion of this frieze may still be seen on the west front of the temple. The cella had a ceiling of painted wood. On one of its inner walls I saw traces of red Byzantine figures, one apparently a figure of the Virgin. These date from the period when the Parthenon was used as a Christian church, and was dedicated to Mary the mother of God, before it became a mosque, and, later, a Turkish powder-magazine. The white marble floor, which is composed of great blocks perfectly fitted together, and without any joining substance, contrasts strongly with the warm hues of the inner flutes of the Doric columns. Here and there in the marble walls may be seen fragments of red and of yellow brick. From within the Parthenon, looking out between the columns, you can see magnificent views of country and sea.

Two other temples form part of the Acropolis, with the Propylæa and the Parthenon, the Temple of Athene Nike and the Erechtheum. They are absolutely different from the profoundly masculine Parthenon, and almost resemble two beautiful female attendants upon it, accentuating by their delicate grace its majesty.

The Temple of Nike is very small. It stands on a jutting bastion just outside the Propylæa, and has been rebuilt from the original materials, which were dug up out of masses of accumulated rubbish. It is Ionic, has a colonnade, is made of Pentelic marble, and was once adorned with a series of winged victories in bas-relief.

Ionic like the Temple of Nike, but much larger, the Erechtheum stands beyond the Propylæa, and not far from the Parthenon, at the edge of the precipice beneath which lies the greater part of Athens. A marvelously personal element attaches to it and makes it unique, giving it a charm which sets it apart from all other buildings. To find this you must go to the southwest, to the beautiful Porch of the Caryatids, which looks toward the Parthenon.

There are six of these caryatids, or maidens, standing upon a high parapet of marble and supporting a marble roof. Five of them are white, and one is a sort of yellowish black in color, as if she had once been black, but, having been singled out from her fellows, had been kissed for so many years by the rays of the sun that her original hue had become changed, brightened by his fires. Four of the maidens stand in a line. Two stand behind, on each side of the portico. They wear flowing draperies, their hair flows down over their shoulders, and they support their burden of marble with a sort of exquisite submissiveness, like maidens choosing to perform a grateful and an easy task that brings with it no loss of self-respect.

I once saw a great English actress play the part of a slave girl. By her imaginative genius she succeeded in being more than a slave: she became a poem of slavery. Everything ugly in slavery was eliminated from her performance. Only the beauty of devoted service, the willing service of love,—and slaves have been devoted to their masters,—was shown in her face, her gestures, her attitudes. Much of what she imagined and reproduced is suggested by these matchlessly tender and touching figures; so soft that it is almost incredible that they are made of marble, so strong that no burden, surely, would be too great for their simple, yet almost divine, courage. They are watchers, these maidens, not alertly, but calmly watchful of something far beyond our seeing. They are alive, but with a restrained life such as we are not worthy to know, neither fully human nor completely divine. They have something of our wistfulness and something also of that attainment toward which we strive. They are full of that strange and eternal beauty that is in all the greatest things of Greece, from which the momentary is banished, in which the perpetual is enshrined. Contemplation of them only seems to make more deep their simplicity, more patient their strength, and more touching their endurance. Retirement from them does not lessen, but almost increases, the enchantment of their very quiet, very delicate spell. Even when their faces can no longer be distinguished and only their outlines can be seen, they do not lose one ray of their soft and tender vitality. They are among the eternal things in art, lifting up more than marble, setting free from bondage, if only for a moment, many that are slaves by their submission.

About two years ago this temple was carefully cleaned, and it is very white, and looks almost like a lovely new building not yet completed. Here and there the white surface is stained with the glorious golden hue which beautifies the Parthenon, the Propylæa, the Odeum of Herodes, the Temple of Theseus, the Arch of Hadrian, and the Olympieion. The interior of the temple is full of scattered blocks of marble. In the midst of them, and as it were faithfully protected by them, I found a tiny tree carefully and solemnly growing, with an air of self-respect. Above the doorway of the north front is some very beautiful and delicate carving. This temple was once adorned with a frieze of Eleusinian stone and with white marble sculpture. Its Ionic columns are finely carved, and look almost strangely slender, if you come to them immediately after you have been among the columns of the Parthenon. Majesty and charm are supremely expressed in these two temples, the Parthenon and the Erechtheum, the smaller of which is on a lower level than the greater. One thinks again of the happy slave who loves her lord.

The group of magnificent, gold-colored Greco-Roman columns which is called the Olympieion stands in splendid isolation on a bare terrace at the edge of the charming Zappeion garden. In this garden, full of firs and pepper-trees, acacias, palms, convolvulus, and pink oleanders, I saw many Greek soldiers, wearied out with preparations for the Balkan war against Turkey, which was declared while I was in Athens, sleeping on the wooden seats, or even stretched out at full length on the light, yellow soil. For there is no grass there. Beyond the Olympieion there is a stone trough in which I never saw one drop of water. This trough is the river-bed of the famous Ilissus!

The columns are very splendid, immense in height, singularly beautiful in color,—they are made of Pentelic marble,—and with Corinthian capitals, nobly carved. Those which are grouped closely together are raised on a platform of stone. But there are two isolated columns which look even grander and more colossal than those which are united by a heavy architrave. The temple of which they are the remnant was erected in the reign of Hadrian to the glory of Zeus, and was one of the most gigantic buildings in the world.

From the Zappeion garden you can see in the distance the snow-white marble Stadium where the modern Olympic and Pan-Hellenic games take place. It is gigantic. When full, it can hold over fifty thousand people. The seats, the staircases, the pavements are all of dazzling-white marble, and as there is of course no roof, the effect of this vastness of white, under a bright-blue sky, and bathed in golden fires, is almost blinding. All round the Stadium cypress-trees have been planted, and their dark-green heads rise above the outer walls, like long lines of spear-heads guarding a sacred inclosure. Two comfortable arm-chairs for the king and queen face two stelæ of marble and the far-off entrance. The earthen track where the sports take place is divided from the spectators by a marble barrier about five feet high, and till you descend into it, it looks small, though it is really very large. The entrance is a propylæum. It is a great pity that immediately outside this splendid building the hideous panorama should be allowed to remain, cheap, vulgar, dusty, and despicable. I could not help saying this to a Greek acquaintance. He thoroughly agreed with me, but told me that the Athenians were very fond of their panorama.

In a straight line with the beautiful Arch of Hadrian, and not far off, is the small and terribly defaced, but very graceful, Monument of Lysicrates, a circular chamber of marble, with small Corinthian columns, an architrave, and a frieze. It is surrounded by a railing, and stands rather forlornly in the midst of modern houses.

The Temple of Theseus, or more properly of Hercules, on the other side of the town, is a beautifully preserved building, lovely in color, very simple, very complete. It is small, and is strictly Doric and very massive. Many people have called it tremendously impressive, and have even compared it with the Parthenon. It seems to me that to do this is to exaggerate, to compare the very much less with the very much greater. There really is something severe in great massiveness combined with small proportions, and I find this temple, noble though it is, severe.

Athens contains several very handsome modern buildings, and one that I think really beautiful, especially on a day of fierce sunshine or by moonlight. This is the Academy, which stands in the broad and airy University Street, at whose mouth are the two cafés which Athenians call "the Dardanelles." It is in a line with the university and the national library, is made of pure white marble from Pentelicus, and is very delicately and discreetly adorned with a little bright gold, the brilliance of which seems to add to the virginal luster of the marble. The central section is flanked by two tall and slender detached columns crowned with statues. Ionic colonnades relieve the classical simplicity of the façade, with some marble and terra-cotta groups of statuary. The general effect is very calm, pure, and dignified, and very satisfying. The Athenians are proud, and with reason, of this beautiful building, which they owe to the generosity of one of their countrymen.

Modern Athens, despite its dust, is a delightful city to dwell in. Nobody in it looks rich,—that dreadful look!—and scarcely anybody looks poor. The king and the princes stroll casually about the streets, or may be met on the Acropolis or walking by the sea at Phalerum. I was allowed to wander all over the palace gardens, which are full of palms and great trees, and which resemble a laid-out wood. A Rumanian friend of mine told me that one day when he was in the garden, on turning a corner, he came upon the king and queen, with the crown-princess, who had just come down from the terrace in front of the royal apartments. All the center of the palace was burned out more than a year ago, and is now being slowly rebuilt. Greece is the home of genuine democrats, but democracy is delightful in Greece. Nobody thinks about rank, and everybody behaves like a gentleman. The note of Athens is a perfectly decorous liveliness, which is never marred by vulgarity. The stranger is welcomed and treated with the greatest possible courtesy, and he is never bothered by objectionable people such as haunt many of the cities of Italy, and of other lands where travelers are numerous. Athens indeed is one of the most simpatica of cities, wonderfully cheerful, simply gay, of a perfect behavior, yet unceremonious.

I have said that the Greeks are democrats. Nevertheless, like certain other democrats of whom one has heard, there are Greeks who love to think that they are not quite as all other Greeks. America, I am informed, has her "four hundred." Greece has her "fifty-two." In New York the "four hundred" consider themselves the advance-guard of fashion, if not of civilization. In Athens the "fifty-two" rejoice in a similar conviction. They do daring things sometimes. There is a card-game beloved of the Greeks called "Mouse." The fifty-two have introduced bridge and despise "Mouse." In Athens they frequent one another's houses. In the summer they "remove" to Kephisia in the pine-woods, where there are many pleasant, and some very fantastic, villas, and where picnics, tennis, and card-parties, theatrical performances and dances, fleet the hours, which are always golden, away. They are sometimes criticized by the "outsiders," for even gods are subject to criticism. People say now and then, "What will the fifty-two do next?" or, "Really there is no end to the folly of the fifty-two!" But have not similar remarks been heard even at Newport or upon Fifth Avenue pavements? Nevertheless, despite the fifty-two, you have only to look at the thin and decrepit palings of King George's garden to realize that at last you have found the true democracy, and a democracy sensible enough to understand the advantage of possessing a royal family. Every society needs a leader, and royalty leads far more effectively than any one else, however self-assured, however glittering. The Greeks are not without wisdom.

Their manners are charming and excellent. I had an unusual opportunity of putting them to the test. I was in Athens just before and just after the declaration of war against Turkey, when spies were everywhere, when a Turkish spy was discovered in Athens disguised as a Greek priest, and a woman was caught near Lycabettus in the act of poisoning the water-supply of the city. One morning early, when I was on the sea near Salamis in a small boat with a Greek fisherman, I was arrested on suspicion of being a spy, and was brought before the admiral in supreme command of the fleet. My passport was in Athens at my hotel, the admiral evidently disbelieved my explanations, and I was handed over to the police at the Piræus, accompanied by a report from the admiral in which, as was afterward made known to me, he stated that I was "a very suspicious character." And now to the test of Hellenic good manners.

Eventually a guard of police carrying rifles was sent to convey me from the Piræus to Athens, and in the middle of the afternoon I was obliged to walk as a prisoner through the streets of the Piræus, to take the tram to Phalerum, to get out there and wait for half an hour at a railway-station, and to travel in the train to Athens. In Athens I was made to walk three times, always guarded closely, through the principal streets and squares of the city, and twice past my hotel in the Constitution Square during the most busy hour of the day. Eventually, at night, I was released. Now, the Hellenes are considered by many people to be very inquisitive. During my public exposure as a prisoner I met with no really disagreeable curiosity from the crowd. Many people discreetly inquired of my guards who I was and what I had done, and naturally a great many more stared at me. But nobody followed me and my attendants as we marched on our way from one police station to another, to the War Office, etc. There was no pushing or jostling, such as there would certainly have been in an English town if a prisoner with guards was exposed to the public gaze. Curiosity was, as a rule, almost carefully dissembled, and inquiries were made with a charming discretion. I confess I felt grateful to the Greeks that day, though not to the admiral who had me arrested, or to the police who put me to so much inconvenience. And I was grateful for one thing more, that I was released just in time to see King George's arrival in Athens on the eve of the war.

The Hellenes are not an enthusiastic people, as a rule. They are critical, intellectual, sometimes rather cynical. But that night they gave way to emotion. Great crowds were lined up in Constitution Square, and were massed on the brow of the hill before the palace, when at length the police let me go. Darkness had long since fallen, but the square was illuminated brightly. All the balconies were packed with people. The terrace before the Grande Bretagne was black with sight-seers. And everywhere in the forefront were rows of eager, vivacious Greek children, many of them the soldiers of the future.

We had to wait for a very long time. But at last the king came in an open carriage, driving with "the Diádochos," as the crown-prince is always called in Greece. Both were in uniform. There was no ceremonial escort, so the people formed an unceremonial one. They ran with the carriage, shouting, waving their hats and handkerchiefs, cheering till they were hoarse, and crying, "War! War!" The great square rang with the clapping of thousands of hands. "Never before," said a Greek to me, "has the king had such a reception." When the carriages containing the rest of the royal family and the ministers had gone by, we ran in our thousands to the palace. Above the great entrance porch there is a balcony, and after a short time slim King George stepped out, rather cautiously, I thought, upon it, followed by all the princes and princesses. It was very dark, but a footman accompanied his Majesty, holding an electric light, and we had our speech.

The king read the first part of it in a loud, unemotional voice, bending sometimes to the light. But at the close he spoke a few words extempore, commending the Hellenic cause, if war should come, to the mercy of God. And then, again with precaution, he retired into the palace amid a storm of cheers.

I was afterward told that, with the whole of the royal family, his Majesty had been standing upon some loose planks which spanned an abyss. The royal palace, owing to the disastrous fire, is not yet what it seems. Fortunately, the Greek army has proved more solid, and the God of battles, so solemnly invoked by their king, has been favorable to the arms of the Greeks. No one, I think, who was in Greece during that time of acute tension, who saw the feverish preparations, the devotion of the toiling soldiers, the ardor of the volunteers; no one who witnessed, as I did, the return to Athens of the "American Greeks," who gave up everything and crossed the ocean to fight for their little, splendid country, could wish it otherwise.

The descendants of those who made the Parthenon have shown something of that Doric soul which is surely the soul of Greece.

THE ENVIRONS OF ATHENS

Chapter III

THE ENVIRONS OF ATHENS

Upon the southern slope of the Acropolis, beneath the limestone precipices and the great golden-brown walls above which the Parthenon shows its white summit, are many ruins; among them the Theater of Dionysus and the Odeum of Herodes Atticus, the rich Marathonian who spent much of his money in the beautification of Athens, and who taught rhetoric to two men who eventually became Roman emperors. The Theater of Dionysus, in which Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides produced their dramas, is of stone and silver-white marble. Many of the seats are arm-chairs, and are so comfortable that it is no uncommon thing to see weary travelers, who have just come down from the Acropolis, resting in them with almost unsuitable airs of unbridled satisfaction.

It is evident to any one who examines this great theater carefully that the Greeks considered it important for the body to be at ease while the mind was at work; for not only are the seats perfectly adapted to their purpose, but ample room is given for the feet of the spectators, the distance between each tier and the tier above it being wide enough to do away with all fear of crowding and inconvenience. The marble arm-chairs were assigned to priests, whose names are carved upon them. In the theater I saw one high arm-chair, like a throne, with lion's feet. This is Roman, and was the seat of a Roman general. The fronts of the seats are pierced with small holes, which allow the rain-water to escape. Below the stage there are some sculptured figures, most of them headless. One which is not is a very striking and powerful, though almost sinister, old man, in a crouching posture. His rather round forehead resembles the very characteristic foreheads of the Montenegrins.

Herodes Atticus restored this theater. Before his time it had been embellished by Lycurgus of Athens, the orator, and disciple of Plato. It is not one of the gloriously placed theaters of the Greeks, but from the upper tiers of seats there is a view across part of the Attic plain to the isolated grove of cypresses where the famous Schliemann is buried, and beyond to gray Hymettus.

Standing near by is another theater, Roman-Greek, not Greek, the Odeum of Herodes Atticus, said to have been built by him in memory of his wife. This is not certain, and there are some authorities who think that, like the beautiful arch near the Olympieion, this peculiar, very picturesque structure was raised by the Emperor Hadrian, who was much fonder of Athens than of Rome.

The contrast between the exterior, the immensely massive, three-storied façade with Roman arches, and the interior, or, rather, what was once the interior, of this formerly roofed-in building, is very strange. They do not seem to belong to each other, to have any artistic connection the one with the other.

