LIBRARY
OF THK
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.
GIFT OF"
Mrs. SARAH P. WALSWORTH.
Received October, 1894.
Accessions No . * . Cto N< >
SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN.
SUMMER CRUISE
THE MEDITERRANEAN
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE.
BY
N. PAEKEK WILLIS.
AUBUEIST:
ALDEN, BEARDSLEY & CO
ROCHESTER :
WANZER, BEARDSLEY & CO
1853.
Entered according to Act of Congress, In the year 1858, by
CIIAELES 8 OB-IB NEB,
In the Clerk s Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York.
PREFACE.
OF one of the most delicious episodes in a long period of foreign
travel, this volume is the imperfect and hastily written transcript.
Even at the time it was written, the author felt its experience to be
a dream so exempt was it from the interrupting and qualifying
drawbacks of happiness in common and working life but, now,
after an interval of many years, it seems. indeed like a dream, and
one so fall of unmingled pleasure, that its telling almost wants the
contrast of a sadness. Of the noble ship, whose summer cruise is
described, and her kind and hospitable officers, the recollection is as
fresh and grateful, now, as when, (twenty years ago,) the author bade
them farewell in the port of Smyrna. Of the scenes he passed
through, while their guest, he has a less perfect remembrance rely
ing indeed on these chance memoranda, for much that would else be
forgotten. It is with a mingled sense of the real and the unreal,
therefore, that the book is offered, in a new shape, to the Public,
whose approbation has encouraged its long existence, and the
vi PREFACE.
author trusts that his thanks to the surviving officers of th it ship,
may again reach them, and that the kind favor of the reading
Public may be again extended to this, his record of what he saw in
the company of these officers, and by their generous hospitality.
HIGHLAND TERRACE, October, 1852.
CONTEN1S.
LETTER I.
Cruise in the Frigate United States Elba Piombino Porto Ferrajo Appearance
of the Bay Naval Discipline Visit to the Town Eesidence of Napoleon His
employment during his Confinement on the Island His sisters Eliza and Pau
lineHis Country-HouseSimplicity of the Inhabitants of Elba, 15
LETTER II.
Visit to Naples, Herculaneum, and Pompeii, 28
LETTER III.
Account of Vesuvius The Hermitage The famous Lagrima Christi Difficulties of
the Path Curious Appearance of the Old Crater Old Assemblage of Travel
lersThe New Crater Splendid Prospect Mr. Mathias, Author of the Pursuits
of Literature The Archbishop of Tarento, 85
LETTER IY.
The Fashionable "World of Naples at the Eaces Brilliant Show of Equipages The
King and his Brother Eank and Character of the Jockeys Description of the
Eaces The Public Burial Ground at Naples Horrid and Inhuman Spectacles
The Lazzaroni The Museum at Naples Ancient Eelics from Pompeii Forks
not used by the Ancients The Lamp lit at the time of our Saviour The Antique
Chair of Sallust The Villa of Cicero The Balbi Family Bacchus on the Should
ers of a Faun Gallery of Dians, Cupids, Joves, Mercuries, and Apollos Statuo
of Artistides, etc., 44
riii CONTENTS.
LETTER V.
Paestnm Temple of Neptune Departure from Elba Ischia Bay of Naples The
Toledo The Young Queen Conspiracy against the King Neapolitans Visiting
the Frigates Leave the B ay Castellamare, 66
LETTER VI.
Baiffi Grotto of Pausilyppo Tomb of Virgil Pozzuoli Euins of the Temple of
Jnpiter Serapis The Lucrine Lake Lake of Avernus, the Tartarus of Virgil
Temple of Proserpine Grotto of the Cumasan Sybil Nero s villa Cape of Mise-
num Eoman villas Euins of the Temple of Venus Cento Camerelle The
Stygian Lake The Elysian FieldsGrotto del Cane Villa of Lucullus, 65
LETTER VII.
Island of Sicily Palermo Saracenic appearance of the town Cathedral The Marina
Viceroy Leopold Monastery of the Capuchins Celebrated Catacombs Fan
ciful Gardens, 74
LETTER VIII.
The Lunatic Asylum at Palermo,
LETTER IX.
Palermo Fete given by Mr. Gardiner, the American Consul Temple of Clitumnua
Cottage of Petrarch Messina Lipari Islands Scylla and Charybdis, 91
LETTER X.
The Adriatic Albania Gay Costumes and Beauty of the Albanese Capo dlstria
Trieste resembles an American Town Visit to the Austrian Authorities of the
Province Curiosity of the Inhabitants Gentlemanly Eeception by the Military
Commandant Visit to Vienna Singular Notions of the Austrians respecting the
Americans Similarity of the Scenery to that of New England Meeting with
German Students Frequent Sight of Soldiers and Military Preparations Pictur-
saue Scenery of Styria, 100
CONTENTS. fe
PAGE
LETTER XL
Gratz Vienna, , 109
LETTER XII.
Vienna. Magnificence of the Emperor s Manage The Young Queen of Hungary
The Palace Hall of Curiosities, Jewelry, etc. The Polytechnic School Geome
trical Figures described by the Vibrations of Musical Notes Liberal Provision
for the Public Institutions Popularity of the Emperor, 117
LETTER XIII.
Vienna Palaces and Gardens Mosaic Copy of Da Vinci s " Last Supper" Collection
of Warlike Antiquities; Scanderburg s Sword, Montezuma s Tomahawk, Kelics
of the Crusaders, Warriors in Armor, the Farmer of Augsburgh Eoom of Por
traits of Celebrated Individuals Gold Busts of Jupiter and Juno The Glacis, full
of Gardens, the General Eesort of the People Universal Spirit of Enjoyment-
Simplicity and Confidence in the Manners of the Viennese Baden, . . . < 125
LETTER XIY.
Vienna The Palace of Liechstenstein, 132
LETTER XY.
The palace of Schoenbrunn Hietzing, the Summer Eetreat of the Wealthy Viennese
Country-House of the American Consul Specimen of Pure Domestic Happi
ness in a German Family Splendid Village Ball Substantial Fare for the Ladies
Curious Fashion of Cushioning the Windows German Grief The Upper Belvi-
dere Palace Endless Quantity of Pictures. 189
LETTER XYI.
Departure from Vienna The Eil- Wagon Motley quality of the passengers Thun
der-storm in the Mountains of Styria Trieste Short beds of the Germans-
Grotto of Adelsburgh Curious Ball-Eoom in the Cavern Nautical preparations
for a Dance on board the " United States " swept away by the Bora Its success-
fol termination, j<t8
1*
CONTENTS.
LETTER XVII.
Trieste, its Extensive Commerce Hospitality of Mr. Moore Kuins of Pola Immense
Amphitheatre Village of Pola Coast of Dalmatia, of Apulia and Calabria Otran-
to Sails for the Isles of Greece,... 153
LETTER XVIII.
The lonion Isles Lord and Lady Nugent Corfu Greek and English Soldiers
Cockneyism The Gardens of Alcinous English Officers Albanians Dionisio
Salomos, the Greek Poet Greek Ladies Dinner with the Artillery Mess, 1C4
LETTER XIX.
Corfu Unpopularity of British Kule Superstition of the Greeks Accuracy of the
Descriptions in the Odyssey Advantage of the Greek Costume ThePaxian Isles
Cape Leucas. or Sappho s Leap Bay of Navarino, Ancient Pylos Modon
Coran s Bay Cape St. Angelo Isle of Cythera, 171
LETTER XX.
The Harbor of Napoli Tricoupi and Mavrocordato, Otho s Cabinet Counsellors Col
onel Gordon King Otho The Misses Armanspergs Prince of Saxe Miaulis,
the Greek Admiral Excursion to Argos, the Ancient Terynthus, ISO
LETTER XXI.
Visit from King Otho and Miaulis Visits an English and Kussian Frigate Beauty of
the Grecian men Lake Lema The Ilerrnionicas Sinus Hydra Efina, 1S9
LETTER XXII.
The Maid of Athens Romance and KealHy American Benefactions to Greece A
Greek "Wife and Scottish Husband School of Capo d Istrias Grecian Disinter
estedness Kuins of the most Ancient Temple Beauty of the Grecian Landscape
Hope for the Land of Epaminoiulas and Ariatides, 196
CONTENTS. xi
LETTER XXIII.
Athens Euins of the Parthenon The Acropolis Temple of Theseus The Oldest
of Athenian Antiquities Burial-Place of the Son of Miaulis Eeflections on
Standing where Plato Taught, and Demosthenes Harangued Bavarian Sentinel
Turkish Mosque, erected within the Sanctuary of the Partheon "Wretched
Habitations of the Modern Athenians, 203
LETTER XXIY.
The "Lantern of Demosthenes "Byron s Eesidence in Athens Temple of Jupiter
Olympus, Seven Hundred Years in Building Superstitious Fancy of the Athenians
respecting its Euins Hermitage of a Oreek Monk Petarches, the Antiquary and
Poet, and his Wife, Sister to the " Maid of Athens " Mutilation of a Basso Ee-
lievo by an English Officer The Elgin Marbles The Caryatides Lord Byron s
Autograph Attachment of the Greeks to Dr. Howe The Sliding Stone A Scene
in the Eostrum of Demosthenes, 210
LETTER XXY.
The Prison of Socrates Turkish Stirrups and Saddles Plato s Academy Tho Ame
rican Missionary School at Athens The Son of Petarches and Nephew of " Mrs.
Black of Egina," 211
LETTER XXYI.
Tha Piraeus The Sacra Yia Euins of Eleusis Gigantic Medallion Costume of the
Athenian Women The Tomb of Themistoclos The Temple of Minerva Auto
graphs, 224
LETTER XXYII.
Mytilene The Tomb of Achilles Turkish Burying Ground Lost Eeputation of the
Scarnander Asiatic Sunsets Visit to a Turkish Bey The Castles of the Darda
nelles Turkish Bath, and its Consequences, ,. 231
LETTER XXYIII.
A Turkish Pic-Nic, on the plain of Troy Fingers vs. Forks Trieste The Bos-
chetto Graceful Freedom of Italian Manners A Eural Fete Fireworks Ama
teur Musicians, 233
xii CONTENTS.
LETTER XXIX.
/ 1
The Dardanelles Visit from the Pacha His Delight at hearing the Piano Turkish
FountainsCaravan of Mules laden with Grapes Turkish Mode of Living-
Houses, Cafes, and Women The Mosque and the Muezzin American Consul of
the Dardanelles, another Caleb Quotem, . . 248
LETTER XXX.
Turkish Military Life A Visit to the Camp Turkish Music Sunsets The Sea of
Marmora, -.
LETTER XXXI.
Gallipoli Aristocracy of Beards Turkish Shopkeepers The Hospitable Jew and lila
lovely Daughter Unexpected Rencontre Constantinople The Bosphorus. the
Seraglio, and the Golden Horn,
LETTER XXXII.
Constantinople An Adventure with the Dogs of Stamboul The Sultan s Kiosk
The Bazaars Georgians Sweetmeats Ilindoostanoe Fakeers Turkish Women
and their Eyes The Jews A. Token of Home The Drug Bazaar Opium
.. 2T2
LETTER XXXIII.
The Sultan s Perfumer Etiquette of Smoking Temptations for Purchasers Exqui
site Flavor of tlifr*irt.ish Perfumes The Slave Market of Constantinople Slaves
from various Countries, Greek, Circassian, Egyptian, Persian African Female
Slaves An Improvisatrice Exposure for Sale -Circassian Beauties prohibited to
Europeans First sight of one, eating a Pie Shock to Eomantic Feelings Beau
tiful Arab Girl chained to the Floor The Silk Merchant A cheap Purchase,... . 230
LETTER XXXIV.
The Bosphorus Turkish PalacesThe Black Sea Buyukdere, 287
CONTENTS.
LETTER XXXV.
The Golden Horn and its Scenery The Sultan s Wives and Arabians The Valley
of Sweet Waters Beauty of the Turkish Minarets The Mosque of Sulymanye
Mussulmans at their Devotions The MuezzinThe Bazar of the Opium-eaters
The Mad House of Constantinople, and Description of its inmates Their Wretched
Treatment The Hippodrome and the Mosque of Sultan Achmet The Janizaries
Inflections on the Past, the Present, and the Future, 294
LETTER XXXVI.
Sultan Mahmoud at his Devotions Comparative Splendor of Papal, Austrian, and
Turkish Equipages The Sultan s Barge or Caique Description of the Sultan
Visit to a Turkish Lancasterian School The Dancing Dervishes Visit from the
Sultan s Cabinet The Seraskier and the Capitan Pacha Humble Origin of Turk
ish Dignitaries, , 805
LETTER XXXVII.
The Grand Bazar of Constantinople, and its infinite Variety of Wonders Silent
Shopkeepers Female Curiosity Adventure with a Black-Eyed Stranger The
Bezestein The Strong-hold of Orientalism Picture of a Dragoman The Kibaub-
Shop A Dinner without Knives, Forks, or Chairs Cistern of the Thousand and
One Columns, 315
LETTER XXXVIII.
Belgrade The Cottage of Lady Montague Turkish Cemeteries Natural Taste of the
Moslems for the Picturesque A Turkish Carriage Washerwomen Surprised
Gigantic Forest TreesThe Reservoir Return to Constantinople, 823
LETTER XXXIX.
Scutari Tomb of the Sultana Valide Mosque of the Howling Dervishes A Clerical
Shoemaker Visit to a Turkish Cemetery Bird s-Eye View of Stamboul and its
Environs Seraglio-Point The Seven Towers, 331
xiv CONTENTS.
LETTER XL.
Beauties of the Bosphorus Summer-Palace of the Sultan Adventure with an old
Turkish "Woman The Feast of Bairam Tho Sultan his own Butcher His Evil
Propensities Yisit to the Mosques A Formidable Dervish Santa Sophia-
Mosque of Sultan Achmet Traces of Christianity, 833
LETTER XLI.
Unerring Detection of Foreigners A Cargo of Odalisques The Fanar, or Quarter of
the Greeks Street of the Booksellers Aspect of Antiquity Purchases Charity
for Dogs and Pigeons Punishment of Canicide A Bridal Procession Turkish
Female Physiognomy, 345
LETTER XLII.
The Perfection of Bathing Pipes Downy Cushions Coffeo Kubbing Down
" Circular Justice," as displayed in the Eetribution of Boiled Lobsters A Deluge
of Suds The Shampoo Luxurious Helps to the Imagination A Pedestrian Ex
cursionStory of an American Tar, burdened with Small Change Beauty of the
Turkish Children A Civilized Monster Glimpse of Sultan Mahmoud in an 111-
Huinor.
LETTER XLIII.
Punishment of Conjugal Infidelity Drowning in the Bosphorus Frequency of its
occurrence accounted for A Band of Wild Eoumeliotes Their Picturesque Ap
pearance All Pacha, of Tanina A Turkish Funeral Fat Widow of Sultan
Seliin A Yisit to tho Sultan s Summer Palace A Travelling Moslem Unex
pected Token of Home 860
LETTER XLIV.
Farewell to Constantinople Europe and tho East compared The Departure Smyr
na, the Great Mart for Figs An Excursion into Asia Minor Travelling Equip
mentsCharacter of the Hajjis Encampment of Gipsies A Youthful Hebe-
Note Horror of tho Turks for the " Unclean Animal" An Anecdote,.
CONTENTS. xv
PAGB
LETTER XLY.
Natural Statue of Niobe The Thorn of Syria and itsTradition Approach to Magnesia
Hereditary Kesidence of the Family of Bey-Oglou Character of its Present Oc
cupant The Truth about Oriental Caravanserais Comforts and Appliances they
yield to Travellers Figaro of the Turks The Pilaw Morning Scene at the De
parture Playful Familiarity of a Solemn old Turk Magnificent Prospect from
Mount Cypilus, 375
LETTER XLYI.
The Eye of the Camel Eocky Sepulchres Virtue of an old Passport backed by Im
pudenceTemple of Cybelet Palace of Crcesus-rAncient Church of Sardis Ee-
turn to Smyrna,. 888
LETTER XLVII.
Smyrna Charms of its Society Hospitality of Foreign Eesldents Tho Marina The
Casino -A Narrow Escape from the Plagues-Departure of the Frigate High Char
acter of the American Navy A Tribute of Eespect and Gratitude The Farewell, 890
SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN
LETTER I.
Cruise in the Frigate United States Elbar-Piombino Porto Ferrajo Appearance of the
Bay Naval Discipline Visit to the Town Eesidonce of Napoleon His Employment
during his Confinement on the Island His sisters Eliza and Pauline His Country-
HouseSimplicity of the Inhabitants of Elba.
I HAD come from Florence to join the " United States,"
at the polite invitation of the officers of the ward-room, on a
cruise up the Mediterranean. My cot was swung immediately
on my arrival, but we lay three days longer than was expected in
the harbor, riding out a gale of wind, which broke the chain
cables of both ships, and drove several merchant vessels on the
rocks. We got under way on the third of June, and the next
morning were off Elba, with Corsica on our quarter, and the
little island of Capreja just ahead.
The firing of guns took me just now to the deck. Three
Sardinian gun-boats had saluted the commodore s flag in passing,
and it was returned with twelve guns. They were coming home
from the affair at Tunis. It is a fresh, charming morning, and
we are beating up against a light head-wind, all the officers on
deck, looking at the island with their glasses, and discussing the
18 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
various directions for a ramble, and I, tempted with the beauty
of the ravine which enclosed the villa of Napoleon, declined all
invitations with an eye to a stroll thither.
We were first set ashore at the mole to see the town. A
medley crowd of soldiers, citizens, boys, girls, and galley-slaves,
received us at the landing, and followed us up to the town-square,
gazing at the officers with undisguised curiosity. We met several
gentlemen from the other ship at the cafe, and taking a cicerone
together, started for the town-residence of the emperor. It is
now occupied by the governor, and stands on the summit of the
little fortified city. We mounted by clean, excellent pavements,
getting a good-natured " buon giorno /" from every female head
thrust from beneath the blinds of the houses. The governor s
aid received us at the door, with his cap in his hand, and we
commenced the tour of the rooms with all the household, male
and female, following to gaze at us. Napoleon lived on the first
floor. The rooms were as small as those of a private house, and
painted in the pretty fresco common in Italy. The furniture was
all changed, and the fireplaces and two bu?ts of the emperor s
sisters (Eliza and Pauline) were all that remained as it was.
The library is a pretty room, though very small, and opens on a
terrace level with his favorite garden. The plants and lemon-
fr.-fs were planted by himself, we were told, and the officers
. i ick>;d souvenirs on all sides. The officer who accompanied us
was an old soldier of Napoleon s, and a native of Elba, and after
a little of the reluctance common to the teller of an oft-told tale,
he gave us some interesting particulars of the emperor s residence
at the island. It appears that he employed himself, from the
first day of his arrival, in the improvement of his little territory,
making roads, &c., and behaved quite like a man who had made
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 19
up his mind to relinquish ambition, and content himself with
what was about him. Three assassins were discovered and
captured in the course of the eleven months, the first two of
whom he pardoned. The third made an attempt upon his life,
in the disguise of a beggar, at a bridge leading to his country-
house, and was condemned and executed. He was a native of
the emperor s own birthplace in Corsica.
The second floor was occupied by his mother and Pauline.
The furniture of the chamber of the renowned beauty is very
much as she left it. The bed is small, and the mirror opposite
its foot very large, and in a mahogany frame. Small mirrors
were set also into the bureau, and in the back of a pretty
cabinet of dark wood standing at the head of the bed. It is
delightful to breathe the atmosphere of a room that has been the
home of the lovely creature whose marble image by Canova
thrills every beholder with love, and is fraught with such
pleasing associations. Her sitting-room, though less interesting,
made us linger and muse again. It looks out over the sea to the
west, and the prospect is beautiful. One forgets that her history
could not be written without many a blot. How much we forgive
to beauty ! Of all the female branches of the Bonaparte family,
Pauline bore the greatest resemblance to her brother Napoleon.
But the grand and regular profile which was in him marked with
the stern air of sovereignty and despotic rule, was in her
tempered with an enchanting softness and fascinating smile.
Her statue, after the Venus de Medicis, is the chef cPauwe of
modern sculpture.
We went from the governor s house to the walls of the town,
loitering along and gazing at the sea ; and then rambled through
the narrow streets of ih<> town, attracting, by the gay uniforms
20 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
of tlie officers, the attention and courtesies of every smooched
petticoat far and near. What the faces of the damsels of Elba
might be, if washed, we could hardly form a conjecture.
The country-house of Napoleon is three miles from the town,
a little distance from the shore, farther round into the bay.
Captain Nicholson proposed to walk to it, and send his boat
across a warmer task for the mid-day of an Italian June than a
man of less enterprise would choose for pleasure. We reached
the stone steps of the imperial casino, after a melting and
toilsome walk, hungry and thirsty, and were happy to fling
ourselves upon broken chairs in the denuded drawing-room, and
wait for an extempore dinner of twelve eggs and a bottle of wine
as bitter as criticism. "A farmer and his family live in the house,
and a couple of bad busts and the fireplaces, are all that remain
of its old appearance. The situation and the view, however, are
superb. A little lap of a valley opens right away from the door
to the bosom of the bay, and in the midst of the glassy basin lies
the bold peninsular promontory and fortification of Porto
Ferrajo, like a castle in a loch, connected with the body of the
island by a mere rib of sand. Off beyond sleeps the main-land
of Italy, mountain and vale, like a smoothly-shaped bed of
clouds ; and for the foreground of the landscape, the valleys of
Elba are just now green with fig-trees and vines, speckled here
and there with fields of golden grain, and farm-houses shaded
with all the trees of this genial climate.
We examined the place, after our frugal dinner, and found a
natural path under the edge of the hill behind, stretching away
back into the valley, and leading, after a short walk, to a small
stream and a waterfall. Across it, just above the fall, lay the
trunk of an old and vigorous fig-tree, full of green limbs, and
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 21
laden with fruit half ripe. It made a natural bridge over the
stream, and as its branches shaded the rocks below, we could
easily imagine Napoleon, walking to and fro in the smooth path,
and seating himself on the broadest stone in the heat of the
summer evenings he passed on the spot. It was the only walk
about the place, and a secluded and pleasant one. The groves
of firs and brush above, and the locust and cherry-trees on the
edges of the walk, are old enough to have shaded him. "We sat
and talked under the influence of the " genius of the spot," till
near sunset, and then, cutting each a walking-stick from the
shoots of the old fig-tree, returned to the boats and reached the
ship as the band sirm-l: u ) their exhilarating music for the
evening on the qu^. lor-deck.
We have passed two or three days at Elba most agreeably.
The weather has been fine, and the ships have been thronged
with company. The common people of the town come on board
in boat-loads, men, women, and children, and are never satisfied
with gazing and wondering. The inhabitants speak very pure
Tuscan, and are mild and simple in their manners. They all
take the ships to be bound upon a mere voyage of pleasure ;
and, with the officers in their gay dresses, and the sailors in their
clean white and blue, the music morning and evening, and the
general gayety on board, the impression is not much to be
wondered at.
Yesterday, after dinner, Captain Nicholson took us ashore in
his gig, to pass an hour or two in the shade. His steward
followed, with a bottle or two of old wine, and landing near the
22 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
fountain to which the boats are sent for water, we soon found a
spreading fig-tree, and, with a family of the country people from
a neighboring cottage around us, we idled away the hours till the
cool of the evening. The simplicity of the old man and his wife,
and the wonder of himself and several laborers in his vineyard,
to whom the captain gave a glass or two of his excellent wines,
would have made a study for Wilkie. Sailors are merry
companions for a party like this. We returned over the unruffled
expanse of the bay, charmed with the beauty of the scene by
sunset, and as happy as a life, literally sans souci, could make us.
What is it, in this rambling absence from all to which we look
forward to in love and hope, that so fascinates the imagination ?
I went, in the commodore s suite, to call upon the governor
this morning. He is a military, commanding-looking man, and
received us in Napoleon s saloon, surrounded by his officers. He
regretted that his commission did not permit him to leave the
shore, even to visit a ship, but offered a visit on the part of his
sister and a company of the first ladies of the town. They came
off this morning. She was a lady-like woman, not very pretty,
of thirty years perhaps. As she spoke only Italian, she was
handed over to me, and I waited on her through the ship,
explaining a great many things of which I knew as much as
herself. This visit over, we get under way to-morrow morning
for Naples.
LETTER II.
Visit to Naples, Herculaneum, and Pompeii.
I HAVE passed my first day in Naples in wandering about,
without any definite object. I have walked around its famous
bay, looked at the lazzaroni, watched the smoke of Vesuvius,
traversed the square where the young Conrad.ne was beheaded
and Masaniello commenced his revolt, mounted to the castle of
St. Elmo, and dined on macaroni in a trattoria, where the Italian
I had learned in Tuscany was of little more use to me than
Greek.
The lay surprised me most. It is a collection of beauties,
which seems more a miracle than an accident of nature. It is a
deep crescent of sixteen miles across, and a little more in length,
between the points of which lies a chain of low mountains, called
the island of Capri, looking, from the shore, like a vast heap of
clouds brooding at sea. In the bosom of the crescent lies
Naples. Its palaces and principal buildings cluster around the
base of an abrupt hill crowned by the castle of St. Elmo, and its
half million of inhabitants have stretched their dwellings over
the plain toward Vesuvius, and back upon Posilipo, bordering
the curve of the shore on the right and left, with a broad white
l?and of city and village for twelve or fourteen miles. Back from
24 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
this, on the southern side, a very gradual ascent brings your eye
to the base of Vesuvius, which rises from the plain in a sharp
cone, broken in at the top, its black and lava-streaked sides
descending with the evennesss of a sand-hill, on one side to the
disinterred city of Pompeii, and on the other to the royal palace
of Portici, built over the yet unexplored Herculaneum. In ihe
centre of the crescent of the shore, projecting into the sea by a
bridge of two or three hundred feet in length, stands a small
castle built upon a rock, on one side of which lies the mole with
its shipping. The other side is bordered, close to the beach,
with the gardens of the royal villa, a magnificent promenade of a
mile, ornamented with fancy temples and statuary, on the smooth
alleys of which may be met, at certain hours, all that is brilliant
and gay in Naples. Farther on, toward the northern horn of the
bay, lies the mount of Posilipo, the ancient coast of Baise, Cape
Mysene, and the mountain isles of Procida and Ischia, the last
of which still preserves the costumes of Greece, from which it
was colonized centuries ago. The bay itself is as blue as the sky,
scarcely ruffled all day with the wind, and covered by countless
boats fishing or creeping on with their picturesque lateen sails
just filled ; while the atmosphere over sea, city, and mountain,
is of a clearness and brilliancy which is inconceivable in other
countries. The superiority of the sky and climate of Italy is no
fable in any part of this delicious land but in Naples, if the
day 1 have spent here is a fair specimen, it is matchless even for
Italy. There is something like a fine blue veil of a most dazzling
transparency over the mountains around, but above and between
there seems nothing but viewless space nothing like air that a
bird could rise upon. The eye gets intoxicated almost with
gazing on it.
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 25
We have just returned from our first excursion to Pompeii.
It lies on the southern side of the bay, just below the volcano
which overwhelmed it, about twelve miles from Naples. The
road lay along the shore, and is lined with villages, which are
only separated by name. The first is Portici, where the king has
a summer palace, through the court of which the road passes.
It is built over Herculaneum, and the danger of undermining it
has stopped the excavations of unquestionably the richest city
buried by Vesuvius. We stopped at a little gate in the midst of
the village, and taking a guide and two torches, descended to the
only part of it now visible, by near a hundred steps. We found
ourselves at the back of an amphitheatre. We entered the
narrow passage, and the guide pointed to several of the upper
seats for the spectators which had been partially dug out. They
were lined with marble, as the whole amphitheatre appears to
have been. To realize the effect of these ruins, it is to be
remembered that they are imbedded in solid lava, like rock, near
a hundred feet deep, and that the city which is itself ancient, is
built above them. The carriage in which we came, stood high
over our heads, in a time-worn street, and ages had passed and
many generations of men had lived and died over a splendid
city, whose very name had been forgotten ! It was discovered in
sinking a well, which struck the door of the amphitheatre. The
guide took us through several other long passages, dug across and
around it, showing us the orchestra, the stage, the numerous
entrances, and the bases of several statues which are taken to
the museum at Naples. This is the only part of the excavation
that remains open, the others having again been filled with
rubbish. The noise of the carriages overhead in the streets of
Portici was like a deafening thunder.
2
26 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
In a hurry to get to Pompeii, which is much more interesting,
we ascended to daylight, and drove on. Coasting along the
curve of the bay, with only a succession of villas and gardens
between us and the beach, we soon came to Torre del Greco, a
small town which was overwhelmed by an eruption thirty-nine
years ago. Vesuvius here rises gradually on the left, the crater
being at a distance of five miles. The road crossed the bed of
dry lava, which extends to the sea in a broad, black mass of
cinders, giving the country the most desolate aspect. The town
is rebuilt just beyond the ashes, and the streets are crowded with
the thoughtless inhabitants, who buy and sell, and lounge in the
sun, with no more remembrance or fear of the volcano, than the
people of a city in America.
Another half hour brought us to a long, high bank of earth and
ashes, thrown out from the excavations ; and, passing on, we
stopped at the gate of Pompeii. A guide met us, and we
entered. We found ourselves in the ruins of a public square,
surrounded with small low columns of red marble. On the
right were several small prisons, in one of which was found the
skeleton of a man with its feet" in iron stocks. The cell was
very small, and the poor fellow must have been suffocated with
out even a hope of escape. The columns just in front were
scratched with ancient names, possibly those of the guard sta
tioned at the door of the prison. This square is surrounded with
shops, in which were found the relics and riches of tradesmen,
consisting of an immense variety. In one of the buildings was
found the skeleton of a newborn child, and in one part of the
square the skeletons of sixty men, supposed to be soldiers, who,
in the severity ot Roman discipline, dared not fly, and perished
at their post. There were several advertisements of gladiatora
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 27
on the pillars, and it appears that at the time of the eruption the
inhabitants of Pompeii were principally assembled in the great
amphitheatre, at a show.
We left the square, and visiting several small private houses
near it, passed into a street with a slight ascent, the pavement of
which was worn deep with carriage-wheels. It appeared to have
led from the upper part of the city directly to the sea, and in
rainy weather must have been quite a channel for water, as high
stones at small distances were placed across the street, leaving
open places between for the carriage wheels. (I think there is
a contrivance of the same kind in one of the streets of Balti
more.)
We mounted thence to higher ground, the part of the city not
excavated. A peasant s hut and a large vineyard stand high
above the ruins, and from the door the whole city and neighbor
hood are seen to advantage. The effect of the scene is
strange beyond description. Columns, painted walls, wheelworn
streets, amphitheatres, palaces, all as lonely and deserted as the
grave, stand around you, and behind is a poor cottage and a
vineyard of fresh earth just putting forth its buds, and beyond,
the broad, blue, familiar bay, covered with steamboats and sails,
and populous modern Naples in the distance a scene as
strangely mingled, perhaps, as any to be found in the world.
We looked around for a while, and then walked on through the
vineyard to the amphitheatre which lies beyond, near the other
gate of the city. It is a gigantic ruin, completely excavated,
and capable of containing twenty thousand spectators. The
form is oval, and the architecture particularly fine. Besides the
many vomitories or passages for ingress and egress, there are
three smaller alleys, one used as the entrance for wild beasts,
28 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
one for the gladiators, and the third as that by which the dead
were taken away. The skeletons of eight lions and a man, sup
posed to be their keeper, were found in one of the dens beneath,
and those of five other persons near the different doors. It is
presumed that the greater proportion of the inhabitants of Pom
peii must have escaped by sea, as the eruption occurred while
they were nearly all assembled on this spot, and these few skele
tons only have been found.*
We returned through the vineyard, and stopping at the
cottage, called for some of the wine of the last vintage (delicious,
like all those in the neighborhood of Vesuvius), and producing
our basket of provisions, made a most agreeable dinner. Two
parties of English passed while we were sitting at our out-of-
doors table. Our attendant was an uncommonly pretty girl of
sixteen, born on the spot, and famous just now as the object of a
young English nobleman s particular admiration. She is a fine,
dark-eyed creature, but certainly no prettier than every fifth
peasant girl in Italy. Having finished our picturesque meal, we
went down into the ancient streets once more, and arrived at the
small temple of Ibis, a building in excellent preservation. On
the altar stood, when it was excavated, a small statue of Isis, of
exquisite workmanship (now in the museum, to which all the
curiosities of the place are carried), and behind this we were
shown the secret penetralia, where the priests wore concealed,
who uttered the oracles supposed to be pronounced by the god
dess. The access was by a small secret flight of stairs,, commu
nicating with the apartments of the priests in the rear. The
largest of these apartments was probably the refectory, and here
* " The number of skeletons hitherto disinterred in Pompeii and its
suburbs is three hundred/ Stark.
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 29
was found a human skeleton near a table, upon which lay dinner
utensils, chicken bones, bones of fishes, bread and wine, and a
faded garland of flowers. In the kitchen, which we next visited,
were found cooking utensils, remains of food, and the skeleton
of a man leaning against the wall with an axe in his hand, and
near him a considerable hole, which he had evidently cut to
make his escape when the door was stopped by cinders. The
skeleton of one of the priests was found prostrate, near the
temple, and in his hand three hundred and sixty coins of silver,
forty-two of bronze, and eight of gold, wrapped strongly in a
cloth. He had probably stopped before his flight to load him
self with the treasures of the temple, and was overtaken by the
shower of cinders and suffocated. The skeletons of one or two
were found upon beds, supposed to have been smothered while
asleep or ill. The temple is beautifully paved with mosaic (as
indeed are all the better private houses and public buildings of
Pompeii), and the open inner court is bordered with a quadri
lateral portico. The building is of the Roman Doric order.
(I have neither time nor room to enumerate the curiosities found
here and in the other parts of the city, and I only notice those
which most impressed my memory. The enumeration by Ma
dame Stark, will be found exceedingly interesting to those who
have not read her laconic guide-book.)
We passed next across a small street to the tragic theatre, a
large handsome building, where the seats for the vestals, consuls,
and other plates of honor, are well preserved, and thence up
the hill to the temple of Hercules, which must have been a
noble edifice, commanding a superb view of the sea.
The next object was the triangular forum, an open space
surrounded with three porticoes, supported by a hundred Dorio
30 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
columns. Here were found several skeletons, one of which was
that of a man who had loaded himself with plunder. Gold and
silver coins, cups, rings, spoons, buckles, and other things, were
found under him. Near here, under the ruins of a wall, were
discovered skeletons of a man and a woman, and on the arms of
the latter two beautiful bracelets of gold.
We entered from this a broad street, lined with shops, against
the walls of which were paintings in fresco, and inscriptions in
deep-red paint, representing the occupations and recording the
names of the occupants. In one of them was found a piece of
salt-fish, smelling strongly after seventeen centuries ! In a small
lane leading from this street, the guide led us to a shop, decorated
with pictures of fish of various kinds, and furnished with a stove,
marble dressers, and earthern jars, supposed to have belonged
to a vender of fish and olives. A little further on was a
baker s shop, with a well-used oven, in which was found a
batch of bread burnt to a cinder. Near this was the house of a
midwife. lu it were found several instruments of a simple and
excellent construction, unknown to the moderns, a forceps,
remains of medicines in a wooden box, and various pestles and
mortars. The walls were ornamented with frescoes of the
Graces, Venus, and Adonis, and similar subjects.
The temple of the pantheon is a magnificent ruin, and must
have been one of the choicest in Pompeii. Its walls are
decorated with exquisite paintings in fresco, arabesques, mosaics,
&c., and its court is one hundred and eighty feet long, and two
hundred and thirty broad, and contains an altar, around which
are twelve pedestals for statues of the twelve principal deities
of the ancients. Gutters of marble are placed at the base of
the triclinium, t) carry away the blood of the victims. A
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 31
thousand coins of bronze, and forty or fifty of silver, were found
near the sanctuary.
We passed on to the Curea, a semi-circular building, for the
discussion of matters of religion by the magistrates ; a temple
of Homulus ; the remains of a temple of Janus ; a splendid
building called the chalddicum, constructed by the priestess
Eumachea and her son, and dedicated as a temple of concord,
and came at last, by a regular ascent, into a large and spacious
square, called the forum civile. This part of the city of
Pompeii must have been extremely imposing. Porticoes, sup
ported by noble columns, encompassed its vast area ; the
pedestals of colossal statues, erected to distinguished citizens,
are placed at the corners ; at the northern extremity rose a
stately temple of Jupiter ; on the right was another temple to
Venus ; beyond, a large public edifice, the use of which is not
known ; across the narrow street which bounds it stood the
Basilica, an immense building, which served as a court of justice
and an exchange.
We passed out at the gate of the city and stopped at a sentry-
box, in which was found a skeleton in full armor a soldier who
had died at his post ! From hence formerly the road descended
directly to the sea, and for some distance was lined on either side
with the magnificent tombs of the Pompeians. Among them
was that of the Vestal virgins, left unfinished when the city was
destroyed ; a very handsome tomb, in which was found the
skeleton of a woman, with a lamp in one hand and jewels in the
other (who had probably attempted to rob before her flight), and
a very handsome square monument, with a beautiful relievo on
one of the slabs, representing (as emblematic of death) a ship
furling her sails on coming into port. Near one of the large
32 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
family sepulchres stands a small semi-circular room, intended for
the funeral feast after a burial ; and here were found the remains
of three men around a table, scattered with relics of a meal.
They were overwhelmed ere their feast was concluded over the
.lead !
The principal inn of Pompeii was just inside the gate. We
wont over the ruins of it. The skeleton of an ass was found
chained to a ring in the stable, and the tire of a wheel lay in the
court yard. Chequers are painted on the side of the door, as a
sign.
Below the tombs stands the " suburban villa of Diomed," one
of the most sumptuous edifices of Pompeii. Here was found
everything that the age could furnish for the dwelling of a man
of wealth. Statues, frescoes, jewels, wine, household utensils of
every description, skeletons of servants and dogs, and every kind
of elegant furniture. The family was large, and in the first
moment of terror, they all retreated to a wine vault under the
villa, where their skeletons (eighteen grown persons and two
children) were found seventeen centuries after ! There was
really something startling in walking through the deserted rooms
of this beautiful villa more than one feels elsewhere in Pompeii,
for it is more like the elegance and taste of our own day ; and
with the brightness of the preserved walls, and the certainty with
which the use of each room is ascertained, it seems as if the
living inhabitant would step from some corner and welcome you.
The figures on the walls are as fresh as if done yesterday. The
baths look as if they might scarce be dry from use. It seems
incredible that the whole Christian age has elapsed since this was
a human dwelling occupied b}~ its last family while our Savior
teas walking the world !
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 33
It would be tedious to enumerate all the curious places to
which the guide led us in this extraordinary city. On our
return through the streets, among the objects of interest was the
house of Sallust) the historian. I did not think, when reading
his beautiful Latin at school, that I should ever sit down in his
parlor ! Sallust was rich, and his house is uncommonly hand
some. Here is his chamber, his inner court, his kitchen, his
garden, his dining-room, his guest-chamber, all perfectly distin
guishable by the symbolical frescoes on the wall. In the court
was a fountain of pretty construction, and opposite, in the rear,
was a flower-garden, containing arrangements for dining in open
air in summer. The skeleton of a female (supposed to be the
wife of the historian) and three servants, known by their
different ornaments, were found near the door of the street.
We passed a druggist s shop and a cook-shop, and entered,
treading on a beautiful mosaic floor, the " house of the dramatic
poet," so named, fiom the character of the paintings with which
it is ornamented throughout. The frescoes found here are the
finest ancient paintings in the world, and from some peculiarity
in the rings upon the fingers of the female figures, they are
supposed to be family portraits. With assistance like this, how
easily the imagination repeoples these deserted dwellings !
A heavy shower drove us to the shelter of the wine-vaults of
Diomed, as we were about stepping into our carriage to return to
Naples. We spent the time in exploring, and found some thirty
or forty earthern jars still half-buried in the ashes which drifted
through the loop-holes of the cellar. In another half hour the
black cloud had passed away over Vesuvius, and the sun set
behind Posilipo in a flood of splendor. We were at home soon
after dark, having had our fill of astonishment for once. I have
2*
34 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN.
seen nothing in my life so remarkable as this disentombed city.
I have passed over, in the description, many things which were
well worth noting, but it would have grown into a mere catalogue
else. You should come to Italy. It is a privilege to realize
these things which could not be bought too dearly, and they
cannot be realized but by the eye. Description conveys but a
poor shadow of them to the fancy
LETTER III,
Account of VesuviusThe Hermitage The famous Lagrima Christi Difficulties of the
Patli Curious Appearance of the Old Crater Odd Assemblage of Travellers Tho
New Crater Splendid Prospect Mr. Mathias, Author of the Pursuits of Literature
The Archbishop of Tarento.
MOUNTED upon asses much smaller than their riders, and with
each a barelegged driver behind, we commenced the ascent of
Vesuvius. It was a troublesome path worn through the rough
scoria of old eruptions, and after two hours toiling, we were
glad to dismount at " the hermitage." Here lives a capuchin
friar on a prominent rib in the side of the volcano, the red-hot
lava dividing above his dwelling every year or two, and coursing
away to the valley in two rivers of fire on either side of him.
He has been there twelve years, and supports himself, and
probably half the brotherhood at the monastery, by selling
lagrima Chrisli to strangers. It is a small white building with a
little grass and a few trees about it, and looks like an island in
the black waste of cinders and lava.
A shout from the guide was answered by the opening of a
small window above, and the shaven crown of the old friar was
thrust forth with a welcome and a request that we would mount
the stairs to the parlor. He received us at the top, and gave us
chairs around a plain to.sd table, upon which he set several
36 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
bottles of the far-famed wine of Vesuvius. One drinks it, and
blesses the volcano that warmed the roots of the grape. It is a
ripe, rich, full-bodied liquor, which " ascends me into the brain"
sooner than any continental wine I have tasted. I never drank
anything more delicious.
We remounted our asses and rode on, much more indifferent
than before, to the roughness of the path. It strikes one
like the road to the infernal regions. No grass, not a
shrub, nothing but a wide mountain of cinders, black aud
rugged, diversified only by the deeper die of the newer streaks
of lava. The eye wearied of gazing on it. We mounted thus
for an hour or more, arriving at last at the base of a lofty cone
whose sides were but slopes of deep ashes. We left our donkeys
here in company with those of a large party that had preceded
us, and made preparations to ascend on foot. The drivers
unlaced their sashes, and passing them round the waists of the
ladies, took the ends over their shoulders, and proceeded.
Harder work could scarce be conceived. The feet had no
hold, sinking knee-deep at every step, and we slipped back so
much, that our progress was almost imperceptible. The ladies
were soon tired out, although more than half dragged up by the
guides. At every few steps there was a general cry for a halt,
and we lay down in the warm ashes, quite breathless and
discouraged.
In something more than an hour from the hermitage we
reached the edge of the old crater. The scene here was very
curious. A hollow, perhaps a mile round, composed entirely of
scoria (like the cinders under a blacksmith s window) contained
in its centre the sharp new cone of the last eruption. Around,
in various directions, sat some thirty groups of travellers, with
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 37
each their six or seven Italian guides, refreshing themselves with
a lunch after the fatigue of the ascent. There were English,
Germans, French, Russians, and Italians, each speaking their
own language, and the largest party, oddly enough, was from the
United States. As I was myself travelling with foreigners, and
found my countrymen on Vesuvius unexpectedly, the mixture of
nations appeared still more extraordinary. The combined heat
of the sun and the volcano beneath us, had compelled the
Italians to throw off half their dress, and they sat, or stood
leaning on their long pikes, with their brown faces and dark eyes
glowing with heat, as fine models of ruffians as ever startled a
traveller in this laud of I..:. Jits. Eight or ten of them were
grouped around u crack in the crater, roasting apples and
toasting bread. There were several of these cracks winding
about in different directions, of which I could barely endure the
heat, holding my hand at the top. A stick thrust in a foot or
more, was burnt black in a moment.
With another bottle or two of " lagrima Christ!" and a
roasted apple, our courage was renewed, and we picked our way
across the old crater, sometimes lost in the smoke which steamed
up through the cracks, and here and there treading on beautiful
beds of crystals of sulphur. The ascent of the new cone was
shorter, but very difficult. The ashes were so new and light,
that it was like a steep sand-bank, giving discouragingly at the
least pressure, and sinking till the next step was taken. The
steams of sulphur as we approached the summit, were all but
intolerable. The ladies coughed, the guides sneezed and called
on the Madonna, and I never was more relieved than in catching
the first clear draught of wind on the top of the mountain.
Here we all stood at last crowded together on the narrow
38 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
edge of a crater formed within the year, and liable every moment
to be overwhelmed with burning lava. There was scarce room
to stand, and the hot ashes burnt our feet as they sunk into it.
The females of each party sunk to the ground, and the common
danger and toil breaking down the usual stiff barrier of silence
between strangers, the conversation became general, and the
hour on the crater s edge passed very agreeably.
A strong lad would just about throw a stone from one side to
the other of the new crater. It was about forty feet deep,
perhaps more, and one crust of sulphur lined the whole. It was
half the time obscured in smoke, which poured in volumes from
the broad cracks with which it was divided in every direction,
and occasionally an eddy of wind was caught in the vast bowl,
and for a minute its bright yellow surface was perfectly clear.
There had not been an eruption for four or five months, and the
abyss which is for years together a pit of fire and boiling lava,
has had time to harden over, and were it not for the ^smoking
seams, one would scarce suspect the existence of the tremendous
volcano slumbering beneath.
After we had been on the summit a few minutes, an English
clergyman of my acquaintance to our surprise emerged from the
smoke. He had been to the bottom for specimens of sulphur
for his cabinet. Contrary to the advice of the guide, I profited
by his experience, and disappearing in the flying clouds, reached
the lowest depths of the crater with some difficulties of foothold
and breath. The cracks, which I crossed twice, were so brittle
as to break like the upper ice of a twice frozen pond beneath my
feet, and the stench of the exhaling gases was nauseating
beyond all the sulphuretted hydrogen I have ever known. The
sensation was painfully suffocating from the moment I entered
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 39
the crater. I Ibroke off as many bits of the bright golden
crystals from the crust as my confusion and failing strength
would allow, and then remounted, feeling my way up through
the smoke to the summit.
I can compare standing on the top of Vesuvius and looking
down upon the bay and city of Naples, to nothing but mounting
a peak in the infernal regions overlooking paradise. The larger
crater encircles you entirely fur a mile, cutting off the view of
the sides of the mountain, and from the elevation of the new
cone, you look over the rising edge of this black field of smoke
and cinders, and drop the eye at once upon Naples, lying asleep
in the sun, with its lazy sails upon the water, and the green hills
enclosing it clad in the indescribable beauty of an Italian
atmosphere. Beyond all comparison, by the testimony of every
writer and traveller, the most beautiful scene in the world, the
loveliest water, and the brightest land, lay spread out before us.
With the stench of hot sulphur in our nostrils, ankle deep in
black ashes, and a waste of smouldering cinders in every
direction around us, the enjoyment of the view certainly did not
want for the heightening of contrast.
We made our descent by jumps through the sliding ashes,
frequently tumbling over each other, and retracing in five
minutes the toil of an hour. Our donkeys stood tethered
together on the herbless field of cinders, and we were soon in
the clumsy saddles, and with a call at the hermitage, and a
parting draught of wine with the friar, we reached our carriages
at the little village of Resina in safety. The feet of the whole
troop were in a wretched condition. The ladies had worn shoes,
or slight boots, which were cut to pieces of course, and one very
fine-looking girl, the daughter of an elderly French gentleman,
40 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
had, with the usual improvidence of her nation, started in satin
slippers. She was probably lamed for a month, as she insisted
on persevering, and wrapped her feet in handkerchiefs to return.
We rode along the curve of the bay, by one of these matchless
sunsets of Italy, and arrived at Naples at dark.
I have had the pleasure lately of making the acquaintance of
Mr. Mathias, the distinguished author of the " Pursuits of
Literature," and the translator of Spenser and other English
poets into Italian. About twenty years ago, this well-known
scholar came to Italy on a desperate experiment of health.
Finding himself better, almost against hope, he has remained
from year to year in Naples, in love with the climate and the
language, until, at this day, he belongs less to the English than
the Italian literature, having written various original poems in
Italian, and translated into Italian verse, to the wonder and
admiration of the scholars of the country. I found him this
morning at his lodgings, in an old palace on the Pizzofalcone,
buried in books as usual, and good-humored enough to give an
hour to a young man, who had no claim on him beyond the
ordinary interest in a distinguished scholar. He talked a great
deal of America naturally, and expressed a very strong friendship
for Mr. Everett, whom he had met on his travels, requesting me
at the same time to take to him a set of his works as a remem
brance. Mr. Mathias is a small man, of perhaps sixty years,
perfectly bald, and a little inclined to corpulency. His head is
ample, and would make a fine picture of a scholar. His voice is
hurried and modest, and from long residence in Italy, his English
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 41
is full of Italian idioms. He spoke with rapture of Da Polite,
calling me back as I shut the door, to ask for him. It seemed to
give him uncommon pleasure that we appreciated and valued him
in America.