The outer walls are barbarically huge and heavy, and superb in color. They gleam with a fierce red-gold, and are conspicuous from afar. The almost monstrous, but impressive, solidity of Rome, heavy and bold, indeed almost crudely imperious, is shown forth by them—a solidity absolutely different from the Greek massiveness, which you can study in the Doric temples, and far less beautiful. When you pass beyond this towering façade, which might well be a section of the Colosseum transferred from gladiatorial Rome to intellectual Athens, you find yourself in a theater which looks oddly, indeed, almost meanly, small and pale and graceful. With a sort of fragile timidity it seems to be cowering behind the flamboyant walls. When all its blanched marble seats were crowded with spectators it contained five thousand persons. As you approach the outer walls, you expect to find a building that might accommodate perhaps twenty-five thousand. There is something bizarre in the two colors, fierce and pale, in the two sizes, huge and comparatively small, that are united in the odeum. Though very remarkable, it seems to me to be one of the most inharmonious ruins in Greece.

The modern Athenians are not very fond of hard exercise, and except in the height of summer, when many of them go to Kephisia and Phalerum, and others to the islands, or to the baths near Corinth for a "cure," they seem well content to remain within their city. They are governed, it seems, by fashion, like those who dwell in less-favored lands. When I was in Athens the weather was usually magnificent and often very hot. Yet Phalerum, perhaps half an hour by train from Constitution Square, was deserted. In the vast hotel there I found only two or three children, in the baths half a dozen swimmers. The pleasure-boats lay idle by the pier. I asked the reason of this—why at evening dusty Athens was crammed with strollers, and the pavements were black with people taking coffee and ices, while delightful Phalerum, with its cooler air and its limpid waters, held no one but an English traveler?

"The season is over," was the only reply I received, delivered with a grave air of finality. I tried to argue the matter, and suggested that anxiety about the war had something to do with it. But I was informed that the "season" closed on a certain day, and that after that day the Athenians gave up going to Phalerum.

The season for many things seemed "over" when I was in Athens. Round about the city, and within easy reach of it, there is fascinating country—country that seems to call you with a smiling decision to enjoy all Arcadian delights; country, too, that has great associations connected with it. From Athens you can go to picnic at Marathon or at Salamis, or you can carry a tea-basket to the pine-woods which slope down to the Convent of Daphni, and come back to it after paying a visit to Eleusis. Or, if you are not afraid of a "long day," you can motor out and lunch in the lonely home of the sea-god under the columns at Sunium. If you wish to go where a king goes, you can spend the day in the thick woods at Tatoï. If you are full of social ambition, and aim at "climbing," a train in not many minutes will set you down at Kephisia, the summer home of "the fifty-two" on the slope of a spur of Mount Pentelicus.

Thither I went one bright day. But, as at Phalerum, I found a deserted paradise. The charming gardens and arbors were empty. The villas, Russian, Egyptian, Swiss, English, French, and even now and then Greek in style, were shuttered and closed. All in vain the waterfalls sang, all in vain the silver poplars and the yellow-green pines gave their shade. No one was there. I went at length to a restaurant to get something to eat. Its door was unlocked, and I entered a large, deserted room, with many tables, a piano, and a terrace. No one came. I called, knocked, stamped, and at length evoked a thin elderly lady in a gray shawl, who seemed alarmed at the sight of me, and in a frail voice begged to know what I wanted. When I told her, she said there was nothing to eat except what they were going to have themselves. The season was over. Eventually she brought me mastika and part of her own dinner to the terrace, which overlooked a luxuriant and deserted garden. And there I spent two happy, golden hours. I had sought the heart of fashion, and found the exquisite peace that comes to places when fashion has left them. Henceforth I shall always associate beautiful Kephisia with silence, flowers, and one thin old woman in a gray shawl.

Greece, though sparsely inhabited, is in the main a very cheerful-looking country. The loneliness of much of it is not depressing, the bareness of much of it is not sad. I began to understand this on the day when I went to the plain of Marathon, which, fortunately, lies away from railroads. One must go there by carriage or motor or on horseback. The road is bad both for beasts and machinery, but it passes through country which is typical of Greece, and through which it would be foolish to go in haste. Go quietly to Marathon, spend two hours there, or more, and when you return in the evening to Athens you will have tasted a new joy. You will have lived for a little while in an exquisite pastoral—a pastoral through which, it is true, no pipes of Pan have fluted to you,—I heard little music in Greece,—but which has been full of that lightness, brightness, simplicity, and delicacy peculiar to Greece. The soil of the land is light, and I believe, though Hellenes have told me that in this belief I am wrong, that the heart of the people is light. Certainly the heart of one traveler was as he made his way to Marathon along a white road thickly powdered with dust.

Has not each land its representative tree? America has its maple. England its oak, France its poplar, Italy its olive, Turkey its cypress, Egypt its palm, and so on. The representative tree of Greece is the pine. I do not forget the wild olive, from which in past days the crowns were made, nor the fact that the guide-books say that in a Greek landscape the masses of color are usually formed by the silver-green olive-trees. It seemed to me, and it seems to me still in remembrance, that the lovely little pine is the most precious ornament of the Grecian scene.

Marathon that day was a pastoral of yellow and blue, of pines and sea. On the way I passed through great olive-groves, in one of which long since some countrymen of mine were taken by brigands and carried away to be done to death. And there were mighty fig-trees, and mulberry-trees, and acres and acres of vines, with here and there an almost black cypress among them. But the pines, more yellow than green, and the bright blue sea made the picture that lives in my memory.

Not very long after we were clear of the town we passed not far from the village of "Louis," who won the first Marathon race that was run under King George's scepter, Marousi, where the delicious water is found that Athens loves to drink. And then away we went through the groves and the little villages, where dusty soldiers were buying up mules for the coming war; and Greek priests were reading newspapers; and olive-skinned children, with bright, yet not ungentle, eyes, were coming from school; and outside of ramshackle cafés, a huddle of wood, a vine, a couple of tables, and a few bottles, old gentlemen, some of them in native dress, with the white fustanella, a sort of short skirt not reaching to the knees, and shoes with turned-up toes ornamented with big black tassels, were busily talking politics. Carts, not covered with absurd but lively pictures, as they are in Sicily, lumbered by in the dust. Peasants, sitting sidewise with dangling feet, met us on trotting donkeys. Now and then a white dog dashed out, or a flock of thin turkeys gobbled and stretched their necks nervously as they gave us passage. Women, with rather dingy handkerchiefs tied over their heads, were working in the vineyards or washing clothes here and there beside thin runlets of water. Two German beggars, with matted hair uncovered to the sun, red faces, and fingers with nails like the claws of birds, tramped by, going to Athens. And farther on we met a few Turkish Gipsies, swarthy and full of a lively malice, whose tents were visible on a hillside at a little distance, in the midst of a grove of pines. All the country smiled at us in the sunshine. One jovial man in a fustanella leaned down from a cart as we passed, and shouted in Greek: "Enjoy yourselves! Enjoy yourselves!" And the gentle hills, the olive- and pine-groves, the stretching vineyards, seemed to echo his cry.

What is the magic of pastoral Greece? What is it that gives to you a sensation of being gently released from the cares of life and the boredom of modern civilization, with its often unmeaning complications, its unnecessary luxuries, its noisy self-satisfactions? This is not the tremendous, the spectacular release of the desert, an almost savage tearing away of bonds. Nothing in the Greece I saw is savage; scarcely anything is spectacular. But, oh, the bright simplicity of the life and the country along the way to Marathon! It was like an early world. One looked, and longed to live in those happy woods like the Turkish Gipsies. Could life offer anything better? The pines are small, exquisitely shaped, with foliage that looks almost as if it had been deftly arranged by a consummate artist. They curl over the slopes with a lightness almost of foam cresting a wave. Their color is quite lovely. The ancient Egyptians had a love color: well, the little pine-trees of Greece are the color of happiness. You smile involuntarily when you see them. And when, descending among them, you are greeted by the shining of the brilliant-blue sea, which stretches along the edge of the plain of Marathon, you know radiance purged of fierceness.

The road winds down among the pines till, at right angles to it, appears another road, or rough track just wide enough for a carriage. This leads to a large mound which bars the way. Upon this mound a habitation was perched. It was raised high above the ground upon a sort of tripod of poles. It had yellow walls of wheat, and a roof and floor of brushwood and maize. A ladder gave access to it, and from it there was a wide outlook over the whole crescent-shaped plain of Marathon. This dwelling belonged to a guardian of the vineyards, and the mound is the tomb of those who died in the great battle.

I sat for a long time on this strange tomb, in the shadow of the rustic watch-house, and looked out over the plain. It is quite flat, and is now cultivated, though there are some bare tracts of unfruitful ground. In all directions I saw straggling vines. Not far away was one low, red-tiled house belonging to a peasant, whose three small, dirty, and unhealthy-looking children presently approached, and gazed at me from below. In the distance a man on a white horse rode slowly toward the pine-woods, and to my left I saw a group of women bending mysteriously to accomplish some task unknown to me. No other figures could I see between me and the bright-blue waters that once bore up the fleet of Persia. Behind me were stony and not very high hills, ending in the slopes down which Miltiades made his soldiers advance "at a running pace." One hundred and ninety-two brave men gone to dust beneath me; instead of the commemorative lion, the little watch-house of brushwood and wheat and maize; silence the only epitaph. The mound, of hard, sun-baked earth, was yellow and bare. On one side a few rusty-looking thorn-bushes decorated it harshly. But about it grew aloes, and the wild oleander, with its bright-pink flowers, and near by were many great fig-trees. A river intersects the plain, and its course is marked by sedges and tall reeds. Where the land is bare, it takes a tawny-yellow hue. Some clustering low houses far off under the hills form the Albanian village of Marathon. Just twenty-two miles from Athens, this place of an ancient glory, this tomb of men who, I suppose, will not be forgotten so long as the Hellenic kingdom lasts, seems very far away, hidden from the world between woods and waters, solitary, but not sad. Beyond the plain and the sea are ranges of mountains and the island of Eubœa.

A figure slowly approaches. It is the guardian of the vineyards, coming back to his watch-house above the grave of his countrymen, smiling, with a cigarette between his white teeth. As I go, he calls out "Addio!" Then he mounts his ladder carefully and withdraws to his easy work. How strange to be a watcher of vineyards upon the tumulus of Marathon!

If you care at all for life in the open, if you have the love of camping in your blood, Greece will call to you at every moment to throw off the dullness of houses, to come and stay under blue heaven and be happy. Yet I suppose the season for all such joys was over when I was in Greece, for I never met any citizens of Athens taking their pleasure in the surrounding country. In Turkey and Asia Minor, near any large town, when the weather is hot and fine, one may see cheerful parties of friends making merry in the open air, under trees and in arbors; or men dreaming idly in nooks that might have made old Omar's delight, shaded, and sung to by a stream. In Greece it is not so. Once you are out in the country, you come upon no one but peasants, shepherds, goatherds, Gipsies, turkey-drivers, and, speaking generally, "sons of the soil."

In the very height of summer, I am told, the Athenians do condescend to go to the pine-woods. They sleep during part of the day, and stay out of doors at night, often driving into the country, and eating under the trees or by the sea. But even in the heat of a rainless September, if I may judge by my own experience, they prefer Constitution Square and "the Dardanelles" to any more pastoral pleasures.

I did not imitate them, but followed the Via Sacra one morning, past the oldest olive-tree in Greece, a small and corrugated veteran said to have been planted in the time of Pericles, to the Convent of Daphni, now fallen into a sort of poetic decay.

Once more I was among pine-trees. They thronged the almost park-like slopes under Ægaleos. They crowded toward the little Byzantine church, which stands on the left of the road on the site of a vanished temple of Apollo, with remains of its once strongly fortified walls about it. Lonely, but smiling, as though with a radiant satisfaction at its own shining peace, is the country in whose bosom the church lies. A few sheep, small, with shaggy coats of brown and white, were grazing near it; a dog lay stretched out in the sun; and some lean, long-tailed horses were standing with bowed heads, as if drowsing. An ancient and very deep well was close by. In the marble well-head the friction of many drawn cords has cut grooves, some of them nearly an inch in depth. The court of the convent is roughly paved and is inclosed within rough walls. In it are a few trees, an acacia or two, a wild pepper-tree, and one gigantic cypress. From a branch near the entrance a big bell hung by a chain. But the only sound of bells came to me from without the walls, where some hidden goats were moving to a pasture. Fragments of broken columns and two or three sarcophagi lay on the hot ground at my feet. To my right, close to the church, a flight of very old marble steps led to a rustic loggia with wooden supports, full of red geraniums and the flowers of a plant like a very small convolvulus. From the loggia, which fronted her abiding-place, a cheerful, kindly-faced woman came down and let me into the church and left me with two companions, a black kitten playing with a bee under the gilded cupola.

The church, like almost all the Byzantine churches I saw in Greece, is very small, but it is tremendously solid and has a tall belfry. The exterior, stained by weather, is now a sort of earthy yellow; the cupola is covered with red tiles. The interior walls look very ancient, and are blackened in many places by the fingers of Time. Made more than eight hundred years ago, the remains of the Byzantine mosaics are very curious and interesting. In the cupola, on a gold ground, is a very large head of a Christ ("Christos Pantokrator"), which looks as if it were just finished. The face is sinister and repellent, but expressive. There are several other mosaics, of the apostles, of episodes in the life of the Virgin, and of angels. None of them seemed to me beautiful, though perhaps not one looks so wicked as the Christos, which dominates the whole church. Until comparatively recent times there were monks attached to this convent, but now they are gone.

I passed through a doorway and came into a sort of tiny cloister, shaded by a huge and evidently very ancient fig-tree with enormous leaves. Here I found the remains of an old staircase of stone. As I returned to the dim and massive little church, glimmering with gold where the sunlight fell upon the mosaics, the eyes of the Christos seemed to rebuke me from the lofty cupola. The good-natured woman locked the door behind me with a large key, handed to me a bunch of the flowers I had noticed growing in the loggia, and bade me "Addio!" And soon the sound of the goat-bells died away from my ears as I went on my way back to Eleusis.

There is nothing mysterious about this road which leads to the site of the Temple of the Mysteries. It winds down through the pine-woods and rocks of the Pass of Daphni into the cheerful and well-cultivated Thriasian plain, whence across a brilliant-blue stretch of water, which looks like a lake, but which is the bay of Eleusis, you can see houses and, alas! several tall chimneys pouring forth smoke. The group of houses is Eleusis, now an Albanian settlement, and the chimneys belong to a factory where olive-oil soap is made. The road passes between the sea and a little salt lake, which latter seems to be prevented from submerging it only by a raised coping of stone. The color of this lake is a brilliant purple. In the distance is the mountainous and rocky island of Salamis.

When I reached the village, I found it a cheery little place of small white, yellow, and rose-colored houses, among which a few cypress-trees grow. Although one of the most ancient places in Greece, it now looks very modern. And it is difficult to believe, as one glances at the chimneys of the soap factory, and at two or three black and dingy steamers lying just off the works to take in cargo, that here Demeter was worshiped with mysterious rites at the great festival of the Eleusinia. Yet, according to the legend, it was here that she came, disguised as an old hag, in search of her lost Persephone; here that she taught Triptolemus how to sow the plain, and to reap the first harvest of yellow wheat, as a reward for the hospitable welcome given to her by his father Celeus.

The ruins at Eleusis are disappointing to the ordinary traveler, though interesting to the archæologist. They have none of the pathetic romance which, notwithstanding the scoldings of many vulgar persons set forth in a certain visitors' book, broods gently over poetic Olympia. Above the village is a vast confusion of broken columns, defaced capitals, bits of wall, bits of pavement, marble steps, fallen medallions, vaults, propylæa, substructures, scraps of architraves carved with inscriptions, and subterranean store-rooms. In the pavement of the processional way, by which the chariots came up to the Temple of Demeter, the chief glory and shrine of Eleusis, are the deep ruts made by the chariot-wheels. The remnants of the hall of the initiated bears witness to the long desire of poor human beings in all ages to find that peace which passeth our understanding. Of beauty there is little or none. Nevertheless, even now, it is not possible in the midst of this tragic débâcle to remain wholly unmoved. Indeed, the very completeness of the disaster that time and humanity have wrought here creates emotion, when one remembers that here great men came, such men as Cicero, Sophocles, and Plato; that here they worshiped and adored under cover of the darkness of night; that here, seeking, they found, as has been recorded, peace and hope to sustain them when, the august festival over, they took their way back into the ordinary world along the shores of sea and lake. Eleusis is no longer beautiful. It is a home of devastation. It is no longer mysterious. A successful man is making a fortune out of soap there. But it is a place one cannot easily forget. And just above the ruins there is a small museum which contains several very interesting things, and one thing that is superb.