I have looked over, this evening, a small volume, which he
was kind enough to give me. It is entitled " Lyric Poetry, by
T. I. Mathias, a new edition, printed privately." It is dated
1832, and the poems were probably all written within the last
two years. The shortest extract I can make is a " Sonnet to
the Memory of Gray," which strikes me as very beautiful.
" Lord of the various lyre ! devout we turn
Our pilgrim steps to thy supreme abode,
And tread with awe the solitary road
To grace with votive wreaths thy hallowed urn.
Yet, as we wander through this dark sojourn,
No more the strains we hear, that all abroad
Thy fancy waited, as the inspiring God
Prompted the thoughts that breathe, the words that burn.
* But hark ! a voice in solemn accents clear
Bursts from heaven s vault that glows with temperate fire;
Cease, mortal, cease to drop the fruitless tear
Mute though the raptures of his full-strung lyre,
E en his own warblings, lessened on his ear,
Lost in seraphic harmony expire."
I have met also, at a dinner party lately, the celebrated
antiquary, Sir William Gell. He too lives abroad. His work
on Pompeii has become authority, and displays very great
learning. He is a tall, large-featured man, and very commanding
in his appearance, though lamed terribly with the gout.
42 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
A friend, whom I met at the same house, took me to see the
archbishop of Tarento yesterday. This venerable man, it is well
known, lost his gown for his participation in the cause of the Car
bonari (the revolutionary conspirators of Italy.) He has always
played a conspicuous part in the politics of his time, and now,
at the age of ninety, unlike the usual fate of meddlers in
troubled waters, he is a healthy, happy, venerated old man-,
surrounded in his palace with all that luxury can give him. The
lady who presented me, took the privilege of intimate friendship
to call at an unusual hour, and we found the old churchman m
his slippers, over his breakfast, with two immense tortoise-shell
cats, upon stools, watching his hand far bits of bread, and
purring most affectionately. He looks like one of Titian s
pictures. His face is a wreck of commanding features, and his
eye seems less to have lost its fire, than to slumber in its deep
socket. His hair is snowy white his forehead of prodigious
breadth and height and his skin has that calm, settled, and yet
healthy paleness, which carries with it the history of a whole life
of temperance and thought.
The old man rose from his chair with a smile, and came for
ward with a stoop and a feeble step, and took my two hands, as
my friend mentioned my name, and looked me in the face very
earnestly. " Your country," said he, in Italian, " has sprung
into existence like Minerva, full grown and armed. We look for
the result. 5> He went on with some comments upon the dangers
of republics, and then sent me to look at a portrait of Queen
Giovanna, of Naples, by Leonardo da Vinci, while he sat down to
talk with the lady who brought me. His secretary accompanied
me as a cicerone. Five or six rooms, communicating with each
other, were filled with choice pictures, every one a gift from some
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 43
distinguished individual. The present king of France has sent him
his portrait ; Queen Adelaide has sent a splendid set of Sevres
china, with the portraits of her family ; the queen of Belgium had
presented him with her miniature and that of Leopold ; the king
and queen of Naples had half-furnished his house ; and so the
catalogue went on. It seemed as if the whole continent had
O
united to honor the old man. While I was looking at a curious
mosaic portrait of a cat, presented to him on the death of the
original, by some prince whose name I have forgotten, he camo
to us, and said he had just learned that my pursuits were literary,
and would present me with his own last work. He opened the
drawer of a small bureau and produced a manuscript of some ten
pages, written in a feeble hand. " This," said he, " is an
enumeration from memory of what I have not seen for many
years, the classic spots about our beautiful city of Naples, and
their associations. I have written it in the last month to wile
away the time, and call up again the pleasure I have received
many times in my life in visiting them." I put the curious
document in my bosom with many thanks, and we kissed the
hand of the good old priest and left him. We found his car
riage, with three or four servants in handsome livery, waiting for
him in the court below. We had intruded a little on the hour
for his morning ride.
I found his account of the environs merely a simple catalogu-.-,
with here and there a classic quotation from a Greek or Latin
author, referring to them. I keep the MS. as a curious memento
of one of the na blest relics I have seen of an age gone by.
LETTER IV,
The Fashionable World of Naples at the Eaccs Brilliant Show of Equipages Tho King
and his Brother Eank and Character of the Jockeys Description of the Kace sThe
Public Burial Ground at Naples Horrid and inhuman Spectacles The Lazzaroni Tho
Museum at Naples Ancient Eelics from Pompeii Forks not used by the Ancients
The Lamp lit at the time of our Saviour The antique. Chair of Sallust Tho Villa of
Cicero The Balbi Family Bacchus on the Shoulders of a Faun Gallery of Dians,
Cupids. Joves, Mercuries, and Apollos, Statue of Aristides, etc.
I HAVE been all day at "the races." The king of Naples,
who has a great admiration for everything English, has aban
doned the Italian custom of running horses without riders through
the crowded street, and has laid out a magnificent course on the
summit of a broad hill overlooking the city on the east. Here
he astonishes his subjects with ridden races, and it was to see one
of the best of the season, that the whole fashionable world of
Naples poured out to the campo this morning. The show of
equipages was very brilliant, the dashing liveries of the various
ambassadors, and the court and nobles of the kingdom, showing
on the bright green-sward to great effect. 1 never saw a more
even piece of turf, and it was fresh in the just-born vegetation of
spring. The carriages were drawn up in two lines, nearly half
round the course, and for an hour or two before the races, the
king and his brother, Prince Carlo, rode up and down between
with the royal suite, splendidly mounted, the monarch himself
SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN 45
upon a fiery gray blood-horse, of uncommon power and beauty.
The director was an Aragonese nobleman, cousin to the king,
and as perfect a specimen of the Spanish cavalier as ever figured
in the pages of romance. He was mounted on a Turkish horse,
snow-white, and the finest animal I ever saw ; and he carried all
eyes with him, as he dashed up and down, like a meteor. I like
to see a fine specimen of a man, as I do a fine picture, or an ex
cellent horse, and I think I never saw a prettier spectacle of its
kind, than this wild steed from the Balkan and his handsome
rider.
The king is tall, very fat, but very erect, of a light complexion,
and a good horseman, riding always in the English style, trotting
and rising in his stirrup. (He is about twenty-three, and so sur
prisingly like a friend of mine in Albany, that the people would
raise their hats to them indiscriminately, I am sure.) Prince
Charles is smaller and less kingly in his appearance, dresses care
lessly arid ill, and is surrounded always in public with half a
dozen young Englishmen. lie is said to have been refused lately
by the niece of the wealthiest English nobleman in Italy, a very
beautiful girl of eighteen, who was on the ground to-day in a
chariot and four.
The horses were led up and down a delicate, fine-limbed sorrel
mare, and a dark chestnut horse, compact and wiry both Eng
lish. The bets were arranged, the riders weighed, and, at the
beat of a bell, off they went like arrows. Oh what a beautiful
sight! The course was about a mile round, and marked with red
flags at short distances ; and as the two flying creatures described
the bright green circle, spread out like greyhounds, and running
with an ease and grace that seemed entirely without effort, the
king dashed across the field followed by the whole court ; the
46 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
Turkish steed of Don Giovanni restrained with difficulty in the
rear, and leaping high in the air at every bound, his nostrils ex
panded, and his head thrown up with the peculiar action of his
race, while his snow-white mane and tail flew with every hair free
to the wind. I had, myself, a small bet upon the sorrel. It was
nothing a pair of gloves with a lady but as the horses came
round, the sorrel a whip s length ahead, and both shot by like
the wind, scarce touching the earth apparently, and so even in
their speed that the rider in blue might have kept his hand on the
other s back, the excitement became breathless. Away they
went again, past the starting post, pattering, pattering on with
their slender hoofs, the sorrel still keeping her ground, and a
thousand bright lips wishing the graceful creature success. Half
way round the blue jacket began to whip. The sorrel still held
her way, and I felt my gloves to be beyond peril. The royal
cortege within the ring spurred across at the top of their speed
to the starting post. The horses came on their nostrils open
and panting, bounding upon the way with the same measured
leaps a little longer and more eager than before ; the rider of the
sorrel leaning over the neck of his horse with a loose rein, and
his whip hanging untouched from his wrist. Twenty leaps more !
With every one the rider of the chestnut gave the fine animal a
blow. The sorrel sprang desperately on, every nerve strained to
the jump, but at the instant that they passed the carriage in
which I stood, the chestnut was developing his wiry frame in
tremendous leaps, and had already gained on his opponent the
length of his head. They were lost in the crowd that broke
instantly into the course behind them, and in a moment after a
small red flag was waved from the stand. My favorite had lost !
The next race was ridden by a young Scotch nobleman, and
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 47
the son of the former French ambassador, upon the horses with
which they came to the ground. It was a match made up on the
spot. The Frenchman was so palpably better mounted, that
there was a general laugh when the ground was cleared and the
two gentlemen spurred up and down to show themselves as
antagonists. The Parisian himself stuffed his white handkerchief
in his bosom, and jammed down his hat upon his head with a
confident laugh, and among the ladies there was scarce a bet
upon the grave Scotchman, who borrowed a stout whip, and rode
his bony animal between the lines with a hard rein and his feet
set firmly in the stirrups. The Frenchman generously gave him
every advantage, beginning with the inside of the ring. The bell
struck, and the Scotchman drove his spurs into his horse s flanks
and started away, laying on with his whip most industriously.
His opponent followed, riding very gracefully, but apparently
quite sure that he could overtake him at any moment, and
content for the first round with merely showing himself off to the
best advantage. Round came Sawney, twenty leaps ahead,
whipping unmercifully still ; the blood of his hired hack com
pletely up, and himself as red in the face as an aldermen, and
with his eye fixed only on the road. The long-tailed bay of the
Frenchman came after, in handsome style, his rider sitting com
placently upright, and gathering up his reins for the first time
to put his horse to his speed. The Scotchman flogged on. The
Frenchman had disdained to take a whip, but he drove his heels
hard into his horse s sides soon after leaving the post, and leaned
forward quite in earnest. The horses did remarkably well, both
showing much more bottom than was expected. On they came,
the latter gaining a little and working very hard. Sawney had
lost his hat, and his red hair streamed back from his redder face ;
48 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
but flogging and spurring, with his teeth shut and his eyes
steadily fixed on the road, he kept the most of his ground and
rode away. They passed me a horse s length apart, and the
Scotchman s whip flying to the last, disappeared beyond me.
He won the race by a couple of good leaps at least. The king
was very much amused, and rode off laughing heartily, and the
discomfitted Frenchman came back to his party with a very ill-
concealed dissatisfaction.
A very amusing race followed between two midshipmen from
an English corvette lying in the bay, and then the long lines of
splendid equipages wheeled into train, and dashed off the ground.
The road, after leaving the campo, runs along the edge of the
range of hills, enclosing the city, and just below, within a high
white wall, lies the public burial-place of Naples. I had read so
many harrowing descriptions of this spot, that my curiosity rose
as we drove along in sight of it, and requesting my friends to set
me down, I joined an American of my acquaintance, and we
started to visit it together.
An old man opened the iron door, and we entered a clean,
spacious, and well-paved area, with long rows of iron rings in
the heavy slabs of the pavement. Without asking a question,
the old man walked across to the farther corner, where stood a
moveable lever, and fastening the chain into the fixture, raised
the massive stone cover of a pit. He requested us to stand back
for a few minutes to give the effluvia time to escape, and then,
sheltering our eyes with our hats, we looked in. You have read,
of course, that there are three hundred and sixty-five pits in this
place, one of which is opened every day for the dead of the city.
They are thrown in without shroud or coffin, and the pit is
sealed up at night for a year. They are thirty or forty feet
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 49
deep, and each would contain perhaps two hundred bodies.
Lime is thrown upon the daily heap, and it soon melts into a
mass of garbage, and by the end of the year the bottom of the
pit is c overed with dry white bones.
It was some time before we could distinguish anything in the
darkness of the abyss. Fixing my eyes on one spot, however,
the outlines of a body became defined gradually, and in a few
minutes, sheltering my eyes completely from the sun above, I
could see all the horrors of the scene but too distinctly. Eight
corpses, all of grown persons, lay in a confused heap together,
as they had been thrown in one after another in the course of the
day. The last was a powerfully made, gray old man, who had
fallen flat on his back, with his right hand lying across and half
covering the face of a woman. By his full limbs and chest, and
the darker color of his legs below the knee, he was probably one
of the lazzaroni, and had met with a sudden death. His right
heel lay on the forehead of a young man, emaciated to the
last degree, his chest thrown up as he lay, and his ribs showing
like a skeleton covered with skin. The close black curls of the
latter, as his head rested on another body, were in such strong
relief that I could have counted them. Off to the right, quite
distinct from the heap, lay, in a beautiful attitude, a girl, as well
as I could judge, of not more than nineteen or twenty. She had
fallen on the pile and rolled or slid away. Her hair was very
long, and covered her left shoulder and bosom ; her arm -was
across her body, and if her mother had laid her down to sleep,
she could not have disposed her limbs more decently. The head
had fallen a little away to the right, and the feet, which were
small, even for a lady, were pressed one against the other, as if
.she were about turning on her side. The sexton said that a
50 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
young man had come with the body, and was very ill for some
time after it was thrown in. We asked him if respectable people
were brought here. " Yes," he said, " many. None but the
rich would go to the expense of a separate grave for their rela
tions. People were often brought in handsome grave-clothes,
but they were always stripped before they were left. The
shroud, whenever there was one, was the perquisite of the under
takers." And thus are flung into this noisome pit, like beasts,
the greater part of the population of this vast city the young
and the old, the vicious and the virtuous together, without
the decency even, of a rag to keep up the distinctions of life !
Can human beings thus be thrown away ? men like ourselves
women, children, like our sisters and brothers ? I never was so
humiliated in my life as by this horrid spectacle. I did not
think a man a felon even, or a leper what you will that is
guilty or debased I did not think anything that had been
human could be so recklessly abandoned. Pah ! It makes one
sick at heart ! God grant I may never die at Naples !
While we were recovering from our disgust, the old man
lifted the stone from the pit destined to receive the dead on the
following day. We looked in. The bottom was strewn with
bones, already fleshless and dry. He wished us to see the dead
of several previous days, but my stomach was already tried to its
utmost. We paid our gratuity, and hurried away. A few steps
from, the gate, we met a man bearing a coflin on his head. See
ing that we came from the cemetery, he asked us if we wished to
look into it. He set it down, and the lid opening with a hinge,
we were horror-struck with the sight of seven dead infants !
The youngest was at least three months old, the eldest perhaps
a year ; and they lay heaped together like so many puppies, one
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 51
or two of them spotted with disease, and all wasted to baby-skel
etons. While we were looking at them, six or seven noisy
children ran out from a small house at the road-side and
surrounded the coffin. One was a fine girl of twelve years of
age, and instead of being at all shocked at the sight, she lifted
the whitest of the dead things, and looked at its face very ear
nestly, loading it with all the tenderc-st diminutives of the
language. The others were busy in pointing to those they
thought had been prettiest, and none of them betrayed fear or
disgust. In answer to a question of my friend about the marks
of disease, the man rudely pulled out one by the foot that lay
below the rest, and holding it up to show the marks upon it,
tossed it again carelessly into th< ; coffin. He had brought them
from the hospital for infants, and they had died that morning.
The coffin was worn with use. Ho shut down the lid, and lifting
it again upon his head, went on to the d-rm^ry, tn en.pfy it like
so much offal up^n the I.u-ap \\>> Lad ;$,vn I
1 have been struck lept-utedJy wi;h the liitlo value attached to
human life in Italy. 1 have seen several of iliose housless hizza-
roni literally dying in the streets, ami no one curious enough to
look at them. The most dreadful sufferings, the most despairing
cries, in the open squares, are passed as unnoticed as the howling
of a dog. The day before yesterday, a woman fell in the Toledo,
in a fit, frothing at the mouth, and livid with pain ; and though
the street was so crowded that one could make his way with diffi
culty, three or four ragged children were the only persons even
looking at her.
52 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
I have devoted a week to the museum at Naples. It is a
world ! Anything like a full description of it would tire even
an antiquary. It is one of those things (and there are many in
Europe) that fortunately compel travel. You must come abroad
to get an idea of it.
The first day I buried myself among the curiosities found at
Pompeii. After walking through the chambers and streets
where they were found, I came to them naturally with an intense
interest. I had visited a disentombed city, buried for seventeen
centuries had trodden in their wheel-tracks had wandered
through their dining-rooms, their chambers, their baths, their
theatres, their market-places. And here were gathered in one
place, their pictures, their statues, their cooking-utensils, their
ornaments, tin very food as it was found on their tables ! I am
puzzled, in looking over my note-book, to know what to mention.
Ti.e c;it.- .l<>;. v u ! fills ;\ printed volume.
A i u i-us corner in one of the cases was that containing the
artick s found 011 the toilet of the wealthiest Pompeian s wife.
Here were pots of rouge, ivory pins, necklaces, ear-rings,
brac . l. ts, small silver mirrors, combs, ear-pickers, etc., etc.
In the next case were two loavvs of bread, found in a baker s
oven, and stamped with his name. Two large cases of precious
gems, cameos and intaglios of all descriptions, stand in the centra
of this room (among which, by the wny, the most exquisitely
done are two which one cannot look at without a blush).
Another case is filled with eatables, found upon the tables eggs,
fish-bones, honey-comb, grain, fruits, etc. In the repository for
ancient glass are several cinerary urns, in which the ashes of the
dead are perfectly preserved ; and numerous small glass lachry-
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 53
matories, in which the tears of the survivors were deposited in
the tombs.
The brazen furniture of Pompeii, the lamps particularly, are
of the most curious and beautiful models. Trees, to which the
lamps were suspended like fruit, vines, statues holding them in
their hands, and numerous other contrivances, were among
them, exceeding far in beauty any similar furniture of our time.
It appears that the ancients did not know the use of the/or^,
as every other article of table service except this has been found
here.
To conceive the interest attached to the thousand things in
this museum, one must imagine a modern city, Boston for
example, completely buried by an unexpected and terrific con
vulsion of nature. Its inhabitants mostly escape, but from,
various causes leave their city entombed, and in a hundred years
ihe grass grows over it, and its very locality is forgotten. Near
two thousand years elapse, and then a peasant, digging in the
field, strikes upon some of its ruins, and it is unearthed just as it
stands at this moment, with all its utensils, books, pictures,
houses, and streets, in untouched preservation. What a subject
for speculation ! What food for curiosity ! What a living and
breathing chapter of history were this ! Far more interesting is
Pompeii. For the age in which it flourished and the characters
who trod its streets, are among the most remarkable in history.
This brazen lamp, shown to me to-day as a curiosity, was lit
every evening in the time of Christ. The handsome chambers
through which I wandered a day or two ago, and from which
were brought this antique chair, were the home of Sallust, and
doubtless had been honored by the visits of Cicero (whose villa,
half-excavated, is near by,) and by all the poets and scholars and
54 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
statesmen of his time. One might speculate endlessly thus !
And it is that which makes these lands of forgotten empires so
delightful to the traveller. His mind is fed by the very air. He
needs no amusements, no company, no books except the history
of the place. The spot is peopled wherever he may stray, and
the common necessities of life seem to pluck him from a faj-
reaching dream, in which he had summoned back receding ages,
and was communing, face to face, with philosophers and poets
and emperors, like a magician before his mirror. Pompeii and
Herculaneum seem to me visions. I cannot shake myself and
wake to their reality. My mind refuses to go back so far.
Seventeen hundred years !
I followed the cicerone on, listening to his astonishing enumer
ation, and looking at everything as he pointed to it, in a kind of
stupor. One has but a certain capacity. We may be over-
astonished. Still he went on in the same every-day tone, talking
as indifferently of this and that surprising antiquity as a pedlar
of his two -penny wares. We went from the bronzes to the hall
of the papyri thence to the hall of the frescoes, and beautiful
they were. Their very number makes them indescribable. The
next morning we devoted to the statuary and of this, if I knew
wh^re to begin, I should like to say a word or two.
First of all comes the Balbi family father, mother, sons and
daughters. He was proconsul of Herculaneum, and by the
excellence of the statues, which are life itself for nature, he and
his family were worth the artist s best effort. He is a fine old
Roman himself, and his wife is a tall, handsome woman, much
better-looking than her daughters. The two Misses Balbi are
modest-looking girls, and that is all. They were the high-born
damsels of Ferculaneum, however ; and, if human nature has
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 55
not changed in seventeen centuries, they did not want admirers
who compared them to the Venuses who have descended with
them to the " Museo Borbonico." The eldest son is on horse
back in armor. It is one of the finest equestrian statues in the
world. He is a noble youth, of grave and handsome features,
and sits the superb animal with the freedom of an Arab and the
dignity of a Roman. It is a beautiful thing. If one had visited
these Balbis, warm and living, in the time of Augustus, he
could scarcely feel more acquainted with them than after having
seen their statues as they stand before him here.
Come a little farther on ! Bacchus on the shoulders of a faun
a child delighted with a grown-up playfellow. I have giveu the
same please to just such another bright " picture in little" of
human beauty. It moves one s heart to see it.
Pass now a whole gallery of Dians, Cupids, Joves, Mercuries
and Apollos, and come to the presence of Aristidesbim whom
the Athenians exiled because they were tired of hcaiing him
called " The Just." Canova has marked three spots upon (hj
floor where the spectator should place himself to see to the bot>t
advantage this renowned statue. He stands wrapped in his toga,
with his head a little inclined, as if in reflection, and in his face
there is a mixture of firmness and goodness from which you read
his character as clearly as if it were written across his forehead.
It was found at Herculaneum, and is, perhaps, the simplest and
most expressive statue in the world.
LETTER V.
rstum Temple of Neptune Departure from Elba Iscln a Buy of Naples The
ToK-ilo The Young Queen Conspiracy against the King Neapolitans Visiting the
Friga os Leave- the Bay Castellamare.
SALVATOH I OSA studied the scenery of La Gava the country
between Pompeii and Salerno, on the road to Pacstum. It is a
seiies of natively abrupt glens, but gemmed with cottages and
banging gardens, through which the wildness of every feature is
as apparent as those of a savage through his trinkets. I was
go iti f to Paestutn with an agreeable party, and we came out upon
the bluffs overhanging Salerno and the sea, an hour before sunset.
We darted down upon the little city lying in the bend of the
bay, like a bird s descent upon her nest. The road is cut through
tiie side of the precipice, and runs to the bottom with a single
MviM-p. We were to pass the night here and go to Paestum the
next morning, see the ruins, and return here to sleep once more
b.-fore returning to Naples.
We were five or six miles from Salerno before sunrise, and
entering upon the dreary wastes of Calabria. The people we
passed on the road were dressed in skins with the wool outside,
and the country looked abandoned by nature itself, scarce a flour
ishing tree or a healthy plant within the range of the sight We
SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN, 57
turned from the main road after a while, crossed a ruinous
bridge, and tracked a broad, waste, gloomy plain, till my eyes
ached with its barrenness. In an hour more, three stately
temples began to rise in the distance, increasing in grandeur as
we approached. A cluster of ruin-ed tombs on the right a
grass-grown and broken city wall, through a rent of which passed
the road and we stood among them, in the desert, amid temples
of inimitable beauty !
T here seemed to be a general feeling in the party that silence
and solitude were the spirits of the place. We separated and
rambled about alone. The grand temple of Neptune stands in
the centre. A temple in the midst of the sea could scarce seem
ii] ore strangely placed. I stood on the high base of the altar
within and looked out between the columns on every side. The
Mediterranean slept in a broad sheet of silver on the west, and
on every other side lay the bare, houseless desert, stretching
a\vay to the naked mountains on the south and east, with a
barrenness that made the heart ache, while it filled the imagination
with its singleness and grandeur. I descended to look at the
columns. They were eaten through and through with snails and
worms, and all of the same rich yellow so admirably represented
in the cork models. But their size, and their noble proportion as
they stand, cannot be represented. They seem the conception
and the woik of giant minds and hands. One s soul rises among
them.
We walked round the ruins for hours. A little toward the sea,
lie the traces of an amphitheatre, filled with fragments of statu
ary, and parts of immense friezes and columns. We all assem
bled at last in the great temple, and sat down on the immense
steps toward the east, in the shadow of the pediment, speculating
3*
58 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
on the wonderful fabric above us, till we were summoned to start
on our return. To think that these very temples were visited as
venerable antiquities in the time of Christ ! What events have
these worm-eaten columns outlived ! What moths of an hour, iu
comparison, are we?
It is difficult to conceive how three such magnificent structures,
so near the sea, the remains of a great city, should have been
lost for ages. A landscape-painter, searching for the picturesque,
came suddenly upon them fifty years ago, and astonished the
world with his discovery ! It adds to their interest now.
We turned our horses heads towards Naples. What an extra
ordinary succession of objects were embraced in the fifty miles
between ! Peestum, Pompeii, Vesuvius, Herculaneum ! nd,
added to these, the thousand classic associations of the lovely
coast along Sorrento ! The value of life deepens incalculably
with the privileges of travel.
WRITTEN ON BOARD THE FRIGATE UNITED STATES. We sot
sail from Elba on the third of June. The inhabitants, all of
whom, I presume, had been on board of the ships, were standing
along the walls and looking from the embrasures of the fortress
to see us off. It was a clear summer s morning, without much
wind, and we crept slowly off from the point, gazing up at the
windows of Napoloon s house as we passed under, and laying on
our course for the shore of Italy. We soon got into the frcshi-r
breeze of the open sea, and the low white line of villages on the
Tuscan coast appeared more distant, till, with a glass, we could
see the people at the windows watching our progress. Fishing
boats were drawn up on shore, and the idle sailors were leaning
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 59
in the half shadow which they afforded ; but with the almost
total absence of trees, and the glaring white of the walls, we
were content to be out upon the cool sea, passing town after
town unvisited. Island after island was approached and left
during the day ; barren rocks with only a lighthouse to redeem
thnir nakedness ; and in the evening at sunset we were in sight
ut i.- chia, iLc toweriu : i.-lo in tlio l>nsom of the bay of Naples.
The band had been called as usual at seven, and were playing a
delightful waltz upon the quarter deck ; the sea was even, and
just crisped by the breeze from the Italian shore ; the sailors
were leaning on the guns listening ; the officers clustered in
their various places ; and the murmur of the foam before the
prow was just audible in the lighter passages of the music.
Above and in the west glowed the eternal but untiring teints of
the summer sky of the Mediterranean, a gradually fading gold
from the edge of the sea to the zenith, and the early star soon
twinkled through it, and the air dampened to a reviving fresh
ness. I do not know that a mere scene like this, without inci
dent, will interest a reader, but it was so delightful to myself,
that I have described it for the mere pleasure of dwelling on it.
The desert stillness and loneliness of the sea, the silent motion
of the ship, and the delightful music swelling beyond the
bulwarks and dying upon the wind, were Buch singularly
combined circumstances It was a moving paradise in the waste
of the ocean.
Sail was shortened last night, and we lay to under the shore of
eiiTa, to enter the bay of Naples by daylight.. As the.morning
60 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
mist lifted a little, the peculiar shape of Vesuvius, the boldness
of the island of Capri, the sweeping curves of Baia and Portici,
and the small promontory which lifts Naples toward the sea, rose
like the features of a familiar friend to my eye. It would be
difficult to have seen Naples without having a memory steeped in
its beauty. A fair wind set us straight into the bay, and one by
one the towns on its shore, the streaks of lava on the sides of its
volcano, and, soon after, the houses of friends on the street of
the Chiaga, became distinguishable to the eye. There had been
a slight eruption since I was here ; but now, as before, there was
scarce a puff of smoke to be seen rising from Vesuvius. My
little specimen of sulphur which I took from the just hardened
som of the crater now destroyed, lies before me on the table as
I write, more valued than ever, since its bed has been melted and
blown into the air. The new and lighter-colored streak on the
right of the mountain, would have informed me of itself that the
lava had issued since I was here. The sound of bells and the
hum of the city reached our ears, and running in between the
mole and the castle, the anchor was dropped, and the ship sur
rounded with boats from the shore.
The heat kept us on board till the evening, and with several
of the officers I landed and walked up the Toledo as the lazzaroni
were stirring from their sleep under the walls of the houses.
With the exception of the absence of the English, who have
mostly flitted to the baths, Naples was the same place as ever }
busy, dirty, and gay. Her thousand beggars were still " dying
of hunger," and telling it to the passenger in the same exhausted
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 6l
tone ; her gay carriages and skeleton hacks were still flying up and
down, and dashing at and over you for your custom ; the cows and
goats were driven about to be milked in the street 5 the lemonade
sellers stood in their stalls ; the money changers at their tables
in the open squares ; punciuello squeaked and beat his mistress
at every corner ; the awnings of the cafes covered hundreds of
smokers and loungers ; and this gay, miserable, homeless, out-of-
doors people, seemed as degraded and thoughtless, and, it must
be owned, as insensibly happy as before. You would think, to
walk through the Toledo of Naples, that two-thirds of its crowd
of wretches, and all its horses and dogs, were at their last
extremity, and yet they go on, and, I was told by an Englishman
resident here, who has been accustomed to meet always the same
faces, seem never to change or disappear, suffering, and groaning,
and dragging up and down, shocking the eye and sickening the
heart of the inexperienced stranger for years and years.
We passed the prima sera, the first part of the evening, as most,
men in Italy pass it, eating ices at the thronged cafe, and at nine
we went to the splendid theatre of San Carlo to sec " La Som-
nambula." The king and queen were present, with the dissolute
old queen-mother and her gray-headed lover. I was instantly
struck with the alteration in the appearance of the young queen.
When I was here three months ago, she was just married, and
appeared frequently in the public walks, and a fresher or brighter
face I never had seen. She was acknowledged the most beautiful
woman in Naples, and had, what is very much valued in this land
of pale brunettes, a clear rosy cheek, and lips as bright as a
child s. She is now thin and white, and looks to me like a
person fading with a rapid consumption.
Several conspiracies have been detected within a month or
62 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
two, the last of which was very nearly successful. The day
before we arrived, two officers in the royal army, men of high
rank, had shot themselves, each putting a pistol to the other s
breast, believing discovery inevitable. One died instantly, and the
other lingers to-day without any hope of recovery. The king
was fired at on parade the day previous, which was supposed to
have been the first step, but the plot had been checked by partial
disclosure, hence the tragedy I have just related.
The ships have been thronged with visitors during the two or
three days we have lain at Naples, among whom have been the
prime minister and his family. Orders arc given to admit every
one on board that wishes to come, and the decks, morning and
evening, present the most motley scene imaginable. Cameo and
lava sellers expose their wares on the gun-carriages, surrounded
by the midshipmen Jews and fruit-sellers hail the sailors through
the ports boats full of chickens and pigs, all in loud outcry, are
held up to view with a recommendation in broken English
contadini in their best dresses walk up and down, smiling on the
officers, and wondering at the cleanliness of the decks, and the
elegance of the captain s cabin Punch plays his tricks under the
gun-deck ports bands of wandering musicians sing and hold out
their hats, as they row around, and all is harmony and amusement.
In the evening, it is pleasanter still, for the band is playing, and
the better class of people come off from the shore, and boats
filled with these pretty, dark-eyed Neapolitans, row round and
round the ship, eying the officers as they lean over the bulwarks,
and ready with but half a nod to make acquaintance and come up
the gangway. I have had a private pride of my own in showing
the frigate as American to many of my foreign friends. One s
nationality becomes nervously sensitive abroad, and in the beauty
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 63
and order of the ships, the manly elegance of the officers, and the
general air of superiority and decision throughout, I have found
food for some of the highest feelings of gratification of which I am
capable.
We weighed anchor yesterday morning (the twentieth of
June), and stood across the bay for Castellamare. Running
close under Vesuvius, we passed Portici, Torre del Greco, and
Pompeii, and rounded to in the little harbor of this fashionable
watering-place soon after noon. Castellamare is about fifteen
miles from Naples, and in the summer months it is crowded with
those of the fashionables who do not make a northern tour. The
shore rises directly from the sea into a high mountain, on the side
of which the king has a country-seat, and around it hang, on
terraces, the houses of the English. Strong mineral springs
abound on the slope.
We landed directly, and mounting the donkies waiting on the
pier, started to make the round of the village walks. English
maids with their prettily dressed and rosy children, and English
ladies and gentlemen, mounted, like ourselves on donkeys, met
us at every turn as we wound up the shady and zigzag roads to
the palace. The views became finer as we ascended, till we look
down into Pompeii, which was but four miles off, and away
toward Naples, following the white road with the eye along the
shore of the sea. The paths were in fine order, and as beautiful
as green trees, and shade, and living fountains, crossing the road
continually, could make them. In tbe neighborhood of the royal
casino, the ground was planted more like a park, and the walks
were terminated with artificial fountains, throwing up their bright
waters amid statuary and over grottoes, and here we met the
idlers of the place of all nations, enjoying the sunset. I met an
64 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN.
acquaintance or two, and felt the yearning unwillingness to go
away which I have felt on every spot almost of this " delicious
land."
We set sail again with the night-breeze, and at this moment
are passing between Ischia and Capri, running nearly on our
course for Sicily. We shall probably be at Palermo to-morrow.
The ship s bell beats ten, and the lights are ordered out, and
under this imperative government, I must say " good night !"
LETTER V.I,
BdiC Grotto of Pausilyppo Tomb of Virgil Pozzuoli Euins of the Temple of Jupiter
Serapis The Lucrine Lake Lake of Avernus, tlie Tartarus of Virgil Temple of Pros
erpine Grotto of the Cumooan Sybil Nero s villa Cape of Misenum Eoman villas
Euins of the Temple of Venus Cento Cainerelle-Tho Stygian Lake The Elysian
Fields Grotto del Cane Villa of Lucullus.
WE made the excurson to Bam on one of those premature
days of March co-union to Italy. A south wind and a warm sun
gave it the foolisn; of June. The heat was even oppressive as
we drove through the city, and the long echoing grotto of
JPausilyppO) always dim and cool, was peculiarly refreshing.
Near the entrance to this curious passage under the mountain,
we stopped to visit the tomb of Virgil. A ragged boy took us
up a steep path to the gate of a vineyard, and winding in among
the just budding vines, we came to a small ravine, in the mouth
of which, right over the deep cut of the grotto, stands the half-
ruined mausoleum which hold the bones of the poet. An
Englishman stood lean in.-. niainst the entrance, reading from a
pocket copy of the ^Eneid. He seemed ashamed to be caught
with his classic, and put the book in his pocket as I came
suddenly upon him, and walked off to the other side whistling an
air from the Pirata, which is playing just now at San Carlo.
We went in, counted the niches for the urns, stood a few minutes
C6 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
to indulge in what recollections we could summon, and then
mounted to the top to hunt for the " myrtle." Even its
root was cut an inch or two below the ground. We found
violets however, and they answered as well. The pleasure of
visiting such places, I think, is not found on the spot. The
fatigue of the walk, the noise of a party, the difference between
reality and imagination, and worse than all, the caprice of mood
one or the other of these things disturbs and defeats for me
the dearest promises of anticipation. It is the recollection that
repays us. The picture recurs to the fancy till it becomes
familiar ; and as the disagreeable circumstances of the visit fade
from the memory, the imagination warms it into a poetic feeling,
and we dwell upon it with the delight we looked for in vain when
present. A few steps up the ravine, almost buried in luxuriant
grass, stands a small marble tomb, covering the remains of an
English girl. She died at Naples. It is as lovely a place to lie
in as the world could show. Forward a little toward the edee of
to
the hill some person of taste has constructed a little arbor, laced
over with vines, whence the city and bay of Naples is seen to the
finest advantage. Paradise that it is !
It is odd to leave a city by a road piercing the base of a broad
mountain, in at one side and out at the other, after a subterranean
; ivo of n<>ar a mile ! The grotto of Pausilyppo has been one of
iiio wonders of the world these two thousand years, and it exceeds
all expectation as a curiosity. Its length is stated at two
thousand three hundred and sixteen feet, its breadth twenty-
two, and its height eighty-nine. It h thronged with carts and
beasts of burden of all descriptions, and the echoing cries of these
noisy Italian drivers are almost deafening. Lamps, struggling
with the distant daylight as you near the end, just make darkness
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 67
visible, and standing in the centre and looking either way, the
far distant arch of daylight glows like a fire through the cloud of
dust. What with the impressiveness of the place, and the
danger of driving in the dark amid so many obstructions, it is
rather a stirring half-hour that is spent in its gloom ! One
emerges into the fresh open air and the bright light of day with
a feeling of relief.
The drive hence to Pozzuoli, four or five miles, was extremely
beautiful. The fields were covered with the new tender grain,
and by the short passage through the grotto we had changed a
busy and crowded city for scenes of as quiet rural loveliness as
ever charmed the eye. We soon reached the lip of the bay, and
then the road turned away to the right, along the beach, passing
the small island of Nisida (where Brutus had a villa, and which
is now a prison for the carbonari).
Pozzuoli soon appeared, and mounting a hill we descended
into its busy square, and were instantly beset by near a hundred
guides, boatmen, and beggars, all preferring their claims and
services at the tops of their voices. I fixed my eye on the most
intelligent face among them, a curly-headed fellow in a red
lazzaroni cap, and succeeded, with some loss of temper, in getting
him aside from the crowd and bargaining for our boats.
While the boatmen were forming themselves into a circle to
cast lots for the bargain, we walked up to the famous ruins of the
temple of Jupiter Serapis. This was one of the largest and
richest of the temples of antiquity. It was a quadrangular
building, near the edge of the sea, lined with marble, and
sustained by columns of solid cipolino, three of which are still
standing. It was buriod by an earthquake and forgotten for a
century ov two, til! in 173 ; it was discovered by a peasant, wh o
68 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
struck the top of one of the columns in digging. We stepped
around over the prostrate fragments, building it up once more
in fancy, and peopling the aisles with priests and worshippers. In
the centre of the temple was the place of sacrifice, raised by
flights of steps, and at the foot still remain two rings of Corin
thian brass, to which the victims were fastened, and near them
the receptacles for their blood and ashes. The whole scene has
a stamp of grandeur. We obeyed the call of our red-bonnet
guide, whose boat waited for us at the temple stairs, very unwil
lingly.
As we pushed off from the shore, we deviated a moment from
our course to look at the ruins of the ancient mole. Here
probably St. Paul set his foot, landing to pursue his way to
Home. The great apostle spent seven days at this place, which
was then called Puteoli a fact that attaches to it a deeper
interest than it draws from all the antiquities of which it is the
centre.
We kept on our way along the beautiful bend of the shore of
Baise, and passing on the right a small mountain formed iu
thirty-six hours by a volcanic explosion, some three fcundrcd
years ago, we came to the Lucrine Lake, so famous in the
classics for its oysters. The same explosion that made the Monte,
Nuovo, and sunk the little village of Tripergole, destroyed the
oyster-beds of the poets.
A ten minutes walk brought us to the shores of Lake Avernus
the " Tartarus" of Virgil. This was classic ground indeed,
and we hoped to have found a thumbed copy of the ^Eneid in tho
pocket of the cicerone. He had not even heard of the poet. A
ruin on the opposite shore, reflected in the still dark water, is
supposed to have been a temple dedicated to Proserpine. If she
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 69
was allowed to be present at her own worship, she might have
been consoled for her abduction. A spot of more secluded
loveliness could scarce be found. The lake lay like a sheet of
silver at the foot of the ruined temple, the water looking un-
fathomably deep through the clear reflection, and the fringes of
low shrubbery leaning down on every side, were doubled in the
bright mirror, the likeness even fairer than the reality.
Our unsentimental guide hurried us away as we were seating
ourselves upon the banks, and We struck into a narrow footpath
of wild shrubbery which circled the lake, and in a few minutes
stood before the door of a grotto sunk in the side of the hill.
Here dwelt the Cuiuaean syl ;3,andby this dark passage, the souls
of the ancients p;issod from Tartarus to Elysium. The guide
struck a light and kindled two large torches, and we followed him
into the narrow cavern, walking downward at a rapid pace for
ten or fifteen minutes. "With a turn to the right, we stood
before a low archway which the guide entered, up to his knees in
water at the first step. It looked like the mouth of an abyss,
and the ladies refused to go on. Six or seven stout fallows had
folio we us in, and the guide assured us we should be safe on
their backs. I mounted first myself to carry the torch, and
holding my head very low, we went plunging on, turning to the
right and left through a crooked passage, dark as Erebus, till I
was set down on a raised ledge called the sybil s bed. The lady
behind me, I soon discovered by her screams, had not made so
prosperous a voyage. She had insisted on being taken up some
thing in the side-saddle fashion ; and the man, not accustomed to
hold so heavy a burden on his hip with one arm, had stumbled
and let her slip up to her knees in water. He took her up
immediately, in his own homely but safer fashion, and she was
70 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
soon set beside me on the sybil s stony couch, dripping with
water, and quite out of temper with antiquities.
The rest of the party followed, and the guide lifted the torches
to the dripping roof of the cavern, and showed us the remains of
beautiful mosiac with which the place was once evidently
encrusted. Whatever truth there may be in the existence of the
sybil, these had been, doubtlessly, luxurious baths, and probably
devoted by the Roman emperors to secret licentiousness. The
guide pointed out to us a small perforation in the rear of the
sybil s bed, whence, he said (by what authority I know not),
Caligula used to watch the lavations of the nymph. It commu
nicates with an outer chamber.
We reappeared, our nostrils edged with black from the smoke
of the torches, and the ladies dresses in a melancholy plight,
between smoke and water. It would be a witch of a sybil that
would tempt us to repeat our visit.
We retraced our steps, and embarked for Nero^s villa. It was
perhaps a half mile further down the bay. The only remains of
it were some vapor baths, built over a boiling spring which
extended under the sea. One of our boatmen waded firlt a few
feet into the surf, and plunging under the cold sea-water, brought
up a handful of warm gravel the evidence of a submarine outlet
from the springs beyond. We then mounted a high and ruined
flight of steps, and entered a series of chambers dug out of the
rock, where an old man was stripping off his shirt, to go through
the usual process of taking eggs down to boil in the fountain.
He took his bucket, drew a long breath of fresh air, and rushed
away by a dark passage, whence he reappeared in three or four
minutes, the eggs boiled, and the perspiration streaming from his
body like rain. He set the bucket down, and rushed to the-
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 71
door, gasping as if from suffocation. The eggs were boiled hard,
but the distress of the old man, and the danger of such sudden
changes of atmosphere to his health, quite destroyed our pleasure
at the phenomenon.
Hence to the cape of Misenum, the curve, of the bay presents
one continuation of Roman villas. And certainly there was not
prdbably in the world, a place more adapted to the luxury of
which it was the scene. These natural baths, the many mineral
waters, the balmy climate, the fertile soil, the lovely scenery, the
matchless curve of the shore from Pozzuoli to the cape, and the
vicinity, by that wonderful subterranean passage, to a populous
capital on the other side of a range of mountains, rendered Baias
a natural paradise to the emperors. It was improved as we see.
Temples to Venus, Diana, and Mercury, the villas of Marius, of
Hortensius, of Caesar, of Lucullus, and others whose masters are
disputed, follow each other in rival beauty of situation. The
ruins are not much now, except the temple of Yenus, which is
one of the most picturesque fragments of antiquity I have ever seen.
The long vines hang through the rent in its circular roof, and the
bright flowers cling to the crevices in its still half-splendid walls
with the very poetry of decay. Our guide here proposed a
lunch. We sat down on the immense stone which has fallen
from the ceiling, and in a few minutes the rough table was spread
with a hundred open oysters from Fusaro (near Lake Avernus),
bottles at will of lagrima christi from Vesuvius, boiled crabs
from the shore beneath the temple of Mercury, fish from the
Lucrine lake, and bread from Pozzuoli. The meal was not less
classic than refreshing. We drank to the goddess (the only one
in mythology, by the way, whose worship has not fallen into
contempt), and leaving twenty ragged descendants of ancient
72 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
Baise to feast on the remains, mounted our donkeys and started
over land for " Elysium."
We passed the villa of Hortensius, to which Nero invited his
mother, with the design of murdering her, visited the immense
subterranean chambers in which water was kept for the Roman
fleet, the horrid prisons called the Cento Camerdle of the
emperors, and then rising the hill at the extremity of the cape,
the Stygian lake lay off on the right, a broad and gloomy pool,
and around its banks spread the Elysian fields, the very home
and centre of classic fable. An overflowed marsh, and an adja
cent corn-field will give you a perfect idea of it. The sun was
setting while we swallowed our disappointment, and we turned
our donkeyjs heads toward Naples.
We left the city again this morning by the grotto of Pausilyppo
to visit the celebrated " Grotto del Cane." It is about three
miles off, on the borders of a pretty lake, once the crater of a
volcano. On the way there arose a violent debate in the party
on the propriety of subjecting the poor dogs to the distress of the
common experiment. AVe had not yet decided the point when
we stopped before the door of the keeper s house. Two misera
ble-looking terriers had set up a howl, accompanied with a
ferocious and half-complaining bark, from our first appearance-
around the turn of the road, and the appeal was effectual. We
dismounted and walking toward the grotto, determined to refuse
to see the phenomenon. Our scruples were unnecessary. The
door was surrounded with another party less merciful, and as
we approached, two dogs were dragged out by the heels, and
thrown lifeless on the grass. We gathered round them, and
while the old woman coolly locked the door of the grotto, the
poor animals began to kick, and after a few convulsions, struggled
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 73
to their feet and crept feebly away. Fresh dogs were offered to
our party, but we contented ourselves with the more innocent
experiments. The mephitic air of this cave rises to a foot above
the surface of the ground, and a torch put into it was immediately
extinguished. It has been described too often, however, to need
a repetition. We took a long stroll around the lake, which was
covered with wild-fowl, visited the remains of a villa of Lucullus
on the opposite shore, and returned to Naples to dinner.
LETTER VII,
Island of Sicily Palermo Saracenic appearance of the town Cathedral The Marina-
Viceroy Leopold Monastery of tho Capuchins Celebrated Catacombs Fanciful
Gardens.
FRIGATE UNITED STATES, June 25. THE mountain coast of
Sicily lay piled up before us at the distance of ten or twelve
miles, when I came on deck this morning. The quarter-master
handed me the glass, and running my eye along the shore, I
observed three OP four low plains, extending between projecting
spurs of the hills, studded thickly with country-houses, and
bright with groves which I knew, by the deep glancing green, to
be the orange. In a corner of the longest of these intervals, a
sprinkling of white, looking in the distance like a bed of pearly
shells on the edge of the sea, was pointed put as Palermo. With
a steady glass its turrets and gardens became apparent, and its
mole, bristling above the wall with masts ; and, running in with
a free wind, the character of our ship was soon recognised from
the shore, and the flags of every vessel in the harbor ran up to
the mast, the customary courtesy to a man-of-war entering
port.
As the ship came to her anchorage, the view of the city was
very captivating. The bend of the shore embraced our position,
and the eastern half of the curve was a succession of gardens and
SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN. 75
palaces. A broad street extended along in front, crowded with
people gazing at the frigates, and up one of the long avenues of
the public gardens, we could distinguish the veiled women
walking in groups, children playing, priests, soldiers, and all the
motley frequenters of such places in this idle clime, enjoying the
refreshing sea-breeze, upon whose wings we had corne. I was
impatient to get ashore, but between the health-officer and some
other hindrances, it was evening before we set foot upon the
pier.
With Captain Nicholson and the purser I walked up to the
Toledo, as the still half-asleep tradesmen were opening their
shops after the siesta. The oddity of the Palermitan style of
building struck me forcibly. Of the two long streets, crossing
each oilier at right angles and extending to the four gates of the
city, the lower story of every house is a shop, of course. The
second and third stories are ornamented with tricksy-looking iron
balconies, in winch the women sit at work universally, while
from above projects, far over the street, a grated enclosure, like
a long bird-cage, from which look down girls and children (or, if
it is a convent, the nuns), as if it were an airy prison to keep the
household from the contact of the world. The whole air of
Palermo is different from that of the towns upon the continent.
The peculiarities are said to be Saracenic, and inscriptions in
Arabic are still found upon the ancient buildings. The towu is
poetically called the concha d oro, or " the golden shell."
We walked on to the cathedral, followed by a troop of literally
naked beggars, baked black in the sun, and more emaciated and
diseased than any I have yet seen abroad. Their crios and
gestures were painfully energetic. In the course of five minutes
we had seen two or three hundred. They lay along the
76 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
sidewalks, and upon the steps of the houses and churches, men,
women, and children, nearly or quite naked, and as unnoticed by
the inhabitants as the stones of the street.
Ten or twenty indolent-looking priests sat in the shade of the
porch of the cathedral. The columns of the vestibule were
curiously wrought, the capitals exceedingly rich with fretted
leaf- work, and the ornaments of the front of the same wild-
looking character as the buildings of the town. A hunchback
scarce three feet high, came up and offered his services as a
cicerone, and we entered the church. The antiquity of the
interior was injured by the new white paint, covering every pait
except the more valuable decorations, but with its four splendid
sarcophagi standing like separate buildings in the aisles, an<l
covering the ashes of Ruggiero and his kinsmen ; the eighty
columns of Egyptian granite in the nave ; the cllorio of entire
lapis-lazuli with its lovely blue, and the mosaics, frescoes and
relievoes about the altar, it could scarce fail of producing ;m
effect of great richness. The floor was occupied by here and
there a kneeling beggar, praying in his rags, and undisturbt d
even by the tempting neighborhood of strangers. I stood long
by an old man, who seemed hardly to have the strength to hold
himself upon his knees. His eyes were fixed upon a 1cm ly
picture of the virgin, and his trembling hands loosed bond ai t r
bead as his prayer proceeded. I slipped a small piecj of fcilv >
between his palm and the cross of his rosary, and without
removing his eyes from the face of the holy mother, he implored
an audible blessing upon me in a tone of the most earnest
feeling. I hav^ scarce been so moved within my recollection.
The equipages were beginning to roll toward the " Marina,"
and the sea-breeze was felt even through the streets. We took
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 77
a carriage and followed to the corso, where we counted near two
hundred gay, well-appointed equipages, in the course of an hour.
What a contrast to the wretchedness we had left behind !
Driving up and down this half mile in front of the palaces on the
sea, seemed quite a sufficient amusement for the indolent nobility
of Palermo. They were named to us by their imposing titles as
they passed, and we looked in vain into their dull unanimated
faces for the chivalrous character of the once renowned knights
of Sicily. Ladies and gentlemen sat alike silent, leaning back in
their carriages in the elegant attitudes studied to such effect on
this side of the water, and gazing for acquaintances among those
passing on the opposite line.
Toward the dusk of the evening, an avant-courier on horseback
announced the approach of the viceroy Leopold, the brother of
the king of Naples. He drove himself in an English hunting-
wagon with two seats, and looked like a dandy whip of the first
water from Regent street. He is about twenty and quite hand
some. His horses, fine English bays, flew up and down the short
corso, passing and repassing every other minute, till we were
weary of touching our hats and stopping *ill he had gone by.
He noticed the uniform of our officers, and raised his hat with
particular politeness to them.
As it grew dark, the carriages came to a stand around a small
open gallery raised in the broadest part of the Marina. Rows of
lamps, suspended from the roof, were lit, and a band of forty or
fifty musicians appeared in the area, and played parts of the
popular operas. We were told they performed every night from
nine till twelve. Chairs were set around for the people on foot,
ices circulated, and some ten or twelve thousand people enjoyed
the music in a delicious moonlight, keeping perfect silence from
78 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
the first note to the last. These heavenly nights of Italy are
thus begun, and at twelve the people separate and go to visit, or
lounge at home till morning, when the windows are closed, the
cool night air shut in, and they sleep till evening comes again,
literally "keeping the hours the stars do." It is very certain
that it is the only way to enjoy life in this enervating climate.
The sun is the worst enemy to health, and life and spirits sink
under its intensity. The English, who are the only people
abroad in an Italian noon, are constant victims to it.
We drove this morning to the monastery of the Capuchins.
Three or four of the brothers in long gray beards, and the heavy
brown sackcloth cowls of the order tied around the waist with
ropes, received us cordially and took us through the cells and
chapels. "We had come to see the famous catacombs of the
convent. A door was opened on the side of the main cloister,
and we descended a long flight of stairs into the centre of three
lofty vaults, lighted each by a window at the extremity of tho
ceiling. A more frightful scene never appalled the eye. The
walla were lined with shallow niches, from which hung, leaning
forward as if to fall upon the gazer, the dried bodies of monks in
the full dress of their order. Their hands were crossed upon
their breasts or hung at their sides, their faces were blackened
and withered, and every one seemed to have preserved, in
diabolical caricature, the very expression of life. The hair lay
reddened and dry on the dusty skull, the teeth, perfect or
imperfect, had grown brown in their open mouths, the nose had
shrunk, the cheeks fallen in and cracked, and they looked more
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 79
like living men cursed with some horrid plague, than tho
inanimate corpses they were. The name of each was pinned
upon his cowl, with his age and the time of his death. Below in
three or four tiers, lay long boxes painted fantastically, and
containing, the monk told us, the remains of Sicilian nobles.
Upon a long shelf above sat perhaps a hundred children of from
one year to five, in little chairs worn with their use while in life,
dressed in the gayest manner, with fanciful caps upon their little
blackened heads, dolls in their hands, and in one or two instances,
a stuffed dog or parrot lying in their laps. A more horribly
ludicrous collection of little withered faces, shrunk into expression
so entirely inconsistent with the gayety of their dresses, could
scarce be conceived. One of them had his arm tied up, holding
a child s whip in the act of striking, while the poor thing s head
had rotted and dropped upon its breast ; and a leather cap fallen
.on one side, showed his bare skull, with the most comical
expression of carelessness. We quite shocked the old monk with
our laughter, but the scene was irresistible.
We went through several long galleries filled in the same
manner, with the dead monks standing over the coffins of nobles,
and children on the shelf above. There were three thousand
bodies and upward in the place, monks and all. Some of them
were very ancient. There was one, dated a century and a half
back, whose tongue still hangs from his mouth. The friar took
hold of it, and moved it up and down, rattling it against his
teeth. It was like a piece of dried fish-skin, and as sharp and
thin as a nail.
At the extremity of the last passage was a new vault
appropriated to women. There were nine already lying on
white pillows in the different recesses, who had died within the
80 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
year, and among them a young girl, the daughter of a noble
family of Palermo, stated in the inscription to have been a virgin
of seventeen years. The monk said her twin-sister was the
most beautiful woman of the city at this moment. She was laid
upon her back, on a small shelf faced with a wire grating,
dressed in white, with a large bouquet of artificial flowers on the
centre of the body. Her hands and face were exposed, and the
skin which seemed to me scarcely dry, was covered with small
black ants. I struck with my stick against the shelf, and,
startled by the concussion, the disgusting vermin poured from the
mouth and nostrils in hundreds. How difficult it is to believe
that the beauty we worship must come to this !
As we went toward the staircase, the friar showed us the
deeper niches, in which the bodies were placed for the first six
months. There were fortunately no fresh bodies in them at the
time of our visit. The stench, for a week or two, he told us,
was intolerable. They are suffered to get quite dry here, and
then are disposed of according to their sex or profession. A
rope passed round the middle, fastens the dead monk to his
shallow niche, and there he stands till his bones rot from each
other, sometimes for a century or more.
We hurried up the gloomy stairs, and giving the monk our
gratuity, were passing out of the cloister to our carriage, when
two of the brothers entered, bearing a sedan chair with the
blinds closed. Our friend called us back, and opened the door.
An old gray-headed woman sat bolt upright within, with a ropo
around her body and another around her neck, supporting her by
two rings in the back of the sedan. She had died that morning,
and was brought to be dried in the capuchin catacombs. The
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 81
effect of the newly deceased body in a handsome silk dress and
plaited cap was horrible.
We drove from the monastery to the gardens of a Sicilian
prince, near by. I was agreeably disappointed to find the
grounds laid out in the English taste, winding into secluded
walks shaded with undipped trees, and opening into glades of
greensward cooled by fountains. TVe strolled on from one sweet
spot to another, coming constantly upon little Grecian temples,
ruins, broken aqueducts, aviaries, bowers furnished with curious
seats and tables, bridges over streams, and labyrinths of
shrubbery, ending in hermitages built curiously of cane. So
far, the garden, though lovely, was like .many others. On our
return, the person who accompanied us began to surprise us
with singular contrivances, fortunately selecting the coachman
who had driven us as the subject of his experiments. In the
middle of a long green alley he requested him to step forward a
few paces, and, in an instant, streams of water poured upon him
from the bushes around in every direction. There were seats in
the arbors, the least pressure of which sent up a stream beneath
the unwary visitor ; steps to an ascent, which you no sooner
touched than you were showered from an invisible source ; and
one small hermitage, which sent a jet d eyu into the face of a
person lifting the latch. Nearly in the centre of the garden
stood a pretty building, with an ascending staircase. At the first
step, a friar in white, represented to the life in wax, opened the
door, and fixed his eyes on the comer. At the next step, the
door was violently shut. At the third, it was half opened
again, and as the foot pressed the platform above, both doors
flew wide open, and the old friar made room for the visitor to
enter. Life itself could not have been more natural. Tho
82 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN.
garden was full of similar tricks. We were hurried away by an
engagement before we had seen them all, and stopping for a
moment to look at a magnificent Egyptian Ibis, walking around
in an aviary like a temple, we drove into town to dinner.
LETTER VIII,
The Lunatic Asylum nt Palermo.
PALERMO, June 28. Two of the best conducted lunatic
asylums in the world are in the kingdom of Naples one at
Aversa, near Capua, and the other at Palermo. The latter is
managed by a whimsical Sicilian baron, who has devoted his
time and fortune to it, and with the assistance of the govern
ment, has carried it to great extent and pe* faction. The poor
are received gratuitously, and those who can .afford it enter as
boarders, and are furnished with luxuries according to their
means.
The hospital stands in an airy situation in the lovely neighbor
hood of Palermo. We were received by a porter in a respectable
livery, who introduced us immediately to the old baron a kind-
looking man, rather advanced beyond middle life, of manners
singularly genteel and prepossessing. u Je suis le premier fou,"
said he, throwing his arms out, as he bowed on our entrance.
We stood in an open court, surrounded with porticoes lined with
stone seats. On one of them lay a fat, indolent-looking man, in
clean gray clothes, talking to himself with great apparent
satisfaction. He smiled at the baron as he passed, without
checking the motion of his lips, and three others standing in the
84 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
doorway of a room marked as the kitchen, smiled also as he
came up, and fell into his train, apparently as much interested as
ourselves in the old man s explanations.
The kitchen was occupied by eight or ten people, all at work,
and all, the baron assured us, mad. One man, of about forty,
was broiling a steak with the gravest attention. Another, who
had been furious till employment was given him, was chopping
meat with violent industry in a large wooden bowl. Two or
three girls were about, obeying the little orders of a middle-aged
man, occupied with several messes cooking on a patent stove. I
was rather incredulous about his insanity, till he took a small
bucket and went to the jet of a fountain, and getting impatient
from some cause or other, dashed the water upon the floor. The
baron mildly culled him by name, and mentioned to him, as a
piece or information, that he had wet the floor. He nodded his
head, and filling his bucket quietly, poured a little into one of the
pans, and resumed Ins occupation.
NVu passed from the kitchen into an open court, curiously
pav<-d. and ornamented with Chinese grottoes, artificial rocks,
trees, cottages, and fountains. Within the grottoes reclined
ii^Uiv.s (,-f wax. Before the altar of one, fitted up as a Chinese
chapel, a mandarin was prostrated in prayer. The walls on
every side were painted in perspective scenery, and the wholo
had as little the air of a prison as the open valley itself. In one
of the corners was an unfinished grotto, and a handsome youui*
man was entirely absorbed in thatching the ceiling with strips of
cane. The baron pointed to him, and said he had been incurable
till he had found this employment for him. Everything about,
us, too, he assured us, was the work of his patients. They had
paved the court, built the grottoes and cottages, and painted the
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 85
walls, under his direction. The secret of his whole system, he
said, was employment and constant kindness. He had usually
about one hundred and fifty patients^ and he dismissed upon an
average two-thirds of them quite recovered.
We went into the apartments of the women. These, he said,
were his worst subjects. In the first room sat eight or ten
employed in spinning, while one infuriated creature, not more
than thirty, but quite gray, was walking up and down the floor,
talking and gesticulating with the greatest violence. A young
girl of sixteen, an attendant, had entered into her humor, and
with her arm put affectionately round her waist, assented to
everything she said, and called her by every name of endearment
while endeavoring to silence her. When the baron entered, the
poor creature addressed herself to him, and seemed delighted
that he had come. He made several mild attempts to check her,
but she seized his hands, and with the veins of her throat
swelling with passion, her eyes glaring terribly, and her tongue
white and trembling, she continued to declaim more and more
violently. The baron gave an order to a male attendant at the
door, and beckoning us to follow, led her gently through a small
court planted with trees, to a room containing a hammock. She
checked her torrent of language as she observed the preparations
going on, and seemed amused with the idea of swinging. The
man took her up in his arms without resistance, and laced the
hammock over her, confining everything but her head, and the
female attendant, one of the most playful and prepossessing little
creatures I ever saw, stood on a chair, and at every swing threw
a little water on her face, as if in sport. Once or twice, the
maniac attempted to resume the subject of her ravings, but the
girl laughed in her face and diverted her from it, till at last she
86 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
female attendant, one of the most playful and prepossessing little
creatures I ever saw, stood on a chair, and at every swing threw
a little water on her face, as if in sport. Once or twice, the
maniac attempted to resume the subject of her ravings, but the
girl laughed in her face and diverted her from it, till at last she
smiled, and dropping her head into the hammock, seemed
disposed to sink into an easy sleep.
We left her swinging and went out into the court, where eight
or ten women in the gray gowns of the establishment were walking
up and down, or sitting under the trees, lost in thought. One,
with a fine, intelligent face, came up to me and courtesied
gracefully without speaking. The physician of the establishment
joined me at the moment, and asked her what she wished.
" To kiss his hand," said she, " but his looks forbade me." She
colored deeply, and folded her arms across her breast and walked
away. The baron called us, and in going out I passed her
again, and taking her hand, kissed it, and bade her good-bye.
" You had better kiss my lips," said she, " you ll never see me
again." She laid her forehead against the iron bars of the gate,
and with a face working with emotion, watched us till we turned
out of sight. I asked the physician for her history, u It was a
common case," he said. u She was the daughter of a Sicilian
noble, who, too poor to marry her to one of her own rank, had
sent her to a convent, where confinement had driven her mad.
She is now a charity patient in the asylum."
The courts in which these poor creatures are confined, open
upon a large and lovely garden. We walked through it with the
baron, and then returned to the apartments of the females. In
passing a cell, a large majestic woman strided out with a
theatrical air, and commenced an address to the Deity, in a
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 87
mark of superiority both of birth and endowment. The baron
took her by the hand with the deferential courtesy of the old
school, and led her to one of the stone seats. She yielded to
him politely, but resumed her harangue, upbraiding the Deity, as
well as I could understand her, for her misfortunes. They
succeeded in soothing her by the assistance of the same playful
attendant who had accompanied the other to the hammock, and
she sat still, with her lips white and her tongue trembling like
an aspen. While the good old baron was endeavoring to draw
her into a quiet conversation, the physician told me some curious
circumstances respecting her. She was a Greek, and had been
brought to Palermo when a girl. Her mind had been destroyed
by an illuos, and after seven years madness, during which she
had refused to rise from her bed, and had quite lost the use o/
her limbs, she was brought to this establishment by her friends.
Experiments were tried in vain to induce her to move from her
painful position. At last the baron determined upon addressing
what he considered the master-passion in all female bosoms. He
dressed himself in the gayest manner, and, in one of her gentle
moments, entered her room with respectful ceremony and offered
himself to her in marriage ! She refused him with scorn, and
with seeming emotion he begged forgiveness and left her. The
next morning, on his entrance, she smiled the first time for
years. He continued his attentions for a day or two, and after a
little coquetry, she one morning announced to him that she had
re-considered his proposal, and would be his bride. They raised
her from her bed to prepare her for the ceremony, and hlie was
carried in a chair to the garden, where the bridal feast was
spread, nearly all the other patients of the hospital being present.
The gayety of the scene absorbed the attention of all ; tho
88 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
utmost decorum prevailed ; and when the ceremony was
performed, the bride was crowned, and carried back in state to
her apartment. She recovered gradually the use of her limbs,
her health is improved, and excepting an occasional paroxysm,
such as we happened to witness, she is quiet and contented.
The other inmates of the asylum still call her the bride ; and the
baron, as her husband, has the greatest influence over her.
While the physician was telling me these circumstances, the
baron had succeeded in calming her, and she sat with her arms
folded, dignified and silent. He was still holding her hand,
when the woman whom we had left swinging in the hammock,
came striding up behind the trees on tiptoe, arid putting her
hand suddenly over the baron s eyes, kissed him on "both sides of
his face, Lug-iing heartily, and calling him by every name of
oueetkiii. The contrast between this mood and the infuriated
one ia which we had found her, was the best comment, on the
goud man s system. He gently disengaged himself, and apolo-
gided to his lady for allowing the liberty, and we followed him to
another apartment.
It opened upon a pretty court, in which a fountain was playing,
and against the columns of the portico sat some half dozen pa
tients. A young man of eighteen, with a very pale, scholar-like
i;;cc, was reading Ariosto. Near him, under the direction of an
.- .iti-ndant, a fair, delicate girl, with a sadness in her soft blue
rv. s that might have been a study for a mater dolorosa, was cut-
ti:;;r paste upon a board laid across her lap. She seemed scarcely
c .-eious of what she was about, and when I approached and
suoke to her, she laid down the knife and rested her head upon
her hand, and looked at me steadily, as if she was trying to recol-
loet where she had known inc. I cannot remember," she said
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 9
to herself, and went on with her occupation. I bowed to her as
we took our leave, and she returned it gracefully but coldly.
The young man looked up from his book and smiled, the old
man lying on the stone seat in the outer court rose up and fol
lowed us to the door, and we were bowed out -by the baron and
his gentle madmen as politely and kindly as if we were conclud
ing a visit with a company of friends.
An evening out of doors, in summer, is pleasant enough any
where in Italy : but I have found no place where the people and
their amusements were so concentrated at that hour, as upon the
* Marina" of Palermo. A ramble with the officers up and down,
renewing the acquaintances made with visiters to the ships, list
ening to the music and observing the various characters of the
crowd, concludes every day agreeably. A terraced promenade
twenty feet above the street, extends nearly the whole length of
the Marina, and here, under the balconies of the viceroy s palace,
with the crescent harbor spread out before the eye, trees above,
and marble seats tempting the weary at every step, may be met
pedestrians of every class, from the first cool hour when the sea-
breeze sets in till midnight or morning. The intervals between
the pieces performed by the royal band in the centre of the diive,
is seizwi Ly tho wandering improvisatrice, or the ludicrous pun-
ciudlo. ;-,:i ,i evon the beggars cease to importune in the general
abandonment to pleasure. Every other moment the air is fill el
with a delightful perfume, and you are addressed by the beare,-
of a tall pole tied thickly with the odorous flowers of this voluptu
ous climate a mode of selling these cheap luxuries which I be
lieve is peculiar to Palermo. The gayety they give a crowd, by
90 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN.
the way, is singular. They move about among the gaudily-
dressed contadini like a troop of banners tulips, narcissus, moss-
roses, branches of jasmine, geraniums, every flower that is rare
and beautiful scenting the air from a hundred overladen poles,
and the merest pittance will purchase the rarest and loveliest. It
seems a clime of fruits and flowers ; and if one could but shut his
eyes to the dreadful contrasts of nakedness and starvation, ho
might believe himself in a Utopia.
We were standing on the balcony of the consul s residence (a
charming situation overlooking the Marina), and remarking the
gayety of the scene on the first evening of our arrival. The con
versation turned upon the condition of the people. The consul
remarked that it was an every-day circumstance to find beggars
starved to death in the streets ; and that, in the small villages
near Palermo, eight or ten were often taken up dead from the
road-side in the morning. The difficulty of getting a subsistence
is every day increasing, and in the midst of one of the most fertile
spots of the earth, one half the population are driven to the last
extremity for bread. The results appear in constant conspira
cies against the government, detected and put down with more or
less difficulty. The island is garrisoned with troops from Italy,
and the viceroy has lately sent to his brother for a reinforcement,
and is said to feel very insecure. A more lamentably mis
governed kingdom than that of the Sicilies, probably does not
ex ^t in the world.
LETTER IX,
Palermo Fete given by Mr. Gardiner, the American Consul Temple of Clitumnus
Cottage of Petrarch Messina Lipari Islands Scylla and Charybdis.
PALERMO, June 23. The curve of " The Golden Shell, 7
which bends to the east of Palermo, is a luxuriant plain of ten
miles in length, terminated by a bluff which forms a headland
corner of the bay. A broad neck of land between this bay and
another indenting the coast less deeply on the other side, is occu
pied by a cluster of summer palaces belonging to several of the
richer princes of Sicily. The breeze, whenever there is one on
land or sea, sweeps freshly across this ridge, and a more desirable
residence for combined coolness and beauty could scarce be im
agined. The Palermitan princes, however, find every country
more attractive than their own ; and while you may find a dozen
of them in any city of Europe, their once magnificent residences
are deserted and falling to decay, almost without an exception.
The old walls of one of these palaces were enlivened yesterday,
by a fete given to the officers of the squadron by the American
consul, Mr. Gardiner. We left Palermo in a long cavalcade,
followed by a large omnibus containing the ship s band, early in
the forenoon. The road was lined with prickly pear and olean-
92 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
der in the most luxuriant blossom. Exotics in our country,
these plants are indigenous to Sicily, and form the only hedges to
the large plantations of cane and the spreading vineyards and
fields. A more brilliant show than these long lines of trees,
laden with bright pink flowers, and varied by the gigantic and
massive leaf of the pear, cannot easily be imagined.
We were to visit one or two places on our way. The carriage
drew up about eight miles from town, at the gate of a ruinous
building, and passing through a deserted court, we entered an
old-fashioned garden, presenting one succession of trimmed walks,
urns, statues and fountains. The green mould of age and ex
posure upon the marbles, the broken seats, the once costly but
now ruined and silent fountains, the tall weeds in the seldom-
trodden walks, and the wild vegetation of fragrant jasmine and
brier burying everything with its luxuriance, all told the story of
decay. I remembered the scenes of the Decameron ; the many
" tales of love," laid in these very gardens ; the gay romances of
which Palermo was the favorite home ; and the dames and
knights of Sicily the fairest and bravest themes, and I longed to
let my merry companions pass on, and remain to realize more
deeply the spells of poetry and story. The pleasure of travel is
in the fancy. Men and manners are so nearly alike over the
world, and the same annoyances disturb so certainly, wherever
we arc, the gratification of seeing and conversing with our living
fellow-beings, that it is only by the mingled illusion of fancy and
memory, by getting apart, and peopling the deserted palace or
the sombre ruin from the pages of a book, that we ever realize the
anticipated pleasure of standing on celebrated ground. The eye,
the curiosity, are both disappointed, and the voice of a common
companion reduces the most romantic ruin to a heap of stone.
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 93
In some of the footsteps of Childe Harold himself, with his glori
ous thoughts upon my lips, and all that moved his imagination
addressing my eye, with the additional grace which his poetry
has left around them, I have found myself unable to overstep the
vulgar circumstances of the hour the " Temple of Clitumnus"
was a ruined shed glaring in the sunshine, and the " Cottage of
Petrarch" an apology for extortion and annoyance.
I heard a shout from the party, and followed them to a build
ing at the foot of a garden. I passed the threshold and started
back. A ghastly monk, with- a broom in his hand, stood gazing
at me, and at a door just beyond, a decrepit nun was see-sawing
backward and forward, ringing a bell with the most impatient
violence. I ventured to pass in, and a door opened at the right,
disclosing the self-denying cell of a hermit with his narrow bed
arid single chair, and at the table sat the rosy-gilled friar, filling
his glass from an antiquated bottle, and nodding his head to his
visitor in grinning welcome. A long cloister with six or eight
cells extended beyond, and in each was a monk in some startling
attitude, or a pale and saintly nun employed in work or prayer.
The whole was as like a living monastery as wax could make it.
The mingling of monks and nuns seemed an anachronism, but
we were told that it represented a tale, the title of which I have
forgotten. It was certainly an odd as well as an expensive fancy
for a garden ornament, and shows by its uselessness the once
princely condition of the possessors of the palace. An English
man married not many years since an old princess, to whom the
estates had descended, and with much unavailable property and
the title of prince, he has entered the service of the king of the
Sicilies for a support.
We drove on to another palace, still more curious in its
94 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
ornaments. The extensive wall which enclosed it, the gates,
the fountains in the courts and gardens, were studded with
marble monsters of every conceivable deformity. The head of a
man crowned the body of an eagle standing on the legs of a
horse ; the lovely face and bosom of a female crouched upon the
body of a dog ; alligators, serpents, lions, monkeys, birds, and
reptiles, were mixed up with parts of the human body in the
most revolting variety. So admirable was the work, too, and so
beautiful the material, that even outraged taste would hesitate to
destroy them. The wonder is that artists of so much merit
could have been hired to commit such sins against decency, or
that a man in his senses would waste upon them the fortune they
must have cost.
We mounted a massive flight of steps, with a balustrade of
gorgeously-carved marble, and entered a hall hung round with
the family portraits, the eccentric founder at tfreir head. He
was a thin, quizzical-looking gentleman, in a laced coat and
sword, and had precisely the face I imagined for him that of a
whimsical madman. You would select it from a thousand as the
subject for a lunatic asylum.
"We were led next .to a long narrow hall, famous for having
dined the king and his courtiers an age or two ago. The ceiling
was of plate mirror, reflecting us all, upside down, as we strolled
through, and the walls were studded from the floor to the roof
with the quartz diamond, (valueless but brilliant), bits of colored
glass, spangles, and every thing that could reflect light. The
effect, when the quaint old chandeliers were lit, and the table
spread with silver and surrounded by a king and his nobles, in
the costume of a court in the olden time, must have exceeded
faery.
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 95
Beyond, we were ushered into the state drawing-room, a saloon
of grand proportions, roofed like the other with mirrors, but
paved and lined throughout with the costliest marbles, Sicilian
agates, paintings set in the wall and covered with glass, while on
pedestals around, stood statues of the finest workmanship,
representing the males of the family in the costume or armor of
the times. A table of. inlaid precious stones stood in the centre,
cabinets of lapis-lazuli and side-tables, occupied the spaces
between the furniture, and the chairs and sofas were covered with
the rich velvet stuffs now out of use, embroidered and fringed
magnificently. I f -at down upon a tripod stool, and with my eyes
half closed, looked up at the mirrored reflections of the officers in
the ceiling, and tried to imagine back the gay throngs that had
moved across the floor they were treading so unceremoniously,
the knightly and royal feet that had probably danced the stars
down with the best beauty of Sicily beneath those silent mirrors ;
the joy, the jealousy, the love and hate, that had lived their hour
and been repeated, as were our lighter feelings and faces now,
outlived by the perishing mirrors that might still outlive ours as
long. How much there is in an atmosphere! How full the
air of these old palaces is of thought ! How one might enjoy
them could he ramble here alone, or with one congenial and
musing companion to answer to his moralizing.
We drove on to our appointment. At the end of a handsome
avenue stood a large palace, in rather more modern taste than
those we had left. The crowd of carriages in the court, the
gold-laced midshipmen scattered about the massive stairs and
in the formal walks of the gardens, the gay dresses of the ship s
band, playing on the terrace, and the troops of ladies and
gentlemen in every direction, gave an air of bustle to the stately
96 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
structure that might have reminded the marble nymphs of the
days when they were first lifted to their pedestals.
The old hall was thrown open at two, and a table stretching
from one end to the other, loaded with every luxury of the
season, and capable of accommodating sixty or seventy persons,
usurped the place of unsubstantial romance, and brought in the
wildest straggler willingly from his ramble. No cost had been
spared, and the hospitable consul (a Bostonian) did the honors
of his table in a manner that stirred powerfully my pride of
country and birthplace. All the English resident in Palermo
were present; and it was the more agreeable to me that their
countrymen are usually the only givers of generous entertainment
in Europe. One feels ever so distant a reflection on his country
abroad. The liberal and elegant hospitality of one of our
countrymen at Florence, has served me as a better argument
against the charge of hardness and selfishness urged upon our
nation, than all which could be drawn from the acknowledgments
of travellers.
When dinner was over, an hour was passed at coffee in a
small saloon stained after the fashion of Pompoii, and we then
assembled on a broad terrace facing the sea, and with the band
in the gallery above, commenced dances which lasted till an hour
or two into the moonlight. The sunset had the eternal but
untiring glory of the Italian summer, and it never set on a gayer
party. There were among the English one or two lovely girls,
and with the four ladies belonging to the squadron (the com
modore s family and Captain Reed s), the dancers were sufficient
to include all the officers, and the scene in the soft light of the
moon was like a description in an old tale. The broad sea on
either side, broke by the headland in front, the distant crescent
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 97
of lights glancing along the seaside at Palermo, the solemn old
palaces seen from the eminence around us, and the noble pile
through whose low windows we strolled out upon the terrace,
the music and the excitement, all blended a scene that is drawn
with bright and living lines in my memory. We parted
unwillingly, and reaching Palermo about midnight, pulled off to
the frigates, and were under way at daylight for Messina.
This is the poetry of sailing. The long, low frigate glides on
through the water with no more motion than is felt in a dining-
room on shore. The sea changes only from a glossy calm to a
feathery ripple, the sky is always serene, the merchant sail
appears and dipapp^ars on the horizon edge, the island rises on
the bow, creeps nlong the quarter, is examined by the glasses of
the idlers on neck and sinks gradually astern, the sun-fi^h whirls
in the eddy of the wake, the tortoise plunges and breathes about
us, and the delightful temperature of the sea, even and invigora
ting, keeps both mind and body in an undisturbed equilibrium of
enjoyment. For me it is a paradise. T am glad to escape from
the contact, the dust, the trials of temper, the noon-day sultri
ness, and the midnight chill, the fatigue, and privation, and
vexation, which beset the traveller on shore. I shall return to it
no doubt willingly after a while, but for the present, it is rest, it
is relief, refreshment, to be at sea. There is no swell in the
Mediterranean during the summer months, and this gliding about
sleeping or reading, as if at home, from one port to another,
seems to me just now the Utopia of enjoyment.
We have been all day among the Lipari islands. It is pleas-
9cS SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
ant to look up at the shaded and peaceful huts on their moun
tainous sides, as we creep along under them, or to watch the fish
erman s children with a glass, as they run out from their huts on
the sea-shore to gaze at the uncommon apparition of a ship-of-
war. They seem seats of solitude and retirement. I have just
dropped the glass, which I had raised to look at what I took to
be a large ship in full sail rounding the point of Felicudi. It is
a tall, pyramidal rock, rising right from the sea, and resembling
exactly a ship with studding-sails set, coming down before the
wind. The band is playing on the deck ; and a fisherman s boat
with twenty of the islanders resting on their oars and listening in
wondering admiration, lies just under our quarter. It will form a
tale for the evening meal, to which they were hastening home.
"We run between Scylla and Charyldis, with a fresh wind and
a strong current. The " dogs" were silent, and the u whirlpool"
is a bubble to Hurl-gate. Scylla is quite a town, and the tall
rock at the entrance of the strait is crowned with a large build
ing, which seems part of a fortification. The passage through
the Faro is lonely quite like a river. Messina lies in a curve
f the western shore, at the base of a hill; and, opposite, a
....1-a.ceiul slope covered with vineyards, swells up to a broad table
plain on the mountain, which looked like the home of peace and
fertility.
We rounded to, off the town, to send in for letters, and I went
ashore in the boat. Two American friends, whom I had as little
expectation of meeting as if I had dropped upon Jerusalem,
hailed me from the grating of the health-office, before we reached
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 99
the land, and having exhibited our bill of health, I had half an
hour for a call upon an old friend, resident at Messina, and we
were off again to the ship. The sails filled, and we shot away on
a strong breeze down the straits. Rhegium lay on our left, a
large cluster of old-looking houses on the edge of the sea. It
was at this town of Calabria that St. Paul landed on his journey
to Rome. We sped on without much time to look at it, even with
a glass, and were soon rounding the toe of " the boot," the
southern point of Italy. We are heading at this moment for
the gulf of Tarento, and hope to be in Venice by the fourth of
July.
LETTER X,
The Adriatic Albania Gay Costumes ana Beauty of the Albanesc Capo d lstna--
Trieste resembles an American Town Visit to the Austrian Authorities of the Province
Curiosity of the Inhabitants Gentlemanly deception by the Military Commamhiut
Visit to Vienna Singular Notions of the Austrians respecting the Americans Similari
ty of the Scenery to that of New England-Meeting with German Students-Frequent
Sight of Soldiers and Military Preparation Picturesque Scenery of Styria.
THE Doge of Venice has a fair bride in the Adriatic. It is the
fourth of July, and with the Italian Cape Colonna on our left,
and the long, low coast of Albania shading the horizon on the
east, we are gazing upon her from the deck of the first Amer
ican frigate that has floated upon her bosom. We head for
Venice, and there is a stir of anticipation on board, felt even
through the hilarity of our cherished anniversary. I am the only
one in the ward-room to whom that wonderful city is familiar,
and I feel as if I had forestalled my own happiness the first
impression of it is so enviable.
It is difficult to conceive the gay costumes and handsome
features of the Albanese, existing in these barren mountains that
bind the Adriatic. It has been but a continued undulation of
rock and sand, for three days past ; and the closer we hug to the
SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN.
shore, the more we look at the broad canvass above us, and pray
for wind. We make Capo cl Istjia now, a small town nestled in
a curve of the sea, and an hour or two more will bring us to
Trieste, ^bere we drop anchor, we hope, for many an hour of
novelty and pleasure.
Trieste lies sixty or eighty miles from Venice, across the head
of the gulf. The shore between is piled up to the sky with the
"blue Fiiuli mountains ;" and from the town of Trieste, the
low coast of Istria breaks away at a right angle to the south,
forming the easlfii b< va.d of the Adriatic. As we ran into the
harbor on our last tack, we passed close under the garden walls
of the villa of the ex-queen of Naples, a lovely spot just in the
suburbs. The palace of Jerome Bonaparte was also pointed out
to us by the pilot on the hill just above. They have both
removed since to Florence, and their palaces are occupied by
English. We dropped anchor within a half mile of the pier,
and the flags of a dozen American vessels were soon distinguish
able among the various colors of the shipping in the port.
I accompanied Commodore Patterson to-day on a visit of cere
mony to the Austrian authorities of the province. We made
our way with difficulty through the people, crowding in hundreds
to the water-side, and following us with the rude freedom of a
showman s audience. The vice-governor, a polite but Frenchified
German count, received us with eveiy profession of kindness.
His Parisian gestures sat ill enough upon his national high cheek
102 SUMMER CRUISE IN TiJE MEDITERRANEAN,
bones, lank hair, and heavy shoulders. We left him to call upon
the military commandant, an Irishman, who occupies part of the
palace of the ex-king of Westphalia. Our reception by him was
gentlemanly, cordial, and dignified. I think the Irish are, after
all, the best-mannered people in the world. They are found in
every country, as adventurers for honor, and they change neither
in character nor manner. They follow foreign fashions, aiid
acquire a foreign language ; but in the first they retain their
heart, and in the latter their brogue. They are Irishmen always.
Count Nugent is high in the favor of the emperor, has the com
mission of a field marshal, and is married to a Neapolitan
princess, who is a most accomplished and lovely woman, and
related to most of the royal houses of Europe. His reputation
as a soldier is well-known, and he seems to me to have no draw
back to the enviableness of his life, except its expatriation.
Trieste is a busy, populous place, resembling extremely our
new towns in America. We took a stroll through the principal
streets after our visits were over, and I was surprised at the
splendor of the shops, and the elegance of the costumes and
equipages. It is said to contain thirty thousand inhabitants.
VIENNA. The frigates were to lie three or four weeks at
Trieste. One half of the officers had taken the steamboat for
Venice on the second evening of our arrival, and the other half
waited impatiently their turn of absence. Vienna was but some
four hundred miles distant, and I might never be so near it again.
On a rainy evening, at nine o clock, I left Trieste in the " eil-
wagon,"*"* with a Grerrnan courier, and commenced the ascent of
the spur of the Friuli mountains that overhangs the bay.
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 103
My companions inside were, a merchant from Gratz, a fantas
tical and poor Hungarian count, a Corfu shop-keeper, and an
Italian ex-militaire and present apothecary, going to Vienna to
marry a lady whom he had never seen. After a little bandying
of compliments in German, of which I understood nothing
except that they were apologies for the incessant smoking of
three disgusting pipes, the conversation, fortunately for me,
settled into Italian. The mountain was steep and very high, and
my friends soon grew conversable. The novelty of two American
frigates in the harbor naturally decided the first topic. Our
Gratz merchant was surprised at the light color of the officers he
had seen, and doubted if they were not Englishmen in the
American service. He had always heard Americans were
black. " They are so," said the soldier-apothecary ; " I saw the
real Americans yesterday in a boat, quite black." (One of the
cutters of the Constellation has a negro crew, which he had
probably seen at the pier.) The assertion seemed to satisfy the
doubts of all parties. They had wondered how such beautiful
ships could come from a savage country. It was now explained.
" They were bought from the English, and officered by English
men." I was too much amused with their speculations to unde
ceive them ; and with my head thrust half out of the window to
avoid choking with the smoke of their pipes, I gazed back at the
glittering lights of the town below, and indulged the never-pall
ing sensation of a first entrance into a new country. The
lantern at the peak of the " United States" was the last thing I
saw as we rose the brow of the mountain, and started off on a
rapid trot toward Vienna.
I awoke at daylight with the sudden stop of the carriage. We
were at the low door of a German tavern, and a clear, rosy,
104 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
good-humored looking girl bade us good morning, as we alighted
one by one. The phrase was so like English, that I asked for a
basin of water in my mother tongue. The similarity served me
again. She brought it without hesitation ; but the question she
asked me as she set it down was like nothing that had ever before
entered my ears. The count smiled at my embarrassment, and
explained that she wished to know if I wanted soap.
I was struck with the cleanliness of everything. The tables,
chairs and floors, looked worn away with scrubbing. Breakfast
was brought in immediately, eggs, rolls, and coffee, the latter in
a glass bottle like a chemist s retort, corked up tightly, and
wrapped in a snowy napkin. It was an excellent breakfast,
served with cleanliness and good humor, and cost about fourteen
cents each. Even from this single meal, it seemed to me that- 1
had entered a country of simple manners and kind feelings.
The conductor gravely kissed the cheek of the girl who had
waited on us, my companions lit their pipes afresh, and the
postillion, iu cocked hat and feather, blew a stave of a waltz on
his horn, and fell into a steady trot, which he kept up with
phlegmatic perseverance to the end of his post.
As we get away from the sea, the land grows richer, and the
farm-houses more frequent. We are in the dutchy of Carniola,
forty or fifty miles from Trieste. How very unlike Italy and
France, and how very like New England it is ! There are no
ruined castles, nor old cathedrals. Every village has its small
white church with a tapering spire, large manufactories cl aster on
the water-courses, the small rivers are rapid and deep, the
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 1Q5
horses large and strong, the barns immense, the crops heavy, the
people grave and hard at work, and not a pauper by the post
together. We are very far north, too, and the climate is like
New England. The wind, though it is midsummer, is bracing,
and there is no travelling as in Italy, with one s hat off and
breast open, dissolving at midnight in the luxury of the soft air.
The houses, too, are ugly and comfortable, staring with paint and
pierced in all directions with windows. The children are white-
headed and serious. The hills are half-covered with woods, and
clusters of elms are left here and there through the meadows, as
if their owners could afford to let them grow for a shade to the
mowers. I was perpetually exclaiming, " how like America !"
We dined at Laybach. My companions had found out by my
passport that I was an American, arid their curiosity was most
amusing. The report of the arrival of the two frigates had
reached the capital of Illyria, and with the assistance of the
information of my friends, I found myself an object of universal
attention. The crowd around the door of the hotel, looked into
the windows while we were eating, and followed me round the
house as if I had been a savage. One of the passengers told me
they connected the arrival of the ships with some political object,
and thought I might be the envoy The landlord asked me if we
had potatoes in our country.
I took a walk through the city after dinner with my mincing
friend the count. The low, two-story wooden houses, the side
walks enclosed with trees, the matter-of-fact looking people, the
shut windows, and neat white churches remind me again strongly
of America. It was like the more retired streets of Portland or
Portsmouth. The lllyrian language spoken here, seemed to me
the most inarticulate succession of sounds I had ever heard. In
106 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
crossing the bridge in the centre of the town, we met a party of
German students travelling on foot with their knapsacks. My
friend spoke to them to gratify my curiosity. I wished to know
where they were going. They all spoke French and Italian, and
seemed in high heart, bold, cheerful, and intelligent. They
were bound for Egypt, determined to seek their fortunes in the
service of the present reforming and liberal pacha. Their enthu
siasm, when they were told I was an American, quite thrilled
me. They closed about me and looked into my eyes, as if they
expected to read the spirit of freedom in them. I was taken by
the arms at last, and almost forced into a beer-shop. The large
tankards were filled, each touched mine and the others, and
" America" was drank with a grave earnestness of manner that
moved my heart within me. They shook me by the band on
parting, and gave me a blessing in German, which as the old
count translated it, was the first word I have learned of their
language. We had met constantly parties of them on the road.
They all dress alike, in long travelling frocks of brown stuff, and
small green caps with straight visors ; but, coarsely as they are
clothed, and humbly as they seem to be faring, their faces bear
always a mark that can never be mistaken. They look like
scholars.
The roads, by the way, are crowded with pedestrians. It
seems to be the favorite mode of travelling in this country. T7e
have scarce met a carriage, and I have seen, I am sure, in one
day, two hundred passengers on foot. Among them is a class of
people peculiar to Germany. 1^ was astonished occasionally at
being asked for charity by stout, well-dressed young men, to all
appearance as respectable as any travellers on the road.
Expressing my surprise, my companion informed me that they
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 107
\Fere apprentices, and that .the custom or law of the country
compelled them, after completing their indentures, to travel in
some distant province, and depend upon charity and their own
exertions for two or three years before becoming masters at their
trade. It is a singular custom, and, I should think, a useful
lesson in hardship and self-reliance. They held out their .hats
with a confident independence of look that quite satisfied me they
felt no degradation in it.
We soon entered the province of Stifria^ and brighter rivers,
greener woods, richer and more graceful uplands and meadows,
do not exist in the world. I had thought the scenery of
Stockbi-idge, in my own state, unequalled till now. I could
believe myself there, ware -not the women alone working in the
fields, and the roads lined for miles together with military wagons
and cavalry upon march. The conscript law of Austria compels
every peasant to serve fourteen years ! and the labors of
agriculture fall, of course, almost exclusively upon females.
Soldiers swarm like locusts through the country, but they seem
as inoffensive and as much at home as the cattle in the farm
yards. It is a curious contrast, to my eye, to see parks of
artillery glistening in tho midst of a wheat-field, and soldiers
sitting about under the low thatches 01 these peaceful-looking
cottages. I do not think, among the thousands that I have
passed in three days travel, I have seen a gesture or heard a
syllable. If sitting, they smoke and sit still, and if travelling,
they economise motion to a degree that is wearisome to the eve.
Words are limited, and the description of scenery becomes
tiresome. It is a fault that the sense of beauty, freshening
constantly on the traveller, compels him who makes a note of
impressions to mark every other line with the same ever-recurring
108 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
exclamations of pleasure. I saw a hundred miles of unrivalled
scenery in Styria, and how can I describe it ? I were keeping
silence on a world of enjoyment to pass it over. We come to a
charming descent into a valley. The town beneath, the river,
the embracing mountains, the swell to the car of its bells ringing
some holyday, affect my imagination powerfully. I take out my
tablets. What shall I say ? How convey to your minds who
have not seen it, the charm of a scene I can only describe as I
have described a thousand others ?
LETTER XI,
Gratz Vienna.
WE had followed stream after stream through a succession of
delicious valleys for a hundred miles. Descending from a slight
eminence, we came upon the broad and rapid ]\Iuhr, and soon
after caught sight of a distant citadel upon a rock. As we
approached, it struck me as one of the most singular freaks of
nature I had ever seen. A pyramid, perhaps three hundred feet
in height, and precipitous on every side, rose abruptly in the
midst of a broad and level plain, and around it in a girdle of
architecture, lay the capital of Styria. The fortress on the
summit hung like an eagle s nest over the town, and from its
towers, a pistol-shot would reach the outermost point of the
wall.
Wearied with travelling near three hundred miles without
sleep, I dropped upon a bed at the hotel, with an order to be
called in two hours. It was noon, and we were to remain at
Gratz till the next morning. My friend, the Hungarian, had
promised as he threw himself on the opposite bed, to wake and
accompany me in a walk through the town, but the shake of a
stout German chambermaid at the appointed time had no effect
upon him, and I deiscended to my dinner alone. I had lost my
110 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
interpreter. The carte was in German, of winch I did not know
even the letters. After appealing in vain in French and Italian
to the persons eating near me, I fixed my finger at hazard upon a
word, and the waiter disappeared. The result was a huge dish
of cabbage cooked in some filthy oil and graced with a, piece of
beef. I was hesitating whether to dine on bread or make another
attempt, when a gentlemanly man of some fifty years came in
and took the vacant seat at my -table, lie addressed me imme
diately in French, and smiling at my difficulties, undertook to
order a dinner for me something less national. We improved
our acquaintance with a bottle of Johannesburg!*, and after
dinner he kindly offered to accompany me in my walk through the
city.
Gratz is about the size of Boston, a plain German city, with
little or no pretensions to style. The military band was playing a
difficult waltz very beautifully in the public square, but no one
was listening except a group of young men dressed in the worst
taste of dandyism. We mounted by a zig-zag pmh to the
fortress. On a shelf of the precipice, half way up, hangs a
small casino, used as a beer-shop. The view from the summit
was a feast to the eye. The wide and lengthening valley of the
Muhr lay asleep beneath its loads of grain, its villas and farm
houses, the picture of " waste and mellow fruitfulness," the rise
to the mountains around the head of the valley was clustered
with princely dwellings, thick forests with glades between them,
and churches with white slender spires shooting from the bosom
of elms, and right at our feet, circling around the precipitous
rock for protection, lay the city enfolded in its rampart, and
sending up to our ears the sound of every wheel that rolled
through her streets. Among the striking buildings below, my
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE.
friend pointed out to me a palace which he said had been lately
purchased by Joseph Bonaparte, who was coming here to reside.
The people were beginning to turn out for their evening walk
upon the ramparts which are planted with trees and laid out for
a promenade, and we descended to mingle in the crowd.
My old friend had a great many acquaintances. He presented
me to several of the best-dressed people we met, all of whom
invited me to supper. I had been in Italy almost a year and a
half, and such a thing had never happened to me. We walked
about until six, and as I preferred going to the play, which
opened at that early hour, we took tickets for " Der Schlimme
Leisel," and were seated presently in one of the simplest and
prettiest theatres t have ever seen.
Der Schlimme Leiscl was an old maid who kept house for an
old bachelor brother, proposing, at the time the play opens, to
marry. Her dislike to the match, from the dread of losing her
authority over his household, formed the humor of the piece, and
was admirably represented. After various unsuccessful attempts
to prevent the nuptials, the lady is brought to the house, and the
old maid enters in a towering passion, throws down her keys, and
flirts out of the room with a threat that she " will go to
America /" Fortunately she is not driven to that extremity.
The lady has been already married secretly to a poorer lover, aud
the old bachelor, after the first shock of the discovery, settles a
fortune on them, and returns to his celibacy and his old maid
sister, to the satisfaction of all parties. Certainly the German is
the most unmusical language of Babel. If my good old friend
had not translated it for ine word for word, I should scarce have
believed the play to be more than a gibbering pantomime. I
shall think differently when I have learned it, no doubt, but a
112 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
strange language strikes upon one s ear so oddly ! I was quite
too tired when the play was over (which, by the way, was at the
sober hour of nine), to accept any of the kind invitations of
which my companion reminded me. We supped tete-d-tctc,
instead, at the hotel. I was delighted with my new acquaintance.
He was an old citizen of the world. He had left Gratz at
twenty, and after thirty years wandering from one part of the
globe to the other, had returned to end his days in his birth
place. His relations were all dead, and speaking all the
languages of Europe, he preferred living at a hotel for the
society of strangers. With a groat deal of wisdom, he had
preserved his good humor toward the world ; and I think I have
rarely seen a kinder and never a happier man. I parted from
him with regret, and the next morning at daylight, had resumed
my seat at the Eil-wagon.
Imagine the Hudson, at the highlands, reduced to a sparkling
little river a bowshot across, and a rich valley thridded by a ro id
accompanying the remaining space between the mountains, and
you have the scenery for the first thirty miles beyond Giatz.
There is one more difference. On the edge of one of the most
toweiing precipices, clear up against the clouds, hang the ruins
of a noble castle. The rents in the wall, and the embrasures in
the projecting turrets, seem set into the sky. Trees and vines
grow within and about it, and the lacings of the twisted roots
seem all that keep it together. It is a perfect " castle in
the air."
A long day s journey and another long nii:ht (during which
we passed Neustadt, on the confines of Hungary) brought us
within sight of Baden, but an hour or two from Vienna. It was
just sunrise, and market-carts and pedestrians and suburban
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 113
vehicles of all descriptions notified us of our approach to a great
capital. A few miles farther we were stopped in the midst of an
extensive plain by a crowd of carnages. A criminal was about
being guillotined. What was that to one who saw Vienna for the
first time ? A few steps farther the postillion was suddenly
stopped. A gentleman alighted from a carriage in which were
two ladies, and opened the door of the diligence. It was the
bride of the soldier-apothecary come to meet him with her
mother and brother. He was buried in dust, just waked out of
sleep, a three days beard upon his face, and, at the best, not a
very lover-like person. He ran to the carriage door, jumped in,
and there was an immediate cry for water. The bride had
fainted ! We left her in his arms and drove on. The courier
had no bowels for love.