This last is the enormous and noble upper part of the statue of a woman wearing ear-rings. I do not know its history, though some one assured me that it was a caryatid. It was dug up among the ruins, and the color of it is akin to that of the earth. The roughly undulating hair is parted in the middle of a majestic, goddess-like head. The features are pure and grand; but the two things that most struck me, as I looked at this great work of art, were the expression of the face, and the deep bosom, as of the earth-mother and all her fruitfulness. In few Greek statues have I seen such majesty and power, combined with such intensity, as this nameless woman shows forth. There is indeed almost a suggestion of underlying fierceness in the face, but it is the fierceness that may sometimes leap up in an imperial nature. Are there not royal angers which flame out of the pure furnaces of love? This noble woman seems to me to be the present glory of Eleusis.

The mountainous island of Salamis, long and calm, with gray and orange rocks, lies like a sentinel keeping guard over the harbor of the Piræus. It is so near to the mainland that the sea between the two shores looks like a lake, lonely and brilliant, with the two-horned peak called "the throne of Xerxes" standing out characteristically behind the low-lying bit of coast where the Greeks have set up an arsenal. Whether Xerxes did really watch the famous battle from a throne placed on the hill with which his name is associated is very doubtful. But many travelers like to believe it, and the kind guides of Athens are quite ready to stiffen their credulity.

The shores of this beautiful inclosed bit of sea are wild. The water is wonderfully clear, and is shot with all sorts of exquisite colors. The strip of mainland, against which the liquid maze of greens and blues and purples seems to lie motionless, like a painted marvel, is a tangle of wild myrtle and dwarf shrubs growing in a sandy soil interspersed with rocks. Gently the land curves, forming a series of little shallow bays and inlets, each one of which seems more delicious than the last as you coast along in a fisherman's boat. But, unfortunately, the war-ships of Greece often lie snug in harbor in the shadow of Salamis not far from the arsenal, and, as I have hinted already, their commander-in-chief has little sympathy with the inquiring traveler. I shall not easily forget the expression that came into his face when, in reply to his question, "What did you come here for?" I said, "To visit the scene of the celebrated battle." A weary incredulity made him suddenly look very old; and I believe it was then that, taking a pen, he wrote on the margin of his report about me that I was "a very suspicious person."

It is safer, especially in war-time, to keep away from Salamis; but if you care for smiling wild places where the sea is, where its breath gives a vivid sense of life to the wilderness, you may easily forget her myrtle-covered shores and the bays of violet and turquoise.

Of the many wonderful haunts of the sea which I visited in Greece, Cape Sunium is perhaps the most memorable, though I never shall forget the glories of the magnificent drive along the mountains between Athens and Corinth. But Sunium has its ruined temple, standing on a great height. And in some of us a poet has wakened a wondering consciousness of its romance, perhaps when we sat in a Northern land beside the winter fire. And in some of us, too, an immortal painter has roused a longing to see it, when we never thought to be carried by our happy fate to Greece.

In going to Sunium I passed through the famous mining district of Laurium, where now many convicts work out their sentences. In ancient times slaves toiled there for the benefit of those citizens who had hereditary leases granted by the state. They worked the mines for silver, but now lead is the principal product. It happened that just as we were in the middle of the dingy town, or village, where the miners and their families dwell,—for only some of them are convicts,—a tire of the motor burst. This of course delayed us, and I was able to see something of the inhabitants. In Athens I had heard that they were a fierce and ill-mannered population. I found them, on the contrary, as I found almost all those whom I met in Greece, cheerful, smiling, and polite. Happy, if rather dirty, children gathered round us, delighted to have something to look at and wonder about. Men, going to or coming from the works, paused to see what was the matter and to inquire where I came from. From the windows of the low, solid-looking houses women leaned eagerly out with delighted faces. Several of the latter talked to me. I could not understand what they said, and all they could understand was that I came from London, a circumstance which seemed greatly to impress them, for they called it out from one to another up the street. We carried on intercourse mainly by facial expression and elaborate gesture, assisted genially by the grubby little boys. And when I got into the car to go we were all the best of friends. The machine made the usual irritable noises, but from the good people of Laurium came only cries of good-will, among them that pleasant admonition which one hears often in Greece: "Enjoy yourself! Enjoy yourself!"

When Laurium was left behind we were soon in wild and deserted country. Now and then we passed an Albanian on horseback, with a gun over his shoulder, a knife stuck in his belt, or we came upon a shepherd watching his goats as they browsed on the low scrub which covered the hills. All the people in this region are Albanians, I was told. They appeared to be very few. As we drew near to the ancient shrine of Poseidon we left far behind us the habitations of men. At length the car stopped in the wilderness, and on a height to my left I saw the dazzling white marble columns of the Temple of Sunium.

Almost all the ruins I saw in Greece were weather-stained. Their original color was mottled with browns and grays, with saffron, with gold and red-gold. But the columns of Sunium have kept their brilliant whiteness, although they stand on a great, bare cliff above the sea, exposed to the glare of the sun and to the buffeting of every wind of heaven. They are raised not merely on this natural height, but also on a great platform of the famous Poros-stone. In the time of Byron there were sixteen columns standing. There are now eleven, with a good deal of architrave. These columns are Doric, and are about twenty feet in height. They have not the majesty of the Parthenon columns, but, on the contrary, have a peculiar delicacy and even grace, which is lacking both in the Parthenon and in the Theseum. They do not move you to awe or overwhelm you; they charm and delight you. In their ivory-white simplicity, standing out against the brilliant blue of sea and sky on the white and gray platform, there is something that allures.

Upon one of the columns I found the name of Byron carved in bold letters. But I looked in vain for the name of Turner. Byron loved the Cape of Sunium. Fortunately, nothing has been done to make it less wonderful since his time. It is true that fewer columns are standing to bear witness to the old worship of the sea-god; but such places as Sunium are not injured when some blocks of marble fall, but when men begin to build. Still the noble promontory thrusts itself boldly forward into the sea from the heart of an undesecrated wilderness. Still the columns stand quite alone. All the sea-winds can come to you there, and all the winds of the hills—winds from the Ægean and Mediterranean, from crested Eubœa, from Melos, from Hydra, from Ægina, with its beautiful Doric temple, from Argolis and from the mountains of Arcadia. And it seems as if all the sunshine of heaven were there to bathe you in golden fire, as if there could be none left over for the rest of the world. The coasts of Greece stretch away beneath you into far distances, curving in bays, thrusting out in promontories, here tawny and volcanic, there gray and quietly sober in color, but never cold or dreary. White sails, but only two or three, are dreaming on the vast purple of Poseidon's kingdom—white sails of mariners who are bound for the isles of Greece. Poets have sung of those isles. Who has not thought of them with emotion? Now, between the white marble columns, you can see their mountain ranges, you can see their rocky shores.

Behind and below me I heard a slight movement. I got up and looked. And there on a slab of white marble lay a snow-white goat warming itself in the sun. White, gold, and blue, and far off the notes of white were echoed not only by the mariner's sails, but by tiny Albanian villages inland, seen over miles of bare country, over flushes of yellow, where the pines would not be denied.

There is an ineffable charm in the landscape, in the atmosphere, of Greece. No other land that I know possesses an exactly similar spell. Wildness and calm seem woven together, a warm and almost caressing wildness with a calm that is full of romance. There the wilderness is indeed a haven to long after, and there the solitudes call you as if with the voices of friends.

As I turned at last to go away from Poseidon's white marble ruin, a one-armed man came up to me, and in English told me that he was the guardian of the temple.

Smiling, he led the way down to a low whitewashed bungalow at a little distance. There, in a rough but delicious loggia, paved and fronting the sea, I found two brown women sitting with a baby among some small pots of flowers. Remote from the world, with only the marble columns for neighbors, with no voice but the sea's to speak to them, dwell these four persons. The man lived and worked for many years in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he lost his arm in some whirring machinery. Now he has come home and entered the sea-god's service. Pittsburgh and the Hellenic wilderness—what a contrast! But my one-armed friend takes it philosophically. He shrugs his shoulder, points to his stump, and says, "I guess I couldn't go on there like this, so I had to quit, and they put me here."

They put him "here," on Cape Sunium, and on Cape Sunium he has built himself a house and made for himself a loggia, white, cool, brightened with flowers, face to face with the purple sea, and the isles and the mountains of Greece. And at Sunium he intends to remain because, unfortunately, having lost an arm, he is no longer wanted in Pittsburgh.

I gave him some money, accepted the baby's wavering but insistent hand, and left him to his good or ill fortune in the exquisite wilderness.

DELPHI AND OLYMPIA

Chapter IV

DELPHI AND OLYMPIA

There are two ways of going from Athens to Delphi: by sea from the Piræus to Itea and thence by carriage; or by motor. Despite the rough surfaces of the roads and the terrors of dust, I chose the latter; and I was well rewarded. For the drive is a glorious one, though very long and fatiguing, and it enabled me to see a grand monument which many travelers miss—the Lion of Chæronea, which gazes across a vast plain in a solitary place between Thebes and Delphi.

Leaving Athens early one morning, I followed the Via Sacra, left Eleusis behind me, traversed the Thriasian plain, the heights of Mount Geraneia, and the rich cultivated plain of Bœotia, passed through the village of Kriekouki, and arrived at Thebes. There I halted for an hour. After leaving Thebes, the journey became continually more and more interesting as I drew near to Parnassus: over the plain of Livadia, through the village and khan of Gravia, where one hundred and eighty Greeks fought heroically against three thousand Turks in 1821, over the magnificent Pass of Amblema, across the delightful olive-covered plain of Krissa, and up the mountain to Delphi.

Throughout this wonderful journey, during which I saw country alternately intimate and wild, genial and majestic, and at one point almost savage, I had only one deception: that was on the Pass of Amblema, which rises to more than eight thousand feet above the level of the sea. Delphi, I felt, ought to be there. Delphi, I believed, must be there, hidden somewhere among the rocks and the fir-woods, where wolves lurk, and where the eagle circles and swoops above peaks which are cold and austere. Only when we began to descend in serpentine curves, when I saw far below me great masses of olive-trees, and the distant shining of the sea, did I realize that I was mistaken, and that Delphi lay beyond, in a region less tragically wild, more rustic, even more tender.

During this journey of, I believe, about three hundred kilometers or more, I realized fully the loneliness that happily shadows a great part of Greece. We seemed to be almost perpetually in the midst of a delightful desolation, gloriously alone with nature, now far up on bare flanks of the hills, now traveling through deserted pine-woods or olive-groves, now upon plains which extended to shadowy ranges of mountains, and which here and there reminded me of the plains of Palestine. Strange it seemed to come upon an occasional village of Greeks or Albanians, strayed, surely, and lost and forgotten in the wilderness; stranger still to see now and then some tiny Byzantine church, perhaps with a few cypresses about it, perched on a mountain height that looked as if it never had been trodden by foot of man. The breezes that met us were alive with a tingling purity of hilltop and sea, or sweet and wholesome with the resinous odor of pine. And the light that lay over the face of the land made nearly all things magical.

Again we met Turkish Gipsies. In Greece they have made the wild life their own. No longer one hears of brigands, though only a few years ago these highways were dangerous, and men traversed them armed and at their own peril. Now the Gipsies are in happy possession, and travel from place to place in small caravans, with their mules, donkeys, and dogs, and their tiny peaked tents, telling the bonne aventure to the superstitious, and, so the Greeks declare, stealing whatever they can lay their dark hands on. They look wild and smiling, crafty rather than ferocious; and they greet you with loud cries in an unknown tongue, and with gestures expressive of the perpetual desire to receive which seems inherent in all true vagabonds. They pitch their tents usually on the outskirts of the villages, staying for days or weeks, as the luck serves them. And, so far as I could judge, people receive them with good nature, perhaps grateful for the excitement they bring into lives that know little variation as season follows season and year glides into year. Just outside Thebes I found eleven of their tents set upon some rough ground, the beasts tethered, the dogs on guard, the babies toddling and sprawling, while their mothers were cooking some mysterious compound, and the men were away perhaps on some nefarious errand among the excited Thebans. For that day Greek officers were visiting the town, and in front of the café, among the trees, and above the waterside, where we stopped to lunch, there was a parade of horses, mules, and donkeys from all the neighborhood. War was taking its toll of the live-stock, and the whole population was abroad to see the fun.

As soon as I had descended from the car and begun to unpack my provisions, an elderly man came up, asked whether we were from Athens, and then put the question that is forever on the lips of the Greek, "What is the news?" Every Greek has a passion for the latest news. Often, when I was traveling through the country, people I passed on the way called out to me, "What is the news?" or, "Can you give us a newspaper?"

Thebes, where, according to legend, Hercules was born; where the stones gathered themselves together when Amphion struck his lyre; where blind Tiresias prophesied; and, seated upon a block of stone, the Sphinx asked her riddle of the passers-by and slew them; where Œdipus ruled and suffered his hideous fate; where the Epigoni took their vengeance; and Epaminondas showed how one man can lift a city and set it on a throne above all the cities of its fatherland—Thebes, where letters were first brought into use among the Greeks, and where weak-voiced Demosthenes by his eloquence persuaded the people to march to their glorious death against Philip of Macedon, is now just a busy village on the flank of a hill. Frequently devastated by earthquakes, which are the scourge of this region, it looks newly built, fairly clean and neat. It dominates the plain in which Plutarch was born, and the murmur of its waters is pleasant to the ear in a dry and thirsty land. But though Thebes is not specially interesting, below it, in that plain once celebrated for its flowers,—iris and lily, narcissus and rose,—beyond all sound of the voices of chattering peasants or determined soldiers, solitary in its noble rage and grief, is that most moving of monuments, the Lion of Chæronea.

I came upon it unexpectedly. If I had not happened to be looking toward the left my chauffeur would have driven me on without pause to Parnassus, the mighty flanks of which were already visible in the distance. When he pulled up we were already almost out of sight of the lion. And I was glad as I walked back alone, still more glad when I stood before it in solitude, surrounded by the great silence of the plain.

There where the lion sits, raised now on a high pedestal and with cypresses planted about him, was fought the great battle of Chæronea between the Greeks and Philip of Macedon; and there the Greeks lost much, but not their honor. Had it been otherwise, would the lion be there now after so many centuries, testifying to the grief of men long since dead, to their anger, even to their despair, but not to their cowardice or shame? I have heard people say that the face of the lion does express shame. It seems to me nobly passionate, loftily angry and sad, but not ashamed. The Thebans raised it to commemorate those of their comrades in arms who died on the battle-field. What shame can attach to such men? For long years the lion lay broken in pieces and buried in the earth. Only in 1902 were the fragments fitted together, though long before that they had lain above ground, where many noted travelers had seen them. The restoration has been splendidly successful, and has given to Greece one of the most memorable manifestations in marble of a state of soul that exists not merely in Greece, but in the world. Lion-hearted men are superbly commemorated by this lion.

The height of the statue from the top of the pedestal is about twenty feet. The material of which it is made, marble of Bœotia, was once, I believe, blue-gray. It is now gray and yellow. The lion is sitting, but in an attitude that suggests fierce vitality. Both the huge front paws seem to grasp the pedestal almost as if the claws were extended in an impulse of irresistible anger. The head is raised. The expression on the face is wonderful. There is in it a savage intensity of feeling that is rarely to be found in anything Greek. But the savagery is ennobled in some mysterious way by the sublime art of the sculptor, is lifted up and made ideal, eternal. It is as if the splendid rage in the souls of all men who ever have died fighting on a losing side had been gathered up by the soul of the sculptor, and conveyed by him whole into his work. The mysterious human spirit, breathed upon from eternal regions, glows in this divine lion of Greece.