There is a small Gothic pillar before us, on the rise of a
slight elevation. Thence we shall see Vienna. " Stop, thou
tasteless postillion !" Was ever such a scene revealed to mortal
sight ! It is like Paris from the Barriere de VEtoile it seems
to cover the world. Oh, beautiful Vienna ! What is that broad
water on which the rising sun glances so brightly ? u The,
Danube /" What is that unparalleled Gothic structure piercing
the sky ? What columns are these ? What spires ? Beautiful,
beautiful city !
VIENNA. It must be a fine city that impresses one witli its
splendor before breakfast, after driving all night in a mail-
coach. It was six o clock in the morning when I left the post-
office, in Vienna, to walk to a hotel. The shops were still shut,
the milkwomen were beating at the gates, and the short, quick
114 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
ring upon the church bells summoned all early risers to mass.
A sudden turn brought me upon a square. In its centre stood
the most beautiful fabric that has ever yet filled my eye. It
looked like the structure of a giant, encrusted with fairies a
majestically proportioned mass, and a spire tapering to the
clouds, but a surface so curiously beautiful, so traced arid fretted,
so full of exquisite ornament, that it seemed rather some curious
cabinet gem, seen through a magnifier, than a building in the
open air. In these foreign countries, the laborer goes in with his
load to pray, and I did not hesitate to enter the splendid church
of St. Etienne, though a man followed me with a portmanteau on
* his back. What a wilderness of arches ! Pulpits, chapels,
altars, ciboriums; confessionals, choirs, all in the exquisite
slenderness of Gothic tracery, and all of one venerable and
timeworn die, as if the incense of a myriad censers had steeped
them in their spicy odors. The mass was chanting, and
hundreds were on their knees about me, and not one without
some trace that he had come in on his way to his daily toil. It
was the hour of the poor man s prayer. The rich were asleep
in their beds. The glorious roof over their heads, the costly and
elaborated pillars against which they pressed their foreheads, the
music and the priestly service, were, for that hour, theirs alone.
I seldom have felt the spirit of a place of worship so strong
upon me.
The foundations of St. Etienne were laid seven hundred years
a^o. It has twice been partly burnt, and has been embellished
in succession by nearly all the emperors of Germany. Among
its many costly tombs, the most interesting is that of the hero
Eugene of Savoy, erected by his niece, the Princess Therese, of
Liechtenstein. There is also a vault in which it is said, in
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE.
compliance with an old custom, the entrails of all the emperors
are deposited.
Having marked thus much upon my tablets, I remembered the
patient porter of my baggage, who had taken the opportunity to
drop on his knees while I was gazing about, and having achieved
his matins, was now waiting submissively till I was ready to
proceed. A turn or two brought us to the hotel, where a bath
and a breakfast soon restored me, and in an hour I was again on
the way with a valet de place, to visit the tomb of the son of
Napoleon.
lie lies in the deep vaults of the capuchin convent, with
eighty -four of the imperial family of Austria beside him. A
monk answered our pull at the cloister-hell, and the valet
translated my request into German. lie opened the gate with a
guttural Yaw !" and lighting a wax candle at. a lamp burning
before (he imaop of thn Virgin, unlocked a massive brazen door
at the end <-f the corridor, :.md h-d the way into the vault, The
capuchin was as pale as marble, quite bald, though young, and
with features which expressed, i thought, the subdued liercem ss
of a devil. He impatiently waved away the officious interpreter
aft en a moment or two, and asked me if I understood _Latin.
Nothing could have been more striking than the whole scene.
The immense bronze sarcophagi, lay in long isles behind railings
and gates of iron, and as the long-robed monk strode on with
his lamp through the darkness, pronouncing the name and title
of each as he unlocked the door and struck it with his heavy b-y,
he seemed to me, \viih his solemn pronunciation, like some
mysterious being calling forth the imperial tenants to judgment,
lie appeared to have something of scorn in his manner MS he
|sK>ki :! oil I . ? splecidid workmanship of the vast coffiu and
116 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN.
pronounced the sounding titles of the ashes within. At that of
the celebrated Empress Maria Theresa alone, he stopped to
make a comment. It was a simple tribute to her virtues, and ho
uttered it slowly, as if he were merely musing to himself. He
passed on to her husband, Francis the first, and then proceeded
uninterruptedly till he came to a new copper coffin. It lay in a
niche, beneath a tall, dim window, and the monk, merely pointing
to the inscription, set down his lamp, and began to pace up and
down the damp floor, with his head on his breast, as if it was a
matter of course that here I was to be left awhile to my
thoughts.
It was certainly the spot, if there is one in the world, to feel
emotion. In the narrow enclosure on which my finger rested,
lay the last hopes of Napoleon. The heart of the master-spirit
of the world was bound up in these ashes. He was beautiful,
acjc>nipli.-!i-d, m-nerous. brave. He was loved with a sort of
idolatry by Uio nati-.sri with which he had passed his childhood.
II u had won all hearts. His death seemed impossible. There
was a universal prayer that he might live, his inheritance of
glory was so incalculable.
I road his epitaph. It was that of a private individual. It
gave his name, and his father s and mother s ; and then enumer
ated his virtues,, with a commonplace regret for his early death.
The monk took up his lamp and reascended to the cloister in
silence. He shut the convent-door behind me, and the busy
street seemed to me profane. How short a time does the most
moving event interrupt the common current of life.
LETTER XII.
Vienna Magnificence of the Emperor s Manage The Young Queen of Hungary The
Palace Hall of Curiosities. Jewelry, etc. Tho Polytechnic School Geometrical
Figures described by the Vibrations of Musical Notes Liberal Provision for the Public
Institutions Popularity of t e Emperor.
I HAD quite forgotten, in packing up my little portmanteau to
leave the ship, that I was coming so far north. Scarce a week
ago, in the south of Italy, we were panting in linen jackets. I
find myself shivering here, in a latitude five hundred miles north
of Boston, with no remedy but exercise and an extra shirt, for a
cold that would grace December.
It is amusing, sometimes, to abandon one s self to a valet de
place- Compelled to resort to one from my ignorance of the
German, I have fallen upon a dropsical fellow, with a Bardolph
nose, whose French is execrable, and whose selection of objects
of curiosity is worthy of his appearance. His first point was the
emperor s stables. We had walked a mi\& and a half to see
them. Here were two or three hundred horses of all breeds, in
a bailding that the emperor himself might live in, with a mag
nificent inner court for a menage, and a wilderness of grooms,
dogs, and other appurtenances. I am as fond of a horse as most
people, but with all Vienna before me, and little time to lose, I
118 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
broke into the midst of the head groom s pedigrees, and request
ed to be shown the way out. Monsieur Karl did not take the
hint. We walked on a half mile, and stopped before another
large building. " What is this !" " The imperial carriage-
house, monseigneur." I was about turning on my heel and
taking my liberty into my own hands, when the large door flew
open, and the blaze of gilding from within, turned me from my
purpose. I thought I had seen the ne plus ultra of equipages at
Rome. The imperial family of Austria ride in more style than
his holiness. The models are lighter and handsomer, while the
gold and crimson is put on quite as resplendently. The most
curious part of the show were ten or twelve state traineaux or
sleighs. I can conceive nothing more brilliant (ban a turn-out
of these magnificent structures upon the snow. They are built
with aerial lightness, of gold and sable, with a seat fifteen or
twenty feet from the ground, and arc driven, wilh two or four
horses, by the royal personage himself. The grace of their shape
"and the splendor of their gilded trappings are inconceivable to
one who has never seen them.
Our way lay through the court of the imperial palace. A
large crowd was collected round a carriage with four horses
standing at the side-door. As we approached ifc, all hats flew off,
and a beautiful woman, of perhaps twenty-eight, came down the
steps, leading a handsome boy of two or three years. It was the
young queen of Hungary and her son. If I h?,d seen such ?
face in a cottage ornee on the borders of an American lake, i
should have thought it made for the spot.
We entered a door of the palace at which stood a ferocious-
looking Croat sentinel, near seven frot high, TLree G-ermac
travelling students had just been ref..oe-Jt admittance. A little
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE.
man appeared at the ring of the bell within, and after a prelimi
nary explanation by my valet, probably a lie, he made a low bow,
and invited rne to enter. I waited a moment, and a permission
was brought me to see the imperial treasury. Handing it to
Karl, I requested him to get permission inserted for my three
friends at the door. He accomplished it in the same incompre
hensible manner in which he had obtained my own, and intro
ducing them with the ill-disguised contempt of a valet for all
men with dusty coats, we commenced the rounds of the curiosi
ties together.
A large clock, facing us as we entered, was just striking.
From either sid- of its base, like companies of gentlemen and
ladies advancing to greet each other, appeared figures in the drusa
and semblance of the royal family of Austria, who remained a
moment, and then retired, bowing themselves courteously out
backward. It is a costly affair, presented by the landgrave of
Hesse to Maria Theresa, in 1750.
After a succession of watches, snuff-boxes, necklaces, and
jewels of every description, we came to the famous Florentine
diamond, said to be the largest in the world. It was lost by a
duke of Burgundy upon the battle-field of Granson, found by a
soldier, who parted with it for five florins, sold again, and found
its way at last to the royal treasury of Florence, whence it was
brought to Vienna. Its weight is one hundred and thirty-nine
and a half carats, and it is estimated at one million forty-threo
thousand three hundred and thirty-four florins. It looks like a
lump of light. Enormous diamonds surround it, but it hangs
among them like Hesperus among the stars.
The next side of the gallery is occupied by specimens of
carved ivory. Many of them are antique, and half of them are
120 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
more beautiful than decent. There were two bas-reliefs am on 5
them by Raphael Donner, which were worth, to my eye, all the
gems in the gallery. They vere taken from scripture, and rep
resented the Woman of Samaria, at the u ell, and Ilagar waiting
for the death of her son. No powers of elocution, no enhance
ment of poetry, could bring those touching passages of the Bible
so movingly to the heart. The latter particularly arrested me.
The melancholy beauty of Hagar, sitting with her head bowed
upon her knees, while her boy is lying a little way off, beneath a
shrub of the desert, is a piece of unparalleled workmanship. It
may well hang in the treasury of an emperor
jMiui;: tares of the royal family in their childhood, set in costly
gems, mas.Mve plate- curiously chased, services of gold, robe- of
diamonds, sxom-hilted swords, dishes wrought of solid integral
agates, and finally the crown and sceptre of Austria upon ied
velvet cushions, looking very much like their imitations on ths
strtge. were among the world of splendors unfolded to our eyas.
The Florentine diamond and the bas-reliefs by Raphael Donner
were all I coveted. The beauty of the diamond was royal. It
needed no imagination to feel its value. A savage would pick it.
up in the desert for a star dropped out of the sky. For the rest,
the demand on my admiration fatigued me, arid 1 was glad to
escape with my dusty friends from the univei sity, and exchange
courtesies in the free air. One of them spoke Knglish a little,
and called me " Mister Engli>hmin," on bidding me a ieu. I
was afraid of a beer-shop scene in Vienna, and did not correct
the mistake.
As we were going out of the court, four covered wagons,
drawn each by four superb horses, dashed through the gate. I
waited a moment to see what they contained. Thirty or forty
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 121
servants in livery came out from the palace, and took from the
wagons quantities of empty baskets carefully labelled with direc
tions. They were from Schoenbrunn, where the emperor is at
present residing with his court, and had come to market for ihe
imperial kitchen. It should be a good dinner that requires six
teen such horses to carry to the cook.
It was the hungry hour of two, and I was still musing on the
emperor s dinner, and admiring the anxious interest his servants
took in their disposition of the baskets, when a blast of military
music came to my ear. It was from the barracks of the impe
rial guard, and I stepped under the arch, and listened to them an
hour. How gloriously they played ! It was probably the finest
band in Austria. I have heard much good music, but of its kind
this was like a new sensation to me. They stand, in playing,
ju.-t under the window at which the emperor appears daily when
in the city.
I have been indebted to Mr. Schwartz, the American consul at
Vicuna, for a very unusual degree of kindness. Among other
polite attentions, he procured for me to-day an admission to the
Polytechnic schooj. a favor granted with difficulty, except on the
appointed days for public visits.
The Polytechnic school was established in 1816, by the pres
ent emperor. The building stands outside the rampart of the
city, of elegant proportions, and about as large as all the build
ings of Yale or Harvard college thrown into one. Its object is
to promote induction in the practical sciences, or, in other
words, to give a practical education for the trades, commerce, or
manufactures. It is divided into three departments. The first is
preparatory, and the course occupies two years. The studies
are religion and morals, elementary mathematics, natural history,
6
122 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
geography, universal history, grammar, and " tlw German style,"
declamation, drawing, writing, and the French, Italian, and ttolie-
mian languages. To enter this class, the boy must be thirteen
years of age, and pays fifty cents per month.
The second course is commercial, and occupies one year. The
studies are mercantile correspondence, commercial law, mercan
tile arithmetic, the keeping of books, geography and history, as
they relate to commerce, acquaintance with merchandise, &c. &c.
The third course lasts one year. The studies are chyniistry as
applicable to arts and trades, the fermentation of woods, tannery,
soap-making, dying, blanching, &c. &c. ; also mechanism, prac
tical geometry, civil architecture, hydraulics, and technology.
The two last courses are given gratis.
The whole is under the direction of a principal, who has under
him thirty professors and two or three guardians of apparatus.
We were taken first into a noble hall, lined with glass cases
containing specimens of every article manufactured in me
German dominions. From the finest silks down to shoos, wi\s,
nails, and mechanics tools, here were all the products of human
labor. The variety was astonishing. AVithin the limits of a
single room, the pupil is here made acquainted with every
mechanic art known in his country.
The next hall was devoted to models. Here was every kind of
bridge, fortification, lighthouse, dry dock, breakwater, canal-lock,
ovC. &c. ; models of steamboats, of ships, and of churches, in
every st.\lu of architecture. It was a little world.
We went thence to the chemical apartment. The servitor
here, a man without education, has constructed all the apparatus.
He is an old gray-headed man, of a keen German countenance,
and great simplicity of manners. lie takes great pride in having
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 123
constructed the largest and most complete chemical apparatus
now in London. The one which he exhibited to us occupies the
whole of an immense hall, and produces an electric discharge
like the report of a pistol. The ordinary batteries in our univer
sities are scarce a twentieth part as powerful.
Afto- showing us a variety of experiments, the old man turned
suddenly ;u;<i u^kt d u.s if \^ kii^w the geometrical figures
described by the vibrations of musical notes. We confessed our
ignorance, and he produced a pane of glass covered with black
sand. He then took a fiddle bow, and holding the glass horizon
tally, drew it downward against the edge at a peculiar angle.
The sand flew as if it had been bewitched, and took the shape of
a perfect square. He asked us to name a figure. We named a
circle. Another careful draw of the bow, and the sand flew into
a circle, with scarce a particle out of its perfect curve. Twenty
times he repeated the experiment, arid with the most complicated
figures drawn en paper. Pie had reduced it to an art. It
would have hung him for a magician a century ago.
However one condemns the policy of Austria with respect to
her subject provinces and the rest of Europe, it is impossible no!
to be struck with her liberal provision for her own immediate
people. The public institutions of all kinds in Vienna are
allowed to be the finest and most liberally endowed on the conti
nent. Her hospitals, prisons, houses of industry, and schools,
are on an imperial scale of munificence. The emperor himself
is a father to his subjects, and every tongue blesses him.
Napoleon envied him their affection, it is said, and certainly no
monarch could be more universally beloved.
Among the institutions of Vienna are two which are peculiar.
One is a maison d* accouchement , into which any female can enter
124 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
veiled, remain till after the period of her labor, and depart
unknown, leaving her child in the care of the institution, which
rears it as a foundling. Its object is a benevolent prevention of
infanticide.
The other is a private penitentiary, to which the fathers of
respectable families can send for reformation children they are
unable to govern. The name is^ept a secret, and the culprits
are returned to their families after a proper time, punished with
out disgrace. Pride of character is thus preserved, while the
delinquent is firmly corrected.
,
i
i
LETTER XIII.
Vienna Palaces and Gardens Mosaic Copy of Da Vinci s "Last Supper" Collection of
\V arlikc A iniquities ; Scanderbui g s Sword, Montezurna s Tomahawk, Holies of the Cru
saders, "\Yarriors in Armor, the Farmer of Augsburgh Eoom of Portraits of- elebrated
Individuals Gold Busts of Jupiter and Juno The Olacis, full of Garden?, the General
liesort of the People Universal Spirit of Enjoyment Simplicity and Confidence in the
Manners of the Viennese Baden.
AT the foot of a hill in one of the beautiful suburbs of Vienna,
stands a noble palace, called the Lower JBeluidere. On the
summit ot the hill stands another, equally magnificent, called the
Upper Bdvidcre, arid between the two extend broad and princely
gardens, open to the public.
On the lower floor of the entrance-hall in the former palace,
lies the copy, in mosaic, of Leonardo da Vinci s " Last Supper,"
done at Napoleon s order. Though supposed to be the finest
piece of mosaic in the world, it is so large that they have never
found a place for it. A temporary balcony has been erected on
one side of the room, and the spectator mounts nearly to the
ceiling to get a fair position for looking down upon it. That
unrivalled picture, now going to decay in the convent at Milan,
will probably depend upon this copy for its name with posterity.
*The expression in the faces of the apostles is as accurately
preserved as in the admirable engraving of Morghen.
126 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
The remaining halls in the palace are occupied by a grand col
lection of antiquities, principally of a warlike character. When
I read in my old worm-eaten Burton, of " Scanderburgh s strength,"
I never thought to see his sword. It stands here against the wall,
a long straight weapon with a cross hilt, which few men could
heave to their shoulders. The tomahawk of poor Montezuma
hangs near it. It was presented to the emperor by the king of
Spain. It is of a dark granite, and polished very beautifully.
What a singular curiosity to find in Austria !
The windows are draped with flags dropping in pieces with age.
This, so in tatters, was renowned in the crusades. It was carried
to the Holy Land and brought back by the archduke Ferdinand.
A hundred warriors in bright armor stand around the hall.
Their vizors are down, their swords in their hands, their feet
planted for a spring. One can scarce believe there are no men
in them. The name of some renowned soldier is attached to
each. This was the armor of the cruel Visconti of Milan that
of Duke Alba of Florence both costly suits, beautifully inlaid
with gold. In the centre of the room stands a gigantic fellow ra
full armor, with a sword on his thigh and a beam in his right
hand. It is the shell of the famous farmer of Augslurgh, who
was in the service of one of the emperors. He was over eight
feet in height, and limbed in proportion. How near such relics
bring history ! With what increased facility one pictures the
warrior to his fancy, seeing his sword, and hearing the very rattle
of his armor. Yet it puts one into Hamlet s vein to see a con
temptible valet lay his hand with impunity on the armed shoulder,
shaking the joints that once belted the soul of a Visconti ! I
turned, in leaving the room, to take a second look at the flag of
the crusade. It had floated, perhaps, over the helmet of Occur
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 127
de Lion. Saladin may have had it in his e/e, assaulting the
Christian camp with his pagans.
In the next room hung fifty or sixty portraits of celebrated in
dividuals, presented in their time to the emperors of Austria.
There was one of Mary of Scotland. It is a face of superlative
loveliness, taken with a careless and most bewitching half smile,
and yet not without the look of royalty, which one traces in all
the pictures of the unfortunate queen. One of the emperors of
Germany married Phillippina, a farmer s daughter, and here is
her portrait. It is done in the prim old style of the middle ages,
but the face is full of character. Her husband s portrait hangs
beside it, and she looks more born for an emperor than he.
Hall after hall followed, of costly curiosities. A volume would
not describe them. Two gold busts of Jupiter and Juno, by Ben-
venuto Cellini, attracted my attention particularly. They were
very beautiful, but I would copy them in bronze, and coin " the
thunderer and his queen," were they mine.
Admiration is the most exhausting thing in the world. The
servitor opened a gate leading into the gardens of the palace, that
we might mount to the Upper Belvidere, which contains the im
perial gallery of paintings. But I had no more strength. I
could have dug in the field till dinner time but to be astonished
more than three hours without respite is beyond me. I took a
stroll in the garden. How delightfully the unmeaning beauty of
a fountain refreshes one after this inward fatigue. I walked on,
up one alley and down another, happy in finding nothing that
surprised me, or worked upon my imagination, or bothered my
historical recollections, or called upon my worn out superlatives
for expression. I fervently hoped not to have another new sen
sation till after dinner.
12S SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
Vienna is an immense city (two hundred .and fifty thousand
inhabitants), but its heart only is walled in. -You may walk f, oni
gate to gate in twenty minutes. In leaving the walls you come
upon a feature of the city which distinguishes it from every other
in Europe. Its rampart is encircled by an open park (called the
Glacis), a quarter of a mile in width and perhaps three miles in
circuit, which is, in fact, in the centre of Vienna. The streets
commence again on the other side of it, and on going from one
part of the city to the other, you constantly cross this lovely belt
of verdure, which girds her heart like a cestus of health. The
top of the rampart itself is planted with trees, and, commanding
beautiful views in every direction, it is generally thronged with
people. (It was a favorite walk of the Duke of Reichstadt.)
Between this and the Glacis lies a deep trench, crossed by draw
bridges at every gate, the bottom of which is cultivated prettily
as a flower garien. Altogether Vienna is a beautiful city. Paris
may have single views about the Tuihries that are finer than any
thing of the same kind here, but this capital of western Europe,
as a whole, is quite the most imposing city I have seen.
The Glacis is full of gardens. I requested my disagreeable
necessity of a valet ^ this afternoon, to take me to two or three of
the most general resorts of the people. We passed out by one
of the city gates, five minutes walk from the hotel, and entered
immediately into a crowd of people, sauntering up and down
under the alleys of the Glacis. A little farther on we found a
fanciful building, buried in trees, and occupied as a summer cafe.
In a little circular temple in front was stationed a band of music,
and around it for a considerable distance were placed small tables,
filled just now with elegantly-dressed people, eating ices, or drink
ing coffee. It was in every respect like a private fete champetrc
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. J29
I wandered about for an hour, expecting in voluntarily to ;ueet
some acquaintance there was such a look of kindness and unre
serve throughout. It is a desolate feeling to be alone in such a
crowd.
We jumped into a carriage and drove round the Glacis for a
mile, passing everywhere crowds of people idling leisurely along
and evidently out for pleasure. We stopped before a superb fa-
?ade, near one of the gates of the city. It was the entrance to
the Volk&garten. We entered in front of a fountain, and turning
up a path to the left, found our way almost impeded by another
crowd. A semicircular building, with a range of columns in
front encircling a stand for a band of music, was surrounded by
perhaps two or three thousand people. Small tables and seats
under trees, were spread in every direction within reach of the
music. The band played charmingly. Waiters in white jackets
and aprons were- luuniug to and fro, receivinir and obeying orders
for refresh merits, and heie again all scorned abandon- d to onj
spirit of enjoyment. I had thought we must have kft all Vr.-nua
.at the other garden. I wondered how so many people could be
spared from their occupations and families. It was no holiday/
Ct It is always as gay in fair w< ather," said Karl.
A little back into the garden stands a beautiful little structure,
on the model of the temple of Theseus in Greece. It was bit U
for Canova s group of u Theseus and the Centaur," bought bv
the emperor. 1 had seen copies of it in Rome, but was of course
much more struck with the original. It is a noble piece of
sculpture.
Still farther back, on the rise of a mount, stood another fanci
ful cafe, with another band of music and another crowd !
After we had walked around it, my man was hurrying me away.
130 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
u You have not seen the au gar ten," said he. It stands upon a
little green island in the Danube, and is more extensive than
either of the others. But I was content where I was ; and dis
missing my Asmodeus, I determined to spend the evening wan
dering about in the crowds alone. The sun went down, the
lamps were lit, the alleys were illuminated, the crowd increased,
and the emperor himself could not have given a gayer evening s
entertainment.
Vienna has the reputation of being the most profligate capital
in Europe. Perhaps it is so. There is certainly, even to a
stranger, no lack of temptation to every species of pleasure.
But there is, besides, a degree of simplicity and confidence in
the manners of the Viennese which I had believed peculiar to
America, and inconsistent with the state of society in Europe.
In the most public resorts, and at all hours of the day and eve
ning, modest and respectable young women of the middle classes
walk alone perfectly secure from molestation. They sit under
the trees in these public gardens, eat ices at the cafes, walk home
unattended, and no one seems to dream of impropriety. Whole
families, too, spend the afternoon upon a seat in a thronged place
of resort, their children playing about them, the father reading,
and the mother sewing or knitting, quite unconscious of observa-
t i( >n. The lower and middle classes live all summer, I am told,
u of doors. It is never oppressively warm in this latitude, and
their houses are deserted after three or four o clock in the after
noon, and the whole population pours out to the different gardens
on the Glacis, wheYe till midnight, they seem perfectly happy in
the enjoyment of the innocent and unexpensive pleasures which a
wise government has provided for them
The nobles and richer class pass their summer in the circle of
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rural villages near the city. They are nested about on the hills,
and crowded with small and lovely rural villas more like the
neighborhood of Boston than anything I have seen in Europe.
Baden, where the emperor passes much of his time, is called
" the miniature Switzerland." Its baths are excellent, its hills
are cut into retired and charmi ng walks, and from June till Sep
tember it is one of the gayest of watering places. It is about a
two hours drive from the city, and omnibuses at a very low rate,
run between at all times of the day. The Austrians seldom
travel, and the reason is evident. They have everything for
which others travel, at home.
LETTER XIV,
Vienna The Palace of Liechsteiistein,
THE red-nosed German led on through the crowded Graben,
jostling aside the Parisian-looking lady and her handsome Hun
garian cavalier, the phlegmatic smoker and the boarded Turk,
alike. We passed the imperial guard, the city gate, the lofty
bridge over the trench (casting a look below at the flower garden
laid out in " the ditch" which encircles the wall), and entered
upon the lovely Glacis one step from the crowded street to the
fresh greenness of a park.
Would you believe, as you "walk up this shaded alley, that you
are in the heart of the city still ?
The Glacis is crossed, with its groups of fair children and shy
maids, its creeping invalids, its solitude-seeking lovers, and its
idling soldiers, and we again enter the crowded street. A half
hour more, and the throng thins again, the country opens, and
here you are, in front of the palace of Luchstenstein, the first
noble of Austria. A modern building, of beautiful and light
architecture, rises from its clustering trees ; servants in hand
some livery hang about the gates and lean against the pillars of
the portico, and with an explanation from my lying valet, who
SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN. 133
evidently makes me out an ambassador at least, by the ceremony
with which I am received, a gray servitor makes his appearance
arid opens the immense glass door leading from the side of the
court.
One should step gingerly on the poli>hed marble of this superb
staircase ! It opens at once into a lofry hall, the ceiliug of which
is painted in fresco by an Italian master. It is a room of noble
proportions. Few churches in America are larger, asd yet it
seems in keeping with the style of the palace, the staircase
everything but the creature meant to inhabit it.
How different arc thc nu-rds in which one sees pictures ! To
day I am in the humor tn give it to the painter s delusion. The
scene is real. Atiiiodcus is at my elbow, and I am witched from
spot to spot, invisible myself, gazing on the varied scenes re
vealed only to the inspired vision of genius.
A landscape opens.* It is one of the woody recesses of Lake
Nervi, at the very edge of " Dian s Mirror." The huntress
queen is bathing with her nymphs. The sandal is half laced
over an ankle that seems fit for nothing else than to sustain a
goddess, when casting her eye on the lovely troop emerging from
the water, she sees the unfortunate Calista surrounded by her
astonished sisters, and fainting with shame- Poor Calista ! one s
heart pleads for her. But how expressive is the cold condemning
look in the beautiful face of her mistress queen ! Even the dogs
have started from their reclining position on the grass, and stand
gazing at the unfortunate, wondering at the silent astonishment
of the virgin troop. Pardon her, imperial Dian !
* By Fianceschini. He passed his life with the Prince Liechstensteh^
and his pictures are found only in this collection. He is a delicious painter,
full of poetry, with the one fault of too voluptuous a style.
134 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN
Come to the baptism of a child ! It is a vision of. Guido
Reni s.* A young mother, apparently scarce sixteen, has
brought her first child to the altar. She kneels with it in her
arms, looking earnestly into the face of the priest while he
sprinkles the water on its pure forehead, and pronounces the
words of consecration. It is a most lovely countenance, made
lovelier by the holy feeling in her heart. Her eyes are moist,
her throat swells with emotion my own sight dims while I gaze
upon her. We have intruded on one of the most holy moments
of nature. A band of girls, sisters by the resemblance, have ac
companied the young mother, and stand, with love and wonder in
their eyes, gazing on the face of the child. How strangely the
mingled thoughts, crowding through their minds, are expressed
in their excited features. It is a scene worthy of an audience of
angels.
We have surprised Giorgione s wife (the " Flora" of Titian,
the love in life" of Byron) locking at a sketch by her husband.
It stands on his easel, outlined in crayons, and represents Lu-
cretia the moment before she plunges the dagger into her bosom.
She was passing through his studio, and you see by the half sus
pended foot, that she stopped but for a momentary glance, and
has forgotten herself in thoughts that have risen unaware. The
head of Lucretia resembles her own, and she is wondering what
Giorgione thought while he drew it. Did he resemble her to the
Roman s wife in virtue as well as in feature ? There is an em
barrassment in the expression of her face, as if she doubted he
had drawn it half in mischief. We will leave the lovely Vene
tian to her thoughts. When she sits again to Titian, it will be
with a colder modesty.
* One of the loveliest pictures that divine painter ever drew.
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 135
Hoogstraeten, a Dutch painter, conjures up a scene for you.
It is an old man, who has thrust his head through a prison gate,
and is looking into the street with the listless patience and curi
osity of one whom habit has reconciled to his situation. His
beard is neglected, his hair is slightly grizzled, and on his head
sits a shabby fur cap, that has evidently shared all his imprison
ment, and is quite past any pride of appearance. What a va
cant face ! How perfectly he seems to look upon the street
below, as upon something with which he has nothing more to do.
There is no anxiety to get out, in its expression. He is past that.
He looks at the playing children, and watches the zigzag trot of
an idle dog with the quiet apathy of one who can find nothing
better to help off the hour. It is a picture of stolid, contented,
unthinking misery.
Look at this boy, standing impatiently on one foot at his
mother s knee, while she pares an apple for him ! With what an
amused and playful love she listens to his hurrying entreaties,
stealing a glance at him as he pleads, with a deeper feeling than
he will be able to comprehend for years ! It is one of the
commonest scenes in life, yet how pregnant with speculation !
On on what an endless gallery ! I have seen twelve
rooms, with forty or fifty pictures in each, and there are thirteen
halls more ! The delusion begins to fade. These are pictures
merely. Beautiful ones, however ! If language could convey to
your eye the impressions that this waste and wealth of beauty
have conveyed to mine, I would write of every picture. There
is not an indifferent one here. All Italy together has not so
many works by the Flemish masters as are contained in this
single gallery certainly none so fine. A most princely fortune
for many generations must have been devoted to its purchase.
136 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
I have seen seven or eight things in all Italy, by Corregio.
They were the gems of the galleries in which they exist, but
always small, and seemed to me to want a certain finish. Here
is a Corregio, a large picture, and no miniature ever had so
elaborate a beauty. It melts into the eye. It is a conception
of female beauty so very extraordinary, that it seems to me it
must become, in the mind of every one who sees it, the model
and the standard of all loveliness. It is a nude Venus, sitting
lost in thought, with Cupid asleep in her lap. She is in the
sacred retirement of solitude, and the painter has thrown into
her attiiude and expression so speaking an unconsciousness of all
presence, that you feel like a daring intruder while you gaze
upon the picture. Surely such softness of coloring, such fault
less proportions, such subdued and yet eloquent richness of teint
in the skin, was never before attained by mortal pencil. I am
here, some five thousand miles from America, yet would I have
made the voyage but to raise my standard of beauty by this
ravishing image of woman.
In the circle of Italian galleries, one finds less of female
beauty, both in degree and in variety, than his anticipations had
promised. Three or four heads at the most, of the many
hundreds that he sees, are imprinted in his memory, and serve as
standards in his future observations Even when standing
before the most celebrated pictures, one often returns to recollec
tions of living beauty in his own country, by which the mst
glowing head of Titian or the Veronese suffer in comparison. In
my own experience this has been often true, and it is perhaps
the only thing in which my imagination of foreign wonders was
too feivent. To this Venus of Corregio s, however, I unhe>itu-
tingly submit all knowledge, all conception even, of female l-ve-
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 137
liness. I have seen nothing in life, imagined nothing from the
descriptions of poets, that is any way comparable to it. It is
matchless.
In one of the last rooms the servitor unlocked two handsome
cases, and showed me, with a great deal of circumstance, two
heads by Denner. They were an old man and his wife two
hale, temperate, good old country gossips but so curiously
finished ! Every pore was painted. You counted the stiff
stumps of the good man s beard as you might those of a living
person, till you were tired. Every wrinkle looked as if a month
had been spent in elaborating it. The man said they were
extremely valuable, and I certainly never saw anything more
curiously and perhaps uselessly wrought.
Near them was a capital picture of a drunken fellow, sitting
by himself and laughing heartily at his own performance on the
pipe. It was irresistible, and I joined in the laugh till the long
suite of halls rung again.
Landscapes by Van Delen such as 1 have seen engravings of
in America, and sighed over as unreal the skies, the temples,
the water, the soft mountains, the distant ruins, seemed so like
the beauty of a dream. Here, they recall to me even lovolier
scenes in Italy atmospheres richer than the painter s pallet can
imitate, and ruins and temples whose ivy-grown and melancholy
grandeur are but feebly copied at the best.
Come, Karl ! I am bewildered with these pictures. You
have twenty such galleries in Vienna, you say ! I have seen
enough for to-day, however, and we will save the Belvidere till
to-morrow. Here ! pay the servitor, and the footman, and the
porter, and let us get into the open air. How common look
your Viennese after the celestial images we have left behind I
138 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN.
And, truly, this is the curse of refinement. The faces we
should have loved else, look dull ! The forms that were graceful
before, move somehow heavily. I have entered a gallery ere
LOW, thinking well of a face that accompanied me, and I have
learned indifference to it, by sheer comparison, before coming
away.
We return through the Kohlmarket, one of the most fashionable
streets of Vienna. It is like a fancy ball. Hungarians, Poles,
Croats, Wallachians, Jews, Moldavians, Greeks, Turks, all
dressed in their national and striking costumes, promenade up
and down, smoking all, and none exciting the slightest observa
tion. Every third window is a pipe-shop, and they bhow, by
their splendor and variety, the expensiveness of the passion.
Some of them are marked " two hundred dollars." The streets
reek with tobacco smoke. Yon never catch a breath of untainted
air within the Glacis. You.- hbte.\, your cafe, your coach, your
friend, are all redolent of tV bWtfa ^i^^^infi; odor.
LETTER XV,
The Palace of Schoenbrunn Ilietzing, the Summer Retreat of tlie Wealthy Viennese
Country-IIouse of the American Consul Specimen of Pure Domestic Happiness in a
German Family Splendid Village Ball Substantial Fare for the Ladies Curious
Fashion of Cushioning the Windows German Grief The Upper Belvidere Palace-
Endless Quantity of Pictures.
DROVE to Schotiibrunn. It is a princely palace, some three
miles from the city, occupied at present by the emperor and his
court. Napoleon resided here during his visit to Vienna, and
here his son died the two circumstances which alone make it
worth much trouble to see. The afternoon was too cold to hope
to meet the emperor in the grounds, and being quite satisfied
with drapery arid modern paintings, I contented myself with
having diivori through the court, and kept on to Ilietzing.
This is a small village of country-seats within an hour s drive
of the city another Jamaica-Plains, or Dorchester in the
neighborhood of Boston. It is the summer retreat of most of
the rank and fashion of Vienna. The American consul has here
a charming country-house, buried in trees, where the few of our
countrymen who travel to Austria find the most hospitable of
welcomes. A bachelor friend of mine from New York is
domesticated in the village with a German family. I was struck
140 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
with the Americanism of their manners. The husband and wife,
a female relative and an intimate friend of the family, were
sitting in the garden, engaged in grave, quiet, sensible conversa
tion. They had passed the afternoon together. Their manners
were affectionate to each other, but serious and respectful.
When I entered, they received me with kindness, and the
conversation was politely changed to French, which they all spoke
fluently. Topics were started, in which it was supposed I would
be interested, and altogether the scene was one of the simplest
and purest domestic happiness. This seems to you, I dare say,
like the description of a very common thing, but I have not
seen such a one before since I left my country. It is the first
family I have found in two years travel who lived in, and
seemed sufficient for, themselves. It came over me with a kind
of feeling of refreshment.
In the evening there was a ball at a public room in the village.
It was built in the rear of a cafe, to which we paid abuut thirty
cents for entrance. I was not prepared for the splendor with
which it was got up. The hall was very large and of beautiful
proportions, built like the interior of a temple, with columns on
the four sides. A partition of glass divided it from a supper-
room equally large, in which were set out perhaps fifty tables,
furnished with a carle, from which each person ordered his supper
when he wished it, after the fashion of a restaurant. The best
baud in Vienna filled the orchestra, led by the celebrated
Strauss, who has been honored for his skill with presents from
half the monarchs of Europe.
The ladies entered, dressed in perfect taste, a la Parisiennc,
but the gentlemen (hear it, Basil Hall and Mrs. Trollope !)
came in frock coats and loots, and danced with their hats on !
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE.
It was a public ball, and there was, of course, a great mixture
of society ; but 1 was asMired that it was attended constantly by
the most respectable people of the village, and was as respectable
as anything of the kind in the middle classes. There were,
certainly, many ladies in the company, of eleirant manners and
appearance, and among the gentlemen I recognised two attaches
to tin* French embassy, whom I had known in Paris, and several
Austrian gentlemen of rank were pointed out to me amonir the
dancers. The galopade and the waltz were the only dances, and
dirty boots and hats to the contrary notwithstanding, it was the
best waltzing I ever saw. They danced with a soul.
The best part, of it was the supper. They danced and eat
danced and eat, the evening through. It was quite the more
important entertainment of the two. The most delicate ladies
prest nt returned three and four times to the supper, ordering
fried chicken, salads, cold meats, and beer, again and again, as if
every waltz created a fresh appetite. The bill was called for,
the* ladies assisted in making the change, the tankard was
drained, and off they strolled to the ball-room to engage with
renewed spirit in the dance. And these, positively, were ladies
who, in dress, manners, and modest demeanor, might pass
uncriticised in any society in the world ! Their husbands and
brothers attended them, and no freedom was attempted, and I am
sure it would not have been permitted even to speak to a lady
without a formal introduction.
^\ e left most of the company supping at a late hour, and I
drove into the city, amused with the ball, and reconciled to any
or all of the manners which travellers in America find so
peculiarly entertaining.
142 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
These cold winds from the Danube have given me a
rheumatism. I was almost reconciled to it this morning,
however, by a curtain-scene which I should have missed but for
its annoyance. I had been driven out of my bed at daylight,
and was walking my room between the door and the window,
when a violent knocking in the street below arrested my
attention. A respectable family occupies the house opposite,
consisting of a father and mother and three daughters, the least
attractive of whom has a lover. I cannot well avoid observing
them whenever I am in my room, for every house in Vienna has
a leaning cushion on the window for the elbows, and the ladies
of all classes are upon them the greater part of the day. A
handsome carriage, servants in livery, and other circumstances,
leave no doubt in my mind that my neighbors are rather of the
better class.
The lover stood at the street door with a cloak on his arm, and
a man at his side with his portmanteau. .He was going on
a journey, and had come to take leave of his mistress. He
was let in by a gaping servant, who looked rather astonished at
the hour he had chosen for his visit, but the drawing-room
windows were soon thrown open, and the lady made her
appearance with her hair in papers and other marks of a hasty
toilet. My room is upon the same floor, and as I paced to and
tVo, the narrowness of the street in a manner forced them upon
my observation. The scene was a very violent one, and the
lady s tears flowed without restraint. After twenty partings at
least, the lover scarce getting to the door before he returned to
take another embrace, he finally made his exit, and the lady
threw herself on a sofa and hid her face for five minutes ! I
had began to feel for her, although her swollen eyes added very
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 143
unnecessarily to her usual plainness, when she rose and rang the
bell. The servant appeared and disappeared, and in a few-
minutes returned with a ham, a loaf of bread, and a mug of
beer ! and down sets my sentimental miss and consoles the
agony of parting with a meal that I would venture to substitute
in quantity for any working man s lunch.
I went to bed and rose at nine, and she was sitting at
breakfast with the rest of the family, playing as good a knifa
and fork as her sisters, though, I must admit, with an expression
of sincere melancholy in her countenance.
The scene, I am told by my friend the consul, was perfectly
German. They eat a great deal, he says, in affliction. The
poet writes :
" They are the silent griefs which cut the heart-strings."
For silent read hungry
The Upper Bclvidere, a palace containing eighteen large
rooms, filled with pictures. This is the imperial gallery and the
first in Austria. How can I give you an idea of perhaps five
hundred masterpieces ! You see here now, and by whom Italy
has been stripped. They have bought up all Flanders one
would think, too. In one room here are twenty-eight superb
Vandykes. Austria, in fact, has been growing rich while every
other nation on the continent has been growing poor, and she
has purchased the treasures of half the world at a discount.*
* Besides the three galleries of the Belvidere, Leichstenstein, and Ester-
hazy, which contain as many choice masters as Rome and Florence together,
144 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
It is wearisome writing of pictures, one s language is so
limited. I must mention one or two in this collection, however,
and I will let you off entirely on the Esterhazy, which is nearly
as fine.
Cleopatra dying. She is represented younger than usual, and
with a more fragile and less queenly style of beauty than is
common. It h a fair slight creature of seventeen, who looks
made to depend for her very breath upon affection, and is dying
of a broken heart. It is painted with great feeling, and with a
soft and delightful tone of color which is peculiar to the artist.
It is the third of Guido Cagnacci s pictures that I have seen.
One was the gem of a gallery at .Bologna, and was bought last
summer by Mr. Cabri o*" Boston.
Th i wife of Potiphar is usually represented as a woman of
midiidle age, witn a tuil, voluptuous person. Mne is so drawn, I
remember, in the famous picture in the Barberim palace at
Rome, said to be the most exprees-ive thing of its kind in the
world. Here is a painting less dangerously expressive of passion
bur full of beauty. She is eighteen at the mo>t, fair, delicate,
and st uggles with the slender boy, who seems scarce older than
herself, more like a sister from whom a mischievous brother has
stolen something in sport. Her partly disclosed figure has all
the incomplete slightness of a girl. The handsome features of
Joseph express more embarrassment than anger. The habitual
cou:tesy to his lovely mistress is sti l there, his glance is just
averted from the snowy bosom toward which he is drawn, but in
the snide-book refers the traveller to sixty-four private galleries of oil
},aintin.s. well worth his attention, a.,(Ho twenty-five private collections of
engravings and antiquities. We shall soon be obliged to goto Vienna to
study the arts, at this rate. They have only no sculpture.
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 145
the firmly curved lip the sense of duty sits clearly defined, and
evidently will triumph. I have forgotten the painter s name.
His model must have been some innocent girl whose modest
beauty led him away from his subject. Called by another name
the picture were perfect.
A portrait of Count Wallenstein, by Vandyke. It looks a
man, in the fullest sense of the word. The pendant to it is the
Countess Turentaxis, and she is a woman he might well have
loved calm, lofty, and pure. They are pictures, I should think,
would have an influence on the character of those who saw them
habitually.
Here is a curious picture by Schnoer Mephisiophdes tempting
Faust. The scholar sits at his table, with a black letter volume
open before him, and apparatus of all descriptions around. The
devil has entered in the midst of his speculations, dressed in
black like a professor, and stands waiting the decision of Faust,
who gazes intently on the manuscript held in his hand. His
fingers are clenched, his eyes start from his head, his feet are
braced, and the devil eyes him with a> side glance, in which
malignity and satisfaction are admirably mingled. The features
of Faust, are emaciated, and show the agitation of his soul very
powerfully. The points of his compasses, globes, and instru
ments, emit electric sparks toward the infernal visiter ; his lamp
burns blue, and the picture altogether has the most diabolical
effect. It is quite a large painting, and just below, by the same
artist, hangs a small, simple, sweet Madonna. It is a singular
contrast in subjects by the same hand.
A portrait of the Princess Esterhazy, by Angelica Kauffman
a beautiful woman, painted in the pure, touching style of that
interesting artist.
7
14 6 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
Then comes a Cleopatra dropping the p*arl into the cup. How
often, and how variously, and how admirably always, the
Egyptian queen is painted ! I never have seen an indifferent
one. In this picture the painter seems to have lavished all he
could conceive of female beauty upon his subject. She is a
glorious creature. It reminds me of her own proud description
of herself, when she is reproaching Antony to one of her maids,
in " The False One" of Beaumont and Fletcher :
To prefer
The lustre of a little trash, Arsinoe,
Before the life of love and soul of beauty /"
I have marked a great many pictures in this collection I can
not describe without wearying you, yet I feel unwilling to let
them go by. A female, representing religion, feeding a dove
from a cup, a most lovely thing by Guido ; portraits of Gerard
Douwand Rembrandt, by themselves ; Rubens children, a boy
and girl ten or twelve years of age, one of the most finished
paintings I ever saw, and entirely free from the common
dropsical style of coloring of this artist ; another portrait of
Giorgione^ wife, the fiftieth that I have seen, at least, yet a face
of which one would never become weary ; a glowing landscape
by Fischer, the first by this celebrated artist I have met ; and last
(for this is mere catalogue-making), a large picture representing
the sitting of the English parliament in the time of Pitt. It
contains about a hundred portraits, among which those of Pitt
and Fox are admirable. The great prime minister stands
speaking in the foreground, and Fox sits on the opposite side of
the house listening attentively with half a smile on his features
It is a curious picture to find in Vienna.
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 147
One thing more, however a Venus, by Lampi. It kept me a
great while before it. She lies asleep on a rich couch, and,
apparently in her dream, is pressing a rose to her bosom, while
one delicate foot, carelessly thrown back, is half imbedded in a
superb cushion supporting a crown and sceptre. It is a lie, by
all experience. The moral is false, but the picture is delicious.
LETTER XVI,
Departure from Vienna The Ell-Wagon Motley quality of the passengers-Thunder-
Btorm in the Mountains of Styria Trieste Short beds of the Germans Grotto of
Adelsburgh Curious Bail-Room in the Cavern Nautical preparations for a Dance on
board the United States" swept away by the Bora Its successful termination.
I LEFT Vienna at daylight in a diligence nearly as capacious
as a steamboat inaptly called the ett- wagon. A Friuli count,
with a y>ai- of cavalry luustacbus, his wife, a pretty Viennese of
eighteen, scarce married a year, two fashionable-looking young
Russians, an Austrian midshipman, a fat Gratz lawyer, a trader
from the Danube, and a young Bavarian student, going to seek his
fortune in Egypt, were my companions. The social habits of
continental travellers had given me thus much information by the
end of the first post.
We drove on with German regularity, three days and three
nights, eating four meals a-day (and very good ones), and
improving hourly in our acquaintance. The Russians spoke all
our languages. The Friulese and the Bavarian spoke everything
but English, and the lady, the trader, and the Gratz avocat, were
confined to their vernacular. It was a pretty idea of Babel
when the conversation became general.
We were coursino- the bank of a river, in one of the romantic
SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN. 149
passes of the mountains of Styria, with a dark thunder-storm
gathering on the summit of a crag overhanging us. I was
pointing out to one of my companions a noble ruin of a castle
seated very loftily on the edge of one of the precipices, when a
streak of the most vivid lightning shot straight upon the northern
most turret, and the moment after several large masses rolled
slowly down the mountain-side. It was so like the scenery in a
play, that I looked at my companion with half a doubt that it
was some optical delusion. It reminded me of some of Martin s
engravings. The sublime is so well imitated in our day that one
is less surprised than he would suppose when nature produces
the reality.
The night was very beautiful when we reached the summit of
the mountain above Trieste. The new moon silvered the little
curved bay below like a polished shield, and right in the path of
its beams lay the two frigates like a painting. I must confess
that the comfortable cot swinging in the ward-room of the
" United States" was the prominent thought in my mind as I
gazed upon the scene. The fatigue of three days and nights
hard driving had dimmed my eye for the picturesque. Leaving
my companions to the short beds* and narrow coverlets of a
German hotel, I jumped into the first boat at the pier, and in a
few minutes was alongside the ship. How musical is the hail of
a .sentry in one s native tongue, after a short habitation to the
jargon of foreign languages ! " Boat ahoy !" It made my heart
leap. The officers had just returned from Venice, some over
* A German bed is never over five feet in length, and proportionably
narrow. The sheets, blankets, and coverlets, are cut exactly to the size of
the bed s surface, so that there is no tucking up. The bed-clothes seem made
for cradles. It is easy to imagine how a tall person sleeps in them.
150 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
land by the Friuli, and some by the steamer through the gulf,
and were sitting round the table laughing with professional
merriment over their various adventures. It was getting back to
country and friends and home.
I accompanied the commodore s family yesterday in a visit to
the Grotto of Adelsburg. It is about thirty miles back into the
Friuli mountains, near the province of Cariola. We arrived at
the nearest tavern at three in the afternoon, and subscribing our
names upon the magistrate s books, took four guides and the
requisite number of torches, and started on foot. A half hour s
walk brought us to a large rushing stream, which, after turning
a mill, disappeared with violence into the mouth of a broad
cavern, sunk in the base of a mountain. An iron gate opened
on the nearest side^ and lighting our torches, we received an
addition of half a dozen men to our party of guides, and entered.
We descended for ten or fifteen minutes, through a capacious
gallery of rock, up to the ancles in mud, and feeling continually
the drippings exuding from the roof, till by the echoing murmurs
of dashing water we found ourselves approaching the bed of a
subterraneous river. We soon -emerged in a vast cavern, whose
height, though we had twenty torches, was lost in the darkness.
The river rushed dimly below us, at the depth of perhaps fifty
feet, partially illuminated by a row of lamps, hung on a slight
wooden bridge by which we were to cross to the opposite side.
We descended by a long flight of artificial stairs, and stood
upon the bridge. The wildness of the scene is indescribable.
A lamp or two glimmered faintly from the lofty parapet from
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 151
which we had descended, the depth and breadth of the sur
rounding cave could only be measured by the distance of the
echoes of the waters, and beneath us leaped and foamed a dark
river, which sprang from its invisible channel, danced a moment
in the faint light of our lamps, and was lost again instantly in
darkness. It brought with it, from the green fields through
which it had come, a current of soft warm air, peculiarly
delightful after the chilliness of the other parts of the cavern ;
there was a smell of new-mown hay in it which seemed lost in
the tartarean blackness around.
Our guides led on, and we mounted a long staircase on the
opposite side of the bridge. At the head of it stood a kind of
monument, engraved with the name of the emperor of Austria,
by whose munificence the staircase had been cut and the
conveniences for strangers provided. We turned hence to the
right, and entered a long succession of natural corridors, roofed
with stalactites, with a floor of rock and mud, and so even and
wide that the lady under my protection had seldom occasion to
leave my arm. In the narrowest part of it, the stalactites
formed a sort of reversed grove, with the roots in the roof.
They were of a snowy white, and sparkled brilliantly in the light
of the torches. One or two had reached the floor, and formed
slender and beautiful sparry columns, upon which the names of
hundreds of visitors were written in pencil.
The spars grew white as we proceeded, and we were con
stantly emerging into large halls of the size of handsome drawing-
rooms, whose glittering roofs, and sides lined with fantastic
columns, seemed like the brilliant frost-work of a crystallized
cavern of ice. Some of the accidental formations of the
stalagmites were very curious. One large area was filled with
152 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
them of the height of small plants. It was called by the guides
the u English Garden." At the head of another saloon, stood a
throne, with a stalactite canopy above it, s-o like the work of
art, that it seemed as if the sculptor had but left the finishing
undone.
We returned part of the way we had come, and took another
branch of the grotto, a little more on the descent. A sign above
informed us that it was the " road to the infernal regions." We
walked on an hour at a quick pace, stopping here and there to
observe the oddity of the formations. In one place, the stalactites
had enclosed a room, leaving only small openings between the
columns, precisely lik the grating of a prison. In another, the
ceiling lifted out of the reach of torch-light, and far above us we
heard the deep-toned beat as upon a muffled bell. It was a thin
circular .sheet of spar, called u the bell," to which one of the
guides had mounted, sti iking upon it with a billet of wood.
We came after a while to a deeper descent, which opened into
a magnificent and spacious hall. It is called " the ball-room,"
and used as such once a year, on the occasion of a certain lilyrian
festa. The floor has been cleared of stalagmites, the roof and
sides are ornamented beyond all art with glittering spars, a
natural gallery with a balustrade of stalactites contains t;>o
u.clu Stra, and side-rooms are all around where supper might be
iai 1, and dressing-rooms offered in the style of a palace. I can
imagine nothing more magnificent than such a scene. A literal
description of it even would read like a fairy tale.
A little farther on, we came to a perfect representation of a
waterfall. The impregnated water had fallen on a declivity, and
with a slightly ferruginous tinge of yellow, poured over in the
most natural resemblance to a cascade after a rain. We pro-
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 153
ceeded for ten or fifteen minutes, and found a small room like a
chapel, with a pulpit, in which stood one of the guides, who gave
us, as we stood beneath, an Illyrian exhortation. There was a
sounding-board above, and I have seen pulpits in old gorhic
churches that seemed at a first glance, to have less method in their
architecture. The last thing we reached, was the most beautiful.
From the cornice of a lung gallery, hung a thin, translucent
sheet of spar, in the graceful and waving folds of a curtain ;
with a lamp behind, the hand could be seen through any
part of it. It was perhaps twenty feet in length, and hung five
or six feet down from the roof of the cavern. The most singular
part of it was the fringe. A ferruginous stain ran through it
from one end to the other, with the exactness of a drawn line,
and thence to the curving edge a most delicate rose-teint faded
gradually down like the last flush of sunset through a silken
curtain. Had it been a work of art, done in alabaster, and
stained with the pencil, it would have been thought admirable.
The guide wished us to proceed, but our feet were wet, and
the air of the cavern was too chill. We were at leasts/bur miles ,
they told us, from the entrance, having walked briskly for
upward of two hours. The grotto is said to extend ten miles
under the mountains, and has never been thoroughly explored.
Parties have started with provisions, and passed forty-eight hours
in it without finding the extremity. It seems to me that any city
I ever taw might be concealed in its caverns. I have often tried
to conceive of the grottoes of Antiparos, and the celebrated
caverns of our own country, but I received here an entirely new
idea of the possibility of space under ground. There is no
conceiving it unseen. The river emerges on the other side of
the mountain, seven or eight miles from its first entrance.
7*
154 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
We supped and slept at the little albergo of the village, and
returned the next day to an early dinner.
TRIESTE. A ball on board the United States. The guns
were run out of the ports ; the main and mizen-masts were wound
with red and white bunting ; the capstan was railed with arms
and wreathed with flowers ; the wheel was tied with nosegays ;
the American eagle stood against the mainmast, with a star of
midshipmen s swords glittering above it ; festoons of evergreens
were laced through the rigging ; the companion-way was arched
with hoops of green leaves and roses ; the decks were tastefully
chalked ; the commodore s skylight was piled with cushions and
covered with red damask for an ottoman ; seats were laid along
from one carronade to the other ; and the whole was enclosed
with a temporary tent lined throughout with showy flajrs, and
studded all over with bouquets of all the flowers of Illyria.
Chandeliers made of bayonets, battle-lanterns, and candles in any
quantity, were disposed all over the hall. A splendid supper was
set out on the gun-deck below, draped in with flags. Our own
and the Constellation s boats were to be at the pier at nine
o clock to bring off the ladies, and at noon every thing promised
of the brightest.
First, about four in the afternoon, came up a saucy-looking
cloud from the westernmost peak of the Friuli. Then followed
from every point toward the north, an extending edge of a broad
solid black sheet which rose with the regularity of a curtain, and
began to send down a wind upon us which made us look anxiously
to our ball-room bowlines. The midshipmen were all forward,
watching it from the forecastle. The lieutenants were in the
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 155
gangway, watching it from the ladder. The commodore looked
seriously out of the larboard cabin port. It was as grave a
ship s company as ever looked out for a shipwreck.
The country about Trieste is shaped like a bellows, and the
city and harbor lie in the nose. They have a wind that comes
down through the valley, called the " bora," which several times
in tiiu you- is strong cuou_li to lift people from their feet. We
could see, by the clouds of dust on the mountain roads, that it
was coming. At six o clock the shrouds began to creak ; the
white tops flew from the waves in showers of spray, and the roof
of our sea- palace began to shiver in the wind. There was no
more hope. We had waited even too long. All hands were
called to take down the chandeliers, sword-stars, and ottomans,
and before it was half done, the storm was upon us ; the bunting
was flying and flapping, the nicely-chalked decks were swashed
with rain, and strown with leaves of flowers, and the whole struc
ture, the taste and labor of the ship s company for two days, was
a watery wreck.
Lieutenant C , who had had the direction of the whole,
was the officer of the deck. He sent for his pea-jacket, and
leaving him to pace out his watch among the ruins of his imagi
nation, we went below to get early to bed, and forgot our disap
pointment in sleep.
The next morning the sun rose without a veil. The " blue
Friuli" looked clear and fresh ; the southwest wind came over
softly from the shore of Italy, and we commenced retrieving our
disaster with elastic spirit. Nothing had suffered seriously except
the flowers, and boats were despatched ashore for fresh supplies,
while the awnings were lifted higher and wider than before, the
bright-colored flags replaced, the arms polished and arranged in
156 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
improved order, and the decks re-chalked with new devices. At
six in the evening everything was swept up, and the ball-room
astonished even ourselves. It was the prettiest place for a dance
in the world.
The ship has an admirable band of twenty Italians collected
from Naples and other ports, and a fanciful orchestra was raised
for them on the larboard side of the mainmast. They struck up
a march as the first boatful of ladies stepped upon the deck, and
in the course of half an hour the waltzing commenced with at
least two hundred couples, while the ottoman and seats under the
hammock-cloths were filled with spectators. The frigate has a
lofty poop, and there was room enough upon it for two quadrille?
after it had served as a reception-room. It was edged with a
temporary balustrade, wreathed with flowers and studded with
lights, and the cabin beneath (on a level with the main ball
room), was set out with card-tables. From the gangway
entrance, the scene was like a brilliant theatrical ballet.
An amusing part of it was the sailors imitation on the
forward decks. They had taken the waste shrubbery and ever
greens, of which there was a great quantity, and had formed a
sort of grove, extending all round. It was arched with festoons
of leaves, with quantities of fruit tied among them ; and over the
entrance was suspended a rough picture of a frigate with the
inscription, " Free trade and sailors 1 rights." The forecastle
was ornamented with cutlasses, and one or two nautical trarispar-
encii S, with pistols and miniature ships interspersed, and the
whole lit up handsomely. The men were dressed in their white
duck trowsers and blue jackets, and sat round on the guns play
ing at draughts, or listening to the music, or gazing at the ladies
constantly promenading fore and aft, and to me this was one of
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 157
the most interesting parts of the spectacle. Five hundred
weather-beaten and manly faces are a fine sight anywhere.
The dance went gaily on. The reigning belle was an Ameri
can, but we had lovely women of all nations among our guests.
There are several wealthy Jewish families in Trieste, and their
dark-eyed daughters, we may say at this distance, are full of the
thoughtful loveliness peculiar to the race. Then we had Illyri-
ans and Germans, and Terpsichore be our witness how they
danced! My travelling companion, the Count of Friuli, was
there ; and his little Viennese wife, though she spoke no Chris
tian language, danced as featly as a fairy. Of strangers passing
through the Trieste, we had several of distinction. Among
them was a fascinating Milanese marchioness, a relative of Man-
zoni s, the novelist (and as enthusiastic and eloquent a lover of
her country as I ever listened to on the subject of oppressed
Italy), and two handsome young men, the counts Neipperg, sons-
in-law to Maria Louisa, who amused themselves as if they had
seen nothing better in the little duchy of Parma.
We went below at midnight, to supper, and the ladies came up
with renewed spirit to the dance. It was a brilliant scene
indeed. The officers of both ships, in full uniform, the gentle
men from shore, mostly military, in full dress, the gayety of the
bright red bunting, laced with white and blue, and studded,
wherever they would stand, with flowers, and the really uncommon
number of beautiful women, with the foreign features and com
plexions so rich and captivating to our eyes, produced altogether
an ffect unsurpassed by any thing I have ever seen even at the
court fetes of Europe. The daylight gun fired at the close of a
galopade, and the crowded boats pulled ashore with their lovely
freight by the broad light of morning.
LETTER XVII
Trieste, its Extensive Commerce Hospitality of Mr. Moore Euins of Pola Immense
Amphitheatre Village of Pola Coast of Dalmatia, of Apulia and Calabria -Otraa to
Sails for the Isles of Greece.
TRIESTE is certainly a most agreeable place. Its streets are
beautifully paved and clean, its houses new and well built, and
its shops as handsome and as well stocked with every variety of
things as those of Paris. Its immense commerce brings all
nations to its port, and it is quite the commercial centre of the
continent. The Turk smokes cross-legged in the cafe, the Eng
lish merchant has his box in the country and his snug establish
ment in town, the Italian has his opera and his wife her cavalier,
the Yankee captain his respectable boarding-house, and the
German bis four meals a day at a hotel dyed brown with tobacco.
Every nation is at home in Trieste.
The society is beyond what is common in a European mercan
tile city. The English are numerous enough to support a
church, and the circle of which our hospitable consul is the
centre, is one of the most refined and agreeable it has been my
happiness to meet. The friends of Mr. Moore have pressed
every possible civility and kindness upon the commodore and his
officers, and his own house has been literally our home on shore
SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN. 159
It is the curse of this volant life, otherwise so attractive, that its
frequent, partings are bitter in proportion to its good fortune.
We make friends but to lose them.
We got under way with a light breeze this morning, and
stole gently out of the bay. The remembrance of a thou
sand kindnesses made our anchors lift heavily. We waved our
handkerchiefs to the consul, whose balconies were filled with his
charming family watching our departure, and, with a freshening
wind, disappeared around the point, and put up our helm for
Pola.
The ruins of Pola, though among the first in the world, are
seldom visited. They lie on the eastern shore of the Adriatic,
at the head of a superb natural bay, far from any populous
town, and are seen only by the chance trader who hugs the
shore for the land-breeze, or the Albanian robber who looks
down upon them with wonder from the mountains. What their
age is I caimot say nearly. The country was conquered by the
Romans about one hundred years before the time of our Savior
and the amphitheatre and temples were probably erected soon
after.
We ran into the bay, with the other frigate close astern, and
| anchored off a small green island which shuts in the inner
harbor. There is deep water up to the ancient town on either
side, and it seems as if nature had amused herself with construct-
ing a harbor incapable of improvement. Pola lay about two miles
from the sea.
It was just evening, and we deferred our visit to the ruins till
morning. The majestic amphitheatre stood on a gentle ascent,
160 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
a mile from the ship, goldenly bright in the flush of sunset ; the
pleasant smell of the shore stole over the decks, and the bands
of the two frigates played alternately the evening through. The
i eceding mountains of Istria changed their light blue veils grad
ually to gray and sable, and with the pure stars of these enchanted
seas, and the shell of a new moon bending over Italy in the west,
it was such a night as one remembrances like a friend. The
Constellation was to part from us here, leaving us to pursue our
voyage to Greece. There were those on board who had bright
ened many of our " hours ashore," in these pleasant wanderings.
We pulled back to our own ship, after a farewell visit, with
regrets deepened by crowds of pleasant remembrances.
The next morning we pulled ashore to the ruins. The amphi
theatre was close upon the sea, and, to my surprise and pleasure,
there was no cicerone. A contemplative donkey was grazing
under the walls, but there was no other living creature near.
We looked at its vast circular wall with astonishment. The
coliseum at Rome, a larger building of the same description, is,
from the outside, much less imposing. The whole exterior wall,
a circular pile one hundred feet high in front, and of immense
blocks of marble and granite, is as perfect as when the Roman
workman hewed the last stone. The interior has been nearly all
removed. The well-hewn blocks of the many rows of seats were
too tempting, like those of Rome, to the barbarians who were
building near. The circle of the arena, in which the gladiators
and wild beasts of these then new-conquered provinces fought, is
still marked by the foundations of its barrier. It measures two
hundred and twenty-three feet. Beneath it is a broad and deep
canal, running toward the sea, filled with marble columns, still
erect upon their pedestals, used probably for the introduction of
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE.
water for the naumachia. The whole circumference of the
amphitheatre is twelve hundred and fifty-six feet, and the thick
ness of the exterior wall seven feet six inches. Its shape is
oblong, the length being four hundred and thirty-six feet, and the
breadth three hundred and fifty. The measurements were taken
by the captain s orders, and are doubtless critically correct.
We loitered about the ruins several hours, finding in every
direction the remains of the dilapidated interior. The sculpture
upon the fallen capitals and fragments of frieze was in the high
est style of ornament. The arena is overgrown with rank grass,
and the crevices in the walls are filled with flowers. A vineyard,
with its large blue grape just within a week of ripeness, encircles
the rear of the amphitheatre. The boat s crew were soon
among them, much better amused than they could have been by
all the antiquities iu Istria.
We walked i ;om the amphitheatre to the town ; a miserable
village built ruouiid two antique temples, one of which still
stands alone, with its fine Corinthian columns, looking just ready
to crumble. The other is incorporated barbarously with the
guard-house of the place, and is a curious mixture of beautiful
sculpture and dirty walls. The pediment, which is still perfect,
in the rear of the building, is a piece of carving, worthy of the
choicest cabinet of Europe. The thieveries from the amphithe
atre are easily detected. There is scarce a beggar s house in the
village, that does not show a bit or two of sculptural marble upou
its front.
At the end of the village stands a triumphal arch, recording
the conquests of a Roman consul. Its front, toward the town,
is of Parian marble, beautifully chiselled. One recognizes the
solid magnificence of that glorious nation, when ho looks on these
162 SUMMER CRULSE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
relics of their distant conquests, almost perfect after eighteen
hundred years. It seems as if the foot-print of a Roman were
eternal.
We stood out of the little bay, and with a fresh wind, ran
down the coast of Dalmatia, and then crossing to the Italian side,
kept down the ancient shore of Apulia and Calabria to the
mouth of the Adriatic. I have been looking at the land with the
glass, as we ran smoothly along, counting castle after castle built
boldly on the sea, and behind them, on the green hills, the
thickly built villages with their smoking chimneys and tall
spires, pictures of fertility and peace. It was upon these shores
that the Barbary corsairs descended so often during the last
century, carrying off for eastern harems, the lovely women of
Italy. We are just off Otranto, and a noble old castle stands
frowning from the extremity of the Cape. We could throw a
shot into its embrasures as we pass. It might be the u Castle of
Otranto," for the romantic locks it has from the sea.
We have out-sailed the Constellation, or we should part from
her here. Her destination is France ; and we should ba to
morrow amid the Aisles of Greece. The pleasure of realizing
the classic dreams of one s boyhood, is not to be expressed i-i a
line. I look forward to the succeeding month or two as to the
L : d-letter" chapter of my life. Whatever I may find the
, . -a.i-.y, my heart has glowed warmly and delightfully with the
anticipation. Commodore Patterson is, fortunately for me, a
scholar and a judicious lover of the arts, and loses no opportu
nity, consistently with his duty, to give his officers the means of
* It was to this point (the ancient Hydranttim) that Pyrrhus proposed to
build a bridge from Greece only sixty miles ! He deserved to ride on an
elephant.
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE.
examining the curious and the beautiful in these interesting seas.
The cruise, thus far, has been one of continually mingled pleas
ure and instruction, and the best of it, by every association of
our early days, is to come.
LETTER XYII1,
The Ionian Isles Lord and Lady Nugent Corfu Greek and English Soldiers Cock-
neyism The Gardens of Alcinous English Officers Albanians Dionisio Salomos, the
Greek Poet Greek Ladies Dinner with the Artillery Mess.
THIS is proper dream-land. The " Isle of Calypso,"* folded
in a drapery of blue air, lies behind, fading in the distance, u the
Acroceraunian mountains of old name," which caught Byron s
eye as he entered Greece, are piled up before us on the Albanian
shore, and the Ionian sea is rippling under our bow, breathing,
from every wave, of Homer, and Sappho, and "sad Penelope."
Once more upon Childe Harold s footsteps. I closed the book at
Rome, after following him for a summer through Italy, confess
ing, by many pleasant recollections, that
u Not in vain
He wore his sandal shoon, and scallop shell."
I resume it here, with the feeling of Thalaba when he caught
sight of the green bird that led him through the desert. It lies
open on my knee at the second canto, describing our position,
even to the hour :
* Fano, which disputes it with Gozo, near Malta.
SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN. 165
; T\vas on a Grecian autumn s gentle eve
Childe Harold hailed Leucadia s cape afar ;
A spot he longed to see, nor cared to leave."
"VVe shall lie off-and-on to-night, and go in to Corfu in the morn
ing. Two Turkish vessels-of-war, with the crescent flag flying,
lie in a small cove a mile off, on the Albanian shore, and by the
discharge of musketry our pilot presumes that they have accom
panied the sultan s tax-gatherer, who gets nothing from these wild
people without fighting for it.
The entrance { Co u is considered pretty, but the English
flag flying over the torts, divested ancient Corcyra of its poetical
associations, It looked to me a common-place seaport, glaring in
the sun. The " Gardens of Alcinous" were here, but who could
imagine them, with a red-coated sentry posted on every corner
of the. island.
The lord high commissioner of the Ionian Isles, Lord Nugent,
came off to the ship this morning in a kind of Corfiate boat,
called a Scampavia, a greyhound-looking craft, carrying sail
enough for a schooner. She cut the water like the wing of a
swallow. His lordship was playing sailor, and was dressed like,
the mate of one of our coasters, and his manners were as bluff.
He has a fine person, however, and is said to be a very elegant
man when he chooses it. He is the author of the " Life and
Times of John Hampden," and Whig, of conrse. Southey has,
lately reviewed him rather bitterly in the Quarterly. Lady N.
is literary, too, and they have written between them a book of
166 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
tales called (I think) " Legends of the Lilies," of which her lady
ship s half is said to be the better.
Went on shore for a walk. Greeks and English soldiers mis
oddly together. The streets are narrow, and crowded with them
in about equal proportions. John Bull retains his red face, and
learns no Greek. We passed through the Bazar, and bad Eng
lish was the universal language. There is but one square in the
town, and round its wooden fence, enclosing a dusty area, with-
i
out a blade of grass, were riding the English officers, while the
regimental band played in the centre. A more arid and cheer
less spot never pained the eye. The appearance of the officers,
retaining all their Bond street elegance and mounted upon Eng
lish hunters, was in singular contrast with the general shabbiness
of the houses and people. I went into a shop at a corner to in
quire for the residence of a gentleman to whom I had a letter.
" It s werry ot, sir," said a little red-faced woman behind the
counter, as I went out, " perhaps you d like a glass of ??ater."
It was odd to hear the Wapping dialect in the " isles of Greece."
She sold green groceries, and wished me to recommend her to
the ^officers. .Mrs. Mary FlacISs " grocery" in the gardens of
Alcinous.
" The wild Albanian kirtled to the knee," walks through the
streets of Corfu, looking unlike and superior to everything about
him. I met several in returning to the boat. Their gait is very
lofty, and the snow-white juktanilla, or kirtle, with, its thousand
folds, sways from side to side, as they walk, with a most showy
effect. Lord Byron was very much captivated with these people,
whose capital (just across the strait from Corfu) he visited once
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 167
or twice in his travels through Greece. Those I have seen are
all very tall, and have their prominent features, with keen eyes
and limbs of the most muscular proportions. The common Eng
lish soldiers look like brutes beside them.
The placard of a theatre hung on the walls of a church. A
rude picture of a battle between the Greeks and Turks hung
above it, and beneath was written, in Italian, a i-Jonor the, repre
sentation of the immortal deeds of your hero JMarco Bozzaris."
It is singular that even a pack of slaves can find pleasure in a
remembrance that reproaches every breath they draw.
k Called on Lord Nugent with the commodore. The governor,
sailor, author, antiquary, nobleman (for he is all these, and a
jockey, to boot), received us in a calico morning frock, with his
breast and neck bare, in a large library lumbered with half-
packed antiquities and strewn with straw. Books, miniatures of
his family (a lovely one of Lady Nugent among them), Whig
pamphlets, riding-whips, spurs, minerals, hammer and nails, half-
eaten cakes, plans of fortifications, printed invitations to his own
balls and dinners, military reports, Turkish pistols, and, lastly,
his own just printed answer to Mr. Southey s review of his book,
occupied the table. He was reading his own production when we
entered. His lordship mentioned, with great apparent satisfac
tion, a cruise he had taken some years ago with Commodore
Chauncey. The conversation was rather monologue than dia
logue ; his excellency seeming to think, with Lord Bacon, that
" the honorablest part of talk was to give the occasion, and then
to moderate and pass to something else." He started a topic,
exhausted and changed it with the same facility and rapidity with
which he sailed his scampavia. An engagement with the artillery-
mess prevented my acceptance of an invitation to dine with him
168 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
to-morrow, a circumstance T rather regret, as he is said to be, at
his own table, one of the most polished and agreeable men of his
time.
Thank Heaven, revolutions do not affect the climate ! The
isle that gave a shelter to the storm-driven Ulysses is an English
barrack, but the same balmy air that fanned the blind eyes of old
Homer blows over it still. " The breezes," says Landor, beauti
fully, " are the children of eternity." I never had the hair lifted
so pleasantly from my temples as to-night, driving into the inte
rior of the island. The gardening of Alcinous seems to have
been followed up by nature. The rhododendron, the tamarisk,
the almond, cypress, olive, and fig, luxuriate in the sweetest
beauty everywhere.
There was a small party in the evening at the house of the
gentleman who had driven me out ? and among other foreigners
present were the count Dionisio Salomos, of Zante, and the Cava-
liere Andrea Mustoxidi, both men of whom I had often heard.
The first is almost the only modern Greek poet, and his u hymns,"
principally patriotic, are in the common dialect of the country,
and said to be full of fire. He is an excessively handsome man,
with large, dark eyes, almost effeminate in their softness. His fea
tures are of the clearest Greek chiselling, as faultless as a statue,
and are stamped with nature s most attractive marks of refine
ment and feeling. I can imagine Anacreon to have resembled
him.
Mustoxidi has been a conspicuous man in the late chapter of
Grecian history. He was much trusted by Capo d Istria, and
among other things had the whole charge of his school at Egiua.
An Italian exile (a Modenese, and a very pleasant fellow), took
rne aside when I asked something of his history, and told me a
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 169
story of him, which proves either that he was a dishonest man, or
(no new truth) that conspicuous men are liable to be abused.
A valuable donation of books was given by some one to the school
library. They stood on the upper shelves, quite out of reach,
and Mustoxidi was particular in forbidding all approach to them.
Some time after his departure from -the island, the library was
committed to the charge of another person, and the treasures of
the upper shelves were found to be painted boards ! His
physiognomy would rather persuade me of the truth of the story.
He is a small man, with a downcast look, and a sly, gray eye,
almost hidden by his projecting eyebrows. His features are
watched in vain for an open expression.
The ladies of the party were principally Greeks. None of
them were beautiful, but they had the melancholy, retired ex
pression of face which one looks for, knowing the history of their
nation. They are unwise enough to abandon their picturesque
national costume, and dress badly in the European style. The
servant-girls, with their hair braided into the folds of their tur
bans, and their open-laced bodices and sleeves, are much more
attractive to the stranger s eye. The liveliest of the party, a little
Zantiote girl jof eighteen, with eyes and eye-lashes that contra
dicted the merry laugh on her lips, sang us an Albanian song to
the guitar, very sweetly.
Dined to-day with the artillery-mess, in company with the
commodore and some of his officers. In a place like this, the
dinner is naturally the great circumstance of the day. The in
habitants do not take kindly to their masters, and there is next
to no society for the English. They sit down to their soup after
8
170 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
the evening drive, and seldom rise till midnight. It was a gay
dinner, as dinners will always be where the whole remainder of
what the " day may bring forth" is abandoned to them, and we
parted from our hospitable entertainers, after four or five hours
"measured with sands of gold." We must do the English the
justice of confessing the manners of their best bred men to be
the best in the world. It is inevitable that one should bear the
remainder of the nation little love. Neither the one class nor the
other, doubtless, will ever seek it at our hands. But mutual hos
pitality may soften so much of our intercourse as happens in the
traveller s way, and without loving John Bull better, all in all,
one soon finds out in Europe that the dog and the lion are not
more unlike, than the race of bagmen and runners with which
our country is overrun, and the cultivated gentlemen of England.
On my right sat a captain of the corps, who had spent the last
summer at the Saratoga Springs. We found any number of mu
tual acquaintances, of course, and I was amused with the impres
sions which some of the fairest of my friends had made upon a
man who had passed years in the most cultivated society of
Europe. He liked America with reservations. He preferred
our ladies to those of any other country except England, and he
had found more dandies in one hour in Broadway than he should
have met in a week in Kegent-street. He gave me a racy scene
or two from the City Hotel, in New York, but he doubted if the
frequenters of a public table in any country in the world were, on
the whole, so well-mannered. If Americans were peculiar for
anything, he thought it was for confidence in themselves and
tobacco-chewing.
LETTER XIX,
Corfu Unpopularity of British Rule Superstition of the Greeks Accuracy of the De
scriptions in the Odyssey Advantage of the Greek Costume The Paxian Isles Cape
Leucas, or Sappho s Leap Bay of Navarino, Ancient Pylos Modon Goran s Bay
Cape St. Angelo Isle of Cythera.
CORFU. Called on one of the officers of the tenth this morn
ing, and found lying on his table two books upon Corfu. They
were from the circulating library of the town, much thumbed,
and contained the most unqualified strictures on the English ad
ministration in the islands. In one of them, by a Count or
Colonel Boig de Sf. Vincent, a Frenchman, the Corfiotes were
taunted with their slavish submission, and called upon to shake
off the yoke of British dominion in the most inflammatory lan
guage. Such books in Italy or France would be burnt by tn
hangman, and prohibited on penalty of death. Here, v.H :
-haughty consciousness of superiority, which must be < alhn
enough to an Ionian who is capable of feeling, they circulate u: -
censured in two languages, and the officers of the abused govc 1 . n-
ment read them for their amusement, and return them coolly t >
go their rounds among the people. They have twenty-five hun
dred troops upon the island, and they trouble themselves little
about what is thought of them. They confess that their govern-
172 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
rnent is excessively unpopular, the officers are excluded from the
native society, and the soldiers are scowled upon in the streets
The body of St. Spiridion was carried through the streets of
Corfu to-day, sitting bolt upright in a sedan chair, and accom
panied by the whole population. lie is the great saint of the
Greek church, and such is his influence, that the English govern
ment thought proper, under Sir Frederick Adams administra
tion, to compel the officers to walk in the procession. The saint
was dried at his death, and makes a neat, black mummy, sans
eyes and nose, but otherwise quite perfect. He was carried to
day by four men in a very splendid sedan, shaking from side to
side with the motion, preceded by one of the bands of music
from the English regiments. Sick children were thrown under
the feet of the bearers, half dead people brought to the doors as
he passed, and every species of disgusting mummery practiced.
The show lasted about four hours, and was, on the whole, at
tended with more marks of superstition than anything I found in
Italy. I was told that the better educated Christians of tlr-
Greek church disbelieve the saint s miracles. The whole body
of the Corfiote ecclesiastics were in the procession, however.
I passed the first watch in the hammock-nettings to-nigh;,
enjoying inexpressibly the phenomena of lias brilliant climato.
The fctars seem burning like lamps in the absolute clearness of
the atmosphere. Meteors shoot constantly with a slow liquid
course, over the sky. The air comes off from the land laden
with the breath of the wild thyme, and the water around the ship
is another deep blue heaven, motionless with its studded
constellations. The frigate seems suspended between them.
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 173
We have little idea, while conning an irksome school-task, how
strongly the " unwilling lore" is rooting itself in the imagination.
The frigate lies perhaps a half mile from the most interesting
scenes of the Odyssey. I have been recalling from the long
neglected stores of memory, the beautiful descriptions of the
court of King Alcinous, and of the meeting of his matchless
daughter with Ulysses. The whole web of the poet s fable has
gradually unwound, and the lamps ashore, and the outline of the
hills, in the deceiving dimness of night, have entered into the
delusion with the facility of a dream. Every scene in Homer
may be traced to this day, the blind old poet s topography was so
admirable. It was over the point of land sloping down to the
right, that the Princess Nausicaa went with her handmaids to
wash her biidal robes in the running streams. The description
stiil guides the traveller to the spot where the damsels of the
royal maid spread the linen on the grass, and commenced the
sports that waked Ulysses from his slumbers in the bed of leaves.
Ashore with one of the officers this morning, amusing our
selves with trying on dresses in a Greek tailor s shop. It quite
puts one out of conceit with these miserable European fashions.
The easy and flowing juktanilla, the unembarrassed leggins, the
t>pen sleeve of the collarless jacket leaving the throat exposed,
and the handsome close-binding girdle from it, seems to me the
very dress dictated by reason and nature. The richest suit in
the shop, a superb red velvet, wrought with gold, was priced at
one hundred and forty dollars. The more sober colors were
much cheaper. A dress lasts several years.
174 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
We made our farewell visits to the officers of the English
regiments, who had overwhelmed us with hospitality during our
stay, and went on board to get under way with the noon breeze.
We were accompanied to the ship, not as the hero of Homer,
when he left the same port, by three damsels of the royal train,
bearing, " one a tunic, another a rich casket, and a third bread
and wine" for his voyage, but by Mrs. Thompson and Mrs.
"Wilson, soldiers wives, and washerwomen, with baskets of
hurriedly dried linen, pinned, every bundle, with a neat bill in
shillings and half-pence.
Ulysses slept all the way from Corcyra to Ithaca. He lost a
great deal of fine scenery. The passage between Corfu and
Albania is beautiful. We ran past the southern cape of the
island with a free wind, and are now off the Paxian Isles, where,
according to Plutarch, Emilanus, the rhetorician, voyaging by
night, " heard a voice louder than human, announcing the death
of Pan." A " schoolboy midshipman" is breaking the same
silence with " on deck, all hands ! on deck, all of you !"
Off the mouth of the Alpheus. If he still chases Arethusa
under the sej,, and she makes straight for Sicily, her bed is
beneath our keel. The moon is pouring her broad light over the
ocean, the shadows of the rigging on the deck lie in clear and
definite lines, the sailors of the watch sit around upon the guns
in silence, and the ship, with her clouds of snowy sail spread
aloft, is stealing through the water with the noiseless motion of a
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 175
swan. Even the gallant man-of-war seems steeped in the spirit
of the scene. The hour wants but an " Ionian Myrrha" to fill
the last void of the heart.
Cape Leucas on the lee the scene of Sappho s leap. We
have coursed down the long shore of ancient Leucadia, and the
precipice to which lovers came from all parts of Greece for an
oblivious plunge, is shining in the sun, scarce a mile from the
ship. The beautiful Grecian here sung her last song, and broke
her lyre and died. The leap was not always so tragical : there
are two lovers, at least, on record (Maces of Buthrotum, and
Cephalos, son of Deioneos), who survived the fall, and were
cured effectually by salt water. It was a common resource in
the days of Sappho, and Strabo says that they were accustomed
to check their descent by tying birds and feathers to their arms.
Females, he says, were generally killed by the rapidity of the
fall, their frames being too slight to bear the shock ; but the men
seldom failed to come safe to shore. The sex . has not lost its
advantages since the days of Phaon.
We have caught a glimpse of Ithaca through the isles, the
land
" Where sad Penelope o erlooked the wave,"
and which Ulysses loved, non quia larga, sed quia sua the most
natural of reasons. We lose Childe Harold s track here. He
turned to the left into the gulf of Lepanto. We shall find him
again at Athens. Missolonghi, where he died, lies about twenty
or thirty miles on our lee, and it is one,. of several places in the
gulf, that I regret to pass so near, unvisited.
176 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
Entering the bay of Navarino. A picturesque and precipitous
rock, filled with caves, nearly shuts the mouth of this ample
harbor. We ran so close to it, that it might have been touched
from the deck with a tandem whip. On a wild crag to the left,
a small, white marble monument, with the earth still fresh about
it, marks the grave of some victim of the late naval battle. The
town and fortress, miserable heaps of dirty stone, lie in the curve
of the southern shore. A French brig-of-war is at anchor in the
port, and broad, barren hills, stretching far away on every side,
complete the scene before us. We run up the harbor, and tack
to stand out again, without going ashore. Not a soul is to be
seen, and the bay seems the very sanctuary of silence. It is
difficult to conceive, that but a year or two ago, the combined
fleets of Europe, were thundering among these silent hills, and
hundreds of human beings lying in their blood, whose bones are
now whitening in the sea beneath. Our pilot was in the fight, on
board an English frigate. He has pointed out to us the position
of the different fleets, and among other particulars, he tells me,
that when the Turkish ships were boarded, Greek sailors were
found chained to the guns, who had been compelled, at the
muzzle of the pistol, to fight against the cause of their country.
Many of them must thus have perished in the vessels that were
sunk.
Navarino was the scene of a great deal of fighting, during the
late Greek revolution. It was invested, while in possession of
the Turks, by two thousand Pelopennesians and a band of
lonians, and the garrison were reduced to such a state of starva
tion, as to eat their slippers. They surrendered at last, under
promise that their lives should be spared ; but the news of the
massacre of the Greek patriarchs and clergy, at Adrianoplo, was
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 177
received at the moment, and the exasperated troops put their
prisoners to death, without mercy.
The peaceful aspect of the place is better suited to its poetical
associations. Navarino was the ancient Pylos, and it is here that
Homer brings Telemachus in search of his father. He finds old
Nestor and his sons sacrificing on the seashore to Neptune, with
nine altars, and at each five hundred men. I should think the
modern town contained scarce a twentieth of this number.
Rounding the little fortified town of Modon, under full sail.
It seems to be built on the level of the water, and nothing but
its high wall and its towers are seen from the sea. This, too,
has been a much contested place, and remained in possession of
the Turks till after the formation of the provisional government
under Mavrocordato. It forms the southwestern point of the
Morea, and is a town of great antiquity. King Philip gained his
first battle over the Athenians here, some thousands of years
ago ; and the brave old Minalis beat the Egyptian fleet in the
same bay, without doubt in a manner quite as deserving of as
long a remembrance. It is like a city of the dead we cannot
even see a sentinel on the wall.
Passed an hour in the mizen-chains with " the Corsair" in my
hand, and " Goran s Bay" opening on the lee. With what
exquisite pleasure one reads, when he can look off from the page,
and study the scene of the poet s fiction :
178" SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
" In Goran s bay floats many a galley light,
Through Coran s lattices the lamps burn bright,
For Seyd, the pacha, makes a feast to-night."
It is a small, deep bay, with a fortified town, on the western
shore, crowned on the very edge of the sea, with a single,
tall tower. A small aperture near the top, helps to realize
the Corsair s imprisonment, and his beautiful interview with
Gulnare :
" In the high chamber of his highest tower,
Sate Conrad fettered in the pacha s power," etc.
The Pirate s Isle is said to have been Poros, and the original
of the Corsair himself, a certain Hugh Crevelier, who filled the
.ZEgean with terror, not many years ago.
Made the Cape St. Angelo, the southern point of the
Peloponnesus, and soon after the island of Cythera, near which
Venus rose from the foam of the sea. We are now running
northerly, along the coast of ancient Sparta. It is a mountainous
country, bare and rocky, and looks as rude and hardy as the
character of its ancient sons. I have been passing the glass in
vain along. the coast, to find a tree. A small hermitage stands on
the desolate extremity of the Cape, and a Greek monk, the
pilot tells me, has lived there many years, who comes from his
cell, and stands on the rock with his arms outspread to bless the
passing ship. I looked for him in vain.
A French man-of-war bore down upon us a few minutes ago,
and saluted the commodore. lie ran so close, that we could sec
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 179
the features of his officers on the poop. It is a noble sijjlit at
sea, a fine ship passing, with all her canvass spread, with the
added rapidity of your own course and hers. The peal of the
guns in the midst of. the solitary ocean, had a singular effect
The echo came back from the naked shores of Sparta, with a
warlike sound, that might have stirred old Leonidas in his grave.
The smoke rolled away on the wind, and the noble ship hoisted
her royals once more, and went on her way. We are making
for Napoli di Romania -,vi ii a summer breeze, and hope to drop
anchor beneath its fortress, at sunset.
LETTER XX,
The Harbor of Napoli Tricoupi and Mavrocordato, Otho s Cabinet Counsellors Colonel
Gordon King Otbo The Misses Armanspergs Prince of Saxe Miaulis, the Greek
Admiral Excursion to Argos, the Ancient Terynthus.
NAPOLI DI ROMANIA. Anchored in the harbor of Napoli after
dark. An English frigate lies a little in, a French and Russian
brig-nf-war astern, and two Greek steamboats, King Otho s
yacht, and a quantity of caiques, fill the inner port. The fort
stands a hundred feet over our heads on a bold promontory, and
the rocky PaLm.idi soars a hundred feet still higher, on a crag
that, thrusts its head sharply into the clouds, as if it would lift
the little fortress out of eyesight. The town lies at the base of
tin mountain, an irregular looking heap of new houses ; and
here, at present, resides the boy-king of Greece, Otho the first.
His predecessors were Agamemnon and Perseu, who, some three
thousand years ago (more or less, I am not, ceitiin <-f my
chronology), reigned at Argos and Mycenae, within sight of hi<
present capitol.
Went ashore with the commodore, to call on Tricoupi and
Mavrocordato, the king s cabinet counsellors. WM found the
SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN. 181
former in a new stone house, slenderly furnished, and badly
painted, but with an entry full of servants, in handsome Greek
costumes. He received the commodore with the greatest friend
liness. He had dined on board the Constitution six years
before, when Ids prospects were less promising than now. He is
a short, stout man, of dark complexion, and very bright black
eyes, and looks very honest and very vulgar. He speaks English
perfectly. He shrugged his shoulders when the commodore
alluded to having left him fighting for a republic, and said
anything was better than anarchy. He spoke in the highest
terms of my friend, Dr. Howe (who was at Napoli with the
American provisions, when Grivas held the Palamidi.) Greece,
he said, had never a better friend. Madam Tricoupi (the
sister of Prince Mavrocordato) came in presently with two very
pretty children. She spoke French fluently, and seemed an
accomplished woman. Her family had long furnished the Prince
Hospodars of Wallachia, and though not a beautiful woman, she
has every mark of the gentle blood of the east. Colonel
Gordon, the famous Philhellene, entered, while we were there.
He was an intimate friend of Lord Byron s, and has expended
the best part of a large fortune in the Greek cause. He is
a plain man, of perhaps fifty, with red hair and freckled face, and
features and accent very Scotch. I liked his manners. He had
lately written a book upon Greece, which is well spoken of in
some review that has fallen in my way.
"Went thence to Prince Mavrocordato s. He occupies the
third story of a very indifferent house, furnished with the mere
necessaries of life. A shabby sofa, a table, two chairs, and a
broken tumbler, holding ink and two pens, is the inventory of his
drawing-room. He received us with elegance and courtesy, and
182 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
presented us to his wife, a pretty and lively little Constantino-
politan, who chattered French like a magpie. She gave the
uncertainty of their residence until the seat of government was
decided on, as the apology for their lodgings, and seemed
immediately to forget that she was not in a palace. Mavro-
cordato is a strikingly handsome man, with long, curling, black
hair, and most luxuriant mustaches. His mouth is bland, and
his teeth uncommonly beautiful ; but without being able to say
where it lies, there is an expression of guile in his face, that shut
my heart to him. He is getting fat, and there is a shade of red
in the clear olive of his cheek, which is very uncommon in this
country. The commodore remarked that he was very thin when
he was here six years before. The settlement of affairs in
Greece, has probably relieved him from a great deal of care.
Presented, with the commodore, to King Otho. Tricoupi
officiated as chamberlain, dressed in a court suit of light blue,
wrought with silver. The royal residence is a comfortable
house, built by Capo d Istria, in the principal street of Napoli-
The king s aid, a son of Marco Bozzaris, a very fine, resolute-
looking young man of eighteen, received us in the antechamber,
and in a few minutes the door of the inner room was thrown
open. His majesty stood at the foot of the throne (a gorgeous
red velvet arm-chair, raised on a platform, and covered with a
splendid canopy of velvet), and with a low bow to each of us as
we entered, he addressed his conversation immediately, and
without embarrassment, to the commodore. I had leisure to
observe him closely for a few minutes. He appears abtfut
eighteen. He was dressed in an exceedingly well cut, swallow-
tailed coat, of very light blue, with a red standing collar,
wrought with silver. The same work upon a red ground, was
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 183
set between the buttons of the waist, and upon the edges of ths
skirts. "White pantaloons, and the ordinary straight court-sword,
completed his dress. He is rather tall, and his figure i*
extremely light and elegant. A very flat nose, and high cheek
bones, are the most marked features of his face ; his hair is
straight, and of a light brown, and with no claim to beauty ; the
expression of his countenance is manly, open, and prepossessing.
He spoke French fluently, though with a German accent, and
went through the usual topics of a royal presentation (very much
the same all over the world) with grace and ease. In the few
remarks which he addressed to me, he said that he promised
himself frn-at pleasure in the search for antiquities in Greece.
He bowed us out after an audience of about ten minutes, no
doubt extremely happy to exchange his court coat cnl GUI-
company for a riding-frock and saddle. His horse and a guard
of twelve lancers were in waiting at the door.
The kino; usually passes his evenings with the Misses Arman-
bpergs, the daughters of the president of the regency. They
accompanied him from Munich, and are the only ladies in Lis
realm with whom he is acquainted. They keep a carriage, which
is a kind of wonder at Napoli ; ride on horseback in the English
style, very much to the amusement of the Greeks ; and give
soirees once or twice a week, which are particularly dull. Ono
of the three is a beautiful girl, and if policy does not interfere, is
likely to be Queen of Greece. The Count Armansperg is a
small, shrewd-looking man, with a thin German countenance,
and agreeable manners. He is, of course, the real king of
Greece.
The most agreeable man I found in Napoli, was the king *
uncle, the prince of Saxe, at present in command of his army.
1S4 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
He is a tall, and uncommonly handsome soldier, of perhaps
thirty-six years, and, with all the air of a man of high birth, has
the open and frank manners of the camp. He has been twice
on board the ship, and seemed to consider his acquaintance with
the commodore s family as a respite from exile. The Bavarian
officers in his suite spoke nothing but the native German, and
looked like mere beef-eaters. The prince returns in two years,
and when the king is of age, his Bavarian troops leave him, and
he commits himself to the country.
Hired the only two public vehicles in Napoli, and set off with
the commodore s family, on an excursion to the ancient cities in
the neighborhood. We left the gate built by the Venetians, and
still adorned with a bas relief of a winged lion, at nine o clock of
a clear Grecian summer s day. Auguries were against us.
P vi thus did the same thing with his elephants arid bis army, one
morning about two thousand years ago, and was killed before
noon ; and our driver stopped his horses a half mile out of the
gate, and told us very gravely that the evil eye was upon him.
He had dreamed that he had found a dollar the night before a
certain sign by the laws of witchcraft in Greece, that he should
low one. He concluded by adding another dollar to the price
of each carriage.
We passed the house of old Miaulis, the Greek admiral, a
pretty cottage a mile from the city, and immediately after came
the ruins of the ancient Terynlhus, the city of Hercules. The
vails, built of the largest hewn stories in the world, still stand, and
will till time ends. It would puzzle modern mechanics to carry
them away. We drove along the same road upon which
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 185
Autolycus taught the young hero to drive a chariot, and passing
ruins and fragments of columns strewn over the whole length of
the plain of Argos, stopped under a spreading aspen tree, the
only shade within reach of the eye. A dirty khan stood a few
yards off, and our horses were to remain here while we ascended
the hills to Mycence.
It was a hot walk. The appearance of ladies, as we passed
through a small Greek village on our way, drew out all the
inhabitants, and we were accompanied by about fifty men,
women, and children, resembling very much in complexion and
dress, the Indians of our country. A mile from our carriages
we arrived at a subterranean structure, built in the side of the
hill, with a door toward tfce east, surmounted by the hewn stone
so famous for its size among the antiquities of Greece. It shuts
the tomb of old Agamemnon. The interior is a hollow cone,
with a small chamber at the side, and would make " very eligible
lodgings for a single gentleman," as the papers say.
We kept on up the hill, wondering that the " king of many
islands and of all Argos," as Homer calls him, should have built
his city so high in this hot climate. We sat down at last, quite
fagged, at the gate of a city built only eighteen hundred years
before Christ. A descendant of Perseus brought us some water
in a wooden piggin, and somewhat refreshed, we went on with
our examination of the ruins. The mere weight of the walls has
ko.pt them together three thousand six hundred years. You can
judge how iuimovouble they must be. The antiquarians call
them the " cyclopean walls of Mycenae ;" and nothing less than
a giant, I should suppose, would dream of heaving such enormous
masses one upon the other. " The gate of the Lions," probably
the principal entrance to the city, is still perfect. The bas-
186 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
relief from which it takes its name, is the oldest sculptured stone
in Europe. It is of green basalt, representing two lions rampant,
very finely executed, and was brought from Egypt. An an^lo
of the city wall is just below, and the ruins of a noble aqueduct
are still visible, following the curve of the opposite hill, and
descending to Mycenae on the northern side. I might bore you
now with a long chapter on antiquities (for, however dry in the
abstract, they arc exceedingly interesting on the spot), but I let
you off. Those who like them will find Sphon and Wheeler,
Dodwell, Leake, and Grell, diffuse . enough for the most classic
enthusiasm.