Various writers on the scenery of Greece have described it as "alpine" in character. One has even used the word in connection with some of the mountain-ranges that may be seen from the plain of Attica. Such distracting visions of Switzerland did not beset my spirit as I traveled through a more beautiful and far more romantic land, absolutely different from the contented republic which has been chosen by Europe as its playground. But there were moments, as we slowly ascended the Pass of Amblema, when I thought of the North. For the delicate and romantic serenity of the Greek landscape did here give way to something that was almost savage, almost spectacular. The climbing forests of dark and hardy firs made me think of snow, which lies among them deep in winter. The naked peaks, the severe uplands, the precipices, the dim ravines, bred gloom in the soul. There was sadness combined with wildness in the scene, which a premature darkness was seizing, and the cold wind seemed to go shivering among the rocks.

It was then that I thought of Delphi, and believed that we must be nearing the home of the oracle. As we climbed and climbed, and the cold increased, and the world seemed closing brutally about us, I felt no longer in doubt. We must be close to Delphi, old region of mysteries and terror, where the god of the dead was thought to be hidden, where Apollo fought with Python, where men came with fear in their hearts to search out the future.

But presently we began to descend, and I learned that we were still a long way from Delphi. The sun set, and evening was falling when we were once more down on the sea-level, traversing one of the most delightful and fertile regions of Greece, the lovely plain of Krissa, which extends to the sea. The great olive-gardens stretch away for miles on every hand, interspersed here and there with plane-trees, mulberry-trees, medlars, cypresses, and the wild oleander. Many battles have been fought in that sylvan paradise, which now looks the home of peace, a veritable Garden of Eden lying between mountains and sea. Pilgrims traveling to Delphi were forced to pay toll there, and eventually the extortion became so intolerable that it led to war. That evening, as we drove along a road cut straight through the heart of the olive-woods, the whole region seemed sunk in a dream. We met no one; we heard no traffic, no voices, no barking of dogs. The thousands of splendid trees, planted symmetrically, were moved by no breeze. Warmth and an odorous calm pervaded the shadowy alleys between them. Here and there a soft beam of light shone among the trees from the window of a guardian's dwelling. And once we stopped to take Turkish coffee under a vine-trimmed arbor, solitary and lost in the sweet silence, in the silver dusk of the forest. A lodge in the wilderness! As I looked at the dark, bright-eyed man who served us, I, perhaps foolishly, envied him his life, his strange little home, remote, protected by his only companions, the trees.

In this plain camels are used for transport, and, I believe, for plowing and other work. They are to be found nowhere else in Greece. I saw none that night; but one morning, after leaving Delphi, I met a train of them pacing softly and disdainfully along the dusty road, laden with bales and with mysterious bundles wrapped round with sacking.

In the dark we began to climb up once more. At last we were actually on Parnassus, were approaching the "navel of the earth." But I was not aware of any wildness, such as that of Amblema, about us. The little I could see of the landscape did not look savage. I heard goat-bells tinkling now and then not far off. Presently some lights beamed out above us, as if in welcome. We passed through a friendly village street, came out on the mountain-side, and drew up before a long house, which stood facing what was evidently a wide view, now almost entirely hidden, though a little horned moon hung in the sky, attended by the evening star. The village was Kastri; the long house was the "Hôtel d'Apollon Pythien."

Delphi is memorable, but not because of wildness or terror. In retrospect it rises in my mind as a lonely place of light, gleaming on volcanic rocks and on higher rocks that are gray; of a few mighty plane-trees, pouring a libation of green toward olive-trees on the slopes beneath them; of a perpetual sweet sound of water. And beside the water travelers from the plain of Krissa, and travelers from Arachova, that wonderfully placed Parnassian village, renowned for its beautiful women, are pausing. They get down from their horses and mules to lave their hands and to drink. They cross themselves before the little Christian shrine under the trees by the roadside. They sit down in the shadows to rest.

It is very sweet to rest for long hours by the Castalian fountain of Delphi, remote from all habitations upon the great southern slope of Parnassus, under the tree of Agamemnon; to listen to the voice of the lustral wave. There, in the dead years, the pilgrims piously sprinkled themselves before consulting the oracle; there, now, the brown women of the mountains chatter gaily as they wash their clothes. The mountain is bare behind the shrine, where perhaps is a figure of Mary with Christ in her arms, or some saint with outspread wings. Its great precipices of rock are tawny. They bloom with strong reds and yellows, they shine with scars of gold. Among the rocks the stream is only a thread of silver, though under the bridge it flows down through the olive-gardens, a broad band of singing happiness.

Delphi has a mountain charm of remoteness, of lofty silence; it has also a seduction of pastoral warmth and gentleness and peace. Far up on the slope of gigantic Parnassus, it faces a narrow valley, or ravine, and a bare, calm mountain, scarred by zigzag paths, which look almost like lines sharply cut in the volcanic soil with an instrument. In the distance, away to the right, the defile opens out into the plain of Krissa, at the edge of which lies a section of sea, like a huge uncut turquoise lying in a cup of the land. Beyond are ranges of beautiful, delicate mountains.

The ruins of Delphi lie above the highroad to the left of it, between Kastri and the Castalian fountain, unshaded, in a naked confusion, but free from modern houses and in a fine loneliness. Once, and not very long ago, the village of Kastri stood close to the ruins, and some of it actually above them. But when excavations were undertaken seriously, all the houses were pulled down, and set up again where they stand to-day. Like the ruins at Eleusis and Olympia, the remains at Delphi are fragmentary. The ancient Hellenes believed that the center of the earth was at a certain spot within the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, where the eagles of Zeus, flying from the two ends of the earth, had met. The foundations, and some portions of the walls of this celebrated shrine, in which two golden eagles stood, may be visited, but very little of it remains. On the foundation has been set up a large Roman column, upon which once stood a statue. The fallen blocks of Doric columns are gigantic, and from them it is possible to gain some faint idea of the temple's immense size and massiveness. In the midst of a pit of stone, not far from the columns, I found a solitary fig-tree growing. It is interesting to notice that the huge outer wall of the temple was constructed of quantities of blocks, each one differing in shape from its neighbors. These were ingeniously fitted close together without the aid of any joining material. Although it is impossible not to wonder at and admire the cleverness shown in this wall, it produced on my mind an impression of confusion that was almost painful. The multitudes of irregular lines distressed my eyes. There is little repose in a puzzle, and this wall is like a mighty puzzle in stone.

Among the masses of broken fragments which cover much of the hillside stands out a small, solid building of Parian marble, very pure, very clean, almost shining under the rays of the sun. It resembles a great marble casket in which something very precious might be placed and sealed up. This is the treasury of the Athenians, which has been reconstructed since Kastri was moved from the fragments of the original temple. It is, in fact, a tiny Doric temple. The marble, of a beautiful yellow-white color, is mingled here and there with limestone. This little temple stands on a platform, with the clearly defined Sacred Way winding up the hill beside it. The front of it is approached by two steps, and it has two Doric columns, containing, however, only two blocks of the original marble, brown, with touches of old gold. The remaining blocks of these columns are of white Poros marble, brought from a distance, and they look rough and almost glaring. Poros marble may always be recognized by the minute shining grains, like specks of gold, that are scattered through it. Although a fine substance, it looks vulgar when placed beside Parian marble.

The semicircular places in which the priests of Delphi used to sit may still be seen, facing a fine view. The sea is hidden by a shoulder of the mountain, but the rolling slopes beyond the road are covered thickly with olive-trees, among which the goat-bells chime almost perpetually; and on the far side of the narrow valley the bare slopes, with their tiny, red paths, lead calmly toward rocky summits. To the left the highroad turns sharply round a rock in the direction of the Castalian fountain.

In the fairly well-preserved theater to the northwest, quantities of yellow flowers were growing, with some daisies. Among the gray limestone blocks of the orchestra I found a quantity of excellent blackberries. Where once was the stage, there are now brown grasses dried up by the sun. This theater is very steep, and above it towers a precipice. Near by, between the theater and the stadium, Parnassus gives back to your cry a swift and sharp echo. The gold, red-gold, and gray stadium, which lies farther up the mountain than the theater, is partly ruined, but in parts is well preserved. As I stood in it, thinking of the intellectual competitions that used to take place there, of the poems recited in it, of the music the lyre gave forth, and of the famous Pythian games, which, later, used to be celebrated in this strange mountain fastness, I saw eagles wheeling over me far up in the blue, above the wild gray and orange peaks.

In the museum, which stands in a splendid position on the mountain-side, with a terrace before it, there are many fine things. Delphi in the time of its greatness contained thousands of statues, great numbers of which were in bronze. Nero, Constantine, and others carried hundreds of them away. One which they left, a bronze charioteer in a long robe, faces you as you enter the museum. It is marvelously alive, almost seems to glow with vitality. The feet should be specially noticed. They are bare, and are miracles of sensitiveness. Farther on there is a splendid Antinous, robust, sensual, egoistic, a type of muscular beauty and crude determination, without heart or any sparkle of intellect. Two other statues which I thought exceptionally interesting are of a sturdy, smiling child and of a headless and armless woman. The latter, numbered 1817 in the catalogue, is very gracious and lovely. The back of the figure and the drapery, especially that part of it which flows from under the left arm to the heel of the right foot, are exceptionally beautiful.

There is a very fine view from the terrace. Toward evening it becomes wonderfully romantic. Far off, the village of Arachova, perched on its high ridge, bounds the horizon. It is a view closed in by mountains yet not oppressive; for there is width between the two ranges, and the large volcanic slopes are splendidly spacious. Here and there on these slopes are large wine-colored splashes such as you see often on the mountains of Syria, and these splashes give warmth to the scene. Above the Castalian fountain the two peaks of the Phædriadæ, a thousand feet high, stand up magnificently. Between them is the famous cleft from which the cold stream issues, to flow down through the olive-groves.

When evening falls, follow the winding white road a little way toward Arachova. From the soft dusk of the defile that spreads out into the plain of Krissa the goat-bells still chime melodiously. I have heard them even very late in the night. The section of sea that was turquoise now looks like solid silver. Behind it the mountains, velvety and black, flow away in delicate shapes. They are dreamlike, but beyond them rise other ethereal ranges which seem to you, as you gaze on them, impalpable, fluid almost, like a lovely imagination of mountains summoned up in your mind. Black-green is the plain. Under the tree of Agamemnon glows a tiny light, like an earth-bound star. Where once the pilgrims gathered who knew only the gods, Christian hands have tended the lamp before the holy picture. And a little farther on, among the foliage of the olive-trees, shines another of these Christian stars, which, in the darkness of Delphi's solitudes, shed their light, faintly perhaps, but faithfully, upon a way once often trodden by pagans who now sleep the last long sleep. To what changes in the human soul do these earth-bound stars bear witness! I sat beneath Agamemnon's tree, listening to the cry of the fountain, watching the little lights, till the night was black about me.

I must always think of Olympia as the poetic shrine of one of the most poetic statues in the world. As the Parthenon seems to be the soul of Athens, so the Hermes of Praxiteles seems to be the soul of Olympia, gathering up and expressing its aloofness from all ugly things, its almost reflective tenderness, its profound calm, and its far-off freedom from any sadness. When I stayed there I was the only traveler. Never did I see any human being among the beautiful ruins, or hear any voice to break their silence. Only the peasants of that region passed now and then on the winding track below the hill of Cronus, to lose themselves among the pine-trees. And I heard at a distance the wonderful sound, eternity's murmur withdrawn, that the breeze makes among their branches, as I sat by the palace of Nero.

Nature has taken Olympia into her loving arms. She has shed her pine-needles and her leaves of the golden autumn upon the seats where the wrestlers reposed. She has set her grasses and flowers among the stones of the Temple of Zeus. Her vines creep down to the edge of that cup of her earth which holds gently, as a nurse holds a sleeping child, palaces, temples, altars, shrines of the gods and ways for the chariots. All the glory of men has departed, but something remains which is better than glory—peace, loveliness, a pervading promise of lasting things beyond.

Among the ruins of Nero's palace I watched white butterflies flitting among feathery, silver grasses and red and white daisies. Lizards basked on the altar of Zeus. At the foot of the Heræum, the most ancient temple that may be seen in Greece at this time, a jackal whined in its dwelling. Sheep-bells were sounding plaintively down the valley beyond the arch leading to the walled way by which the great stadium, where the games took place, was entered. When I got up presently to stroll among the ruins, I set my foot on the tiny ruts of an uneven pavement, specially constructed so that the feet of contending athletes should not slip upon it.

The ruins lie in a sheltered and remote valley far away from the sea, and surrounded by gentle hills, woods, and delightful pastoral country. At some distance is the last railway station of the Peloponnesian railway line, which connects with the main line at Pyrgos. Between the station and the low hill on which stand the hotel and the museum is strung out a small, straggling hamlet of peasants' houses. It is very difficult to realize that this remote sanctuary, hidden away in the green glades and amid the pastures of Elis, where the waters of Cladeus and Alpheus glide among reeds and rushes, was ever crowded with people from all parts of Greece; that emperors dwelled there; that there the passions of the mob were roused to intense expression; that there men gained the desire of their hearts or were exposed to the sneers and opprobrium of their fellows. For Olympia to-day looks like an ideal home for the great god Pan.

I have called the ruins beautiful, and I think them so, partly because of their situation, with which they seem to me to combine harmoniously, and partly because of nature's collaboration with them, which is lacking from the ruins at Eleusis and even at Delphi. At Olympia many trees grow among the remains of the temples. A river runs by them. Excavations, though usually interesting, are often both dusty and ugly. At Olympia they are pastoral. Dryads might love them. Pan might sit happily on almost any bit of the walls and play his pipe. They form a unique sylvan paradise, full of wonderful associations, in which one is tempted to rest for hours, whereas from many ruins one wishes only to get away once they have been examined. And yet Olympia is so fragmentary that many persons are bitterly disappointed with what they find there, as the visitors' book in the little hotel bears witness.

In all the mass of remains, and they cover a very large extent of ground, I think I saw only four complete columns standing. Two of these were columns of the Heræum, in which the Hermes of Praxiteles was found lying among the remnants. They are golden-brown in color, and are of course Doric, very massive and rather squat. The temple, the base of which is very clearly marked, must have looked very powerful, but, I should think, heavy rather than really majestic. I cannot imagine the wonderfully delicate Hermes standing within it. It is believed that the original columns of the Heræum were of wood, and that when they began to rot away the stone columns were put up in their places. Much of the temple was made of brick. The Hermes stood between two of the columns.

It will be evident to any one who examines carefully all that is left of the Temple of Zeus that it must have been very grand. Fragments of the shafts of its columns, which are heaped in confusion on the ground, are enormous. One block, which I found poised upright on its rounded edge, was quite six feet high. This temple was made of limestone, which is now of a rather dreary, almost sinister, gray color. Exposure to the weather has evidently darkened it. The foundations are terrific. They suggest titanic preparations for the bearing up of a universe of stone. It seems to me that from what is left of this celebrated building, which stands in the middle of the sacred precinct, and which once contained Phidias's statue of Zeus, about forty feet high, one can gather something of what was the builders' conception of the chief of all the gods of Olympus. To them he must surely have been simply the Thunderer, a deity terrific and forbidding, to whose worship must be raised a temple grand but probably almost repellent. Legend relates that when Phidias had completed his great statue of Zeus, and it had been placed in position, Zeus sent down a thunderbolt which struck the ground close to the statue. The Greeks considered the thunderbolt to be the god's characteristic expression of content. Instead of the eagles of Zeus, I saw hovering over, and perching upon, this ruin black and white birds, with long tails, not unlike magpies. The statue of Zeus has disappeared. It is known to have been taken to Constantinople, and in that tempestuous city it vanished, like so much else. In the time of Olympia's glory the temple was elaborately decorated, with stucco, painting, gilding, marble tiles, shields, and vases, as well as with many statues. But despite this, I think it must have been far less satisfying than the calm and glorious Parthenon, in which seems to dwell rather the spirit of a goddess than the spirit of any human builders.