We descended by a rocky ravine, in the bosom of which lay a
well with six large fig-trees growing at its brink. A wouia-i,
burnt black with the sun, was drawing water in a goat-skin, and
we were too happy to get into the shade, and in the namo of Pan,
sink delicacy and ask for a drink of water. I have seen thu tiim*
when nectar in a cup of gold would have been less refresh in-/.
We arrived at the aspen about two o clock, and nuvlo
preparations for our dinner. The sea-breeze had sprung up, and
came freshly over the plain of Argos. We put our claret in a
goat-skin of water hung at one of the wheels, the basket was
produced, the ladies sat in the interior of the carriage, and the
commodore and his son and myself, made tables of the foot
boards ; and thus we achieved a meal which, if meals are
rui is.Mirod by content, old King .Danaus and his fifty dauu h tors
might have risen from their graves to envy us.
A very handsome Greek woman had brought us water and
stood near while we were eating, and making over to her the
remnants of the ham and its condiments and the empty bottles,
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 187
with which she seemed made happy for a day, we went on our
way to Argos.
"Rivers die," it is said, " as well as men and cities." We
drove through the bed of "Father Inachus," which was a
respectable river in the time of Homer, but which, in our day,
would ^ puzzled to drown a much less thing than a king. Men
achieve hmuortulifcy in a. vanity of ways. King Inachus might
have been forgotten as the first Argive ; but by drowning himself
in the river which afterward took his name, every knowledge-
hunter that travels is compelled to look up his history. So St.
Nepomuc became the guardian of bridges by breaking his neck
over one.
The modern Argos occupies the site of the ancient. It is
tolerably populous, but it is a town of most wretched hovels.
We drove through several long streets of mud houses with
thatched roofs, completely open in front, and the whole family
huddled together on the clay floor, with no furniture but a flock
bed in the corner. The first settlement by Deucalion and
Pyrrha, on the sediment of the deluge, must have looked like it.
Mud, stones, and beggars, were all we saw. Old Pyrrhus was
killed here, after all his battles, by a tile from a house-top ; but
modern Argos has scarce a roof high enough to overtop his
helmet.
We left our carriages in the street, and walked to the ruins of
the amphitheatre. The brazen thalamos in which Danae was
confined when Jupiter visited her in a shower of gold, was near
this spot, the supposed site of most of the thirty temples once
famous in Argos.
Some solid brick walls, the seats of the amphitheatre cut into
the solid rock of the hill, the rocky acropolis above, and twenty
188 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
or thirty horses tied together, and treading out grain on a
thrashing-floor in the open field> were all we found of ancient or
picturesque in the capitol of the Argives. A hot, sultry after
noon, was no time to weave romance from such materials.
We returned to our carriages, and while the Greek was getting
his horses into their harness, we entered a most unpromising cafe
for shade and water. A billiard-table stood in the centre ; and
the high, broad bench on which the Turks seat themselves, with
their legs crooked under them, stretched around the wall. The
proprietor was a Venetian woman, who sighed, as she might well,
for a gondola. The kingdom of Agamemnon was not to her
taste.
After waiting awhile here for the sun to get behind the hills of
Sparta, we received a message from our coachman, announcing
that he was arrested. The " evil eye" had not glanced upon
him in vain. There was no returning without him, and I walked
over with the commodore to see what could be done. A fine-
looking man sat cross-legged on a bench, in the upper room of a
building adjoining a prison, and a man with a pen in his hand
was reading the indictment. The driver had struck a child who
was climbing on his wheel. I pleaded his case in ( choice
Italian," and after half an hour s delay, they dismissed him,
exacting a dollar as a security for reappearance. It was a
curious verification of his morning s omen.
We drove on over the plain, met the king, five camels, and
the Misses Armansperg, and were on board soon after sunset.
LETTER XXI,
Visit from King Otho and Miaulis Visits an English and Eussian frigate Beauty of th
Grecian Men Lake Lcma The llermionicas Sinus Hydra Efina,
NAPOLI DI ROMANIA. Went ashore with one of the officers, to
look for the fountain of Canathus. Its waters had the property
(vide Pausanias) of renewing the infant purity of the women who
bathed in them. Juno used it once a year. We found but one
natural spring in all Napoli. It stands in a narrow street, filled
with tailors, and is adorned with a marble font bearing a Tuvkij-h
inscription. Two girls were drawing water in skins. We drank
a little of it, but found nothing peculiar in the taste. Its virtues
are confined probably to the other sex.
The king visited the ship. As his barge left the pier, the
vessels of war in the harbor manned their yards and fired the royal
salute. He was accompanied by young Bozzaris and the prince,
his uncle, and dressed in the same uniform in which he received
us at our presentation. As he stepped on the deck, and was
received by Commodore Patterson, I thought I had never seen a
more elegant and well-proportioned man. The frigate was in her
190 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
usual admirable order, and the king expressed his surprise and
gratification at every turn. His questions were put with un
common judgment for a landsman. We had heard, indeed, on
board the English frigate which brought him from Trieste, that
he lost no opportunity of learning the duties and management of
the ship, keeping watch with the midshipmen, and running from
one deck to the other at all hours. After going thoroughly
through all the ship, the commodore presented him to his family.
He seemed very much pleased with the ease and frankness with
which he was received, and seating himself with our fair country
women in the after-cabin, prolonged his visit to a very uncere
monious length, conversing with the most unreserved gayety.
The yards were manned again, the salutes fired once more, and
the king of Greece tossed his oars for a moment under the stern,
and pulled ashore.
Had the pleasure and honor of showing Mmulis through the
ship. The old man came on board very modestly, without even
announcing himself, and as he addressed one of the officers in
Italian, I was struck with his noble appearance, and oifered my
services as interpreter. He was dressed in the Hydriote costume,
the full blue trousers gathered at the knee, a short open jacket,
worked with black braid, and a red skull-cap. His lieutenant,
dressed in the same costume, a tall, superb-looking Greek, was
his only attendant. Hs was quite at home on board, comparing
the United States" continually to the Hellas, the American-
built frigate which he commanded. Every one on board was
struck with the noble simplicity and dignity of his address- I
have seldom seen a man who impressed me more. He requested
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE.
me to express bis pleasure at his visit, and bis friendly feelings
to tbe commodore, and invited us to bis country-bouse, wbicb be
pointed out from tbe deck, just without tbe city. Every officer
in tbe sbip uncovered as he passed. The gratification at seeing
him was universal. He looks worthy to be one of the "three"
that Byron demanded, in bis impassioned verse,
" To make a new Thermopylae."
Returned visits of ceremony with the commodore, to the
English and Russian vessels of war. The British frigate Mada
gascar is about tbe size of the United States, but not in nearly
so fine a condition. The superior cleanliness and neatness of
arrangement on board our own ship are indisputable. The cabin
of Captain Lyon (who is said to be one v of the best officers in the
English service) was furnished in almost oriental luxury, and,
what I should esteem more, crowded with the choicest books.
He informed us that of his twenty-four midshipmen, nine were
sons of noblemen, and possessed the best family influence on
both fathers and mothers side, and several of the remainder had
high claims for preferment. There is small chance there, one
would think, for commoners.
Captain Lyon spoke in the highest terms of his late passenger,
King Otho, both as to disposition and talent. Somewhere in the
jEgean, one of bis Bavarian servants fell overboard, and the
boatswain jumped after him, and sustained him till the boat was
lowered to his relief. On his reaching the deck, the king drew a
valuable repeater from his pocket, and presented it to him ip the
192 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
presence of the crew. He certainly has caught the " trick of
royalty" in its perfection.
The guard presented, the boatswain " piped us over the side,"
and we pulled alongside the Russian. The file of marines drawn
up in honor of the commodore on her quarter deck, looked like
so many standing bears. Features and limbs so brutally coarse
I never saw. The officers, however, were very gentlemanly, and
the vessel was in beautiful condition. In inquiring after the
health of the ladies on board our ship, the captain and his lieu
tenant rose from their seats and made a low bow a degree of
chivalrous courtesy very uncommon, I fancy, since the days of
Sir Piercie Shafton. I left his imperial majesty s ship with an
improved impression of him.
They are a gallant-looking people, the Greeks. Byron says
of them, " all are beautiful, very much resembling tho busts of
Alcibiades." We walked beyond the walls of the city this eve
ning, on the plain of Argos. The whole population were out in
their Sunday costumes, and no theatrical ballet was ever more
showy than the scene. They are a very affectionate people, and
walk usually hand in hand, or sit upon the rocks at the roadside,
with their arms over each other s shoulders ; and their picturesque
attitudes and lofty gait, combined with the flowing beauty of
their dress, give them all the appearance of heroes on the stage.
I saw literally no handsome women, but the men were magnifi
cent, almost without exception. Among others, a young man
passed us with whose personal beauty the whole party wero
struck. As he went by he laid his hand on his breast and bowed
to the ladies, raising his red cap, with its flowing bluo tassel, at
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 193
the same time with perfect grace. It was a young man to whom
I had been introduced the day previous, a brother of Mavromi-
chalis, the assassin of Capo d Istrias. He is about seventeen,
tall and straight as an arrow, and has the eye of a falcon. His
family is one of the first in Greece ; and his brother, who was a
fellow of superb beauty, is said to have died in the true heroic
style, believing that he had rid his country of a tyrant.
The view of Napoli and the Palamidi from the plain, with its
back ground of the Spartan mountains, and the blue line of the
Argylic gulf between, is very fine. The home of the Nemean
lion, the lofty hiil rising above Argos, was enveloped in a black
cloud as the sun set on our walk, the short twilight of Greece
thickened upon us, and the white, swaying juktauillas of the
Greeks striding past, had the effect of spirits gliding by in the
dark.
The king, \vn.i iiis guard of lancers on a hard trot, passed us
near the gate, ioiiuwcd close by the Aiisses Armansperg, mounted
on line liunguiiuu horses. His majesty rides beautifully, and the
effect of the short high-borne flag on the tips of the lances, and
the tall Polish caps with their cord and tassels, is highly pictur
esque
Made an excursion with the commodore across the gulf, 10
Lake Lerna, the home of the hydra. We saw nothing save the
half dozen small marshy lakes, whose overflow devastated the
country, until they were dammed by Hercules, who is thus poeti
cally said to have killed a many-headed monster. We visited,
near by, u the mills," which were the scene of one of the most
famous battles of the late struggle. The mill is supplied by a
194 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
lovely stream, issuing from beneath a rock, and running a short
course of twenty or thirty rods to the sea. It is difficult to
believe that human blood has ever stained its pure waters.
Left Napoli with the daylight breeze, and are now entering the
Hermionicus Sinus. A more barren land never rose upon the
eye. The ancients considered this part of Greece so near to
hell, that they omitted to put the usual obolon into the hands of
those who died here, to pay their passage across the Styx.
Off the town of Hydra. This is the birthplace of Miaulis,
and its neighbor island, Spesia, that of the sailor heroine, Bobo-
lina. It is a heap of square stone houses set on the side of a
hill, without the slightest reference to order. I see with the
glass, au old Greek smoking on his balcony, with his feet over the
railing, and half a dozen bare-legged women getting a boat into
the water on the beach. The whole island has a desolate and
sterile aspect. Across the strait, directly opposite the town, lies a
lovely green valley, with olive groves and pastures between, and
hundreds of gray cattle feeding in all the peace of Arcadia. I
!,;ive seen such pictures so seldom of late, that it is like a mcdi-
oino to my sight. " The sea and the sky," after a while, " lie
like a load on the weary eye."
In passing two small islands just now, we caught a glimpse
between them of the " John Adams," sloop-of-war, under full
sail in the opposite direction. Five minutes sooner or later we
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 195
should have missed her. She has been cruising in the archipel
ago a month or two, waiting the commodore s arrival, and has on
board despatches and letters, which make the meeting a very
exciting one to the officers. There is a general stir of expecta
tion on board, in which my only share is that of sympathy. She
brings her news from Smyrna, to which port, though my course
has been errant enough, you will scarce have thought of direct
ing a letter for me.
Anchored off the Island of Egina, a mile from the town. The
rocks which King ^Eacus (since Judge ./Eacus of the infernal
regions) raised in the harbor to keep off the piratas, prevent our
nearer approach. A beautiful garden of oranges and figs close to
our anchorage, promises to reconcile us to our position. The
little bay is completely shut in by mountainous islands, and the
sun pours down upon us, unabated by the " wooing Egean wind.
LETTER XXII,
The Maid of Athens Romance and Eeality American Benefactions to Greece A Greek
"Wife and Scottish Husband School of Capo dMsMas--Gre;:iar Dirinterertcdn xss
Euins of the most Ancient Temple Beauty of the Grecian Landscape Hope ior the-
Land of Epaminondas and Aristides.
ISLAND OF EGINA. The " Maid of Athens," in the very
teeth of poetry, has become Mrs. Black of Egina ! The beau
tiful Teresa Makri, of whom Byron asked back his heart, of
whom Moore and Hobhouse, and the peet himself have written
so much and so passionately, has forgotten the sweet burthen of
the sweetest of love songs, and taken the, unromantic name, and
followed the unromantic fortunes, of a Scotchman !
The commodore proposed that we should call upon her on our
way to the temple of Jupiter, this morning. We pulled up to
the town in the barge, and landed on the handsome pier built by
Dr. Howe (who expended thus, most judiciously, a part of tho
provisions sent from our country in his charge), and, finding a
Greek in the crowd, who understood a little Italian, we were soon
on our way to Mrs. Black s. Our guide was a fine, grave-look
ing man of forty, with a small cockade on his red cap, which
indicated that he was some way in the service of the govern
ment. He laid his hand on his heart, when I asked him if he
SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN. 197
had known any Americans in Egina. " They built this," said
he, pointing to the pier, the handsome granite posts of which we
were passing at the moment. " They gave us bread, and meat,
and clothing, when we should otherwise have perished." It was
said with a look and tone that thrilled me. I felt as if the
whole debt of sympathy which Greece owes our country, were
repaid by this one energetic expression of gratitude.
We stopped opposite a small gate, and the Greek went in with
out cards. It was a small stone house of a story and a half, with
a rickety flight of wooden steps at the side, and not a blade of
grass or sign of a flower in court or window. If there had
been but a geranim.j i:i tii ^ ;roh, or a rose-tree by the gate, for
description s sake.
Mr. Black was out Mrs. Black was in. We walked up the
creaking steps, with a Scotch terrier barking and snapping at our
heels, and were met at the door by, really, a very pretty woman.
She smiled as I apologized for o-ur intrusion, and a sadder or a
sweeter smile I never saw. She said her welcome in a few,
simple words of Italian, and I thought there were few sweeter
voices in the world. I asked her if she had not learned English
yet. She colored, and said, " No, signore !" and the deep spot
in her cheek faded gradually down, in teints a painter would
remember. Her husband, she said, had wished to learn her lan
guage, and would never Jet her speak English. I began to feel a
prejudice against him. Presently, a boy of perhaps three years
came into the room- an ugly, white-headed, Scotch-looking
little ruffian, thin-lipped and freckled, and my aversion for Mr.
Black became quite decided. " Did you not regret leaving
Athens ?" I asked. " Very much, siguore," she answered with
198 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
half a sigh; "but my husband dislikes Athens." Horrid Mr
Black ! thought I.
I wished to ask her of Lord Byron, but I had heard that the
poet s admiration had occasioned the usual scandal attendant on
every kind of pre-eminence, and her modest and timid manners,
while they assured me of her purity of heart, made me afraid to
venture where there was even a possibility of wounding her.
She sat in a drooping attitude on the coarsely -covered divan,
which occupied three sides of the little room^ and it was difficult
to believe that any eye but her husband s had ever looked upon
her, or that the " wells of her heart" had ever been drawn upon
for any thing deeper than the simple duties of a wife and mother.
She offered us some sweetmeats, the usual Greek compliment
to visitors, as we rose to go, and laying her hand upon her heart,
in the beautiful custom of the country, requested me to express
her thanks to the commodore for the honor he had done her in
calling, and to wish him and his family every happiness. A
servant-girl, very shabbily dressed, stood at the side door, and we
offered her some money, which she might have taken unnoticed.
She drew herself up very coldly, and refused it, as if she thought
we had quite mistaken her. In a country where gifts of the
kind are so universal, it spoke well for the pride of the family, at
least.
I turned after we had taken leave, and made an apology to
speak to her again ; for in the interest of the general impression
she had madj upon me, I had forgotten to notice her dress, and-I
was not sure that I could remember a single feature of her face.
We had called unexpectedly of course, and her dress was very
plain. A red cloth cap bound about the temples, with a colored
shawl, whose folds were mingled with large braids of dark browu
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 199
Lair, and decked with a tassel of blue silk, which fell to her left
shoulder, formed her head-dress. In other respects she was
dressed like a European. She is a little above the middle height,
slightly arid well-formed, and walks weakly, like most Greek
women, as if her feet were too small for her weight. Her skin
is dark and clear, and she has a color in her cheek and lips that
looks to me consumptive. Her teeth are white and regular, her
face oval, and her forehead and nose form the straight line of the
Grecian model one of the few instances I have ever seen of it.
Her eyes are large, and of a soft, liquid hazel, and this is her
chief beauty. There is that " looking out of the soul through
them," which Byron always described as constituting the loveli
ness that most moved him. I made up my mind, as we walked
away, that she would be a lovely woman anywhere. Her horrid
name, and the unprepossessing circumstances in which we found
her, had uncharmed, I thought, all poetical delusion that would
naturally surround her as the " Maid of Athens." We met her
as simple Mrs. Black, whose Scotch husband s terrier had
worried us at her door, and we left her, feeling that the poetry
which she had called forth from the heart of Byron, was her due
by every law of loveliness-
From the house of the maid of Athens we walked to the
school of Capo d Istrias. It is a spacious stone quadrangle,
enclosing a court handsomely railed and gravelled, and furnished
with gymnastic apparatus. School was out, and perhaps a
hundred and fifty boys were playing in the area. An intelligent-
looking man accompanied us through the museum of antiquities,,
where we saw nothing very much worth noticing, after the collec
tions of Home, and to the library, where there was a superb bust
200 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
of Capo d Istrias, done by a Roman artist. It is a noble head,
resembling Washington.
We bought a large basket of grapes for a few cents in return
ing to the boat, and offered money to one or two common men
who had been of assistance to us, but no one would receive it. I
italicise the remark, because the Greeks are so often stigmatized
as utterly mercenary.
We pulled along the shore, passing round the point on which
stands a single fluted column, the only remains of a magnificent
temple of Venus,, and, getting the wind, hoisted a sail, and ran
down the northern side of the island five or six miles, till we
arrived opposite the mountain on which stands the temple of
Jupiter Panhdlenios. The view of it from the sea was like that of
a temple drawn on the sky. It occupies the very peak of the
mountain, and is seen many miles on either side by the mariner
of the Egean.
A couple of wild-looking, handsome fellows, bareheaded and
barelegged, with shirts and trowsers reaching to the knee, lay in
a small caique under the shore ; and, as we landed, the taller of
the two laid his hand on his breast, and offered to conduct us to
the temple. The ascent was about a mile.
We toiled over ploughed fields, with here and there a cluster
of fig-trees, wild patches of rock and brier, and an occasional
wall, and arrived breathless at the top, where a cool wind met us
from the other side of the sea with delicious refreshment.
We sat down among the ruins of the oldest temple of Greece
after that of Corinth. Twenty-three noble columns still lifted
their heads over us, after braving the tempests of more than two
thousand years. The ground about was piled up with magnificent
fragments of marble, preserving, e\vn in their fall, the sharp
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 201
edges of the admirable sculpture of Greece. The Doric capital,
the simple frieze, the well-fitted frusta, might almost be restored
in the perfection with which they were left by the last touch of
the chisel.
The view hence comprised a classic world. There was Athens !
The broad mountain over the intensely blue gulf at our feet was
Hymettus, and a bright white summit as of a mound between it
and the sea, glittering brightly in the sun, was the venerable pile
of temples in the Acropolis. To the left, Corinth was distin
guishable over its low isthmus, and Megara and Salamis, and
following down the wavy line of the mountains of Attica, the
promontory of Sunium, modern Cape Colonna, dropped the
horizon upon the sea. One might sit out his life amid these
loftily-placed ruins, and scarce exhaust in thought the human
history that has unrolled within the scope of his eye.
We passed two or three hours wandering about among the
broken columns, and gazing away to the main and the distant
isles, confessing the surpassing beauty of Greece. Yet have its
mountains scarce a green spot, and its vales are treeless and
uninhabited, and all that constitutes desolation is there, and
strange as it may seem, you neither miss the verdure, nor the
people, nor find it desolate. The outline of Greece, in the first
place, is the finest in the world. The mountains lean down into
the valleys, and the plains swell up to the mountains, and the
islands rise from the sea, with a mixture of boldness and grace
altogether peculiar. In the most lonely parts of the Egean,
where you can see no trace of a human foot, it strikes you like a
foreign land. Then the atmosphere is its own, and it exceeds
that of Italy, far. It gives it the look of a landscape seen
through a faintly-teinted glass. Soft blue mists of the most
9*
202 SUMMER CRUISE JN THE MEDITERRANEAN.
rarefied and changing shapes envelop the mountains on the
clearest day, and without obscuring the most distant points
perceptibly, give hill and vale a beauty that surpasses that of
verdure. I never saw such air as I see in Greece. It has the
same effect on the herbless and rocky scenery about us, as a veil
over the face of a woman.
The islander who had accompanied us to the temple, stood on
a fragment of a column, still as a statue, looking down upon the
sea toward Athens. His figure for athletic grace of mould, and
his head and features, for the expression of manly beauty and
character, might have been models to Phidias. The beautiful
and poetical land, of which he inherited his share of unparalleled
glory, lay around him. I asked myself why it should have
become, as it seems to be, the despair of the philanthropist.
Why should its people, who, in the opinion of Childe Harold, are
" nature s favorites still," be branded and abandoned as irre
claimable rogues, and the source to which we owe, even to this
day, our highest models of taste, be neglected and forgotten ?
The nine days enthusiasm for Greece has died away, and she
has received a king from a family of despots. But there seems
to me in her very beauty, and in the still superior qualities of
Ler children, wherever they have room for competition, a promise
of resuscitation. The convulsions of Europe may leave her
soon to herself, and the slipper of the Turk, and the hand of
the Christian, once lifted fairly from her neck, she will rise, and
stand up amid these imperishable temples, once more fre& r
LETTER XXIII,
Athens Buins of the Parthenon The Acropolis Temple of Theseus The Oldest of
Athenian Antiquities Burial-Place of the Son of Miaulis Inflections on Standing
where Plato Taught, and Demosthenes Harangued Bavarian Sentinel Turkish
Mosqne, erected within the Sanctuary of th Parthenon Wretched Habitations of tho
Modern Athenians.
EOEAN SEA. We got under way this morning, and stood
toward Athens, followed by the sloop-of-war, John Adams, which
had come to anchor under our stern the evening of our arrival at
Egina. The day is like every day of the Grecian summer,
heavenly. The stillness and beauty of a new world lie about us.
The ships steal on with their clouds of canvass just filling in the
light breeze of the Egean, and withdrawing the eye from tho
lofty temple crowning the mountain on our lee, whose shining
columns shift slowly as we pass ; we could believe ourselves
asleep on the sea. I have been repeating to myself the beautiful
reflection of Servius Sulpitius, which occurs in his letter of
condolence to Cicero, on the death of his daughter, written on
this very spot. * " On my return from Asia," he says, " as I
was sailing from Egina toward Megara, I begnn to contemplate
* " Ex Asia rediens," etc. I have given the translation from Middleton a
Cicero.
204 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
the prospect of the countries around me. Egina was behind,
Megara before me ; Pirseus on the right, Corinth on the left ; all
which towns, once famous and flourishing, now lie overturned and
buried in their ruins ; upon this sight, I could not but presently
think within myself, Alas ! how do we poor mortals fret and
vex ourselves if any of our friends happen to die or be killed,
whose life is yet so short, when the carcases of so many cities lie
here exposed before me in one view. "
The columns of the Parthenon are easily distinguishable with
the glass, and to the right of the Acropolis, in the plain, I see a
group of tall ruins, which by the position must be near the banks
of the Ilissus. I turn the glass upon the sides of the mount
Hymettus, whose beds of thyme, " the long, long summer gilds,"
and I can scarce believe that the murmur of the bees is not
stealing over the water to my ear. Can this be Athens ? Are
these the same isles and mountains Alcibiades saw, returning
with his victorious galleys from the Hellespont ; the same that
faded on the long gaze of the conqueror of Salamis, leaving his
ungrateful country for exile ; the same that to have seen, for a
Roman, was to be complete as a man ; the same whose proud
dames wore the golden grasshopper in their hair, as a boasting
token that they had sprung from the soil ; the same where
Pericles nursed the arts, and Socrates and Plato taught
" humanity," and Epicurus walked with his disciples, looking for
truth ? What an offset are these thrilling thoughts, with the
nearing view in my sight, to a whole calender of common
misfortune !
Dropped anchor in the Piraeus, the port of Athens. The city
is five miles in the interior, and the "arms of Athens," as the
extending walls were called, stretched in the times of the
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 205
republic from the Acropolis to the sea. The Piraeus, now
nearly a deserted port, with a few wretched houses, was then a
large city. It wants an hour to sunset, and I am about starting
with one of the officers to walk to Athens.
Five miles more sacred in history than those between the
Pirseus and the Acropolis, do not exist in the world. We walked
them in about two hours, with a golden sunset at our backs, and
the excitement inseparable from an approach to " the eye of
Greece," giving elasticity to our steps. ]N T ear the Parthenon,
which had been glowing in a flood of saffron light before us, the
road separated, and taking the right, we entered the city by its
southern gate. A tall Greek, who was returning from the plains
with a gun on his shoulder, led us through the narrow streets of
the modern town to a hotel, where a comfortable supper, of which
the most attractive circumstance to me was some honey from
Hymettus, brought us to bed-time.
"VVe were standing under the colonnades of the temples of
Theseus, the oldest, and the best preserved of the antiquities of
Athens, at an early hour. We walked around it in wonder.
The sun that threw inward the shadows of its beautiful columns,
had risen on that eastern porch for more than two thousand
years, and it is still the transcendent model of the world. The
Parthenon was a copy of it. The now venerable and ruined
temples of Home, were built in its proportions when it was
already an antiquity. The modern edifices of every civilized
nation are considered faulty only as they depart from it. How
206 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
little dreamed the admirable Grecian, when its proportions rose
gradually to his patient thought, that the child of his teeming
imagination would be so immortal !
The situation of the Theseion has done much to preserve it.
It stands free of the city, while the Parthenon and the other
temples of the Acropolis, being within the citadel, have been
battered by every assailant, from the Venetian to the ikonoklast
and the Turk. It looks at a little distance like a modern
structure, its parts are so nearly perfect. It is only on coming
close to the columns that you see the stains in the marble to be
the corrosion of the long-feeding tooth of ages. A young
Englishman is buried within the nave of the temple, and the son
of Miaulis, said to have been a young man worthy of the best
days of Greece, lies in the eastern porch, with the weeds growing
rank over his grave.
We passed a handsome portico, standing alone amid a heap of
ruins. It was the entrance to the ancient Agora. Here
assembled the people of Athens, the constituents and supporters
of Pericles, the first possessors of these god-like temples. Here
were sown, in the ears of the Athenians, the first seeds of glory
and sedition, by patriots and demagogues, in the stirring days of
Plataja and Marathon. Here was it first whispered that
Aristidcs had been too long called "the just," and that Socrates
corrupted the youth of Athens. And, for a lighter thought, it
was here that the wronged wife of Alcibiades, compelled to come
forth publicly and sign her divorce, was snatched up in the arms
of her brilliant, but dissolute husband, and carried forcibly home,
forgiving him, woman-like, with but half a repentance. The
feeling with which I read the story when a boy, is strangely fresh
in my memory.
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 207
We hurried on to the Acropolis. The ascent is winding and
difficult, and, near the gates, encumbered with marble rubbish.
Volumes have been written on the antiquities which exist still
within the walls. The greater part of four unrivalled temples
are still lifted to the sun by this tall rock in the centre of Athens,
the majestic Parthenon, visible over half Greece, towering above
all. A Bavarian soldier received our passport at the gate. He
was resting the butt of his musket on a superb bas-relief, a
fragment from the ruins. How must the blood of a Greek boil
to see a barbarian thus set to guard the very sanctuary of his
glory.
We stood under the portico of the Parthenon, and looked down
on Greece. Right through a broad gap in the mountains, as if
they had been swept away that Athens might be seen, stood the
shining Acropolis of Corinth. I strained my eyes to see
Diogenes lying under the walls, and Alexander standing in his
sunshine. " Sea-born Salamis" was beneath me, but the " ships
by thousands" were not there, and the king had vanished from
his " rocky throne" with his u men and nations." .^Egina lay
. - ..
far down the gulf, folded in its blue mist, and I strained my sight
to see Aristides wandering in exile on its shore. " Mars Hill"
was within the sound of my voice, but its Areopagus was
deserted of its judges, and the intrepid apostle was gone. The
rostrum of Demosthenes, and the academy of Plato, and the
banks of the Ilissus, where Socrates and Zeno taught, were all
around me, but the wily orator,, and the philosopher, " on whose
infant lips the bees shed honey as he slept," and he whose death
and doctrine have been compared to those of Christ, and the
self-denying stoic, were alike departed. Silence and ruin brood
over all !
208 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
I walked through the nave of the Parthenon, passing a small
Turkish mosque (built sacrilegiously by the former Disdar of
Athens, within its very sanctuary), and mounted the south
eastern rampart of the Acropolis. Through the plain beneath
ran the classic Ilissus, and on its banks stood the ruins of the
temple of Jupiter Olympus, which I had distinguished with the
glass in coming up the Egean. The Ilissus was nearly dry, but
a small island covered with verdure divided its waters a short
distance above the temple, and near it were distinguishable the
foundations of the Lyceum. Aristotle and his Peripatetics
ramble there no more. A herd of small Turkish horses were
feeding up toward Hymettus, the only trace of life in a valley
that was once alive with the brightest of the tides of human
existence.
The sun poured into the Acropolis with an intensity I have
seldom felt. The morning breeze had died away, and the glare
from the bright marble ruins was almost intolerable to the eye,
I climbed around over the heaps of fragmented columns, and
maimed and fallen statues, to the northwestern corner of the
citadel, and sat down in the shade of one of the embrasures to
look over toward Plato s academy. The part of the city below
this corner of the wail was- the ancient Pelasgicum. It was from
the spot where I sat that Parrhesiades, the fisherman, is repre
sented in Lucian to have angled for philosophers, with a hook
baited with gold and figs.
The academy (to me the most interesting spot of Athens) is
still shaded with olive groves, as in the time of Plato. The
Cuphissus, whose gentle flow has mingled its murmur with so
much sweet philosophy, was hidden from my sight by the
numberless trees. I looked toward the spot with inexpressible
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 209
interest. I had not yet been near enough to dispel the illusion.
To me, the academy was still beneath those silvery olives in all
its poetic glory. The " Altar of Love" still stood before the
entrance ; the temple of Prometheus, the sanctuary of the
Muses, the- statues of Plato and of the Graces, the sacred olive,
the tank in the coal gardens, and the tower of the railing Timon
were all there. I could almost have waited till evening to see
Epicurus and Leontium, Socrates and Aspasia, returning to
Athens.
We passed the Tower of the Winds, the ancient Klepsydra or
water-clock of Athens, in returning to the hotel. The Eight
Winds sculptured on the octagonal sides, are dressed according
to their temperatures, six of them being more or less draped,
and the remaining two nude. It is a small marble building, more
curious than beautiful.
Our way lay through the sultry streets of modern Athens. I
can give you an- idea of it in a single sentence. It is a large
village, of originally mean houses, pulled down to the very
cellars, and lying choked in its rubbish. A large square in ruins
after a fire in one of our cities, looks like it. It has been
destroyed so often by Turks and Greeks alternately, that scarce
one stone is left upon the other. The inhabitants thatch over
one corner of these wretched and dusty holes with maize stalks
and straw, and live there like beasts. The fineness of the
climate makes a roof almost unnecessary for eight months in the
year. The consuls and authorities of the place, and the mission
aries, have tolerable houses, but the paths to them are next to
impracticable for the rubbish. Nothing but a Turkish horse,
which could be ridden up a precipice, would ever pick his way
through the streets.
LETTER XXIV,
The "Lantern of Dernosthenes"-Byron s Residence in Athens-Temple of Jupiter Olym
pus, Seven Hundred Years in Building-Superstitious Fancy of the Athenians respect
ing its Ruins-Hermitage of a Greek Monk-Petarche*, the Antiquary and Poet, and
his Wife, Sister to the "Maid of Athens" Mutilation of a Basso Relievo by an English
Officer-The Elgin Marbles-The Caryatides-Lord Byron s Autograph-Attachment
of the Greeks to Dr. Howe-The Sliding Stone-A Scene in the Rostrum of Demos
thenes.
TOOK a walk by sunset to the Ilissus. I passed, on the way,
the " Lantern of Demosthenes," a small octagonal building of
marble, adorned with splendid columns and a beautifully-sculp
tured frieze, in which it is said the orator used to shut himself
for a month, with his head half shaved, to practice his orations.
The Franciscan convent, Byron s residence while in Athens, was
built adjoining it. It is now demolished. The poet s name is
written with his own hand on a marble slab of the wall.
I left the city by the gate of Hadrian, and walked on to the
temple of Jupiter Olympus. It crowns a small elevation on the
northern bank of the Ilissus. It was once beyond all compari
son the largest and most costly building in the world. During
seven hundred years it employed the attention of the rulers of
Greece, from Pisistratus to Hadrian, and was never quite com
pleted. As a ruin it is the most beautiful object, I ever s,w.
SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN. 211
Thirteen columns of Pentclic marble, partly connected by a
frieze, are all that remain. They are of the flowery Corinthian
order, and sixty feet in height , exclusive of base or capital.
Three perfect columns stand separate from the rest, and lift
from the midst of that solitary plain with an effect that, to my
mind, is one of the highest sublimity. The sky might rest on
them. They seem made to sustain it. As I lay on the parched
grass and gazed on them in the glory of a Grecian sunset, they
seemed to me proportioned for a continent. The mountains I
saw between them were not designed with more amplitude, nor
corresponded more nobly to the sky above.
The people of Athens have a superstitious reverence for these
ruins. Dodwell says, " The single column toward. the western
extremity was thrown down, many years ago, by a Turkish voi-
vode, for the sake of the inatemLs, winch \vere employed in con
structing tin; great mosqu.; of the bazar, i h -". A rher.inns rela.tr,
that, after it was throw:! down, the the t.t!ie.,s n-.-aix-st it were
heard to lament the loss of their sister ! and these nocturnal
lamentations did not cease till the sacrilegious voivode was de
stroyed by poison.
Two of the columns, connected by one immense slab, are sur
mounted by a small building, now in ruins, but once the her
mitage of a Greek monk. Here he passed his life, seventy feet
in the air, sustained by two of the most graceful columns of
Greece. A basket, lowered by a line, was filled by the pious
every morning, but the romantic eremite was never seen. With
the lofty Acropolis crowned with temples just beyond him, the
murmuring Ilissus below, the thyme-covered sides of Hymettus
to the south, and the blue Egean stretching away to the west, his
212 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
eye, at least, could never tire. There arc times when I could
envy him his lift above the world.
I descended to the Fountain of Cattirhoe, which gushes from
beneath a rock in the bed of the Ilissus, just below the temple.
It is the scene of the death of the lovely nymph-mother of Gany
mede. The twilight air was laden with the fragrant thyme, and
the songs of the Greek laborers returning from the fields came
faintly over the plains. Life seems too short, when every breath
is a pleasure. I loitered about the clear and rocky lip of the
fountain, till the pool below reflected the stars in its trembling
bosom. The lamps began to twinkle in Athens, Hesperus rose
over Mount Pentilicus like a blazing lamp, the sky over Salamis
faded down to the sober teint of night, and the columns of the
Parthenon mingled into a single mass of shade. And so, I
thoii2hfr, as I strolled back to the city, concludes a day in
Athens out, at least, in my life, for which it is worth the trouble
to! i li ! -
i \v:is.a--:iiu iu the Acropolis the following morning. Mr. Hill
had kindly given me a note to Petarchcs the king s antiquary, a
voiing Athenian, who married the sister of the Maid of Athens.*
We v/ nt together through the ruins. They have lately made
new excavations, and some superb bassi-rdievi are among the
discoveries. One of them represented a procession leading vic
tims to the sacrifice, and was quite the finest tiling I ever saw.
The leading figure was a superb female, from the head of which
the nose had lately been barbarously broken. Tho face of the
* You will recollect what Byron says of these three girls in one of his
letters to Dr. Drury : I had almost forgot to tell you, that I am dying
for love of three Greek girls, at Athens, sisters. 1 lived in the same house.
Teresa, Marcama, and Katinka, are the names of these divinities all under
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 213
enthusiastic antiquary flushed while I was lamenting it. It was
done, he told me, but a week before, by an officer of the Eng
lish squadron then lying at the Piraeus. Petarches detected it
immediately, and sent word to the admiral, who discovered the
heartless Goth in a nephew of an English duke, a midshipman of
his own ship. I should not have taken the trouble to mention so
revolting a circumstance if I had not seen, in a splendid copy of
the u Illustrations of Byron s Travels in Greece," a most viru
lent attack on the officers of the Constellation, and Americans
generally, for the same thing. Who but Englishmen have robbed
Athens, and Egina, and all Greece ? Who but Englishmen are
watched like thieves in their visits to every place of curiosity in
the world ? Where is the superb caryatid of the Erechtheion ?
stolen, with such barbarous carelessness, too, that the remaining
statues and the superb portico they sustained are tumbling to the
ground ! The insolence of England s laying such sins at the door
of another nation is insufferable.
For my own part, I cannot conceive the motive for carrying
away a fragment of a statue or a column. I should as soon
think of drawing a tooth as a specimen of some beautiful woman
I had seen in my travels. And how one dare show such a theft
to any person of taste, is quite as singular. Even when a whole
column or statue is carried away, its main charm is gone with the
association of the place. I venture to presume, that no person
of classic feeling ever saw Lord Elgin s marbles without execrat
ing the folly that could bring them from their bright, native sky,
to the vulgar atmosphere of London. For the love of taste, let
us discountenance such barbarisms in America.
The Erechtheion .and the adjoining temple are gems of archi
tecture. The small portico of the caryatides (female figures, in
214 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
the place of columns, with their hands on their hips) must have
been one of the most exquisite things in Greece. One of them
(fallen in consequence of Lord Elgin s removal of the sister
statue), lies headless on the ground, and the remaining ones are
badly mutilated, but they arc very, very beautiful. I remember
two in the Villa Albani, at Rome, brought from some other tem
ple in Greece, and considered the choicest gems of the gallery.
We climbed up to the sanctuary of the Erechtheion, in which
stood the altars to the two elements to which the temples
were dedicated. The sculpture around the cornices is still so
sharp that it might have been finished yesterday. The young
antiquary alluded to Byron s anathema against Lord Elgin, in
Childe Harold, and showed me, on the inside of the capital of
one of the columns, the place where the poet had written his
name. It was, as he always wrote it, simply " Byron," in small
letters, and would not be noticed by an ordinary observer.
If the lover, as the poet sings, was jealous of the star his mis
tress gazed upon, the sister of the " Maid of Athens" may well
be jealous of the Parthenon. Petarches looks at it and talks of
it with a fever in his eyes. I could not help smiling at his enthu
siasm. He is about twenty-five, of a slender person, with down
cast, melancholy eyes, and looks the poet according to the most
received standard. His reserved manners melted toward me on
discovering that I knew our countryman, Dr. Howe, who, he tells
me, was his groomsman (or the corresponding assistant at a
Greek wedding), and to whom he seems, in common with all his
countrymen, warmly attached. To a man of his taste, I can
conceive nothing more gratifying than his appointment to the
care of the Acropolis. He spends his day there with his book,
attending the few travellers who come, and when the temples arc
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 215
deserted, he sits down in the shadow of a column, and reads amid
the silence of the ruins he almost worships. There are few voca
tions in this envious world so separated from the jarring passions
of our nature.
Passed the morning on horseback, visiting the antiquities with
out the city. Turning by the temple of Theseus, we crossed
Mars Hill, the seat of the Areopagus, and passing a small valley,
ascended the Pnyx. On the right of the path we observed the
rock of the hill worn to the polish of enamel by friction. It was
uu iilu.o*t perpendicular descent of six or seven feet, and steps
were cut at the sides to mount to the top. It is the famous slid
ing stone, believed by the Athenians to possess the power of de
termining the sex of unborn children. The preference of sons,
if the polish of the stone is to be trusted, is universal in Greece
The rostrum of Demosthenes was above us on the side of the
hill facing from the sea. A small r Ltlbrm is cut into the rocif,
and on either side a seat is hewn out, probably for the distin
guished men of the state. The audience stood on the side-hill,
and the orator and his listeners were in the open air. An older
rostrum is cut into the summit of the hill, facing the sea. It is
said that when the maritime commerce of Greece began to enrich
the lower classes, the thirty tyrants turned the rostrum toward
the land, lest their orators should point to the ships of tho Piraeus,
and remind the people of their power.
Scene after scene swept through my fancy as I stood on tho
spot. I saw Demosthenes, after his first unsuccessful oration,
descending with a dejected air toward the temple of Theseus, fol-
2H5 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN.
lo-.V -ii by old Eunomus ;* abandoning himself to despair, and
repressing the fiery consciousness within him as a hopeless ambi
tion. I saw him again, with the last glowing period of a Phillipio
on his lips, standing on -this rocky eminence, his arm stretched
toward Macedon ; his eye flashing with success, and his ear
catching the low murmur of the crowd belowj which told him he
had moved his country as with the heave of an earthquake. I
saw the calm Aristides rise, with his mantle folded majestically
about him ; and the handsome Aleibiados waiting with a smile on
his lips to speak ; and Socrates, gazing on his wild but winning
disciple with affection and fear How easily is this bare rock,
whereon th o eagle now alights unafirighted, repcopled with the
crowding shadows of the past.
* Cl However, in his iirst address to the people, he was laughed at and in-
tern. j tecl by their clamors; for the violence of his manner threw him h.to a
oor.fiuitin of periods, and a distortion of his argument. At last, upon his
ijuiuiii : the asi-enibly, Euncmus, the Thriasian, a man now extremely old.
found i;;!: i wandering in a dejected condition in the Pirceus. and took upon
I.-UR tjsK h:n r ; {jht 1 -*-" . tt"-VJ ftf*. of Demottkeiut.
LETTER XXV,
The Prison of Socrates Turkish Stirrups and Saddles Plato s Academy The American
.Missionary School at Athens The Son of Petarches and Nephew of " Mrs. Black of
Egina."
ATHENS. We dismounted at the door of Socrates prison.
A bill between the Areopagus and the sea, is crowned with the
remains of a showy monument to a Roman pro-consul. Just be
neath it the hill forms a low precipice, and in the face of it you
t>oo three low entrances to caverns hewn in the solid rock. The
farthest to the right was the room of the Athenian guard, and
within it is a chamber with a round ceiling, which the sage occu
pied during the thirty days of his imprisonment. There are
marks of an iron door which separated it from the guard-room,
and through the bars of this he refused the assistance of his
friends to escape, and held those conversations with Onto, Plato,
and others., which have made his name immortal. On the day
upon wi.ich he was doomed to die, he was removed to the cham
ber nearest the Acropolis, and here the hemlock was presented
to him. A shallower excavation between, held an altar to the
gods ; and after his death, his body was here given to his friends.
Nothing, except some of the touching narrations of scripture,
ever seemed to me so affecting as the history of the death of
10
218 SUMMER CRU1SK IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
Socrates. It has been likened (I think, not profanely), to the
death of Christ. His virtuous life, his belief in the immortality
of the soul and a future state of reward and punishment, his for
giveness of his enemies and his godlike death, certainly provo
him, in the absence of. revealed light, to have walked the " dark
ling path of human reason with an almost inspired rectitude. I
stood in the chamber which had received his last breath, not
without emotion. The rocky walls about me had witnessed his
composure as he received the cup from his weeping jailer ; the
roughly-hewn floor beneath my feet had sustained him, as he
walked to and fro, till the poison had chilled his limbs ; his last
sigh, as he covered his head with his mantle and expired, passed
forth by that low portal. It is not easy to be indifferent on spots
like these. The spirit of the place is felt. We cannot turn
back and touch the brighter links of that " fleshly chain," in
which all human beings since the creation have been bound alike
without feeling, even through the rusty coil of ages, the electric
sympathy. Socrates died here ! The great human leap into
eternity, the inevitable calamity of our race, was here taken more
nobly than elsewhere. Whether the effect be to " fright us from
the shore," or, to nerve us by the example, to look more steadily
before us, a serious thought, almost of course a salutary one,
lurks in the very air.
We descended the hill and gallopped our small Turkish horses
at a stirring pace over the plain. The short stirrup and hiirh
peaked .saddle of the country, are (at least to men of my len^fh
and limb) uncomfortable contrivances. With the knees almost
up to the chin, one is compelled, of course, to lean far over the
horse s head, and it requires all the fullness of Turkish trousers
to conceal the awkwardness of the position. We drew rein at the
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 219
entrance of the " olive grove." Our horses walked leisurely
along the shaded path between the trees, and we arrived in a few
minutes at the site of Plato" 1 ?, academy. The more ethereal por
tion of my pleasure in seeing it must be in the recollection. The
Cephissus was dry, the noon-day sun was hot, and we were glad
to stop, \vifh throbbing temples, under a cluster of fig-trees, and
eat the delicious fruii, ibi gutting fill the philosophers inconti
nently. We sat in our saddles, and a Greek woman, of great
natural beauty, though dressed in rags, bent down the boughs to
our reach. The honey from the over-ripe figs, dropped upon us
as the wind shook the branches. Our dark-eyed and bright-lipped
Pomona served us with a grace and cheerfulness that would draw
me often to the neighborhood of the academy if I lived in Athens.
I venture to believe that Phryne herself, in so mean a dress,
would scarce have been more attractive. We kissed our hand to
her as our spirited horses leaped the hollow with which the trees
were encircled, and passing the mound sacred to the Furies,
where (Edipus was swallowed up, dashed over the sultry plain
once more, and were soon in Athens.
I have passed most of my leisure hours here in a scene I
certainly did not reckon in anticipation, among the pleasures of a
visit to Athens the American missionary school. We have all
been delighted with it, from the commodore to the youngest
midshipman. Mr. and Mrs. Hill have been here some four or
five years, and have attained their present degree of success in
the face of every difficulty. Their whole L ;mber of scholars
220 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
from the commencement, has been upward of three hundred ; at
present they have a hundred and thirty, mostly girls.
We found the school in a new and spacious stone building on
the site of the ancient " market," where Paul, on his visit to
Athene, "disputed daily with those that met with him." A
large court-yard, shaded partly with a pomegranate-tree, separates
it from the marble portico of the Agora, which is one of the
finest remains of antiquity. Mrs. Hill was in the midst of the
little Athenians. Two or three serious- looking Greek girls were
assisting her in regulating their movements, and the new and
admirable system of combined instruction and amusement was
going on swimmingly. There were, perhaps, a hundred children
in the benches, mostly from three to six or eight years of age ;
dark-eyed, cheerful little creatures, who looked as if their
" birthright of the golden grasshopper" had made them nature s
favorites as certainly as in the days when their ancestor-mothers
settled questions of philosophy. They inarched and recited, and
clapped their sun-burnt hands, and sung hymns, and I thought I
never had seen a more gratifying spectacle. I looked around in
vain for one who seemed discontented or weary. Mrs. HilPs
manner to them was most affectionate. She governs, literally
with a smile.
I selected several little favorites. One was a fine fellow of
two to three years, whose name I inquired immediately. He was
Plato Petarches, the nephew of the " maid of Athens," and the
son of the second of the three girls so admired by Lord Byron.
Another was a girl of six or seven, with a face, surpassing, for
expressive beauty, that of any "child I ever saw. She was a
Hydriote by birf , and dressed in the costume of the islands.
Her little feet vvcre in Greek slippers ; her figure was prettily
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 221
set off with an open jacket, laced with buttons from the shoulder
to the waist, and her head was enveloped in a figured handker
chief, folded gracefully in the style of a turban, and brought
under her chin, so as to show suspended a rich metallic fringe.
Her face was full, but marked with childish dimples, and her
mouth and eyes, as beautiful as ever those expressive features
were made, had a retiring seriousness in them, indescribably
sweet. She looked as if she had been born in some scene of
Turkish devastation, and had brought her mother s heart-ache
into the world.
At noon, at the sound of a bell, they marched out, clapping
their hands in time to the instructor s voice, and seated them
selves in order upon the portico, in front of the school. Here
their baskets were given them, and each one produced her dinner
and eat it with the utmost propriety. It was really a beautiful
scene.
It is to be remembered that here are educated a class of
human beings who were else deprived of instruction by the
universal custom of their country. The females of Greece are
suffered to grow up in ignorance. One who can read and write
is rarely found. The school has commenced fortunately at the
most favorable moment. The government was in process of
change, and an innovation was unnoticed in the confusion that at
a later period might have been opposed by the prejudices of
custom. The king and the president of the regency, Count
Armansperg, visited the school frequently during their stay in
Athens, and expressed their thanks to Mrs. Hill warmly. The
Countess Armansperg called repeatedly to have the pleasure of
sitting in the school-room for an hour. His majesty, indeed,
could hardly find a more useful subject in his realm. Mrs. Hill,
222 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
with her own personal efforts, has taught more than one, hundred
children to read the, Bible ! How few of us can write against our
names an equal offset to the claims of human duty ?
Circumstances made me acquainted with one or two wealthy
persons residing in Athens, and I received from them a strong
impression of Mr. Hill s usefulness and high standing. His
house is the hospitable resort of every stranger of intelligence
and respectability.
Mr. King and Mr. Robinson, missionaries of the Foreign
Board, are absent at Psera. Their families are here.
I passed my last evening among the magnificent ruins on the
banks of the Ilissus. The next day was occupied in returning
visits to the families who had been polite to us, and, with a
farewell of unusual regret to our estimable missionary friends, we
started on horseback to return by a gloomy sunset to the Piraeus.
I am looking more for the amusing than the useful in my rambles
about the world, and I confess I should not have gone far out of
my way to visit a missionary station anywhere. But chance has
thrown this of Athens across my path, and I record it as a moral
spectacle to which no thinking person could be indifferent. I
freely say I never have met with an equal number of my fellow-
creatures, who seemed to me so indisputably and purely useful.
The most cavilling mind must applaud their devoted sense of
duty, bearing up against exile from country and friends, priva
tions, trial of patience, and the many, many ills inevitable to such
an errand in a foreign land, while even the coldest politician
would find in their efforts the best promise for an enlightened
renovation of Greece.
Long after the twilight thickened immediately about us, the
lofty Acropolis stood up, bathed in a glow of light from the
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 2 23
lingering sunset. I turned back to gaze upon it with an enthusi
asm I had thought laid on the shelf with my half-forgotten
classics. The intrinsic beauty of the ruins of Greece, the
loneliness of their situation, and the divine climate in which, to
use Byron s expression, they are " buried," invest them with an
interest which surrounds no other antiquities in the world. I
rode on, repeating to myself Milton s beautiful description :
" Look ! on the Egean a city stands
Built nobly; pure the air and light the soil
Athens the eye of Greece, mother of arts
And eloquence ; native to famous wits
Or hospitable, in her sweet recess
City or suburban, studious walks or shades.
See, there the olive groves of Academe,
Plato s retirement, where the attic bird
Trills her thick- warbled notes the summer long.
There, flowery hill, Hymettus, with the sound
Of bees industrious murmurs, oft invites
To studious musing ; there Ilissus rolls
His whispering stream ; within the walls there view
The schools of ancient sages, his who bred
Great Alexander to subdue the world !"
uin
LETTEtt XXVI,
The Piraeus The Sacra Via Ruins of Eleusis Gigantic Medallion C^tumo of the
Athenian Women The Tomb of Themistoc es The Temple of Minerva Autographs.
PIRJEUS. With a basket of ham and claret in the stern- sheets,
a cool awning over our heads, and twelve men at the oars, such
as the coxswain of Thernistocles galley might have sighed for,
we pulled away from the ship at an early hour, for Eleusis. The
conqueror of Salamis delayed the battle for the ten o clock
breeze, and as nature (which should be called he instead of she,
for her constancy) still ruffles the Egean at the same hour, we
had a calm sea through the strait, where once lay the u ships by
thousands."
We soon rounded the point, and shot along under the
" Rocky brow
Which looks o er sea-born Salamis."
It is a bare, bold precipice, a little back from the sea, and
commands an entire view of the strait. Here sat Xerxes, " on
his throne of gold,* with many secretaries about him to write
* So says Phanodemus, quoted by Plutarch. The commentators upon
the tragedy of ^Eschylus on this subject, say it was a "silver chair," and
that it "was afterward placed in the temple of Minerva, at Athens, with the
golden-lulted cimeter of Mardonius."
SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN. 225
down the particulars of the action." The Athenians owed their
victory to the wisdom of Themistocles, who managed to draw the
Persians into the strait (scarce a cannon shot across just here),
where only a small part of their immense fleet could act at one
time. The wind, as the wily Greek had foreseen, rose at the
same time, and rendered the lofty-built Persian ships unmanage
able ; while the Athenian galleys, cut low to the water, were
easily brought into action in the most advantageous position. It
is impossible to look upon this beautiful and lovely spot and
imagine the stirring picture it presented. The wild sea-bird
knows no lonelier place. Yet on that rock once sat the son of
Darius, with his royal purple floating to the wind, and, below
him, within these rocky limits, lay " one thousand two hundred
ships-of-war, and two thousand transports," while behind him on
the shores of th Piraeus, were encamped " seven hundred
thousand foot, an.l four hundred thousand horse," "amounting,"
says Potter, in his notes, " with the retinue of women and
servants that attended the Asiatic princes in their military
expeditions, to more than Jive millions." How like a king must
the royal Persian have felt, whon
" He counted them at break of day I"
With an hour or two of fast pulling, we opened into the broad
bay of Eleusis. The first Sabbath after the creation could not
have been more absolutely silent. Megara was away on the
left, Eleusis before us at the distance of four or five miles, and
the broad plains where agriculture was first taught by Triptole-
mus, the poetical home of Ceres, lay an utter desert in the
sunshine. Behind us, between the mountains, descended the
Sacra Via, by which the procession came to Athens to celebrate
226 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
the " Eleusinian mysteries" a road of five or six miles, lined, in
the time of Pericles, with temples and tombs. I could half
fancy the scene, as it was presented to the eyes of the invading
Macedonians when the procession of priests and virgins,
accompanied by the whole population of Athens, wound down
into the plain, guarded by the shining spears of the army of
Alcibiades. It is still doubtful, I believe, whether these
imposing ceremonies were the pure observances of a lofty and
sincere superstition, or the orgies of licentious saturnalia.
"We landed at Eleusis, and were immediately surrounded by a
crowd of people, as simple and curious in their manners, and
resembling somewhat in their dress and complexion, the Indians
of our country. The ruins of a great city lay about us, and their
huts were built promiscuously among them. Magnificent frag
ments of columns and blocks of marble interrupted the path
through the village, and between two of the houses lay, half
buried, a gigantic medallion of Pentelic marble, representing, in
alto relievo, the body and head of a warrior in full armor. A
hundred men would move it with difficulty. Commodore Patter
son attempted it six years ago, in the " Constitution," but his
launch was found unequal to its weight.
The people here gathered more closely round the ladies of our
jvn-ty, examining their dress with childish curiosity. They were
itiuutless the first females ever seen at Eleusis in European
costume. One of the ladies happening to pull off her glove,
there was a general cry of astonishment. The brown kid had
clearly been taken as the color of the hand. Some curiosity was
then shown to see their faces, which were covered with thick
green veils, as a protection against the sun. The sight of their
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 227
complexion (in any country remarkable for a dazzling whiteness)
completed the astonishment of these children of Ceres.
We, on our part, were scarcely less amused by their costumes
in turn. Over the petticoat was worn a loose jacket of white
cloth reaching to the knee, and open in front its edges and
sleeves wrought very tastefully with red cord. The head-dress
was composed entirely of money. A fillet of gold sequins was
first put, a la feronierc, around the forehead, and a close cap,
with a throat-piece like the gorget of a helmet, fitted the skull
exactly, stitched with coins of all values, folded over each other
according to their sizes, like scales. The hair was then braided
and fell down the back, loaded also with money. Of the fifty or
sixty women we saw, I should think one half had money on her
head to the amount of from one to two hundred dollars. They
suffered us to examine them with perfect good humor. The
greater proportion of pieces were paras, a small and thin Turkish
coin of very small value. Among the larger pieces were dollars
of all nations, five-franc pieces, Sicilian piastres, Tuscan colonati,
Venetian swansicas, etc., etc. I doubted much whether they
were not the collection of some piratical caique. There is no
possibility of either spending or getting money within many miles
of Eleusis, and it seemed to be looked upon as an ornament
which they had come too lightly by to know its use.
We walked over the foundations of several large temples with
the remains of their splendor lying unvalued about them, and at
a mile from the village came to the " well of Proserpine,"
whence, say the poets, the ravished daughter of Ceres emerged
from the infernal regions on her visit to her mother. The
modern Eleusinians know it only as a well of the purest water.
On our return, we stopppd at the southern point of the Piraeus,
226 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
to see the tomb of Themistochs. We were directed to it by
thirteen or fourteen frusta of enormous columns, which once
formed the monument to his memory. They "buried him close to
the edge of the sea, opposite Salamis. The continual beat of
the waves for so many hundred years has worn away the
promontory, and his sarcophagus, which was laid in a grave cut in
the solid rock, is now filled by every swell from the Egean.
The old hero was brought back from his exile to be gloriously
buried. He could not lie better for the repose of his spirit (if it
returned with his bones from Argos). The sea on which he beat
the haughty Persians with his handful of galleys, sends every
wave to his feet. The hollows in the rock around his grave are
full of snowy salt left by the evaporation. You might scrape up
a bushel within six feet of him. It seems a natural tribute to his
memory.*
On a high and lonely rock, stretching out into the midst of the
sea, stands a solitary temple. As far as the eye can reach, along
the coast of Attica and to the distant isles, there is no sign of
human habitation. There it stands, lifted into the blue sky of
Greece, like the unreal " fabric of a vision."
Cape Colonna and its " temple of Minerva," were familiar to
my memory, but my imagination had pictured nothing half so
beautiful. As we approached it from the sea, it seemed so
strangely out of place, even for a ruin, so far removed from what
had ever been the haunt of man, that I scarce credited my eyes.
We could soon count them thirteen columns of sparkling
marble, glittering in the sun. The sea-air keeps them spotlessly
# Langhorne says in his notes on Plutarch, "There is the genuine attic
salt in most of the re orts and observations of themselves. His wit seems to
have been equal to his military and political capacity."
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 229
white, and, until you approach them nearly, they have the
appearance of a structure, from its freshness, still in the sculp
tor s hands.
The boat was lowered, and the ship lay off-and-on while we
landed near the rocks where Falconer was shipwrecked, and
mounted to the temple. The summit of the promontory is
strewn with the remains of the fallen columns, and their smooth
surfaces are thickly inscribed with the names of travellers
Among others, I noticed Byron s and Hobhouse s, and that of
the agreeable author of "a year in Spain." Byron, by the
way, mentions having narrowly escaped robbery here, by a band
of Mairiote pirates. II o w:;s surprised swimming off" the point,
by an English vessel containing some ladies of his acquaintance.
He concludes the " Isles of Greece" beautifully with an allusion
to it by its ancient name :
" Place me on Sunium s marble steep," etc.
The view from the summit is one of the finest in all Greece.
The isle where Plato was sold as a glave, and where Aristides
and Demosthenes passed their days in exile, stretches along the
west ; the wide Egean, sprinkled with here and there a solitary
rock, herbless, but beautiful in its veil of mist, spreads away
from its feet to the southern line of the horizon, and crossing
each other almost imperceptibly on the light winds of this summer
sea, the red-sailed caique of (Ireece, the merchantmen from the
Dardanelles, and the heavy men-of-war of England and France,
cruising wherever the wind blows fairest, are seen like broad-
winged and solitary birds, lying low with spread pinions upon the
waters. The place touched me. I shall remember it with an
affection.
230 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN.
There is a small island close to Sunium, which was fortified by
one of the heroes of the Iliad on his return from Troy why,
heaven only knows. It was here, too, that Phrontes, the pilot
of Menelaus, died and was buried.
We returned on board after an absence of two hours from the
ship, and are steering now straight for the Dardanelles. The
plains of Marathon are but a few hours north of our course, and
I pass them unwillingly ; but what is there one would not see ?
Greece lies behind, and I have realized one of my dearest
dreams in rambling over its ruins. Travel is an appetite that
" grows by what it feeds on."
LETTER XXVIT,
Mytilene The Tomb of Achilles Turkish Burying Ground Lost Reputation of the Sca-
mander Asiatic Sunsets Visit to a Turkish Bey The Castles of the Dardanelles-
Turkish Bath, and its Consequences.
LESBOS to windward. A caique, crowded with people, is run
ning across our bow, all hands singing a wild chorus (perhaps the
Lcsboun Carmen), most merrily. The island is now called
Mytilene, said to be the greenest and most fertile of the Medit
erranean. The Lesbean wine is still good, but they have had no
poetesses since Sappho. Cause and effect have quarrelled, one
would think.
Tenedos on the lee. The tomb of Achilles is distinguishable
with the glass on the coast of Asia. The column which Alex
ander " crowned and anointed and danced around naked," in
honor of the hero s ghost, stands above it no longer. The
Macedonian wept over Achilles, says the school-book, and envied
him the blind bard who had sung his deeds. He would have
dried his tears if he had known that his pas seul would be
remembered as long.
Tenedos seems a pretty island as we near it. It was here that
the Greeks hid, to persuade the Trojans that they had abandoned
the siege, while the wooden horse was wheeled into Troy. The
site of the city of Priam is visible as we get nearer the coast of
232 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN.
Asia. Mount Ida and the marshy valley of the Scamander are
appearing beyond Cape Sigseum, and we shall anchor in an hour
between Europe and Asia, in the mouth of the rapid Dardanelles.
The wind is not strong enough to stem the current that sets
down like a mill-race from the sea of Marmora.
Went ashore on the Asian side for a ramble. We landed at
the strong Turkish castle that, with another on the European
side, defends the strait, and passing under their bristling batter
ies, entered the small Turkish town in the rear. Our appearance
excited a great deal of curiosity. The Turks, who were sitting
cross-legged on the broad benches extending like a tailor s board,
in front of the cafes, stopped smoking as we passed, and the
women, wrapping up their own faces more closely, approached the
ladies of our party, and lifted their veils to look at them with the
freedom of our friends at Eleusis. We came unaware upon two
squalid wretches of women in turning a corner, who pulled their
ragged shawls over their heads with looks of the greatest resent
ment at having exposed their faces to us.
A few minutes walk brought us outside of the town. An
extensive Turkish grave-yard lay on the left. Between fig-trees
and blackberry bushes it was a green spot, and the low tomb
stones of the men, crowned each with a turban carved in marble
of the shape befitting the sleeper s rank, peered above the grass
like a congregation sitting in .a uniform head-dress at a field-
preaching. Had it not been for the female graves, which were
marked with a slab like ours, and here and there the tombstone
of a Greek, carved, after the antique, in the shape of a beautiful
shell, the effect of an assemblage sur Vherle would have been
ludicrously perfect.
We walked on to the Scamander. A ricketty bridge gave us
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 333
a passage, toll free, to the other side, where we sat round the rim
of a marble well, and ate delicious grapes, stolen for us by a
Turkish boy from a near vineyard. Six or seven camels were
feeding on the unenclosed plain, picking a mouthful, and then
lifting their long, snaky necks into the air to swallow ; a stray
horseman, with the head of his bridle decked with red tassels and
his knees up to his chin, scoured the bridle path to the moun
tains ; and three devilish-looking buffaloes scratched their hides
and rolled up their fiendish green eyes under a bramble-hedge
near the river. Voila ! a scene in Asia.
The poets lie, or the Scamander is as treacherous as Macassar.
Venus bathed in its waters before contending for the prize of
beauty adjudged to her on this very Mount Ida that I see
covered with brown grass in the distance. Her hair became
" flowing gold" in the lavation. My friends compliment me upon
no change after a similar experiment. My long locks (run riot
with a four months cruise) are as dingy and untractable as ever,
and, except in the increased brownness of a Mediterranean com
plexion, the cracked glass in the state-room of my friend the
lieutenant give me no encouragement of a change. It is soft
water, and runs over fine white sand ; but the fountain of Callir-
hoe, at Athens (she was the daughter of the Scamander, and like
most daughters, is much more attractive than her papa), is softer
and clearer. Perhaps the loss of the Scamander s virtues is
attributable to the cessation of the tribute paid to the god in
Helen s time.
The twilights in this part of the world are unparalleled but I
have described twilights and sunsets in Greece and Italy till I am
ashamed to write the words. Each one comes as if there never
had been and never were to be another, and the adventures of the
234 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
day, however stirring, are half forgotten in its glory, and seem,
in comparison, unworthy of description ; but one look at the
terms that might describe it, written on paper, uncharrns even
the remembrance. You must come to Asia and feel sunsets.
You cannot get them by paying postage.
At anchor, waiting for a wind. Called to-day on the Bey
Effendi, commander of the two castles, " Europe 7 and " Asia,"
between which we lie. A pokerish-looking dwarf, with ragged
beard and high turban, and a tall Turk, who I am sure never
smiled since he was born, kicked off their slippers at the thresh
old, and ushered us into a chamber on the second story. It was
a luxurious little room, lined completely with cushions, the
muslin-covered pillows of down leaving only a place for the door.
The divan was as broad as a bed, and, save the difficulty of
rising from it, it was perfect as a lounge. A ceiling of inlaid
woods, embrowned with smoke, windows of small panes fantasti
cally set, and a place lower than the floor for the attendants to
stand and leave their slippers, were all that was peculiar else.
The bey entered in a few minutes, with a pipe-bearer, an inter
preter, and three or four attendants. He was a young man,
about twenty, and excessively handsome. A clear, olive com
plexion, a mustache of silky black, a thin, aquiline nose, with
almost transparent nostrils, cheeks and chin rounded into a per
fect oval, and mouth and eyes expressive of the most resolute
firmness, and at the same time, girlishly beautiful, completed the
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 235
picture of the finest-looking fellow I have seen within my recol
lection. His person was very slight, and his feet and hands
small, and particularly well shaped. Like most of his country
men of later years, his dress was half European, and much less
becoming, of course, than the turban and trowser. Pantaloons,
rather loose, a light fawn-colored short-jacket, a red cap, with a
blue tassel, and stockings, without shoes, were enough to give
him the appearance of a dandy half through his toilet. He
entered with an indolent step, bowed, without smiling, and
throwing one of his feet under him, sunk down upon the divan,
and beckoned for his pipe. The Turk in attendance kicked off
his slippers, and gave him the long tube with its amber mouth
piece, setting the bowl into a basin in the centre of the room.
The bey put it to his handsome lips, and drew till the smoke
mounted to the ceiling, and then handed it, with a graceful ges
ture, to the commodore.
The conversation went on through two interpretations. The
bey s interpreter spoke Greek and Turkish, and the ship s pilot,
who accompanied us, spoke Greek and English, and the usual
expressions of good feeling, and offers of mutual service, were
thus passed between the puffs of the pipe with sufficient facility.
The dwarf soon entered with coffee. The small gilded cups had
about the capacity of a goodwife s thimble, and were covered
with gold tops to retain the aroma. The fragrance of the rich
berry filled the room. We acknowledged, at once, the superior
ity of the Turkish manner of preparing it. It is excessively
strong, and drunk without milk.
I looked into every corner while the attendants were removing
the cups, but could see no trace of a look. Ten or twelve guns,
with stocks inlaid with pearl and silver, two or three pair of gold-
236 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
handled pistols, and a superb Turkish cimetar and belt, hung
upon the walls, but there was no other furniture. We rose, after
a half hour s visit, and were bowed out by the handsome effendi,
coldly and politely. As we passed under the walls of the castle,
on the way to the boat, we saw six or seven women, probably a
part of his harem, peeping from the embrasures of one of the
bastions. Their heads were wrapped in white, one eye only left
visible. It was easy to imagine them Zulcikas after having seen
their master.
Went ashore at Castle Europe, with one or two of the officers,
to take a bath. An old Turk, sitting upon his hams, at the
entrance, pointed to the low door at his side, without looking at
us, and we descended, by a step or two, into a vaulted hall, with
a large, circular ottoman in the centre, and a very broad divan
all around. Two tall young mussulmans, with only turbans and
waistcloths to conceal their natural proportions, assisted us to
undress, and led us into a stone room, several degrees warmer
than the first. We walked about here for a few minutes, and, as
we began to perspire, were taken into another, filled with hut
vapor, and, for the first moment or two, almost intolerable. It
was shaped like a dome, with twenty or thirty small windows at
the top, several basins at the sides into which hot water w;;s
pouring, and a raised stone platform in the centre, upon which
we were all requested, by gestures, to lie upon our backs. The
perspiration, by this time, was pouring from us like rain. I lay
down with the others, and a Turk, a dark-skinned, fine-looking
fellow, drew on a mitten of rough grass cloth, and laying one
hand upon my breast to hold rne steady, commenced rubbing me,
without water, violently. The skin peeled off under the friction,
and 1 thought he must have rubbed into the flesh repeatedly.
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 237
Nothing but curiosity to go through the regular operation of a
Turkish bath prevented my crying out " enough !" He rubbed
away, turning me from side to bide, till the rough glove passed
smoothly all over my body and limbs, and then handing me a
pair of wooden slippers, suffered me to rise. I walked about for
a few minutes, looking with surprise at the rolls of skin he had
taken from me, and feeling almost transparent as the hot air
blew upon me.
In a few minutes my mussulman beckoned to me to follow him
to a smaller room, where he seated me on a stone beside a fount
of hot water. He then made some thick soap-suds in a basin,
and, with a handful of fine flax, soaped and rubbed me all over
again, and a few dashes of the hot water, from a wooden saucer,
completed the bath.
The next room, which had seemed so warm on our entrance,
was now quite chilly. We remained here until we were dry, arid
then returned to the hall in which our clothes were left, where
beds were prepared on the divans, and we were covered in warm
cloths, and left to our repose. The disposition to sleep was
almost irresistible. We rose in a short time, and went to the
coffee-house opposite, when a cup of strong coffee, and a hookah
smoked through a highly ornamented glass bubbling with water,
refreshed us deliciously.
I have had ever since a feeling of suppleness and lightness,
which is like wings growing at my feet. It is certainly a very
great luxury, though, unquestionably, most enervating as a habit.
LETTER XXVIII,
A Turkish Pic-Nic, ou the plain of Troy Finger* vs. Forks Trieste The Boschetto
Graceful freedom of Italian Manners A Eural F6to Fireworks Amateur Musicians.
DARDANELLES. The oddest invitation I ever had in my life
was from a Turkish bey to a fete champfore, on the ruins of
Troy ! We have just returned, full of wassail and pillaw, by
the light of an Asian moon.
The morning was such a one as you would expect in the
country where mornings were first made. The sun was clear,
but the breeze was fresh, and as we sat on the bey s soft divans,
taking coffee before starting, I turned my cheek to the open
window, and confessed the blessing of existence.
We were sixteen, from the ship, and our boat was attended
by his interpreter, the general of his troops, the governor of
13ournabashi (the name of the Turkish town near Troy), and a
host of attendants on foot and horseback. His cook had been
sent forward at daylight with the provisions.
The handsome bey came to the door, and helped to mount us
upon his own horses, and we rode on, with the whole population
cf the village assembled to see our departure. We forded the
Scamander, near the town, and pushed on at a hard gallop over
SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN. 239
the plain. The bey soon overtook us upon a fleet gray mare,
caparisoned with red trappings, holding an umbrella over his
head, which he courteously offered to the commodore on coming
up. We followed a grass path, without hill or stone, for nine or
ten miles, and after having passed one or two hamlets, with their
open thrashing-floors, and crossed the Simois, with the water to
our saddle-girths, we left a slight rising ground by a sudden turn,
and descended to a cluster of trees, where the Turks sprang from
their horses, and made signs for us to dismount.
It was one of nature s drawing-rooms. Thickets of brush and
willows enclosed a fountain, whose clear waters were confined in
a tank, formed of marble slabs, from the neighboring ruins. A
spreading tree above, and soft meadow-grass to its very tip, left
nothing to wish but friends and a quiet mind to perfect its
beauty. The cook s fires were smoking in the thicket, the
horses were grazing without saddle or bridle in the pasture
below, and we laid down upon the soft Turkish carpets, spread
beneath the trees, and reposed from our fatigues for an hour.
The interpreter came when the sun had slanted a little across
the trees, and invited us to the bey s gardens, hard by. A path,
overshadowed with wild brush, led us round the little meadow to
a gate, close to the fountain-head of the Scamander. One of the
common cottages of the country stood upon the left, and in front
of it a large arbor, covered with a grape-vine, was underlaid with
cushions and carpets. Here we reclined, and coffee was brought
us with baskets of grapes, figs, quinces, and pomegranates, the
bey and his officers waiting on us themselves with amusing
assiduity. The people of the house, meantime, were sent to the
fields for green corn, which was roasted for us, and this with
nuts, wine, and conversation, and a ramble to the source of the
240 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
Simois, which bursts from a cleft in the rock very beautifully,
whiled away the hours till dinner.
About four o clock we returned to the fountain. A white
muslin cloth was laid upon the grass between the edge and the
overshadowing tree, and all around it were spread the carpets
upon which we were to recline while eating. Wine and melons
were cooling in the tank, and plates of honey and grapes, and
new-made butter (a great luxury in the archipelago,), stood on
the marble rim. The dinner might have fed Priam s army.
Half a lamb, turkeys, and chickens, were the principal meats,
but there was, besides, " a rabble route" of made dishes, peculiar
to the country, of ingredients at which I could not hazard even a
conjecture.
We crooked our legs under us with some awkwardness, and
producing our knives and forks (which we had brought with the
advice of the interpreter), commenced, somewhat abated in
appetite by too liberal a lunch. The bey and his officers sitting
upright, with their feet under them, pinched off bits of meat
dexterously with the thumb and forefinger, passing from one to
the other a dish of rice, with a large spoon, which all used
indiscriminately. It is odd that eating with the fingers seemed
only disgusting to me in the bey. His European dress probably
made the peculiarity more glaring. The fat old governor who
sat beside me was greased to the elbows, and his long gray beard
was studded with rice and drops of gravy to his girdle. He rose
when the meats were removed, and waddled off to the stream
below, where a wash in the clean water made him once more a
presentable person.
It is a Turkish custom to rise and retire while the dishes are
changing, and after a little ramble through the meadow, we
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 241
returned to a lavish spread of fruits and honey, which concluded
the repast.
It is doubted where Troy stood. The reputed site is a rising
ground, near the fountain of Bournabashi, to which we strolled
after dinner. We found nothing but quantities of fragments of
columns, believed by antiquaries to be the ruins of a city, that
sprung up and died long since Troy.
We mounted and rode home by a round moon, whose light
filled the air like a dust of phosphoric silver. The plains were
in a glow with it. Our Indian summer nights, beautiful as they
are, give you no idea of an Asian moon.
The bey s rooms were lit, and we took coffee with him once
more, and, fatigued with pleasure and excitement, got to our
boats, and pulled up against the arrowy current of the Dardanelles
to the frigate.
*******
A long, narrow valley, with precipitous sides, commences
directly at the gate of Trieste, and follows a small stream into
the mountains of Friuli. It is a very sweet, green place, and
studded on both sides with cottages and kitchen-gardens, which
supply the city with flowers and vegetables. The right hand
slope is called the Boschetto, and is laid out with pretty avenues
of beach and elm as a public walk, while, at every few steps,
stands a bowling-alley or drinking arbor, and here and there a
trim little restaurant, just large enough for a rural party. It is,
perhaps, a mile and a half in length, and one grand cafe in the
centre, usually tempts the better class of promenaders into the
expense of an ice.
It was a Sunday afternoon, and all Trieste was pouring out
to the Boschctto. I had come ashore with one of the officers,
11
242 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
and we fell into the tide. Few spots in the world are so various
ly peopled as this thriving seaport, and we encountered every
style of dress and feature. The greater part were Jewesses.
How instantly the most common observer distinguishes thorn in a
crowd ! The clear sallow skin, the sharp black eye and broad
eyebrow, the aqueline nose, the small person, the slow, cautious
step of the old, and the quick, restless one of the younsj, the
ambitious ornaments, and the look of cunning, winch nothing but
the highest degree of education does away, mark the race with
the definiteness of another species.
We strolled on to the end of the walk, amused constantly with
the family groups sitting under the trees with their simple repast
of a fritnta and a mug of beer, perfectly unconscious of the
presence of the crowd. There was something pastoral and
contented in the scene that took my fancy. Almost all the
female promenaders were without bonnets, and the mixture of the
Greek style of head-dress with the Parisian coiffure, had a
charming effect. There was just enough of fashion to take off
the vulgarity.
We coquetted along, smiled upon by here and there a group
that /had visited the ship, and on our return sat down at a table
in front of the cafe, surrounded by some hundreds of people of
all classes, conversing and eating ices. T thought as I glanced
about me, how oddly such a scene would look in America. In
the broad part of an open walk, the whole town passing and
repassing, sat elegantly dressed ladies, with their husbands or
lovers, mothers with their daughters, and occasionally a group of
modest girls alone, eating or drinking with as little embarrassment
as at home, and preserving toward each other that courtesy of
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 2 43
deportment which in these classes of society can result only from
being so much in public.
Under the next tr-e to us sat an excessively pretty woman
with two gentlemen, probably her husband and cavalier. I
touched my hat to them as we seated ourselves, and this common
courtesy of the country was returned with smiles that put us
instantly upon the footing of a half acquaintance. A caress to
the lady s greyhound, arid an apology for smoking, produced a
little conversation, and when they rose to leave us, the compli
ments of the evening were exchanged with a cordiality that in
America would scarce follow an acquaintance of months. I
mention it as an every-day instance of the kind r hearted and open
manners of Europe, it is what makes these countries so aoree-
o
able to the stranger and the traveller. Every cafe, on a second
visit, seems like a home.
We were at a rural fefe last night, given by a wealth.; .
of Trieste, at his villa in the neighborhood. We found tho
company assembled on a terraced observatory, crowning a
summer-house, watching the sunset over one of the sweetest
landscapes in the world. "We were at the head of a vall-y,
broken at the edge of the Adriatic by the city, and beyond
spread the golden waters of the gulf toward Venice, headed in on
the right by the long chain of the Friuli. The country around
was green and fertile, and small white villas peeped out every
where Irom the foliage, evidences of the prosperous commerce of
the town. We watched the. warm colors out of the sky, and tho
244 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
party having by this time assembled, we walked through the long
gardens to a house open with long windows from the ceiling to the
floor, and furnished only with the light and luxurious arrange
ment of summer.
Music is the life of all amusement within the reach of Italy,
and the waltzing was mingled with performances on the piano
(and very wonderful ones to me) by an Italian count and his
friend, a German. They played duetts in a style I have seldom
heard even by professors.
The supper was fantastically rural. The table was spread
under a large tree, from the branches of which was trailed a
vine, by a square frame of lattice-work in the proportions of a
pretty saloon. The lamps were hung in colored lanterns among
the branches, and the trunk of the tree passed through the centre
of the table hollowed to receive it. The supper was sumptuous
ly spl i-ndid, and th* effect of the party within, seen from the
g ounds about, through the arched and vine-concealed doors, was
the iuot picturesque imaginable.
A waltz or two followed, and we were about calling for our
horses, when the whole place was illuminated with a discharge of
fi eworks. Every description of odd figures was described in
flame during the hour they detained us, and the bright glare on
the trees, and the figures of the party strolling up and down the
gravelled walks, was admirably beautiful.
They do these things so prettily here ! We were invited out
on the morning of the same day, and expected nothing but a
drive and a cup of tea, and we found an entertainment worthy
of a king. The simplicity and frankness with which w*. were
received, and the unpretendingness of the manner of introducing
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 245
the amusements of the evening, might have been lessons in
politeness to nobles.
A drive to town by starlight, and a pull off to the ship in the
cool and refreshing night air, concluded a day of pure pleasure
It has been my good fortune of late to number many such.
LETTER XXIX,
The DardanellesVisit from the Pacha His Delight at hearing the Tiano Turkish Foua-
tains Caravan of Mules laden with Grapes Turkish Mode of Living Houses. Cafes,
and Women The Mosque and the Muezzin American Consul of the Dardanelles, an
other Caleb Quotem.
COAST OF ASIA. We have lain in the mouth of the Darda
nelles sixteen mortal days, waiting for a wind. Like Don Juan
(who passed here on his way to Constantinople)
" Another time we might have liked to see em,
But now are not much pleased with Cape Sigaeum."
An occasional trip with the boats to the watering-place, a Turk
ish bath, and a stroll in the bazaar of the town behind the castle,
gazing with a glass at the tombs of Ajax and Achilles, and the
long, undulating shores of Asia, eating often and sleeping much,
are the only appliances to our philosophy. One cannot always
be thinking of Hero and Leander, though he lie in the Helles
pont.
A merchant-brig from Smyrna is anchored just astern of us,
waiting like ourselves for this eternal northeaster to blow itself
out. She has forty or fifty passengers for Constantinople, among
SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN. 247
whom are the wife of an American merchant (a Greek lady), and
Mr. Schauffler, a missionary, in whom I recognised a quondam
fellow-student. They were nearly starved on board the brig, as
she was provisioned but for a few days, and the commodore has
courteously ofiered them a passage in the frigate. Fifty or sixty
sail lie below Castle Europe, in the same predicament. With the
u cap of King Erricus," this cruising, pleasant as it is, would be
a thought pleasanter to my fancy.
Still wind-bound. The angel that
Looked o er my almanac
And crossed out my ill-days, 7
suffered a week or so to escape him here. Not that the ship ia
not pleasant enough, and the climate deserving of its Sybarite
fame, and the sunsets and stars as much brighter than those of
the rest of the world, as Byron has described them to be (vide
letter to Leigh Hunt) , but life has run in so deep a current with
me of late, that the absence of incident seems like water without
wine. The agreeable stir of travel, the incomplete adventure,
the change of costumes and scenery, the busy calls upon tho
curiosity and the imagination, have become, in a manner, very
breath to me. Hitherto upon the cruise, we have scarce ever
been more than one or two days at a timeout of port. Elba
Sicily, Naples, Vienna, the Ionian Isles and the various ports of
Greece have come and gone so rapidly, and so entirely without
exertion of my own, that I seem to have lived in a magic pano
rama. After dinner on one day I visit a city here, and the day
248 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
or two after, lounging and reading and sleeping meanwhile quietly
at home, I find myself rising from table, hundreds of miles
farther to the north or east, and another famous city before me,
having taken no care, and felt no motion, nor encountered danger
or fatigue. A summer cruise in the Mediterranean is certainly
the perfection of sight-seeing. With a sea as smooth as a river,
and cities of interest, classical and mercantile, everywhere on the
lee, I can conceive of no class of persons to whom it would not
be delightful. A company of pleasure, in a private vessel,
would see all Greece and Italy with less trouble and expense
than is common on a trip to the lakes.
"All hands up anchor !" The dog-vane points at last to
Constantinople. The capstan is manned, the sails Igosed, the
quarter- master at the wheel, and the wind freshens every
moment from the " sweet south." " Heave round merrily !"
The anchor is dragged in by this rushing Hellespont, and holds
on as if the bridge of Xerxes were tangled about the flukes.
" Up she conies at last," and yielding to her broad canvass, the
gallant frigate begins to make headway against the current.
There is nothing in the whole world, of senseless matter, so like
a breathing creature as a ship ! The energy of her motion, the
beauty of her shape and contrivance, and the ease with which
she is managed by the one mind upon her quarter-deck, to
whose voice she is as obedient as the courser to the rein, inspire
me with daily admiration. I have been four months a guest in
this noble man-of-war, and to this hour, I never set my foot on
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 249
her deck without a feeling of fresh wonder. And then Cooper s
novels read in a ward-room as grapes eat in Tuscany. It were
missing one of the golden leaves of a life not to have thumbed
them on a cruise.
The wind has headed us off again, and we have dropped
anchor just below the castles of the Dardanelles. We have
made but eight miles, but we have new scenery from the ports,
and that is something to a weary eye. I was as tired of " the
shores of Ilion" as ever was Ulysses. The hills about our
present anchorage are green and boldly marked, and the frowning
castles above us give that addition to the landscape which is
alone wanting on the Hudson. Sestos and Abydos are six or
seven miles up the stream. The Asian shore (I should have
thought it a pretty circumstance, once, to be able to set foot
either in Europe or Asia in five minutes) is enlivened by
numbers of small vessels, tracking up with buffaloes, .against
wind and tide. And here we lie, says the old pilot, without
hope till the moon changes. The fickle moon," quotha ! I
wish my friends were half as constant !
The pacha of the Dardanelles has honored us with a visit.
He came in a long caique, pulled by twenty stout rascals, his
excellency of u two tails" sitting on a rich carpet on the bottom
of the boat, with his boy of a year old in the same uniform as
himself, and his suite of pipe and slipper-bearers, dwarf and
executioner, sitting cross-legged about him. He was received
with the guard and all the honor due his rank. His face is that
of a cold, haughty, and resolute, but well-born man, and his son
is like him. He looked at everything attentively, without
expressing any surprise, till he came to the pianoforte, which one
of the ladies played to his undisguised delight. It was the first
250 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
he had ever seen. He inquired, through his interpreter, if she
had not been all her life in learning.
The poet says, " The seasons of the year come in like
masquers." To one who had made their acquaintance in New-
England, most of the months would literally pass incog, in Italy.
But here is honest October, the same merry old gentleman,
though I meet him in Asia, and I remember him, last year, at
the baths of Lucca, as unchanged as here. It has been a clear,
bright, invigorating day, with a vitality in the air as rousing to
the spirits as a blast from the " horn of Astolpho." I enu
remember just such a day ten years ago. It is odd how a littlo
.sunshine will cling to the memory when loves and hnts that, iu
their time, convulsed the very soul, are so easily forgotten.
We heard yesterday that there was a Turkish village seven or
eight miles in the mountains on the Asian side, and, as a variety
to the promenade on the quarter-deck, a ramble was proposed
to it.
We landed, this morning, on the bold shore of the Dardanelles,
and, climbing up the face of a sand-hill, struck across a broad
plain, through brush and brier, for a mile. On the edge of a
ravine we found a pretty road, half hedged over with oak and
hemlock, and a mounted Turk, whom we met soon after, with a
un across his pummel, and a goose looking from his saddle-l -u:*,
directed us to follow it till we reached the village.
It was a beautiful path, flecked with the shade of leaves of ail
the variety of eastern trees, and refreshed with a fountain at
every mile. About half way we stopped at a spring welling from
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 351
a rock, under a large fig-tree, from which the water poured, as
clear as crystal, into seven tanks, and one after the other rippling
away from the last into a wild thicket, whence a stripe of brighter
green marked its course down the mountain. It was a spot
worthy of Tempe. We seated ourselves on the rim of the
rocky basin, and, with a drink of bright water, and a half hour s
repose, re-eunitiicnceci oui 1 a^c -nt, blessing the nymph of the
fount, like true pilgrims of the east.
A few steps beyond we mot a caravan of the pacha s tithe-
gatherers, with mules laden with grapes ; the turbaned and
showily-armed drivers, as they came winding down the dell,
produced the picturesque effect of a theatrical ballet. They
laid their hands on their breasts, with grave courtesy as they
approached, and we helped ourselves to the ripe, blushing
clusters, as the panniers went by, with Arcadian freedom.
We reached the summit of the ridge a little before noon, and
turned our faces back for a moment to catch the cool wind from
the Hellespont. The Dardanelles came winding out from the
bills, just above Abydos, and sweeping past the upper castles of
Europe and Asia, rushed down by Tenedos into the archipelago.
Perhaps twenty miles of its course lay within our view. Its
colors were borrowed from the divine sky above, and the rainbow
is scarce more varied or brighter. The changing purple and
blue of the mid-stream, specked with white crests, the crysoprase
green of the shallows, and the dies of the various depths along
the shore, gave it the appearance of a vein of transparent
marble, inlaid through the valley. The frigate looked like a
child s boat on its bosom. To our left, the tombs of Ajax and
Achilles were just distinguishable in the plains of the Scaman-
der, and Troy (if Troy ever stood), stood back from the sea, and
252 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN.
the blue-wreathed isles of the archipelago bounded the reach of
the eye. It was a view that might " cure a month s grief in a
day."
We descended now into a kind of cradle valley, yellow with
rich vineyards. It was alive with people gathering in the grapes.
The creaking wagons filled the road, and shouts and laughter
rang over the mountain-sides merrily. The scene would have
been Italian, but for the turbans peering out everywhere from
the leaves, and those diabolical-looking buffaloes in the wagons.
The village was a mile or two before us, and we loitered on,
entering here and there a vineyard, where the only thing
evidently grudged us was our peep at the women. They
scattered like deer as we stepped over the walls.
Near the village we found a grave Turk, of whom one of the
officers made some inquiries, which were a part of our errand to
the mountains. It may spoil the sentiment of my description,
but, in addition to the poetry of the ramble, we were to purchase
beef for the mess. His bullocks were out at grass (feeding in
pastoral security, poor things!), and he invited us to his house,
while he sent his boyto drive them in. I recognised them, when
they came, as two handsome steers, which had completed the
beauty of an open glade, in the centre of a clump of forest trees,
on our route. The pleasure they have afforded to the eye will
be repeated upon the palate a double destiny not accorded to
all beautiful creatures.
Our host led us up a flight of rough stone steps to the second
story of his house, where an old woman sat upon her heels,
rolling out paste, and a younger one nursed a little Turk at her
bosom. They had, like every man, woman or child I have seen
in this country, superb eyes and noses. No chisel could improve
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 253
the meanest of them in these features. Our friend s wife
seemed ashamed to be caught with her face uncovered, but she
offered us cushions on the floor before she retired, and her
husband followed up her courtesy with his pipe.
We went thence to the cafe, where a bubbling hookah, a cup
of coffee, and a divan, refreshed us a little from our fatigues.
While the rest of the party were lingering over their pipes, T
took a turn through the village in search of the house of the
aga. After strolling up and down the crooked streets for half an
hour, a pretty female figure, closely enveloped in her veil, and
showing, as she ran across the street, a dainty pair of feet in
small yellow slippers, attracted me into the open court of the
best-looking house in the village. The lady had disappeared,
but a curious-looking carriage, lined with rich Turkey carpeting
and cushions, and covered with red curtains, made to draw
close in front, stood in the centre of the court. I was going up
to examine it, when an old man, with a beard to his girdle, and
an uncommonly rich turban, stepped from the house, and
motioned me angrily away. A large wolf-dog, which he held
by the collar, added emphasis to his command, and I retreated
directly. A giggle and several female voices from the closely-
latticed window, rather aggravated the mortification. I had
intruded on the premises of the aga, a high offence in Turkey,
when a woman is in the case.
It was " deep i the afternoon," when we arrived at the beach,
and made signal for a boat. We were on board as the sky
kindled with the warm colors of an Asian sunset a daily offset
to our wearisome detention which goes far to keep me in temper.
My fear is that the commodore s patience is not u so good a
254 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN.
continuer" as this " vento maledetto," as the pilot calls it, and
in such a case I lose Constantinople most provokingly.
Walked to the Upper Castle Asia, some eight miles above our
anchorage. This is the main town on the Dardanelles, and
contains forty or fifty thousand inhabitants. Sestos and Abydos
are a mile or two farther up the strait.
We kept along the beach for an hour or two, passing
occasionally a Turk on horseback, till we were stopped by a
small and shallow creek without a bridge, just on the skirts of
the town. A woman with one eye peeping from her veil,
dressed in a tunic of fine blue cloth, stood at the head of a large
drove of camels on the other side, and a beggar with one eye,
smoked his pipe on the sand at a little distance. The water was
knee-deep, and we were hesitating on the brink, when the beggar
offered to carry us across on his back a task he accomplished
(there were six of us) without taking his pipe from his mouth.
I tried in vain to get a peep at the camel-driver s wife or
daughter, but she seemed jealous of showing even her eyebrow,
and I followed on to the town. The Turks live differently from
every other people, I believe. You walk through their town and
see every individual in it, except perhaps the women of the
pacha. Their houses are square boxes, the front side of which
lifts on a hinge in the day time, exposing the whole interior, with
its occupants squatted in the corners or on the broad platform
where their trades are followed. They are scarce larger than
boxes in the theatre, and the roof projects into the middle of the
street, meeting that of the opposite neighbor, so that the
pavement between is always dark and cool. The three or four
Turkish towns I have seen, have the appearance of cabins
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 255
thrown up hastily after a fire. You would not suppose they were
intended to last more than a month at the farthest.
We roved through the narrow streets an hour or more,
admiring the fine-bearded old Turks, smoking cross-legged in
the cafes, the slipper-makers with their gay morocco wares in
goodly rows around them, the wily Jews with their high caps and
caftans (looking, crouched among their merchandise, like the
u venders of old bottles and abominable lies," as they are drawn
in the plays of Queen Elizabeth s time), the muffled and
gliding spectres of the moslem women, and the livelier-footed
Greek girls, in their velvet jackets and braided hair, and by this
time we were kindly disposed to our dinners.
On our way to the consul s, where we were to dine, we passed
a mosque. The minaret (a tall peaked tower, about of the shape
and proportions of a pencil-case) commanded a view down the
principal streets ; and a stout fellow, with a sharp clear voice,
leaned over the balustrade at the top, crying out the invitation to
prayer in a long drawling sing-song, that must have been audible
on the other side of the Hellespont. Open porches, supported
by a paling, extended all around the church, and the floors were
filled with kneeling Turks, with their pistols and ataghans lying
beside them. I had never seen so picturesque a congregation.
The slippers were left in hundreds at the threshold, and the bare
and muscular feet and legs, half concealed by the full trowsers,
supported as earnest a troop of worshippers as ever bent fore
head to the ground. I left them rising from a flat prostration,
and hurried after my companions to dinner.
Our consul of the Dardanelles is an American. He is absent
just now, in search of a runaway female tlave of the sultan s ;
and his wife, a gracious Italian, full of movement and hospitality,
256 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN.
does the honors of his house in his absence. He is a physician
as well as consul and slave-catcher, and the presents of a hand-
orga**, a French clock, and a bronze standish, rather prove him
to be a favorite with the " brother of the sun."
"We were smoking the hookah after dinner, when an intelligent-
looking man, of fifty or so, came in to pay us a visit. He is at
present an exile from Constantinople, by order of the grand
seignior, because a brother physician, his friend, failed in an
attempt to cure one of the favorites of the imperial harem !
This is what might be called " sympathy upon compulsion." It
is unnecessary, one would think, to make friendship more
dangerous than common human treachery renders it already.
LETTER XXX,
Turkish Military Life- -A Visit to the Camp Turkish Music Sunsets The Sea of Mar
mora.
A HALF hour s walk brought us within sight of the pacha s
camp. The green and white tents of five thousand Turkish
troops were pitch". ! on the edge of a stream, partly sheltered by
a grove of nob].; oaks, and defended by v;icker batteries at
distances of thirty or forty feet. We were stopped by the
sentinel on guard, while a message was sent in to the pacha for
permis.-ion to wait upon him. Meantime a number of young
officers came out from their tents, and commenced examining
our dresses with the curiosity of boys. One put on my gloves,
another examined the cloth of my coat, a third took from mo a
curious stick I had purchased at Vienna, and a more famili.-n-
gentleman took up my hand, and after comparing it with his own
black fingers, stroked it with an approving smile that was meant
probably as a compliment. My companions underwent the same
review, and their curiosity was still unsated when a good-looking
officer, with his cimeter under his arm, came.to conduct us to the
commander-in-chief.
The long lines of tents were bent to the direction of the
258 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN
stream, and, at short distances, the silken banner stuck in the
ground under the charge of a sentinel, and a divan covered with
rich carpets under the shade of the nearest tree, marked the tent
of an officer. The interior of those of the soldiers exhibited
merely a stand of muskets and a raised platform for bed and
table, covered with coarse mats, and decked with the European
accoutrements now common in Turkey. It was the middle of
the afternoon, and most of the officers lay asleep on low otto
mans, with their tent-curtains undrawn, and their long chibouques
beside them, or still at their lips. Hundreds of soldiers loitered
about, engaged in various occupations, sweeping, driving their
tent-stakes more firmly into the ground, cleaning arms, cooking,
or with their heels under them playing silently at dominoes.
Half the camp lay on the opposite bank of the stream, and there
was repeated the same warlike picture, the white uniform and the
loose red cap with its gold bullion and blue tassel, appearing and
disappearing between the rows of tents, and the bright red
banners clinging to the staff in the breathless sunshine.
We soon approached the splendid pavilion of the pacha,
unlike the rest in shape, and surrounded by a quantity of
servants, some cooking at the root of a tree, and all pursuing
their vocation with a singular earnestness. A superb banner of
vi<:ht crimson silk, wrought with long lines of Turkish charac-
u>, piobably passages from the Koran, stood in a raised socket
guarded by two sentinels. Near the tent, and not far from the
edge of the stream, stood a gayly-painted kiosk, not unlike the
fantastic summer-houses sometimes seen in a European garden,
and here our conductor stopped, and kicking off his slippers,
motioned for us to enter.