Earthquakes are frequent at Olympia, and have been so since the most ancient times. One destroyed the greater part of Zeus's temple about four hundred years after Christ. By that time the Olympic games had ceased to be held, and no doubt the place was beginning to fall into the neglect which, with the lapse of the centuries, has become so romantic. After it was forgotten by men, nature began to remember and love it. Very little of the famous stadium has been excavated. I found flocks of sheep and goats feeding peacefully above it, and near by a small, barefooted boy, with a little gun, out after quail.

On the first day of my visit to Olympia, after spending a few hours alone among the ruins I crossed the river, where I saw some half-naked men dragging for fish with hand-nets, and mounted the hill to the museum, which looks out over the delicious valley, and is attended by some umbrella-pines. It was closed, but the keeper came smiling from his dwelling close by to let me in. He did not follow me far, but sat down in the vestibule among the Roman emperors.

On my right I saw the entrance to what seemed a small gallery, or perhaps a series of small rooms. In front of me was a large, calm, well-lighted hall, with a wooden roof and walls of a deep, dull red, round which were ranged various objects. My eyes were attracted immediately to one figure, a woman apparently almost in flight, radiantly advancing, with thin draperies floating back from an exquisitely vital form—the celebrated "Victory" of Pæonius, now more than two thousand years old. Beyond this marvel of suggested motion I saw part of another room very much smaller than the hall and apparently empty. It drew me on, as in certain Egyptian temples the dim holy of holies draws the wanderer onward with an influence that may not be resisted. I took no more heed of the "Victory," of Hercules winning the apples of the Hesperides, or of anything else, but walked forward, came into the last room, and found myself alone with the Hermes of Olympia.

The room in which the Hermes stands—alone save for the little child on his arm—is exactly opposite the distant entrance of the museum. The keeper, when letting me in, had left the big door wide open. In my heart I thanked him, but not at that moment, for just then I did not notice it. I was looking at the Hermes.

A great deal of sad nonsense is talked in our day by critics of art, music, and literature about "restraint." With them the word has become a mere parrot cry, a most blessed word, like Mesopotamia. They preach restraint very often to those who have little or nothing to restrain. The result is nullity. In striving to become "Greek," too many unhappy ones become nothing at all. Standing before the Hermes of Olympia, one realizes as never before the meaning, the loveliness, of restraint, of the restraint of a great genius, one who could be what he chose to be, and who has chosen to be serene. This it is to be Greek. Desire of anything else fails and lies dead. In the small and silent room, hidden away from the world in the green wilderness of Elis, one has found that rare sensation, a perfect satisfaction.

Naked the Hermes stands, with his thin robe put off, and flowing down over the trunk of a tree upon which he lightly leans. He is resting on his way to the nymphs, but not from any fatigue. Rather, perhaps, because he is in no haste to resign his little brother Dionysus to their hands for education. Semele, the mother, is dead, and surely this gracious and lovely child, touching because of his innocent happiness, his innocent eagerness in pleasure, looks to Hermes as his protector. He stretches out one soft arm in an adorable gesture of desire. The other clings to the shoulder of Hermes. And Hermes watches him with an expression of divine, half-smiling gentleness, untouched by sadness, by any misgiving, such as we often feel about the future of a little child we love; Hermes watches him, contemplative, benign, celestial.

There is a pause in the hurry, in the sorrow, of this travailing world; there is a hush. No more do the human cries sound in the midst of that darkness which is created by our misunderstanding. No longer do the frantic footfalls go by. The golden age has returned, with its knowledge of what is not needed—a knowledge that we have lost.

I looked up from Hermes and the little brother, and, in the distance, through the doorway of the museum, I saw a tiny picture of Elis bathed in soft, golden light; a calm hillside, some green and poetic country, and, in the foreground, like a message, a branch of wild olive.

That is what we need, what secretly we desire, our branch, perhaps our crown, of wild olive. And all the rest is as nothing.

IN CONSTANTINOPLE

Chapter V

IN CONSTANTINOPLE

Constantinople is beautiful and hateful. It fascinates and it repels. And it bewilders—how it bewilders! No other city that I have seen has so confused and distressed me. For days I could not release myself from the obsession of its angry tumult. Much of it seems to be in a perpetual rage, pushing, struggling, fighting, full of ugly determination to do—what? One does not know, one cannot even surmise what it desires, what is its aim, if, indeed, it has any aim. These masses of dark-eyed, suspicious, glittering people thronging its streets, rushing down its alleys, darting out of its houses, calling from its windows, muttering in its dark and noisome corners, gathering in compact, astonishing crowds in its great squares before its mosques, blackening even its waters, amid fierce noises of sirens from its innumerable steamers and yells from its violent boatmen, what is it that they want? Whither are they going in this brutal haste, these Greeks, Corsicans, Corfiotes, Montenegrins, Armenians, Jews, Albanians, Syrians, Egyptians, Arabs, Turks? They have no time or desire to be courteous, to heed any one but themselves. They push you from the pavement. They elbow you in the road. Upon the two bridges they crush past you, careless if they tread upon you or force you into the mud. If you are in a caique, traveling over the waters of the Golden Horn, they run into you. Caique bangs into caique. The boatmen howl at one another, and somehow pull their craft free. If you are in a carriage, the horses slither round the sharp corners, and you come abruptly face to face with another carriage, dashing on as yours is dashing, carelessly, scornfully, reckless apparently of traffic and of human lives. There seems to be no plan in the tumult, no conception of anything wanted quietly, toward which any one is moving with a definite, simple purpose. The noise is beyond all description. London, even New York, seems to me almost peaceful in comparison with Constantinople. There is no sound of dogs. They are all dead. But even their sickly howling, of which one has heard much, must surely have been overpowered by the uproar one hears to-day, except perhaps in the dead of night.

Soldiers seem to be everywhere. To live in Constantinople is like living in some vast camp. When I was there, Turkey was preparing feverishly for war. The streets were blocked with trains of artillery. The steamers in the harbor were vomiting forth regiments of infantry. Patrols of horsemen paraded the city. On my first night in Pera, when, weary with my efforts to obtain some general conception of what the spectacular monster really was, what it wanted, what it meant, what it was about to do, I had at length fallen asleep toward dawn, I was wakened by a prolonged, clattering roar beneath my windows. I got up, opened the shutters, and looked out. And below me, in the semi-darkness, I saw interminable lines of soldiers passing: officers on horseback, men tramping with knapsacks on their backs and rifles over their shoulders; then artillery, gun-carriages, with soldiers sitting loosely on them holding one another's hands; guns, horses, more horses, with officers riding them; then trains of loaded mules. On and on they went, and always more were coming behind. I watched them till I was tired, descending to the darkness of Galata, to the blackness of old Stamboul.

Gradually, as the days passed by, I began to understand something of the city, to realize never what it wanted or what it really meant, but something of what it was. It seemed to me then like a person with two natures uneasily housed in one perturbed body. These two natures were startlingly different the one from the other. One was to me hateful—Pera, with Galata touching it. The other was not to be understood by me, but it held me with an indifferent grasp, and from it to me there flowed a strange and almost rustic melancholy that I cared for—Stamboul. And between these two natures a gulf was fixed—the gulf of the Golden Horn.

Pera is a mongrel city, set on a height and streaming blatantly to Galata; a city of tall, discolored houses not unlike the houses of Naples; of embassies and churches; of glaring shops and cafés glittering with plate-glass, through which crafty, impudent eyes are forever staring out upon the passers-by; of noisy, unattractive hotels and wizen gardens, where bands play at stated hours, and pretentious, painted women from second-rate European music-halls posture and squall under the light of electric lamps. There is no rest, no peace in Pera. There seems to be no discipline. Motor-cars make noises there even in the dead of night, and when standing still, such as I never before heard or imagined. They have a special breed of cars in Pera. Bicyclists are allowed to use motor sirens to clear the way before them. One Sunday when, owing to a merciful strike of the coachmen, there was comparative calm, I saw a boy on horseback going at full gallop over the pavement of the Grande Rue. He passed and repassed me five times, lashing his horse till it was all in a lather. Nobody stopped him. You may do anything, it seems, in Pera, if it is noisy, brutal, objectionable. Pera has all that is odious of the Levant: impudence, ostentation, slyness, indelicacy, uproar, a glittering commonness. It is like a blazing ring of imitation diamonds squeezing a fat and dirty finger. But it is wonderfully interesting simply because of the variety of human types one sees there. The strange thing is that this multitude of types from all over the East and from all the nations of Europe is reduced, as it were, by Pera to a common, a very common, denominator. The influence of place seems fatal there.

Stamboul is a city of wood and of marble, of dusty, frail houses that look as if they had been run up in a night and might tumble to pieces at any moment, and of magnificent mosques, centuries old, solid, huge, superb, great monuments of the sultans. The fire-tower of Galata looks toward the fire-tower of Stamboul across a forest of masts; but no watchfulness, no swiftness of action, can prevent flames from continually sweeping through Stamboul, leaving waste places behind them, but dying at the feet of the mosques. As one looks at Stamboul from the heights of Pera, it rises on its hills across the water, beyond the sea of the Golden Horn, like a wonderful garden city, warm, almost ruddy, full of autumnal beauty, with its red-brown roofs and its trees. And out of its rich-toned rusticity the mosques heave themselves up like leviathans that have nothing in common with it; the Mosque of Santa Sophia, of the Sultan Achmet, with its six exquisite minarets, of Mohammed the Conqueror, of Suleiman the Magnificent, and how many others!

There is no harmony between the mosques of Stamboul and the houses of Stamboul. The former are enduring and grand; the latter, almost like houses of cards. And yet Stamboul is harmonious, is very beautiful. Romance seems brooding over it, trailing lights and shadows to clothe it with flame and with darkness. It holds you, it entices you. It sheds upon you a sense of mystery. What it has seen, Stamboul! What it has known! What a core of red violence that heart has and always has had! When the sunset dies away among the autumnal houses and between the minarets that rise above the city like prayers; when the many cypresses that echo the minarets in notes of dark green become black, and the thousands of houses seem to be subtly run together into a huge streak of umber above the lights at the waterside; when Seraglio Point stretches like a shadowy spear toward the Bosporus and the Black Sea, and the coasts of Asia fade away in the night, old Stamboul murmurs to you with a voice that seems to hold all secrets, to call you away from the world of Pera to the world of Aladdin's lamp. Pera glitters in the night and cries out to heaven. Old Stamboul wraps itself in a black veil and withdraws where you may not follow.

When I think of Constantinople as a whole, as seen, say, from the top of the Galata tower, set up by the Genoese, I think of it as the most wonderful, the most beautiful, and the most superbly situated city I ever have seen.

It is an Eastern city of the sea, pierced by water at its heart, giving itself to the winds from Marmora, from the Golden Horn, from the Bosporus, from the Black Sea. The snows of Asia look upon it across the blue waters of Marmora, where the Iles des Princes sleep in a flickering haze of gold. Stamboul climbs, like Rome, to the summits of seven hills, and gazes over the great harbor, crowded with a forest of masts, echoing with sounds of the sea, to Galata, and to Pera on the height. And the Golden Horn narrows to the sweet waters of Europe, but broadens toward Seraglio Point into the Bosporus, that glorious highway of water between Europe and Asia, lined with the palaces and the villas of sultans and pashas, of Eastern potentates and of the European Powers: Yildiz, and Dolma bagtché, Beylerbey, and Cheragan, the great palace of the Khedive of Egypt's mother, with its quay upon the water, facing the villa of her son, which stands on the Asian shore, lifted high amid its woods, the palace of the "sweet waters of Asia," the gigantic red-roofed palace where Ismail died in exile. Farther on toward Therapia, where stand the summer embassies of the Powers, Robert College, dignified, looking from afar almost like a great gray castle, rises on its height above its sloping gardens. Gaze from any summit upon Constantinople, and you are amazed by the wonder of it, by the wonder of its setting. There is a vastness, a glory of men, of ships, of seas, of mountains, in this grand view which sets it apart from all other views of the world. Two seas send it their message. Two continents give of their beauty to make it beautiful. Two religions have striven to sanctify it with glorious buildings. In the midst of its hidden squalor and crime rises what many consider the most beautiful church—now a mosque—in the world. Perhaps no harbor in Europe can compare with its harbor. For human and historical interest it can scarcely be equaled. In the shadow of its marvelous walls, guarded by innumerable towers and girdled by forests of cypresses, it lies like some great magician, glittering, mysterious, crafty, praying, singing, intriguing, assassinating, looking to East and West, watchful, and full of fanaticism.

I crossed the new bridge. The famous old timber bridge, which rocks under your feet, has been moved up the Golden Horn, and now spans the sea by the marine barracks. Evening was falling; a wind had brought clouds from the Black Sea. The waters were colorless, and were licked into fretful wavelets, on which the delicate pointed caiques swayed like leaves on a tide. Opposite to me, at the edge of Stamboul, the huge Mosque of Yeni-Validé-Jamissi rose, with its crowd of cupolas large and small and its prodigious minarets. Although built by two women, it looked stern and male, seemed to be guarding the bridge, to be proclaiming to all the mongrels from Galata and Pera, who hurried from shore to shore, that Stamboul will make no compromise with the infidel, that in the great space before this mosque the true East in Europe begins.

Russia was in the wind, I thought. The breath of the steppes was wandering afar to seek—what? The breath of the desert? The great mosque confronted it, Islam erect, and now dark, forbidding under the darkening sky. Even the minarets had lost their delicate purity, had become fierce, prayers calling down destruction on unbelievers. And all the cries of Stamboul seemed to gather themselves together in my ears, keening over the sea above which I stood—voices of many nations; of Turks, Arabs, Circassians, Persians, of men from the wilds of Asia and the plains of India; voices of bashi-bazouks and of slaves; even, thin high voices of eunuchs. From the quays to right and left of the bridge crowds of people rose to my sight and hurried away; to them crowds of people descended, sinking out of my sight. Soldiers and hamals passed, upright and armed, bending beneath the weight of incredible loads. Calls of Albanian boatmen came up from the sea. From the city of closely packed fishermen's vessels rose here and there little trails of smoke. On their decks dim figures crouched about wavering fires. A gnarled beggar pushed me, muttering, then whining uncouth words. Along the curving shore, toward the cypress-crowned height of Eyub, lights were strung out, marking the waterside. Behind me tall Pera began to glitter meretriciously. The Greek barbers, I knew, were standing impudently before the doors of their little saloons, watching the evening pageant as it surged slowly through the Grande Rue and toward the Taxim Garden. Diplomats were driving home from the Sublime Porte in victorias. The "cinemas" were gathering in their mobs. Tokatlian's was thronged with Levantines whispering from mouth to mouth the current lies of the day. Below, near the ships, the business men of Galata were rushing out of their banks, past the large round-browed Montenegrins who stand on the steps, out of their offices and shops, like a mighty swarm of disturbed bees. The long shriek of a siren from a steamer near Seraglio Point tore the gloom. I went on, despite menacing Validé Sultan, I lost myself in the wonderful maze of Stamboul.

Stamboul near the waterside is full of contrasts so sharp, so strange that they bewilder and charm, and sometimes render uneasy even one who has wandered alone through many towns of the East. Sordid and filthy, there is yet something grandiose in it, something hostile and threatening in the watchful crowds that are forever passing by. Between the houses the sea-wind blows up, and you catch glimpses of water, of masts, of the funnels of steamers. Above the cries of the nations rise the long-drawn wails and the hootings of sirens. The traffic of the streets is made more confusing by your constant consciousness of the traffic of the sea, embraced by it, almost mingling with it. Water and wind, mud and dust, cries of coachmen and seamen, of motor-cars and steamers, and soldiers, soldiers, soldiers passing, always passing. Through a window-pane you catch a glitter of jewels and a glitter of Armenian eyes gazing stealthily out. You pass by some marble tombs sheltered by weary trees, under the giant shadow of a mosque, and a few steps farther on you look through an arched doorway and see on the marble floor of a dimly lighted hall half-naked men, with tufts of black hair drooping from partly shaved heads and striped towels girt round their loins, going softly to and fro, or bending about a fountain from which water gushes with a silvery noise. This is a Turkish bath. Throughout Stamboul there are bath-houses with little cupolas on their roofs, and throughout Stamboul there are tombs; but the uneasy and watchful crowds throng the quarters near the waterside and the great bazaars and the spaces before the principal mosques. They are not spread throughout the city. Many parts of Stamboul are as the waste places of the earth, abandoned by men.

By night they are silent and black; by day they look like the ways of a great wooden village from which the inhabitants have fled. In their open spaces, patches of waste ground, perhaps a few goats are trying to browse among rubbish and stones, a few little children are loitering, two or three silent men may be sitting under a vine by a shed, which is a Turkish café. There is no sound of steps or of voices. One has no feeling of being in a great city, of being in a city at all. Little there is of romance, little of that mysterious and exquisite melancholy which imaginative writers have described. Dullness and shabbiness brood over everything. Yet an enormous population lives in the apparently empty houses. Women are watching from the windows behind the grilles. Life is fermenting in the midst of the dust, the discomfort, the almost ghastly silence.

The great bazaar of Stamboul is a city within a city. As you stand before its entrance you think of a fortress full of immured treasures. And there are treasures of price under the heavy arches, in the long roofed-over lanes. The bazaars of Tunis seem minute, of Damascus ephemeral, of Cairo dressed up, of Jerusalem crushed together and stifling, when compared with the vast bazaars of Stamboul, which have a solidity, a massiveness, unshared by their rivals. I saw there many cheap goods such as I have seen on certain booths in the East End of London, but they were surrounded with a certain pomp and dignity, with a curious atmosphere of age. Some parts of the bazaars are narrow. Others are broad and huge, with great cupolas above them, and, far up, wooden galleries running round them. Now and then you come upon an old fountain of stained marble and dim faience about which men are squatting on their haunches to wash their faces and hands and their carefully bared arms. The lanes are paved and are often slippery. Just under the lofty roof there are windows of white glass, and about them, and on arches and walls, there are crude decorations in strong blues and purples, yellows and greens. The serious merchants from many lands do not beset you with importunities as you pass; but sometimes a lustrous pair of eyes invites you to pause, or a dark and long-fingered hand gently beckons you toward a jewel, a prayer-carpet, a weapon, or something strange in silver or gold or ivory.

One day a man from Bagdad invited me to buy a picture as I drew near to him. It was the portrait of a dervish's cap worked in silk. The cap, orange-colored and silver, was perched upon a small table (in the picture) above which hung curtains in two shades of green. A heavy gilt frame surrounded this "old master" of the East. We bargained. The merchant's languages were broken, but at length I understood him to say that the cap was a perfect likeness. I retorted that all the dervishes' caps I had seen upon living heads were the color of earth. The merchant, I believe, pitied my ignorance. His eyes, hands, arms, and even his shoulders were eloquent of compassion. He lowered the price of the picture by about half a farthing in Turkish money, but I resisted the blandishment and escaped into the jewel bazaar, half regretting a lost opportunity.

Many Turkish women come to the bazaars only to meet their lovers. They cover a secret desire by a pretense of making purchases. From the upper floor of the yellow-blue-and-red kiosk, in which Turkish sweets are sold, and you can eat the breasts of chickens cooked deliciously in cream and served with milk and starch, I have watched these subtle truants passing in their pretty disguises suggestive of a masked ball. They look delicate and graceful in their thin and shining robes, like dominoes, of black or sometimes of prune-color, with crape dropping over their faces and letting you see not enough; for many Turkish women are pretty.

One day I was in the upper room of a photographer's shop when two Turkish women came in and removed their veils, standing with their backs to the English infidel. One was obviously much younger than the other, and seemed to have a beautiful figure. I was gazing at it, perhaps rather steadily, when, evidently aware of my glance, she turned slowly and deliberately round. For two or three minutes she faced me, looking to right and left of me, above me, even on the floor near my feet, with her large and beautiful blue-gray eyes. She was lovely. Young, perhaps eighteen, she was slightly painted, and her eyebrows and long curling lashes were blackened. Her features were perfect, her complexion was smooth and brilliant, and her expression was really adorable. It seemed to say to me quietly:

"Yes, you are right. It is foolish ever to conceal such a face as this with a veil when really there is not too much beauty in the world. Mais que voulez-vous? Les Turcs!" And the little hanum surely moved her thin shoulders contemptuously. But her elderly companion pulled at her robe, and slowly she moved away. As the two women left the room, the photographer, a Greek, looked after them, smiling. Then he turned to me, spread out his thin hands, and said, with a shrug, "Encore des désenchantées!"

I thought of the disenchanted one day as I sat among the letter-writers in the large and roughly paved court of the "Pigeon's Mosque," or Mosque of Bajazet II. For hours I had been wandering on foot through the upper quarters of old Stamboul, and I could not release my mind from the dull pressure of its influence. All those wooden houses, silent, apparently abandoned, shuttered—streets and streets of them, myriads of them! Now and then above the carved wood of a lattice I had seen a striped curtain, cheap, dusty, hanging, I guessed, above a cheap and dusty divan. The doors of the houses were large and solid, like prison doors. Before one, as I slowly passed by, I had seen an old Turk in a long quilted coat of green, with a huge key in his hand, about to enter. He glanced to right and left, then thrust the key into the door. I had felt inclined to stop and say to him:

"That house has been abandoned for years. Every one has migrated long ago from this quarter of Stamboul. If you stay here, you will be quite alone." But the old Turk knew very well that all the houses were full of people, of imprisoned women. What a fate to be one of the prisoners!

That was my thought as I looked at the sacred pigeons, circling in happy freedom over the garden where Bajazet slumbers under his catafalque, fluttering round the cupolas of their mosque, and beneath the gray-pink-and-white arcade, with its dull-green and plum-colored columns, or crowding together upon the thin branches of their plane-tree. A pure wind blew through the court and about the marble fountain. The music made by the iridescent wings of the birds never ceased, and their perpetual cooing was like the sweet voice of content. The sunshine streamed over the pavement and penetrated under the arches, making the coral beads of a rosary glow and its gold beads glitter, giving to the amber liquid carried on a tray by a boy to a barber beneath his awning a vivacity almost of flame. Beside me a lover was dictating a letter to a scribe, who squatted before his table, on which were arranged a bright-blue inkstand and cup, a pile of white paper, and a stand with red pens and blue pencils. Farther on, men were being shaved, and were drinking coffee as they lounged upon bright-yellow sofas. Near me a very old Turk, with fanatical, half-shut eyes, was sitting on the ground and gazing at the pink feet of the pigeons as they tripped over the pavement, upon which a pilgrim to the mosque had just flung some grain. As he gazed, he mechanically fingered his rosary, swiftly shifting the beads on and on, beads after beads, always two at a time. Some incense smoldered in a three-legged brazier, giving out its peculiar and drowsy smell. On the other side of the court a fruit-seller slept by a pile of yellow melons. The grain thrown by the pilgrim was all eaten now, and for a moment the sunshine was dimmed by the cloud of rising and dispersing birds, gray and green, with soft gleams like jewels entangled in their plumage. Some flew far to the tall white-and-gray minaret of their mosque, others settled on the cupola above the fountain. A few, venturous truants, disappeared in the direction of the seraskierat wall, not far off. The greater number returned to their plane-tree on the right of the lover and the scribe. And as the lover suggested, and the scribe wrote from right to left, the pigeons puffed out their breasts and cooed, calling other pilgrims to remember that even the sacred have their carnal appetites, and to honor the poor widow's memory before going up to the mosque to pray.

One day I went up the hill toward Yildiz to see the Selamlik. That morning the sultan was going to pray in the mosque of wood which Abdul Hamid built close to the mysterious, walled-in quarter of palaces, harems, kiosks, gardens, barracks, and parks which he made his prison. From the Bosporus you can see it extending from the hilltop almost to the sea, a great property, outside the city, yet dominating it, with dense groves of trees in which wild animals were kept, with open spaces, with solitary buildings and lines of roofs, and the cupola of the mosque of the soldiers. All about it are the high walls which a coward raised up to protect him and his fear. The mosque is below the great entrance-gates on a steep hillside beyond the walls. A large modern house, white, with green shutters, in which Abdul Hamid used to grant audiences and, I believe, to give banquets, looks down on it. From the upper windows of this dwelling the Turks say the ex-sultan often stared at his city through powerful glasses.

The mosque is not large. It is yellow and white, with a minaret of plaster on the side next the sea, and a graveled courtyard surrounded by green iron railings and planted with a few trees. On the side next to Yildiz is a steep bank. A road runs up the hill to the left of the mosque as you face Yildiz, and another hidden road descends from the gates and gives access to the courtyard behind the mosque. The sultan has therefore a choice of two routes, and nobody seems to know beforehand which way he will come. There were very few tourists in Constantinople when I was there. People were afraid of war, and before I left the Orient express had ceased to run. But I found awaiting the padishah many Indian pilgrims, a large troop of pilgrims from Trebizond who were on their way to Mecca, several Persians wearing black toques, and a good many Turks. These were in the courtyard close to the mosque, where I was allowed to stand by the aristocratic young chief of police, who wore a woolly, gray, fez-shaped cap. Outside the railings stood a dense crowd of veiled women.

Soon after I arrived a squadron of the body-guard rode up from the city, carrying red-and-green pennons on long staffs, and halted before the gates of the palace. And almost at the same moment the palace musicians, in dark-blue, red, and gold, wearing short swords, and carrying shining brass instruments, marched into the inclosure. They stood still, then dropped their instruments on the ground, moved away, and sat down on the bank, lolling in easy attitudes. Time slipped by, and important people strolled in, officers, court officials, attendants. Eunuchs shambled loosely past in wonderfully fitting, long frock-coats, wearing turquoise rings on their large weak hands, and looking half-piteously impudent. Men hurried into the mosque carrying brown Gladstone bags. Nazim Pasha, weary and grave, the weight of war already on his shoulders, talked with the master of the ceremonies beside some steps before which lay a bright-yellow carpet.

This is the sultan's entrance to the mosque. It is not imposing. The two flights of steps curve on right and left to a trivial glass porch which reminded me of that bulbous addition to certain pretentious houses which is dignified by the name "winter garden." Some smart, very strong Turkish sailors lined up opposite me. Not far from the porch stood a group of military doctors in somber uniforms. A second yellow carpet was unrolled to cover the flight of steps on the left of the porch, more eunuchs went by, more Gladstone bags were carried past me. Then came soldiers in yellowish brown, and palace officials in white and blue, with red collars. Two riding-horses were led by two grooms toward the back of the mosque. The musicians rose languidly from the bank, took up their instruments, turned round, and faced toward Yildiz. Through the crowd, like a wind, went that curious stir which always precedes an important event for which many people are waiting. Nazim Pasha spoke to the chief of police, slowly moving his white-gloved hands, and then from the hilltop came a rhythmical, booming noise of men's voices, very deep, very male: the soldiers before the gates were acclaiming their sovereign. I saw a fluttering movement of pennons; the sultan had emerged from the palace and was descending by the hidden road to perform his devotions.

In perhaps five minutes an outrider appeared from behind the mosque, advancing slowly parallel with the bank, followed by a magnificent victoria, covered with gold and lined, I think, with satin, drawn by two enormous brown horses the harness of which was plated with gold. They were driven from the box by a gorgeous coachman, who was standing. The musicians, turning once more, struck up the "Sultan's Hymn," the soldiers presented arms; the brown horses wheeled slowly round, and I saw within a few paces of me, sitting alone in the victoria in a curious, spread-out attitude, a bulky and weary old man in a blue uniform, wearing white kid gloves and the fez. He was staring straight before him, and on his unusually large fair face there was no more expression than there is on a white envelop. Women twittered. Men saluted. The victoria stopped beside the bright-yellow carpet. After a moment's pause, as if emerging from a sort of trance, the Calif of Islam got up and stepped slowly and heavily out, raising one hand to his fez. Then, as if with an abrupt effort to show alertness, he walked almost quickly up the steps to the glass porch, turned just before entering it, stood for an instant looking absolutely blank, again saluted, swung round awkwardly, and disappeared. Almost immediately afterward one of his sons, a rather short and fair young man with a flushed face, attended by an officer, hurried past me and into the mosque by another entrance.

A few persons went away while his Majesty was praying; but all the pilgrims stayed, and I stayed with them. Several of the officials walked about on the gravel, talked, smoked, and drank orangeade, which a servant brought to them on a silver tray. Now and then from within the mosque came to us the loud murmur of praying voices. The soldiers of the body-guard descended the hill from the gates of Yildiz on foot, leading their horses, and assembled outside the courtyard. They were followed by a brilliant squadron of cavalry in dark-blue-and-red uniforms, with green-and-red saddle-cloths; their blood-red flag was borne before them, and their own music accompanied them. The soldiers in yellowish brown had piled arms and were standing at ease, smoking and talking. Twenty minutes perhaps went by, then a Gladstone bag was carried out of the mosque. We all gazed at it with reverence. What was in it? Or, if there was nothing, what had been recently taken out of it? I never shall know. As the bag vanished, a loud sound of singing came from within, and a troop of palace guards in vivid-red uniforms, with white-and-red toques trimmed with black astrakhan, marched into the court led by an officer. Some gendarmes followed them. Then the chief of police tripped forward with nervous agility, and made us all cross over and stand with our backs to the bank in a long line. An outrider, dressed in green and gold, and holding a big whip, rode in on a huge strawberry-roan horse. Behind him came a green-and-red brougham with satin cushions, drawn by a pair of strawberry roans. A smart coachman and footman sat on the box, and on each side rode two officers on white horses.

Now the singing ceased in the mosque. People began to come out. The sultan's son, less flushed, passed by on foot, answering swiftly the salutes of the people. The brougham was drawn up before the bright-yellow carpet. Nazim Pasha once more stood there talking with several officials. The soldiers had picked up their arms, the sailors were standing at attention.

On this announcement being made to me, I thought seriously of departing in peace; but a Greek friend, who had spoken to an official, murmured in my ear:

It seemed to me that his Majesty was a very long time at his toilet; but at last we were rewarded. Abruptly from the glass porch he appeared in European dress, with very baggy trousers much too long in the leg and a voluminous black frock-coat. He stood for a moment holding the frock-coat with both hands, as if wishing to wrap himself up in it. Then, still grasping it, he walked quickly down the steps, his legs seeming almost to ripple beneath the weight of his body, and stepped heavily into the brougham, which swung upon its springs. The horses moved, the carriage passed close to me, and again I gazed at this mighty sovereign, while the Eastern pilgrims salaamed to the ground. Mechanically he saluted. His large face was still unnaturally blank, and yet somehow it looked kind. And I felt that this old man was weary and sad, that his long years of imprisonment had robbed him of all vitality, of all power to enjoy; that he was unable to appreciate the pageant of life in which now, by the irony of fate, he was called to play the central part. All alone he sat in the bright-colored brougham, carrying a flaccid hand to his fez and gazing blankly before him. The carriage passed out of the courtyard, but it did not go up the hill to the palace.

"The sultan," said a voice, "is going out into the country to rest and to divert himself."

After that day I often saw before me a large white envelop, and the most expressive people in the world were salaaming before it.

STAMBOUL, THE CITY OF MOSQUES

Chapter VI

STAMBOUL, THE CITY OF MOSQUES

Stamboul is wonderfully various. Compressed between two seas, it contains sharp, even brutal contrasts: of beauty and ugliness, grandeur and squalor, purity and filth, silence and uproar, the most delicate fascination and a fierceness that is barbaric. It can give you peace or a sword. The sword is sharp and cruel; the peace is profound and exquisite.

Every day early I escaped from the uproar of Pera and sought in Stamboul a place of forgetfulness. There are many such places in the city and on its outskirts: the mosques, the little courts and gardens of historic tombs; the strange and forgotten Byzantine churches, lost in the maze of wooden houses; the cemeteries vast and melancholy, where the dead sleep in the midst of dust and confusion, guarded by giant cypresses; the lonely and shadowed ways by the walls and the towers; the poetic glades and the sun-kissed terraces of Seraglio Point.

Santa Sophia stands apart from all other buildings, unique in beauty, with the faint face of the Christ still visible on its wall; Christian in soul though now for so long dedicated to the glory of Allah and of his prophet. I shall not easily forget my disappointment when I stood for the first time in its shadow. I had been on Seraglio Point, and, strolling by the famous Royal Gate to look at the lovely fountain of Sultan Ahmed, I saw an enormous and ugly building decorated with huge stripes of red paint, towering above me as if fain to obscure the sun. The immensity of it was startling. I asked its name.

I looked away to the fountain, letting my eyes dwell on its projecting roof and its fretwork of gold, its lustrous blue and green tiles, splendid ironwork, and plaques of gray and brown marble.

It was delicate and enticing. Its mighty neighbor was almost repellent. But at length—not without reluctance, for I feared perhaps a deeper disappointment—I went into the mosque by the Porta Basilica, and found myself in the midst of a vast harmony, so wonderful, so penetrating, so calm, that I was conscious at once of a perfect satisfaction.

At first this happy sense of being completely satisfied seemed shed upon me by shaped space. In no other building have I had this exact feeling, that space had surely taken an inevitable form and was announcing itself to me. I stood beneath the great dome, one hundred and seventy-nine feet in height, and as I gazed upward I felt both possessed and released.

For a long time I was fully aware of nothing but the vast harmony of Santa Sophia, descending upon me, wrapping me round. I saw moving figures, tiny, yet full of meaning, passing in luminous distances, pausing, bending, kneeling; a ray of light falling upon a white turban; an Arab in a long pink robe leaning against a column of dusky red porphyry; a dove circling under the dome as if under the sky. But I could not be strongly conscious of any detail, or be enchanted by any separate beauty. I was in the grasp of the perfect whole.

Somewhere far off in the mosque a child began to sing a great tune, powerfully, fervently, but boyishly. The voice was not a treble voice; it was deeper, yet unmistakably the voice of a boy. And the melody sung was bold, indeed almost angry, and yet definitely religious. It echoed along the walls of marble, which seemed to multiply it mysteriously, adding to it wide murmurs which were carried through all the building, into the dimmest, remotest recesses. It became in my ears as the deep-toned and fanatical thunder of Islam, proclaiming possession of the church of Divine Wisdom which had been dedicated to Christ. It put me for a time definitely outside of the vast harmony. I was able at last to notice details both architectural and human.

Santa Sophia has nine gates leading to it from a great corridor or outer hall, lined with marble and roofed with old-gold mosaic. As you enter from the Porta Basilica you have an impression of pale yellow, gold, and gray; of a pervading silvery glimmer, of a pervading gleam of delicate primrose, brightly pure and warm. You hear a sound of the falling of water from the two fountains of ablution, great vases of gray marble which are just within the mosque.

Gray and gold prevail in the color scheme, a beautiful combination of which the eyes are never tired. But many hues are mingled with them: yellow and black, deep plum-color and red, green, brown, and very dark blue. The windows, which are heavily grated, have no painted glass, so the mosque is not dark. It has a sort of lovely and delicate dimness, touching as the dimness of twilight. It is divinely calm, almost as Nature can be when she would bring her healing to the unquiet human spirit. We know that during the recent war Santa Sophia was crowded with suffering fugitives, with dying soldiers and cholera patients. I feel that even upon them in their agony it must have shed rays of comfort, into their hearts a belief in a far-off compassion waiting the appointed time to make itself fully manifest.

The great dome is of gold, and of either black or very deep blue. Myriads of chandeliers, holding tiny glass cups, hang from the roof. Pale yellow matting covers the plain of the floor. The silvery glimmer comes from the thousands of cups, the primrose gleam from the matting. The walls are lined with slabs of exquisite marble of many patterns and colors. Gold mosaic decorates the roof and the domes. Galleries, supported by marble arcades, and leaning on roofs of dim gold, run round a great part of the mosque; which is subtly broken up, and made mysterious, enticing, and various by curved recesses of marble, by innumerable arches, some large and heavy, some fragile and delicate, by screens, and by forests of columns. Two-storied aisles flank the vast nave, through which men wander looking almost like little dolls. So huge is the mosque that the eyes are deceived within it, and can no longer measure heights or breadths with accuracy. When I first stood in the nave I thought the chandeliers were hanging so near to the ground that it must be dangerous for a tall man to try to pass underneath them. They are, of course, really far higher than the head of a giant.

In Santa Sophia intricacy, by some magical process of genius, results in simplicity. Everything seems gently but irresistibly compelled to become a minister to the beauty and the calmness of the whole: the arcades of gray marble and gold; the sacred mosaics of Holy Mary, and of the six-winged Seraphim, which still testify to another age and another religion; the red columns of porphyry from Baalbec's Temple of the Sun; the Ephesus columns of verde antico; the carved capitals and the bases of shining brass; the gold and gray pulpit, with its long staircase of marble closed by a gold and green curtain, and its two miraculously beautiful flags of pearly green and faint gold, by age made more wonderful than when they first flew on the battle-field, or were carried in sacred processions; the ancient prayer-rugs fixed to the walls; the Sultan's box, a sort of long gallery, ending in a kiosk with a gilded grille, and raised upon marble pillars; the great doors and the curtains of dull red wool; the piled carpets that are ready against the winter, when the cool yellow matting is covered up; the great green shields in the pendentives, bearing their golden names of God and his prophet, of Ali, Osman, Omar, and Abu-Bekr. Everything slips into the heart of the great harmony, however precious, however simple, even however crude. There are a few ugly things in Santa Sophia: whitewash covering mosaics, stains of fierce yellow, blotches of plaster which should be removed. They do not really matter; one cannot heed them when one is immersed in such almost mysterious beauty.

Men and birds are at ease in Santa Sophia. Doves have made their home in the holy place. They fly under the long arcades, they circle above the galleries, they rest against blocks of cool marble the color of which their plumage resembles. And all day long men pass in through the gateways, and become at once little, yet strangely significant in the vastness which incloses and liberates them. They take off their shoes and carry them, or lay them down in the wooden trays at the edges of those wide, railed-in platforms covered with matting, called mastaba, which are characteristic of mosques, and which are supposed to be for the use of readers of the Koran. Then they are free of the mosque. Some of them wander from place to place silently gazing; others kneel and pray in some quiet corner; others study, or sing, or gossip, or sink into reverie or slumber. Many go up to the mastaba, take off their outer garments and hang them over the rails, hang their handkerchiefs beside them, tuck their legs under their bodies, and remain thus for hours, staring straight before them with solemn eyes as if hypnotized. Children, too, go to the mastaba, settle cozily down and read the Koran aloud, interspersing their study with gay conversation. On one of them I found my singing boy. Small, fanatical, with head thrown back and the fez upon it, he defiantly poured forth his tune, while an older companion, opposite to him and looking not unlike an idol in its shrine, stared impassively as if at the voice.

Santa Sophia is mystical in its twilight beauty. Its vastness, its shape, its arrangement, its beautifully blended colors, the effects of light and of sound within it, unite in creating an atmosphere that disposes the mind to reverie and inclines the soul to prayer. Along the exquisite marble walls, in the mellow dimness, while Stamboul just outside is buying and selling, is giving itself to love and to crime, the murmur of Islam's devotion steals almost perpetually, mysterious as some faint and wide-spread sound of Nature. The great mosque seems to be breathing out its message to the Almighty, and another message—to man. The echoes are not clear, but dim as the twilight under the arches of marble and beneath the ceilings of gold. They mingle without confusion in a touching harmony, as all things mingle in this mosque of the great repose.

One day I saw standing alone in the emperor's doorway a child in blood-colored rags. The muezzin had called from the minaret the summons to the midday prayer, and far off before the mihrab, and the sacred carpet on which the prophet is said to have knelt, the faithful were ranged in long lines: pilgrims on the way to Mecca; Turks in quilted coats and in European dress; two dervishes with small, supple limbs and pale faces smoldering with reverie; and some hard-bitten, sun-scorched soldiers, perhaps bound for the battle-fields of the Balkan War. Moving almost as one man they bent, they kneeled, they touched the floor with their foreheads, leaned back and again bowed down. Their deep and monotonous voices were very persistent in prayer. And the echoes, like secret messengers, bore the sound along the arcades, carried it up into the vast space of the dome, under the transverse arches and the vaulted openings of the aisles, past the faint Christ on the wall, and the "Hand of the Conqueror," with horrible outspread fingers, the Sweating Column, and the Cradle of Jesus, to the child in the blood-red rags. He stood there where Theophilus entered, under the hidden words, "I am the Light of the World," gazing, listening, unconscious of the marvelous effect his little figure was making, the one absolutely detached thing in the mosque. The doves flew over his head, vanishing down the marble vistas, becoming black against golden distances. The murmur of worship increased in power, as more and more of the faithful stole in, shoeless, to join the ranks before the mihrab. Like incense from a thurible, mysticism floated through every part of the mosque, seeming to make the vast harmony softer, to involve in it all that was motionless there and all that was moving, except the child in the emperor's doorway, who was unconsciously defiant, like a patch of fresh blood on a pure white garment. The prayers at last died away, the echoes withdrew into silence. But the child remained where he was, crude, almost sinister in his wonderful colored rags.

Close to Santa Sophia in the Seraglio grounds is the old Byzantine Church of Saint Irene, now painted an ugly pink, and used by the Turks as an armory and museum. It contains many spoils taken by the Turks in battle, which are carefully arranged upon tables and walls. Nothing is disdained, nothing is considered too paltry for exhibition. I saw there flags riddled with bullets; but I saw also odd boots taken from Italian soldiers in Tripoli; caps, belts, water-bottles, blood-stained tunics and cloaks, saddles, weapons, and buttons. Among relics from Yildiz Kiosk was a set of furniture which once belonged to Abdul Hamid, and which he is said to have set much store by. It shows a very distinctive, indeed a somewhat original taste, being made of red plush and weapons. The legs of the tables and chairs are guns and revolvers. As I looked at the chairs I could not help wondering whether ambassadors were invited to sit in them, after they had been loaded to their muzzles, or whether they were reserved for subjects whom the ex-Sultan suspected of treachery. Near them were several of Abdul Hamid's favorite walking-sticks containing revolvers, a cane with an electric light let into the knob, his inkstand, the mother-of-pearl revolver which was found in his pocket, and the handkerchief which fell from his hand when he was taken prisoner by the Young Turks, who have since brought their country to ruin.

In a series of galleries, under arches and ceilings of yellow and white, stands, sits, reclines, and squats, in Eastern fashion, a strange population of puppets, dressed in the costumes of the bygone centuries during which Turkey has ruled in Europe. Those fearful ex-Christians, the Janissaries, who were scourges of Christianity, look very mild now as they stand fatuously together, no longer either Christian or Mussulman but fatally Madame Tussaud. Once they tucked up their coats to fight for the "Father" who had ravished them away from their fathers in blood. Now, even the wicked man, who flees when no one pursueth, could scarcely fear them. Near them the chief eunuch, a plump and piteous gentleman, reclines absurdly upon his divan, holding his large black pipe, and obsequiously attended by a bearded dwarf in red, and by a thin aide-de-camp in green. The Sheikh-ul-Islam bends beneath the coiled dignity of his monstrous turban; a really lifelike old man, with a curved gray beard and a green and white turban, reads the Koran perpetually; and soldiers with faces made of some substance that looks like plaster return blankly the gaze of the many real soldiers who visit this curious show.

One day, when I was strolling among the puppets of Saint Irene, some soldiers followed me round. They were deeply interested in all that they saw, and at last became interested in me. Two or three of them addressed me in Turkish, which alas! I could not understand. I gathered, however, that they were seriously explaining the puppets to me, and were giving me information about the Janissaries, and Orchan, who was the founder of that famous corps. I responded as well as I could with gestures, which seemed to satisfy them, for they kept close beside me, and one, a gigantic fellow with pugnacious mustaches, frequently touched my arm, and once even took me by the hand to draw my attention to a group which he specially admired. All this was done with gravity and dignity, and with a childlike lack of self-consciousness. We parted excellent friends. I distributed cigarettes, which were received with smiling gratitude, and went on my way to Seraglio Point, realizing that there is truth in the saying that every Turk is a gentleman.

Upon Seraglio Point I found many more soldiers, resting in groups by the edge of the sea, upon the waste ground that lies at the foot of the walls, beyond the delightful abandoned glades that are left to run wild and to shelter the birds. If you wish to understand something of the curious indifference that hangs, like moss, about the Turk, visit Seraglio Point. There, virtually in Stamboul, is one of the most beautifully situated bits of land in the world. Though really part of a great city, much of it has not been built upon. Among the trees on the ridge, looking to Marmora and Asia, to the Bosporus and the palaces, to the Golden Horn, Galata, and Pera, lie the many buildings and courts of the Old Seraglio, fairy-like in their wood. The snowy cupolas, the minarets, and towers look ideally Eastern. They suggest romantic and careless lives, cradled in luxury and ease. In that white vision one might dream away the days, watching from afar the pageant of the city and the seas, hearing from afar the faint voices of the nations, listening to strange and monotonous music, toying with coffee and rose-leaf jam in the jewel-like Kiosk of Bagdad, and dreaming, always dreaming. There once the Sultan dwelt in the Eski-Serai, which exists no longer, and there was built the great Summer Palace, which was inhabited by Suleiman I, and by his successors. Hidden in the Old Seraglio there are many treasures, among them the magnificent Persian throne, which is covered with gold and jewels. Beyond this neglected wonder-world the woods extend toward the waters; hanging woods by the sea—and the Turks care nothing about them. One may not wander through them; one may not sit in them; one may only look at them, and long to lose oneself in their darkness and silence, to vanish in their secret recesses. The Turk leaves them alone, to rot or to flourish, as Allah and Nature will it.

On the third of Stamboul's seven hills stands the Mosque of Suleiman the Magnificent, all glorious without, as Santa Sophia is not, but disappointing within, despite its beautiful windows of jeweled glass from Persia, and the plaques of wonderful tiles which cover the wall on either side of the mihrab. Somber and dark, earth-colored and gray, dark-green and gold, it has a poorly painted cupola and much plastered stone which is ugly. But there is fascination in its old dimness, in its silence and desertion. More than once I was quite alone within it, and was able undisturbed to notice its chief internal beauty, the exquisite proportions which trick you at first into believing it to be much smaller than it is.

When seen from without it looks colossal. It is splendid and imposing, but it is much more, for it has a curiously fantastic, and indeed almost whimsical charm, as if its builder, Sinan, had been a playful genius, full of gaiety and exuberance of spirit, who made this great mosque with joy and with lightness of heart, but who never forgot for a moment his science, and who could not be vulgar even in his most animated moments of invention. Massiveness and grace are blended together in this beautiful exterior. Round the central dome multitudes of small domes—airy bubbles thrown up on the surface of the mosque—are grouped with delightful fantasy. Four minarets, the two farthest from the mosque smaller than their brethren, soar above the trees. They are gray, and the walls of the mosque are gray and white. In the forecourt there is a fine fountain covered with a cupola; the roof of the cloisters which surround it is broken up into twenty-four little domes. A garden lies behind the mosque, and the great outer court is planted with trees.

In the garden are the turbehs, or tombs, of Suleiman the Magnificent and of Roxalana, "the joyous one," that strange captive from Russia, who by her charm and the power of her temperament subdued a nation's ruler, who shared the throne of the sultan, who guided his feet in the ways of crime, and who to the day of her death was adored by him. For Roxalana's sake, Suleiman murdered his eldest son by another wife, and crept out from behind a curtain to look upon him dead; and for Roxalana's sake that son's son was stabbed to death in his mother's arms. Now the fatal woman sleeps in a great octagonal marble tomb near the tomb of her lord and slave.

An atmosphere of peace and of hoary age broods over these tombs and the humble graves that crowd close about them. Mulberry-trees, fig-trees, and cypresses throw patches of shade on the rough gray pavement, in which is a small oval pool, full of water lest the little birds should go thirsty. A vine straggles over a wall near by; weeds and masses of bright yellow flowers combine their humble efforts to be decorative; and the call to prayer drops down from the mighty minarets to this strange garden of stones, yellow flowers, and weeds, where the lovers rest in the midst of Stamboul, which once feared and adored them. They were two criminals, but there was strength in their wickedness, strength in their pride and their passion. Romance attended their footsteps, and romance still lingers near them.

One morning, as I sat beneath the noble fig-tree which guards Roxalana's tomb, and listened to the voice of the muezzin floating over old Stamboul, and watched the birds happily drinking at the edge of their little basin in the pavement, I thought of the influence of cities. Does not Stamboul forever incite to intrigue, to lawlessness, to bloodshed? The muezzin calls to prayer, but from old Stamboul arises another voice sending forth an opposing summons. Suleiman heard it echoed by Roxalana, and slew his son; Roxalana heard and obeyed it; and how many others have listened and been fatally moved by it! It has sounded even across the waters of the sea and over the forests of Yildiz; and Armenians have been slain by thousands while Europe looked on. And perhaps in our day, and after we are gone, old Stamboul will command from its seven hills and will be horribly obeyed.

I shall always remember, among many less famous buildings, the small mosque of Rustem Pasha near the Egyptian Bazaar, with its beautiful arcade and its strangely confused interior, full of loveliness and bad taste, of atrocious modern painting and oleographic horrors, mingled with exquisite marble and perfect tiles. The wall of the arcade gleams with lustrous faience, purple and red, azure and milk-white, and with patterns of great flowers with green centers and turquoise leaves. I recall, too, the Mosaic Mosque, once the church of the monastery of the Chora, which stands on a hill from which Stamboul looks like a beautiful village embowered in green, cheerful and gaily fascinating. The church is ugly outside, yellow and lead-colored, with a white plaster minaret, and it is surrounded by wooden shanties like booths. But its mosaics are very interesting and beautiful, and its chief muezzin, Mustafa Effendi, is a delight in his long golden robe and his yellow turban.

Mustafa Effendi was born near Brusa in Asia Minor, but for forty-two years he has held the office of chief muezzin at the Mosaic Mosque, on which all his thoughts seem centered. He speaks English a little, and has an almost inordinate sense of humor. As he pointed out the mosaics to me with his wrinkled hand he abounded in comment, and more than once his thin voice was almost overwhelmed by ill-suppressed laughter. He seemed specially entertained as he drew my attention to two birds on the wall—"Monsieur Peacock and Madame Peahen"; and he was obliged to abandon all dignity and to laugh outright when we came to a company of saints and angels.

The most sacred mosque in Turkey lies outside of Stamboul, at Eyub, far up the Golden Horn and not very distant from the "sweet waters of Europe." In it, on their accession, the sultans are solemnly girded with Osman's sword instead of being crowned. Eyub is a place of tombs. Chief eunuchs and grand vizirs sleep near the sea in great mausoleums inclosed within gilded railings, and some of them surrounded by gardens; on the hillside above them thousands of the faithful rest under cypresses in graves marked by dusty headstones leaning awry.

The center or heart of Eyub is a pleasant village, which gathers closely about the mosque, and is full of a quietly cheerful life. Just beyond the court of the mosque is a Turkish bath, where masseurs, with shaven heads and the usual tuft, lounge in the sunshine while waiting for customers. Near by are many small shops and cafés. In one of the latter I ate an excellent meal of rice and fat mutton, cooked on a spit which revolved in the street. If you stray from the center of the village toward the outskirts you find yourself in a deserted rummage of tombs, of white columns, white cupolas, cloisters, rooms for theological students, mausoleums of white and pink marble. No footsteps resound on the pavement of the road, no voices are heard in the little gardens, no eyes look out through the railings. As I wandered through the sunshine to the small stone platform, where the Sultan descends from his horse when he comes to be girded with the sword, I saw no sign of life; and the only noise that I heard was the persistent tap of a hammer near the sea, where his Majesty is building an imperial mosque of white stone from Trebizond.

Presently, growing weary of the white and silent streets of the tombs, I turned into a narrow alley that ran by a grated wall, above which great trees towered, climbing toward heaven with the minaret of the Mosque of Eyub, but failing in their journey a little below the muezzin's balcony. They were cypresses, and creepers climbed affectionately with them. Just beyond them I came into the court of the mosque, and found myself in the midst of a crowd of pilgrims before the tomb of Abu Eyub, which is covered with gilding and faience. Near it is a fountain protected by magnificent plane-trees which are surrounded by iron railings decorated with dervish caps.

I had been told more than once that the Christian dog is unwelcome in Eyub, and I was soon made aware of it. In the façade of the tomb there is a hole through which one can look into the interior. Taking my turn among the pilgrims, I presently stood in front of this aperture, and was about to peep in discreetly when a curtain was sharply drawn across it by some one inside. I waited for a moment, but in vain; the curtain was not drawn back, so at last I meekly went on my way, feeling rather humiliated. A Greek friend afterward told me that an imâm was stationed within the tomb, and that no doubt he had drawn the curtain against me because I was an unbeliever.

Duly chastened by this rebuff, I nevertheless went on to the mosque, and was allowed to go in for a moment on making a payment. The attendant was very rough and suspicious in manner, and watched me as if I were a criminal; and the pilgrims who thronged the interior stared at me with open hostility. I thought it wiser, therefore, to make only a cursory examination of the handsome marble interior, with its domes and semi-domes, and afterward, with a sense of relief, took my way up the hillside, to spend an hour among the leaning gravestones in the shade of the cypresses. Each stone above the grave of a man was carved with a fez, each woman's stone with a flower; and tiny holes formed receptacles to collect the rain-water, so that the birds might refresh themselves above the dust of the departed.

The great field of the dead was very tranquil that day. I saw only two closely veiled women moving slowly in the distance near the small tekkeh of the Mevlevi dervishes, and an old Turk sitting with a child, at the edge of the hill before a café. The women, who were shrouded in black, disappeared among the gigantic cypresses, seeking perhaps among the thousands of graves one stone with a flower or a fez that was dear to their hearts because of the sleeper beneath it. The old Turk rolled a cigarette in his knotty fingers, looking dreamily down at the child, who sat with his little legs under him silently staring at the water below, upon which no vessels, no caiques were moving. On the bare hill to my left I saw the white gleam of the stones in a Jewish cemetery; and, beneath, the pale curve of the Golden Horn, ending not far off in the peace of the desolate country. Red-roofed Eyub, shredding out into blanched edges of cupolas and tombs by the sultan's landing-place, marked the base of the hill; and, beyond, in the distance, mighty Stamboul, brown, with red lights here and there where the sun struck a roof, streamed away to Seraglio Point. The great prospect was closed by the shadowy mountains of Asia, among which I divined, rather than actually saw, the crest of Olympus.

In these Turkish cemeteries there is a romantic and poignant melancholy such as I have found in no other places of tombs. They breathe out an atmosphere of fatalism, of bloodless resignation to the inevitable. Their dilapidation suggests rather than mere indifference a sense of the uselessness of care. Dust unto dust—and there an end! But far off in Stamboul the minarets contradict the voices that whisper over the fields of the dead. For the land of the Turk is the home of contradictions; and among them there are some that are welcome.

To rid myself of the clinging impression of sadness that stole over me among the cypresses of Eyub, I took a boat, later in the day, to the shore of Asia, and visited the English graveyard at Haidar Pasha, where long ago Florence Nightingale established her hospital for soldiers wounded in the Crimean War, and where now Germans have built an elaborate station from which some day we shall be able to set out for Bagdad. Already smart corridor cars, with white roofs and spotlessly clean curtains, and with "Bagdad" printed in large letters upon them, are running from the coast to mysterious places in the interior of Asia. In the excellent restaurant beer flows freely. If the mystic word "Verboten" were not absent from the walls, one might fancy himself in Munich on entering the station at Haidar Pasha. On the hill just above the station lies the English cemetery, a delightful garden of rest, full of hope and peace. It is beautifully kept, and contains the home of the guardian, a British soldier, who lives with his wife and daughters in a cozy stone bungalow fronted by flower-beds and trees. Close to his house is a grave with a broken column, raised on a platform which is approached by three steps and surrounded by a circular grass-plot. Here I found a serious Montenegrin, one of the workers in the cemetery, busily employed. He had spread sheets of paper all over the grass-plot, and up the steps of the grave, and had scattered above them a great mass of wool which suggested a recent sheep-shearing. When I came up he was adding more wool to the mass with a sort of grave ardor. I asked him what the wool was for and why he was spreading it out. He glanced up solemnly and replied:

"It is for my bed. I live in that shed over there and am preparing my mattress for the winter."

The cemetery, which looks out over the sea and the beautiful shores of Europe, is full of the graves of soldiers who died of wounds received in the Crimean War, or of maladies caught in camp and in the trenches. Among them lie the bodies of many devoted women who worked to allay their sufferings.

Bent perpetually on escape from the uproar of Pera, in which at night I was forced to dwell, I made more than one excursion to the walls and the seven towers of Stamboul. There are three sets of walls: the land, the sea, and the harbor walls. The seven towers, Yedi Kuleh, are very near to the Sea of Marmora, and are now unused and deserted; the home no longer of imprisoned ambassadors, of sultans and vizirs, but of winds from the islands and from Asia, of grass, yellow wild-flowers, and the fallen leaves of the autumn. When I went there I was alone, save for one very old man, the peaceful successor of the Janissaries who long ago garrisoned this marvelous place of terror and crime. With him at my heels I wandered among the trees of the deserted inclosure surrounded by gray and crenellated walls, above which the towers rose up grimly toward the windy sky; I penetrated through narrow corridors of stone; I crawled through gaps and clambered over masses of rubble and fallen masonry; I visited tiny and sinister chambers inclosed in the thickness of the walls; peered through small openings; came out unexpectedly on terraces. And the old man muttered and mumbled in my ears, monotonously and without emotion, the history of crime connected with the place. Here some one was starved to death; here another was strangled by night; in this chamber a French ambassador was held captive; the blood of a sultan dyed these stones red; at the foot of this bit of wall there was a massacre; just there some great person was blinded. And, with the voice in my ears, I looked and I saw white butterflies flitting, with their frivolous purity, among the leaves of acacia-trees, and snails crawling lethargically over rough gray stones. Near the Golden Gate, where an earthquake has shaken down much of the wall, and the Byzantine dove of carved stone still remains—ironically?—as an emblem of peace, was a fig-tree giving green figs; Marmora shone from afar; in the waterless moat, that stretches at the feet of the walls, the grasses were waving, the ivy grew thickly, here and there big patches of vegetables gave token of the forethought and industry of men. And beyond, stretching away as far as eye could see, the cemeteries without the city disappeared into distances, everywhere shadowed by those tremendous, almost terrible, cypresses that watch over the dead in the land of the Turk.

Beauty and sadness, crime and terror, wonderful romance, and a ghastly desolation seemed brooding over this strange region beyond the reach of the voices of the city. Even the ancient man was silent at last. He had recited all the horrors his old memory contained, and at my side he stood gazing, with bleary eyes, across the moat and the massy cypresses, and, with me, he turned to capture the shining of Marmora.

On the farther verge of the moat three dogs, which had somehow escaped the far-flung nets, wandered slowly seeking for offal; some women hovered darkly among the graves; a thin, piercing cry, that was not without a wild sweetness, rose to me from somewhere below. I looked down and there, among the rankly growing grasses of the moat, I saw a young girl, very thin, her black hair hanging and bound with bright handkerchiefs, sketching vaguely a danse du ventre. As I looked she became more precise in her movements, and her cries grew more fierce and imperative. From some hovel, hidden among the walls, other children streamed out, with cries and contortions, to join her. For here, among the ruins, the Turkish Gipsies have made their home. I threw down some coins and turned away. And as I went, returning through the old places of assassination, I was pursued by a whining of pipes and a thrumming of distant guitars. The Gipsies of old Stamboul were trying to lure me down from my fastness to make merry with them among the tombs.

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The Mosque of Suleiman at Constantinople From a painting by Jules Guérin	Frontispiece
	PAGE
The Roman Amphitheater at Pola From a painting by Jules Guérin	4
The Market-Place at Spalato From a painting by Jules Guérin	9
Zara—Piazza delle Erbe	14
The Harbor of Mezzo	17
Spalato—Peristilio	24
Trau—Vestibule of the Cathedral	27
Ragusa	32
The Rector's Palace and the Public Square at Ragusa From a painting by Jules Guérin	37
The Jesuits' Church and the Military Hospital, Ragusa	45
The Parthenon at Athens From a painting by Jules Guérin	52
The Acropolis, with a View of the Areopagus and Mount Hymettus, from the West	55
The Theater of Dionysus on the southern slope of the Acropolis	62
The Temple of the Olympian Zeus at Athens From a painting by Jules Guérin	65
In the Portico of the Parthenon	70
The Temple of Athene Nike at Athens From a painting by Jules Guérin	75
The Stadium, Athens	82
The Academy, Mount Lycabettus in the background	87
The Acropolis at Athens, early morning From a painting by Jules Guérin	92
The Temple of Poseidon and Athene at Sunium From a painting by Jules Guérin	98
The Temple of Athene, Island of Ægina From a painting by Jules Guérin	103
The Theater of Dionysus, Athens	108
The Plain of Marathon	113
A Monastery at the foot of Hymettus	120
Ruins of the Great Temple of the Mysteries at Eleusis	125
The Odeum of Herodes Atticus in Athens From a painting by Jules Guérin	133
The Site of Ancient Delphi From a painting by Jules Guérin	140
Delphi—Gulf of Corinth in the distance	143
The Lion of Chæronea, the Acropolis and Mount Parnassus	150
Place of the famous Oracle, Delphi	154
View of Mount Parnassus	159
Ruins of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi	165
The Temple of Hera at Olympia	170
Olympia—Entrance to the Athletic Field	175
The Grand Bazaar in Constantinople From a painting by Jules Guérin	184
The Bosphorous—Constantinople in the distance	190
Galata Bridge, which connects Galata and Pera	193
The Water-front of Stamboul, with Pera in the distance	200
Looking down Step Street, Constantinople	203
Public Letter-writers in a Constantinople Street	208
The Courtyard of the "Pigeon's Mosque" From a painting by Jules Guérin	213
Street Scene in Constantinople	221
The Mosque of the Yeni-Validé-Jamissi, Constantinople From a painting by Jules Guérin	228
The Royal Gate leading to the old Seraglio From a painting by Jules Guérin	231
The Mosque of Santa Sophia From a painting by Jules Guérin	238
In the Cemetery of Eyub, on the Golden Horn From a painting by Jules Guérin	241
Interior of Santa Sophia	246
St. George's Greek Church, now a mosque, Constantinople	251
Street vista in Galata from end of bridge, Constantinople	258
A view over Constantinople showing the Mosque of Santa Sophia	263

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Near East: Dalmatia, Greece and Constantinople

THE NEAR EAST

THE
NEAR EAST

DALMATIA, GREECE
AND CONSTANTINOPLE

BY

ROBERT HICHENS

ILLUSTRATED BY
JULES GUÉRIN
AND WITH PHOTOGRAPHS

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES BY THE DE VINNE PRESS

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PICTURESQUE DALMATIA

THE NEAR EAST

Chapter I

PICTURESQUE DALMATIA

IN AND NEAR ATHENS

Chapter II

IN AND NEAR ATHENS

THE ENVIRONS OF ATHENS

Chapter III

THE ENVIRONS OF ATHENS

DELPHI AND OLYMPIA

Chapter IV

DELPHI AND OLYMPIA

IN CONSTANTINOPLE

Chapter V

IN CONSTANTINOPLE

STAMBOUL, THE CITY OF MOSQUES

Chapter VI

STAMBOUL, THE CITY OF MOSQUES

Transcriber's Notes

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Near East: Dalmatia, Greece and Constantinople

THE NEAR EAST

THE NEAR EAST DALMATIA, GREECE AND CONSTANTINOPLE

BY

ROBERT HICHENS

ILLUSTRATED BY JULES GUÉRIN AND WITH PHOTOGRAPHS

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES BY THE DE VINNE PRESS

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PICTURESQUE DALMATIA

THE NEAR EAST

Chapter I

PICTURESQUE DALMATIA

IN AND NEAR ATHENS

Chapter II

IN AND NEAR ATHENS

THE ENVIRONS OF ATHENS

Chapter III

THE ENVIRONS OF ATHENS

DELPHI AND OLYMPIA

Chapter IV

DELPHI AND OLYMPIA

IN CONSTANTINOPLE

Chapter V

IN CONSTANTINOPLE

STAMBOUL, THE CITY OF MOSQUES

Chapter VI

STAMBOUL, THE CITY OF MOSQUES

Transcriber's Notes

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

THE
NEAR EAST

DALMATIA, GREECE
AND CONSTANTINOPLE

ILLUSTRATED BY
JULES GUÉRIN
AND WITH PHOTOGRAPHS