We mounted the steps, and passing a small entrance-room
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 259
filled with guards, stood in the presence of the commander-in-
chief. He sat on a divan, cross-legged, in a military frock-coat
wrought with gold on the collar and cuffs, a sparkling diamond
crescent on his breast, and a cimetar at his side, with a belt
richly wrought, and held by a buckle of dazzling brilliants. His
aid sat beside him, in a dress somewhat similar, and both
appeared to be men of about forty. The pacha is a stern, dark,
soldier-like man, with a thick, straight beard as black as jet, and
features which look incapable of a smile. He bowed without
rising when we entered, and motioned for us to be seated. A
little conversation passed between him and the consul s son, who
acted as our interpreter, and coffee came in almost immediately.
There was an aroma about it which might revive a mummy.
The small china-cups, with thin gold filagree sockets, were soon
emptied and taken away, and the officer in waiting introduced a
soldier to go through the manual exercise by way of amusing us.
He was a powerful fellow, and threw his musket about with
so much violence, that I feared every moment, the stock, lock,
and barrel would part company. He had taken off his shoes
before venturing into the presence of his commander, and looked
oddly enough, playing the soldier in his stockings. I was
relieved of considerable apprehension when he ordered arms, and
backed out to his slippers.
The next exhibition was that of a military band. A drum-
major, with a proper gold-headed stick, wheeled some sixty
fellows with all kinds of instruments under the windows of the
kiosk, and with a whirl of his baton, the harmony commenced.
I could just detect some resemblance to a march. The drums
rolled, the " ear-piercing fifes" fulfilled their destiny, and trom
bone, serpent and !< i< >Lowed of what they were capable
260 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
The pacha got upon his knees to lean out of the window, and as
I rose from my low seat at the same time, he pulled me down
beside him, and gave me half his carpet, patting me on the back,
and pressing me to the window with his arm over my neck. I
have observed frequently among the Turks this singular familiar
ity of manners both to strangers and one another. It is an odd
contrast with their habitual gravity.
The sultan, I think unwisely, has introduced the European
uniform into his army. With the exception of the Tunisian
cap, which is substituted for the thick and handsome turban, the
dress is such as is worn by the soldiers of the French army.
Their tailors are of course bad, and their figures, accustomed
only to the loose and graceful costume of the east, are awkward
and constrained. I never saw so uncouth a set of fellows as the
five thousand mussulmans in this army of the Dardanelles ; and
yet in their Turkish trowsers and turban, with the belt stuck full
of arms, and their long mustache, they would be as martial-look
ing, troops as ever followed a banner.
We embarked at sunset to return to the ship. The shell-
shaped caique, with her tall sharp extremities and fantastic sail,
yielded to the rapid current of the Hellespont ; and our two
boatmen, as handsome a brace of Turks as were ever drawn in a
picture, pulled their legs under them more closely, and com
menced singing the alternate stanzas of a villanous duet. The
helmsman s part was rather humorous, and his merry black eyes
redeemed it somewhat, but his fellow was as grave as a dervish,
and howled as if he were ferrying over Xerxes after his defeat.
If I were to live in the east as long as the wandering Jew, I
think these heavenly sunsets, evening after evening, scarce vary
ing by a shade, would never become familiar to my eye. Thoy
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 261
surprise me day after day, like some new and brilliant phenome
non, though the thoughts which they bring, as it were by a habit
contracted of the hour, are almost always the same. The day,
in these countries where life flows so thickly, is engrossed, and
pretty busily too, by the present. The past comes up with the
twilight, and wherever I may be, and in whatever scene mingling,
my heart breaks away, and goes down into the west with the sun.
I am at home as duly as the bird settles to her nest.
It was natural in paying the boatman, after such a musing
passage, to remember the poetical justice of Uhland in crossing
the ferry :
" T..Le. O Liouunan, thrice thy fee !
Take ! I give it willingly ;
For, invisibly to thee,
Spirits twain have crossed with me!"
I should have paid for one other seat, at least, by this fanciful
tariff. Our unmusical mussulmans were content, however, and
we left them to pull back against the tide, by a star that cast a
shadow like a meteor.
The moon changed this morning, and the wind, that in this
clime of fable is as constant to her as Endymion, changed too.
The white caps vanished from the hurrying waves of the Darda
nelles, and after an hour or two of calm, the long-expected
breeze came tripping out of Asia, with oriental softness, and is
now leading us gently up the Hellespont.
As we passed between the two castles of the Dardanelles, the
commodore saluted the pacha with nineteen guns, and in half an
262 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
hour we were off Abydos, where our friend from the south has
deserted us, and we are compelled to anchor. It would be
unclassical to complain of delay on so poetical a spot. It is
beautiful, too. The shores on both the Asian and European
sides are charmingly varied and the sun lies on them, and on the
calm strait that links them, with a beauty worthy of the fair
spirit of Hero. A small Turkish castle occupies the site of the
" torch-lit tower" of Abydos, and there is a corresponding one
at Sestos. The distance between looks little more than a mile-
not a surprising feat for any swimmer, I should think. Lady
loves in our day, alas ! are not won so lightly. The current of
the Hellespont, however, remains the same, and so does the
moral of Leander s story. The Hellespont of matrimony may
be crossed with the tide. The deuse is to get lack !
Lampsacus on the starboard-bow, and a fairer spot lies on no
river s brink. Its trees, vineyards, and cottages, slant up almost
imperceptibly from the water s edge, and the hills around have
the look " of a clean and quiet privacy," with a rural elegance
that might tempt Shakspeare s Jaques to come and moralize.
By the way, there have been philosophers here. Did not Alex
ander forgive the city its obstinate defence for the sake of Anax-
imenes ? There was a sad dog of a deity worshipped here about
that time.
I take a fresh look at it from the port, as I write. Pastures,
every one with a bordering of tall trees, cattle as beautiful as the
daughter of lanchus, lanes of wild shrubbery, a greener stripe
through the fields like the track of a stream, and smoke curling
from every cluster of trees, telling as plainly as the fancy can
read, that there is both poetry and pillaw at Lampsacus.
Just opposite stands the modern Gallipoli, a Turkish town of
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 263
some thirty thousand inhabitants, at the head of the Hellespont.
The Hellespont gets broader here, and a few miles farther up we
open into the Sea of Marmora. A French brig-of-war, that has
been hanging about us for a fortnight (watching our movements
in this unusual cruise for an American frigate, perhaps), is just
ahead, and a quantity of sail are stretching off on the southern
tack, to make the best use of their new sea-room for beating up
to Constantinople.
We hope to see Seraglio Point to-morrow. Mr. Hodgson, the
secretary of our embassy to Turkey, has just come on board
from the Smyrna packet, and the agreeable preparations for
going on shore, are already on the stir. I do not find that the
edge of curiosity dulls with use. The prospect of seeing a
strange city, to-morrow, produces the same quick-pulsed emotion
that I felt in the diligence two years ago, rattling over the last
post to Paris. The entrances to Florence, Rome, Venice,
Vienna, Athens, are marked each with as white a stone, He
may " gather no moss" who rolls about the world ; but that
which the gold of the careful cannot buy pleasure when the
soul is most athirst for it, grows under his feet. Of the many
daily reasons I find to thank Providence, not the least is that of
being what Clodio calls himself in the play, " a here-and-
thereian."
LETTER XXXI,
Gallipoli Aristocracy of Beards Turkish Shop keepers The Hospitable Jew and hia
lovely Daughter Unexpected Kencontre Constantinople The Bosphorus, the Serag-
.lD, and the Golden Horn.
WHAT an image of life it is ! The good ship dashes bravely
on her course the spray flies from her prow her sheets are
steady and full to look up to her spreading canvass, and feel her
springing away beneath, you would not give her " for the best
horse the sun has in his stable." The next moment, hey ! the
foresail is aback ! the wind baffles and dies, the ripples sink from
the sea, the ship loses her " way," and the pennant drops to the
mast in a breathless calm ! " Clear away the anchor !" and
here we are till this " crab in the ascendant" that makes " all
our affairs go backward," yields to our better stars.
We went ashore to take a stroll through the streets of G-alli-
poli (the ancient Gallipoli of Thrace) as a sop to our patience.
A deeply-laden Spanish merchant lay off the pier, with a crew
of red-capped and olive-complexioned fellows taking in grain
from a Turkish caique, and a crowd of modern Thracians, in the
noble costumes and flowing beards of the country, closed around
us as we stepped from the boat.
A street of cafes led from the end of the pier, and as usual,
SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN. 265
they were all crowded with Turks, leaning forward over their
slippers, and crossing their long chibouques as they conversed
together. It is odd that even the habit of a life can make their
painful and unnatural posture an agreeable one. Yet they will
sit with their legs crooked under them, in a way that strains the
unaccustomed knee till it cracks again, motionless by the hour
together.
I had no idea till I came to Turkey how rare a beauty is a
handsome beard. Here no man shaves, and there is as great a
difference in beards as in stature. The men of rank that we
have seen, might have been picked out anywhere by their
superior beauty in this respect. It grows vilely, it seems to me,
on scoundrels. The beggars ashore, the low Jews who board us
with provisions, the greater part of the soldiers and petty shop
keepers of the towns, have all some mark in their beards, that
nature never intended them for gentlemen. Your smooth chin
is a great leveller, trust me !
These Turkish towns have a queer look altogether. Gallipoli
is so seldom touched by a Christian foot, that it preserves all its
peculiarities entire, and is likely to do so- for the next century.
We walked on, ascending a narrow street completely shut in by
the roofs of the low houses meeting above. There are no
carriages or carts, and the Turks glide over the stones in their
loose slippers with an indolent shuffle that seems rather to add to
the silence. You hear no voice, for they seldom speak, and
never above the key of a bassoon ; and what with the odd cos
tumes, long beards, grave faces, and twilight darkness all about
you, it is like a scene on the stage when the lights are lowered in
some incantation scene.
Each street is devoted to some one trade. We first got among
12
266 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
the grocers. Every shop was a fellow to the other, containing
an old Turk, squatted among soap, jars of oilj raisins, olives,
pickled fish, and sweetmeats, and everything within his reach.
He would sell you his whole stock in trade without taking his
pipe from his mouth, or disturbing his yellow slipper.
The next turn brought us into the Jews quarter. They were
all tailors, and their shops were as dark as Erebus. The light
crept through the chinks in the roof, falling invariably on the
same aquiline nose and ragged beard, with now and then a pair
of copper spectacles, while in the back of the dim tenement sat
an old woman with a group of handsome little Hebrews, (they
are always handsome when very young, with their clear skins and
dark eyes) the whole family stitching away most diligently. It
was laughable to see how every shop in the street presented the
same picture.
We then got among the slipper-makers, and vile work they
turned out. "VVe were hesitating between two turnings when an
old Jew, with a high lamb s-wool cap and long black caftan,
rather shabby for wear, addressed me in a sort of lingua Franca,
half Italian, half French, with a sprinkling of Spanish, and in
quiring whether I belonged to the frigate in the harbor, offered
to supply us with provisions, etc., etc. T declined his services,
and he asked us directly to his house to take coffee, as plump a
non sequitur as I have met in my travels.
We followed the old man to a very secluded part of the town,
stopping a moment by the way to look at the remains of an old
fort built by the Genoese in the stout times of Andrea Doria.
(Where be their galleys now ?) Hajji (so he was called, he said,
from having been to Jerusalem) stopped at last at the door of a
shabby house, and throwing it open with a hospitable smile, bade
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 267
us welcome. We mounted a creaking stair, and found things
within better than the promise of the exterior. One half the
floor of the room was raised perhaps a foot, and matted neatly,
and a nicely carpeted and cushioned divan ran around the three
sides, closed at the two extremities by a lattice-work like the arm
of a sofa. The windows were set in fantastical arabesque frames,
the upper panes coarsely colored, but with a rich effect, and the
view hence stretched over the Hellespont toward the south, with
a delicious background of the valleys about Lampsarus. No
palace window looks on a fairer scene. The broad strait was as
smooth as the amber of the old Hebrew s pipe, and the vines that
furnished Themistocles with wine during his exile in Persia,
looked of as golden a green in the light of the sunset, as if the
honor of the tribute still warmed their classic juices.
The rich Turkish coffee was brought in by an old woman, who
left her slippers below as she stepped upon the mat, and our host
followed with chibouques and a renewed welcome. A bright pair
of eyes had been peeping for some time from one of the chambers,
and with Hajji s permission I called out a graceful creature of
fourteen, with a shape like a Grecian Cupidon, and a timid
sweetness of expression that might have descended to her from
the gentle Ruth of scripture. There are lovely beings all over
the world. It were a desert else. But I did not tlnnk to find
such a diamond in a Hebrew s bosom. I have forgotten to
mention her hair, which was very remarkable. I thought at
first it was dyed with henna. It covered her back and shoulders
in the greatest profusion, braided near the head, and floating be
low in glossy and silken curls of a richness you would deny na
ture had you seen it in a painting. The color was of the deep
burnt brown of a berry, almost black in the shade, but catching
268 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
the light at every motion like threads of gold. In my life I have
seen nothing so beautiful. It was the " hair lustrous and smil
ing" of quaint old "Burton.* There was something in it that you
could scarce avoid associating with the character of the wearer
as if it stole its softness from some inborn gentleness in her heart.
I shall never thread my fingers through such locks again !
We shook our kind host by the hand, and stepped gingerly
down in the fading twilight to our boat. As we were crossing an
open space between the bazars, two gentlemen in a costume half
European, half Oriental, with spurs and pistols, and a quantity
of dust on their mustaches, passed, and immediately turned and
called me by name. The last place in which I should have
looked for acquaintances, would be Gallipoli. They were two
French exquisites whom I had known at Rome, travelling to
Constantinople with no more serious object, I dare be sworn,
than to return with long beards from the east. They had just
arrived on horseback, and were looking for a khan. I com
mended them to my old friend the Jew, who offered at once to
lodge them at his house, and we parted in- this by-corner of
Thrace, as if we had but met for the second time in a morning
stroll to St. Peter s.
We lay till noon in the glassy harbor of Gallipoli, and then the
breeze came slowly up the Hellespont, its advancing edge marked
by a crowd of small sail keeping even pace with its wings. We
soon opened into the extending sea of Marmora, and the cloudy
* " Hair lustrous and smiling. The trope is none of mine. ^Eneus Syl
vius hath crincs ridcntes.^ Jlnaiomy of Melancholy.
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 269
island of the same name is at this moment on our lee. The sun
is setting gorgeously over the hills of Thrace, and thankful for
sea-room once more, and a good breeze, we make ourselves cer
tain of seeing Constantinople to-morrow.
We were ten miles distant when I came on deck this morning.
A long line of land with a slightly-waving outline began to emerge
from the mist of sunrise, and with a glass I could distinguish the
clustering masses and shining eminences of a distant and far ex
tending city. We were approaching it with a cloud of company.
A Turkish ship-of-war with the crescent and star fluttering on
her blood-red flag, a French cutter bearing the handsome tri
color at her peak, and an uncounted swarm of merchantmen,
taking advantage of the newly-changed wind, were spreading
every thread of canvass, and stretching on as eagerly as we
toward the metropolis of the east. There was something in the
companionship which elated me. It seemed as if all the world
shared in my anticipations as if all the world were going to
Constantinople.
I approached the mistress of the east with different feelings
from that which had inspired me in entering the older cities of
Europe. The interest of the latter sprang from the past. Rome,
Florence, Athens, were delightful from the store of history and
poetry I brought with me and had accumulated in my youth
from what they once were, and for that of which they preserved
the ruins. Constantinople, on the contrary, is still the gem of
the Orient still the home of the superb Turk, and the resort of
many nations of the east still all that fires curiosity and excites
270 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
the imagination in the descriptions of the traveller. I was com
ing to a living city, full of strange people and strange costumes
language, and manners. It was, to the places I had seen, like
the warm and breathing woman perfect in life, to the interesting
but lifeless and mutilated statue.
As the distance lessened, the tall, slender, glittering minarets
of a hundred mosques were first distinguishable. Towers, domes,
and dark spots of cypresses next emerged to the eye, and a sea of
buildings, followed undulating in many swells and widening along
the line of the sea as if we were approaching a continent covered
to its farthest limits with one unbroken city.
We kept on with unslackened sail to the shore which seemed
closed before us. A few minutes opened to us a curving bay,
winding in and lost to the eye behind a swelling eminence, and as
if mosques, towers, and palaces, had spread away and opened to
receive us into their bosom, we shot into the heart of a busy city,
and dropped anchor at the feet of a cluster of hills, studded from
base to summit with buildings of indescribable splendor.
An American gentleman had joined us in the Dardanelles, and
stood with us, looking at the transcendant panorama. " What is
this lovely point, gemmed with gardens and fantastic palaces, and
with every variety of tree and building on its gentle slope de
scending so gracefully to the sea ?" The Seraglio ! " What is
i his opening of bright water, crowded with shipping, and sprinkled
with these fairy boats so gayly decked and so slender, shooting
from side to side like the crossing flight of a thousand arrows ?"
The Golden Horn^ that winds up through the city and terminates
in the valley of Sweet Waters ! " And what is this other stream,
opening into the hills to the east, and lined with glittering palaces
as far as the eye can reach ?" The Bosphorus. " And what is
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 271
this, and that, and the other exquisite and surpassing beauty
features of a scene to which the earth surely has no shadow of a
parallel !" Patience ! patience ! We have a month before us, and
we will see.
LETTER XXXII,
Constantinople An Adventure with the Dogs of Stamboul The Sultan s Kiosk Tho
Bazars Georgians Sweetmeats Hindoostanee Fakeers Turkish Women and their
Eyes The Jews A Token of Home The Drug Bazar Opium Eaters.
THE invariable " Where am 7 ?" with which a traveller awakes
at morning was to me never more agreeably answered. At Con
stantinople ! The early ship-of-war summons to " turn out," was
obeyed with alacrity, and with the first boat after breakfast I was
set ashore at Tophana, the landing place of the Frank quarter of
Stamboul.
A row of low-built cafes, with a latticed enclosure and a plenti
ful shade of plane-trees on the right; a large square, in the
centre of which stood a magnificent Persian fountain, as large as
a church, covered with lapis-lazuli and gold, and endless inscrip
tions in Turkish ; a mosque buried in cypresses on the left ; a
hundred indolent-looking, large-trousered, mustached, and withal
very handsome men, and twice the number of snarling, wolfish,
and half-starved dogs, are some of the objects which the first
glance, as I stepped on shore, left on my memory.
I had heard that the dogs of Constantinople knew and hated a
Christian. By the time I had reached the middle of the square,
a wretched puppy at my heels had succeeded in announcing the
SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN, 373
presence of a stranger. They were upon me in a moment from
every heap of garbage, and every hole and corner. I was begin
ning to be seriously alarmed, standing perfectly still, with at
least a hundred infuriated dogs barking in a circle around me,
when an old Turk, selling sherbet under the shelter of the pro
jecting roof of the Persian fountain, came kindly to my relief.
A stone or two well aimed, and a peculiar cry, which I have since
tried in vain to imitate, dispersed the hungry wretches, and I
took a glass of the old man s raisin-water, and pursued my way
up the street. The circumstance, however, had discolored my
anticipations ; nothing looked agreeably to me for an hour
after it.
I ascended through narrow and steep lanes, between rows of
small wooden houses, miserably built and painted, to the main
street of the quarter of Pera. Here live all Christians and Chris
tian ambassadors, and here I found our secretary of legation, Mr.
H., who kindly offered to accompany me to old Stamboul.
"VVe descended to the water-side, and stepping into an egg-shell
caique, crossed the Golden Horn, and landed on a pier between
the sultan s green kiosk and the seraglio. I was fortunate iu a
companion who knew the people and spoke the language. The
red-trousered and armed kervas, at the door of the kiosk, took
his pipe from his mouth, after a bribe and a little persuasion, and
motioned to a boy to show us the interior. A circular room, with
a throne of solid silver embraced in a double colonnade of marble
pillars, and covered with a roof laced with lapis lazuli and gold,
formed the place from which Sultan Mahmoud formerly contem
plated, on certain days, the busy and beautiful panorama of his
matchless bay. The kiosk is on the edge of the water, and the
poorest caikjee might row his little bark undei its threshold, and
12*
274 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN
fill his monarch s eye, and look on his monarch s face with the
proudest. The green canvass curtains, which envelop the whole
building, have, for a long time, been unraised, and Mahmoud is
oftener to be seen on horseback, in the dress of a European offi
cer, guarded by troops in European costume and array. The
change is said to be dangerously unpopular.
"We walked on to the square of Sultana Yalide. Its large
area was crowded with the buyers and sellers of a travelling fair
a sort of Jews market held on different days in different parts of
this vast capital. In Turkey every nation is distinguished by its
dress, and almost as certainly by its branch of trade. On the
right of the gate, under a huge plane-tree, shedding its yellow
leaves among the various wares, stood the booths of a group of
Georgians, their round and rosy-dark faces (you would know
their sisters must be half houris) set off with a tall black cap of
curling wool, their small shoulders with a tight jacket studded
with silk buttons, and their waists with a voluminous silken sash,
whose fringed ends fell over their heels as they sat cross-legged,
patiently waiting for custom. Hardware is the staple of their
shops, but the cross-pole in front is fantastically hung with silken
garters and tasselled cords, and their own Georgian caps, with a
gay crown of cashmere, enrich and diversify the shelves. I
bought a pair or two of blushing silk garters of a young man,
whose eyes and teeth should have been a woman s, and we strolled
on to the next booth.
Here was a Turk, with a table covered by a broad brass waiter,
on which was displayed a tempting array of mucilage, white and
pink, something of the consistency of blanc-mange. A dish of
sugar, small gilded saucers, and long-handled, flat, brass spoons,
with a vase of rose-water, completed his establishment. The
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 275
grave mussulman cut, sugared, and scented the portions for which
we asked, without condescending to look at us or open his lips,
and, with a glass of mild and pleasant sherbet from his next
neighbor, as immovable a Turk as himself, we had lunched, ex
tremely to my taste, for just five cents American currency.
A little farther on I was struck with the appearance of two
inen, who stood bargaining with a Jew. My friend knew them
immediately as fakecrs, or religious devotees from Hindoostan.
He addressed them in Arabic, and, during their conversation of
ten minutes, I studied them with some curiosity. They were
singularly small, without any appearance of dwarfishness, their
limbs and persons slight, and very equally and gracefully propor
tioned. Their features were absolutely regular, and, though
small as a child s of ten or twelve years, were perfectly developed.
They appeared like men seen through an inverted opera-glass.
An exceedingly ash} , olive complexion, hair of a kind of glitter
ing black, quite unlike in texture au<i color any I have ever be
fore seen ; large, brilliant, intense black eyes, and lips (the most
peculiar feature of all), of lustreless black* completed the por
traits of two as remarkable-looking men as I have anywhere met.
Their costume was humble, but not unpicturesque. A well-worn
sash of red silk enveloped the waist in many folds, and sustained
trousers tight to the legs, but of the Turkish ampleness over the
hips. Their small feet, which seemed dried up to the bone, were
bare. A blanket, with a hood marked in a kind of arabesque
figure, covered their shoulders, and a high quilted cap, with a
rim of curling wool, was pressed down closely over the forehead.
* I have since met many of them in the streets of Constantinople, and I
find it a distinguishing feature of their race. They look as if their lips were
dead as if the blood had dried beneath the skin.
276 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
A crescent-shaped tin vessel, suspended by a leather strap to the
waist, and serving the two purposes of a charity box, and a re
ceptacle for bread and vegetables, seemed a kind of badge of their
profession. They were lately from Hindoostan, and were begging
their way still farther into Europe. They received our proffered
alms without any mark of surprise or even pleasure, and laying
their hands on their breasts, with countenances perfectly im
movable, gave us a Hindoostanee blessing, and resumed their
traffic. They see the world, these rovers on foot ! And I think,
could I see it myself in no other way, I would e en take sandal
and scrip, and traverse it as a dervish or beggar !
The alleys between the booths were crowded with Turkish wo
men, who seemed the chief purchasers. The effect of their en
veloped persons, and eyes peering from the muslin folds of the
yashmack, is droll to a stranger. It seemed to me like a mas-
qiin jido, and the singular sound of female voices, speaking through
several thicknesses of a stuff, bound so close on the mouth as to
show the shape of the lips exactly, perfected the delusion. It
reminded me of the half-smothered tones beneath the masks in
carnival- time. A clothes-bag with yellow slippers would have
about as much form, and might be walked about with as much
grace as a Turkish woman. Their fat hands, the finger-nails dyed
with henna, and their unexceptionably magnificent eyes, are all
that the stranger is permitted to peruse. It is strange how uni
versal is the beauty of the eastern eye. I luive looked in vain
hitherto, for a small or an unexprcssive one. It is quite startling
to meet the gaze of such large liquid orbs, bent upon you from
their long silken fringes, with the unwinking steadiness of look
common to the females of this country. Wrapped in their veils,
they seem unconscious of attracting attention T and turn and look
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 377
you full in the face, while you seek in vain for a pair of lips to
explain by their expression the meaning of such particular
notice.
The Jew is more distinguishable at Constantinople than else
where. He is compelled to wear the dress of his tribe (and its
"badge of sufferance," too), and you will find him, wherever
there is trafficking to be done, in a small cap, not ungracefully
shaped, twisted about with a peculiar handkerchief of a small
black print, and set back so as to show the whole of his national
high and narrow forehead. He is always good humored and ob
sequious, and receives the curse with which his officious offers of
service are often repelled, with a smile, and a hope that he may
serve you another time. One of them, as we passed his booth,
called our attention to some newly-opened bales, bearing the
stamp, " TREMONT MILL, LOWELL, MASS." It was a long dis
tance from home to meet such familiar words !
We left the square of the sultan mother, and entered a street
of confectioners. The east is famous for its sweetmeats, and truly
a more tempting array never visited the Christmas dream of a
schoolboy. Even Felix, the patimer nonpareil of Paris, might
take a lesson in jellies. And then for " candy" of all colors of
the rainbow (not shut enviously in with pitiful glass cases, but
piled up to the ceiling in a shop all in the street, as it might be
in E utopia, with nothing to pay), it is like a scene in the Arabian
Nights. The last part of the parenthesis is almost true, for with a
small coin of the value of two American cents, I bought of a certain
kind called, in Turkish, " peace to your throat" (they call things by
such poetical names in the east), the quarter of which I could
not have eaten, even in my best "days of sugar candy." The
women of Constantinople, I am told, almost live on confectionary.
278 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
They eat incredible quantities. The sultan s eight hundred
wives and women employ five hundred cooks, and consume two
thousand five hundred pounds of sugar daily ! It is probably the
most expensive item of the seraglio kitchen.
A turn or two brought us to the entrance of a long dark pas
sage , of about the architecture of a covered bridge in our country.
A place richer in the oriental and picturesque could scarce be
found between the Danube and the Nile. It is the bazar of
drugs. As your eye becomes accustomed to the light, you dis
tinguish vessels of every size and shape, ranged along the reced
ing shelves of a stall, and filled to the uncovered brim with the
various productions of the Orient. The edges of the baskets and
jars are turned over with rich colored papers (a peculiar color to
every drug), and broad spoons of boxwood are crossed on the top.
There is the henna in a powder of deep brown, with an envelope
of deep Tyrian purple, aud all the precious gums in their jars,
golden-leafed, and spices and dyes and medicinal roots, and above
hang anatomies of curious monsters, dried and stuffed, and in the
midst of all, motionless as the box of sulphur beside him, and
almost as yellow, sits a venerable Turk, with his beard on his
knees, and his pipe-bowl thrust away over his drugs, its ascend
ing smoke-curls his only sign of life. This class of merchants is
famous for opium eaters, and if you pass at the right hour, you
find the large eye of the silent smoker dilated and wandering, his
fingers busy in tremulously counting his spicewood beads, and the
roof of his stall wreathed with clouds of smoke, the vent to every"
species of eastern enthusiasm. If you address him, he smiles,
and puts his hand to his forehead and breast, but condescends to
answer no question till it is thrice reiterated, and then in the
briefest word possible, he answers wide of your meaning, strokes
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 279
the smoke out of his mustache, and slipping the costly amber be
tween his lips, abandons himself again to his exalted revery. I
write this after being a week at Constantinople, during which the
Egyptian bazar has been my frequent and most fancy-stirring
lounge. Of its forty merchants, there is not one whose pic
turesque features are not imprinted deeply in my memory. I
have idled up and down in the dim light, and fingered the soft
henna, and bought small parcels of incense-wood for my pastille
lamp, studying the remarkable faces of the unconscious old mus-
sulmans, till my mind became somehow tinctured of the east, and
(what will be better understood) my clothes steeped in the mixed
and agreeable odors of the thousand spices. Where are the
painters, that they have never found this mine of admirable
studies ? There is not a corner of Constantinople, nor a man in
its streets, that were not a novel and a capital subject for the
pencil. Pray, Mr. Cole, leave things that have been painted so
often, as aqueducts and Italian ruins (though you do make deli
cious pictures, and could never waste time or pencils on anything),
and come to the east for one single book of sketches ! How I
have wished I was a painter since I have been here !
LETTER XXXIII,
The Sultan s Perfumer Etiquette of Smoking Temptations for Purchasers Exquisite
Flavor of the Turkish Perfumes The Slave Market of Constantinople Slaves from
various Countries, Greek, Circassian, Egyptian, Persian African female Slaves An
Improvisatiice Exposure for Sale Circassian Beauties prohibited to Europeans First
sight of one, eating a Tie Shock to romantic Fedings Beautiful Arab Girl chained to
the Floor The Silk Merchant A cheap Purchase.
AN Abyssinian slave, with bracelets on his wrists and ankles,
a white turban, folded in the most approved fashion around his
curly head, and a showy silk sash about his waist, addressed us
in broken English as we passed a small shop on the way to the
Bozesteiu. His master was an old acquaintance of my polyglot
friend, and, passing in at a side door, we entered a dimly-lighted
apartment in the rear, and were received, with a profusion of
salaams, by the sultan s perfumer. For a Turk, Mustapha
Effendi was the most voluble gentleman in his discourse that 1
had yet met in Stamboul. A sparse gray beard just sprinkled a
pair of blown-up cheeks, and a collapsed double chin that fell in
curtain folds to his bosom, a mustache, of seven or eight hairs on
a side, curled demurely about the corners of his mouth, his heavy,
oily black eyes twinkled in their pursy recesses, with the salacious
good humor of a satyr ; and, as he coiled his legs under him on
the broad ottoman in the corner, his boneless body completely
SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN. 2 81
lapped over them, knees and all, and left him, apparently, bolt
upright on his trunk, like a man amputated at the hips. A string
of beads in one hand, and a splendid narghile , or rose-water pipe
in the other, completed as fine a picture of a mere animal as I
remember to have met in my travels.
My learned friend pursued the conversation in Turkish, aud,
in a few minutes, the black entered, with pipes of exquisite amber
filled with the mild Persian tobacco. Leaving his slippers at the
door, he dropped upon his knee, and placed two small brass
dishes in the centre of the room to receive the hot pipe-bowls,
and, with a showy flourish of his long, naked arm, brought round
the rich mouth-pieces to our lips. A spicy atom of some aro
matic composition, laid in the centre of the bowl, removed from
the smoke all that could offend the most delicate organs, and, as
I looked about the perfumer s retired sanctum, and my eye rested
on the small heaps of spice-woods, the gilded pastilles, the curi
ous bottles of ottar of roses and jasmine, and thence to the broad,
soft divans extending quite around the room, piled in the corners
with cushions of down, I thought Mustapha, the perfumer, among
those who lived by traffic, had the cleanliest and most gentleman
like vocation.
Observing that I smoked but little, Mustapha gave an order to
his familiar, who soon appeared, with two small gilded saucers ;
one containing a jelly of incomparable delicacy and whiteness,
and the other a candied liquid, tinctured with quince and cinna
mon. My friend explained to me that I was to eat both, and
that Mustapha said, " on his head be the injury it would do me."
There needed little persuasion. The cook to a court of fairies
might have mingled sweets less delicately.
For all this courtesy Mustapha finds his offset in the opened
282 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
hearts of his customers, when the pipes are smoked out, and
there is nothing to delay the offer of his costly wares. First call
ing for ajar of jessamine, than which the sultan himself perfumes
his beard with no rarer, he turned it upside down, and, leaning
towards me, rubbed the moistened cork over my nascent mus
tache, and waited with a satisfied certainty for my expression of
admiration as it " ascended me into the brain." There was no
denying it was of celestial flavor. He held up his fingers :
" One ? two ? three ? ten ? How many bottles shall your slave
fill for you ?" It was a most lucid pantomime. An interpreter
would have been superfluous.
The ottar of roses stood next on the shelf. It was the best
ever sent from Adrainople. Bottle after bottle of different ex
tracts were passed under nasal review ; each, one might think,
the triumph of the alchymy of flowers, and of each a specimen
was laid aside for me in a* slender vial, dexterously capped with
vellum, and tied with a silken thread by the adroit Abyssinian.
I escaped emptying my purse by a single worthless coin, the fee
I required for my return boat over the Golden Horn but I Kad
seen Mustapha, the perfumer.
My friend led the way through several intricate windings, and
passing through a gateway, we entered a circular area, surrounded
with a single building divided into small apartments, faced with
open porches. It was the slave-market of Constantinople. My
first idea was to look round for Don Juan and Johnson. In
their place we found slaves of almost every eastern nation, who
looked at us with an u I wish to heaven that somebody would
buy us" sort of an expression, but none so handsome as Haidee s
lover. In a low cellar, beneath one of the apartments, lay
twenty or thirty white men chained together by the legs, and
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 283
with scarce the covering required by decency. A small-featured
Arab stood at the door, wrapped in a purple-hooded cloak, and
Mr. H. addressing him in Arabic, inquired their nations. He
was not their master, but the stout fellow in the corner, he said,
was a Greek by his regular features, and the boy chained to him
was a Circassian by his rosy cheek and curly hair, and the black-
lipped villain with tbe :-car over his forehead, was an Egyptian,
doubtless, and the two that looked like brothers, were Georgians
or Persians, or perhaps Bulgarians. Poor devils ! they lay on
the clay floor with a cold easterly wind blowing in upon them,
dispirited and chilled, with the prospect of being sold to a task
master for their best hope of relief.
A shout of African laughter drew us to the other side of the
bazar. A dozen Nubian damsels, flat-nosed and curly-headed,
but as straight and fine-limbed as pieces of black statuary, lay
around on a platform in front of their apartment, while one sat
upright in the middle, and amused her companions by some nar
ration accompanied by grimaces irresistibly ludicrous. Each had
a somewhat scant blanket, black with dirt, and worn as carelessly
as a lady carries her shawl. Their black, polished frames were
disposed about, in postures a painter would scarce call ungrace
ful, and no start or change of attitude when we approached be
trayed the innate coyness of the sex. After watching the impro-
visatrice awhile, we were about passing on, when a man came out
from the inner apartment, and beckoning to one of them to fol
low him, walked into the middle of the bazar. She was a tall,
arrow-straight lass of about eighteen, with the form of a nymph,
and the head of a baboon. He commenced by crying in a voice
that must have been educated in the gallery of a minaret, setting
forth the qualities of the animal -at his back, who was to be sold
284 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
at public auction forthwith. As he closed his harangue he slipped
his pipe back into his mouth, and lifting the scrimped blanket of
the ebon Venus, turned her twice round, and walked to the other
side of the bazar, where his cry and the exposure of the submis
sive wench were repeated.
We left him to finish his circuit, and walked on in search of
the Circassian beauties of the market. Several turbaned slave-
merchants were sitting round a manghal, or brass vessel of coals,
smoking or making their coffee, in one of the porticoes, and my
friend addressed one of them with an inquiry on the subject.
" There were Circassians in the bazar," he said, " but there was
an express firman, prohibiting the exposing or selling of them to
Franks, under heavy penalties." We tried to bribe him. It
was of no use. He pointed to the apartment in which they were,
and, as it was upon the ground floor, I took advice of modest
assurance, and approaching the window, sheltered my eyes with
my hand, and looked in. A great, fat girl, with a pair of saucer-
like black eyes, and cheeks as red and round as a cabbage-rose,
sat facing the window, devouring a pie most voraciously. She
had a small carpet spread beneath her, and sat on one of her
heels, with a row of fat, red toes, whose nails were tinged with
henna, just protruding on the other side from the folds of her
ample trousers. The light was so dim that I could not see the
features of the others, of whom there were six or seven in groups
in the corners. And so faded the bright colors of a certain boyish
dream of Circassian beauty ! A fat girl eating a pie !
As we were about leaving the bazar, the door of a small
apartment near the gate opened, and disclosed the common
cheerless interior of a chamber in a khan. In the centre
burned the almost extinguished embers of a Turkish manghal,
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 285
and, at the moment of my passing, a figure rose from a prostrate
position, and exposed, as a shawl dropped from her face in rising,
the exquisitely small features and bright olive skin of an Arab
girl. Her hair was black as night, and the bright braid of it
across her forehead seemed but another shade of the warm dark
eye that lifted its heavy and sleepy lids, and looked out of the
accidentally opened door as if she were trying to remember how
she had dropped out of " Araby the blest" upon so cheerless a
spot. She was very beautiful. I should have taken her for a
child, from her diminutive size, but for a certain fulness in the
limbs and a womanly ripeness in the bust and features. The
same dusky lips which give the males of her race a look of
ghastliness, either by contrast with a row of dazzlingly white
teeth, or from their round and perfect chiselling, seemed in her
almost a beauty. I had looked at her several minutes before she
chose to consider it as impertinence. At last she slowly raised
her little symmetrical figure (the "Barbary shape" the old poets
talk of), and slipping forward to reach the latch, I observed that
she was chained by one of her ankles to a ring in the floor. To
think that only a " malignant and a turbaned Turk" may possess
such a Hebe ! Beautiful creature ! Your lot,
" By some o er-hasty angel was misplaced,
In Fate s eternal volume."
And yet it is very possible she would eat pies, too !
We left the slave-market, and wishing to buy a piece of
Brusa silk for a dressing-gown, my friend conducted me to a
secluded khan in the neighborhood of the far-famed " burnt
column." Entering by a very mean door, closed within by a
curtain, we stood on fine Indian mats in a large room, piled to
286 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN.
the ceiling with silks enveloped in the soft satin-paper of the
east. Here again coffee must be handed round before a single
fold of the old Armenian s wares could see the light, and
fortunate it is, since one may not courteously refuse it, that
Turkish coffee is very delicious, and served in acorn cups for
size. A handsome boy took away the little filagree holders at
last, and the old trader, setting his huge calpack firmly on his
shaven head, began to reach down his costly wares. I had
never seen such an array. The floor was soon like a shivered
rainbow, almost paining the eye with the brilliancy and variety
of beautiful fabrics. And all this to tempt the taste of a poor
description-monger, who wanted but a plain role de chambre to
conceal from a chance visitor the poverty of an unmade toilet !
There were stuffs of gold for a queen s wardrobe ; there were
gauze-like fabrics interwoven with flowers of silver ; and there
was no leaf in botany, nor device in antiquity, that was not
imitated in their rich borderings. I laid my hand on a plain
pattern of blue and silver, and half-shutting my eyes to imagine
how I should look in it, resolved upon the degree of depletion
which my purse could bear, and inquired the price. As " green
door and brass knocker" says of his charges in the farce, it was
" ridiculously trifling." It is a cheap country, the east ! A
beautiful Circassian slave for a hundred dollars (if you are a
Turk), and an emperor s dressing-gown for three ! The Arme
nian laid his hand on his breast, as if he had made a good sale
of it, the coffee-bearer wanted but a sous, and that was charity ;
and thus, by a mere change of place, that which were but a
gingerbread expenditure becomes a ric\ man s purchase.
LETTER XXXIV,
The Bosphorus Turkish Palaces The Black Sea Buyukdore.
WE left the ship with two caiques, each pulled by three men,
and carrying three persons, on an excursion to the Black Sea.
We were followed by the captain in his fast-pulling gig with six
oars, who proposed to beat the feathery boats of the country in a
twenty miles 7 pull against the tremendous current of the
Bosphorus.
The day was made for us. We coiled ourselves a la Turque,
in the bottom of the sharp caique, and as our broad-brimmed
pagans, after the first mile, took off their shawled turbans,
unwound their cashmere girdles, laid aside their gold-broidered
jackets, and with nothing but the flowing silk shirt and ample
trousers to embarrass their action, commenced " giving way," in
long, energetic strokes I say, just then, with the sunshine and
the west wind attempered to half a degree warmer than the blood
(which I take to be the perfection of temperature), and a long,
long autumn day, or two, or three, before us, and not a thought in
the company that was not kindly and joyous just then, I say, I
dropped a " white stone" on the hour, and said, " Here is a
moment, old Care, that has slipped through your rusty fingers
288 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
You have pinched me the past somewhat, and you will doubtless
mark your cross on the future but the present^ by a thousand
pulses in this warm frame laid along in the sunshine, is care-free,
and the last hour of Eden came not on a softer pinion !"
We shot along through the sultan s fleet (some eighteen or
twenty lofty ships-of-war, looking, as they lie at anchor in this
narrow strait, of a supernatural size), and then, nearing the
European shore to take advantage of the counter-current, my
kind friend, Mr. H., who is at home on these beautiful waters,
began to name to me the palaces we were shooting by, with many
a little history of their occupants between, to which in a letter,
written with a traveller s haste, and in moments stolen from
fatigue, or pleasure, or sleep, I could not pretend to do justice.
The Bosphorus is quite there can be no manner of doubt of
it the most singularly beautiful scenery in the world. From
Constantinople to the Black Sea, a distance of twenty miles, the
two shores of Asia and Europe, separated by but half a mile of
bright blue water, are lined by lovely villages, each with its
splendid palace or two, its mosque and minarets, and its hundred
small houses buried in trees, each with its small dark cemetery
of cypresses and turbaned head-stones, and each with its valley
stretching back into the hills, of which every summit and swell
is crowned with a fairy kiosk. There is no tide, and the palaces
of the sultan and his ministers, and of the wealthier Turks and
Armenians, are built half over the water, and the ascending
caique shoots beneath his window, within the length of the
owner s pipe ; and with his own slender boat lying under the
stairs, the luxurious oriental makes but a step from the cushions
of his saloon to those of a conveyance, which bears him (so built
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 289
on the water s edge is this magnificent capital) to almost every
spot that can require his presence.
A beautiful palace is that of the " Marble Cradle," or
Beshiktash, the sultan s winter residence. Its bright gardens
with latticed fences (through which, as we almost touched in
passing, we saw the gleam of the golden orange and lemon trees,
and the thousand flowers, and heard the splash of fountains and
the singing of birds) lean down to the lip of the Bosphorus, and
declining to the south, and protected from everything but the
sun by an enclosing wall, enjoy, like the terrace of old King
Rene, a perpetual summer. The brazen gates open on the
water, and the palace itself, a beautiful building, painted in the
oriental -style, of a bright pink, stands between the gardens, with
its back to the wall.
The summer palace, where the " unmuzzled lion," as his
flatterers call HMI. resides at present, is just above on the Asian
side, at a villn^? called Beylerbcy. It is an immense building,
painted yellow, with white cornices, and has an extensive terrace-
garden, rising over the hill behind. The harem has eight
projecting wiDgs, each occupied by one of the sultan s lawful
wives.
Six or seven miles from Constantinople, on the European
shore, stands the serai of the sultan s eldest sister. It is a
Chinese-looking structure, but exceedingly picturesque, and like
everything else on the Bosphorus, quite in keeping with the
scene. There is not a building on either side, from the Black
Sea to Marmora, that would not be ridiculous in other countries;
and yet, here, their gingerbread balconies, imitation perspectives,
lattices, bird-cages, and kiosks, seem as naturally the growth of
the climate as the pomegranate and the cypress. The old maid
290 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
sultana lives here with a hundred or two female slaves of
condition, a little empress in an empire sufficiently large (for a
woman), seeing no bearded face, it is presumed, except her black
eunuchs and her European physician s, and having, though a
sultan s sister, less liberty than she gives even her slaves, whom
she permits to marry if they will. She can neither read nor
write, and is said to be fat, indolent, kind, and childish.
A little farther up, the sultan is repairing a fantastical little
palace for his youngest sister, Esmeh Sultana, who is to be
married to Haleil Pacha, the commander of the artillery. She
is about twenty, and, report says, handsome and spirited. Her
betrothed was a Georgian slave, bought by the sultan when a
boy, and advanced by the usual steps of favoritism. By the
laws of imperial marriages in this empire, he is to be banished to
a distant pachalik after living with his wife a year, his connexion
with blood-royal making him dangerously eligible to the throne.
His bride remains at Stamboul, takes care of her child (if sbo
has one), and lives the remainder of her life in a widow s
seclusion, with an allowance proportioned to her rank. His
consolation is provided for by the nmssulman privilege of as
many more wives as he can support. Heaven send him resigna
tion if he needs it notwithstanding.
The hakim, or chief physician to the sultan, has a handsome
palace on the same side of the Bosphorus ; and the Armenian
seraffs, or bankers, though compelled, like all rayahs, to paint
their houses of a dull lead color (only a mussulman may live in a
red house in Constantinople), are said, in those dusky-looking
tenements, to maintain a luxury not inferior to that of the sultan
himself. They have a singular effect, those black, funereal
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 291
houses, standing in the foreground of a picture of such light and
beauty !
We pass Orta-keni) the Jew village, the Arnaoutkeni, occupied
mostly by Greeks ; and here, if you have read " the Armenians,"
you are in the midst of its most stirring scenes. The story is a
true one, not much embellished in the hands of the novelist, and
there, on the hill opposite, in Anatolia, stands the house of the
heroine s father, the old seraff Oglou, and, behind the garden,
you may see the small cottage, inhabited, secretly, by the
enamored Constantine, and here, in the pretty village of Bebec,
lives, at this moment, the widowed and disconsolate Veronica,
dressed ever in weeds, and obstinately refusing all society but
her own sad remembrance. I must try to see her. Her
" husband of a night" was compelled to marry again by the
hospidar, his father (but this is not in the novel, you will remem
ber), and there is late news that his wife is dead, and the lovers
of romance in Stamboul are hoping he will return and make !
happier sequel than the sad one in the story. The " orthodox
catholic Armenian, broker and money-changer to boot," who was
to have been her forced husband, is a very amiable and good-
looking fellow, now in the employ of our charge d affaires as
second dragoman.
We approach Roumeli-Hissar, a jutting point almost meeting
a similar projection from the Asian shore, crowned, like its
vis-a-vis, with a formidable battery. The Bosphorus here is but
half an arrow-flight in width, and Europe and Asia, here at their
nearest approach, stand looking each other in the face, like
boxers, with foot forward, fist doubled, and a most formidable
row of teeth on either side. The current scampers through
between the two castles, as if happy to get out of the way, and,
292 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
up-stream, it is hard pulling for a caique. They are beautiful
points, however, and I am ashamed of my coarse simile, when I
remember how green was the foliage that half enveloped the
walls, and how richly picturesque the hills behind them
Here, in the European castle, were executed the greater part
of the janisaries, hundreds in a day, of the manliest frames in
the empire, thrown into the rapid Bosphorus, headless and
stripped, to float, unmourned and unregarded, to the sea.
Above Roumeli-Hissar, the Bosphorus spreads again, and a
curving bay, which is set like a mirror, in a frame of the softest
foliage and verdure, is pointed out as a spot at which the
crusaders, Godfrey of Bouillon and Raymond of Toulouse,
encamped on their way to Palestine. The hills beyond this are
loftier, and the Giant s Mountain, upon which the Russian army
encamped at their late visit to the Porte, would be a respectable
eminence in any country. At its foot, the strait expands into
^nlfce a lake, and on the European side, in a scoop of the shore,
exquisitely placed, stand the diplomatic villages of Terapia and
Buyukdere. The English, French, Russian, Austrian and other
flags were flying over half a dozen of the most desirable residences
es I have seen since Italy.
We soon pulled the remaining mile or two, and our spent
caikjees drew breath, and lay on their oars in the Black Sea
The waves were breaking on the " blue Symplegades," a mile on
our left, and, before us, toward the Cimmerian, Bosphorus, and,
south, toward Colchis and Trebizond, spread one broad, blue
waste of waters, apparently as limitless as the ocean. The
Black Sea is particularly Hue.
We turned our prow to the west, and I sighed to remember
that I had reached my farthest step into the east. Henceforth
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 293
I shall be on the return. I sent a long look over the waters to
the bright lands beyond, so famed in history and fiction, and
wishing for even a metamorphosis into the poor sea-bird flyiug
above us (whose travelling expenses Nature pays), I lay back in
the boat with a " change in the spirit of my dream."
We stopped on the Anatolian shore to visit the ruins of a fine
old Genoese castle, which looks over the Black Sea, and after a
lunch upon grapes and coffee, at a small village at the foot of the
hill on which it stands, we embarked and followed our compan
ions. Running down with the current to Buyukdere, we landed
and walked along the thronged and beautiful shore to Terapia,
meeting hundreds of fair Armenians and Greeks (all beautiful, it
seemed to me), icsuiug forth for their evening promenade, and,
with a call of ceremony on the English ambassador, for whom I
had letters, we again took to the caique, and fled down with the
current like a bird. Oh, what a sunset was there !
We were to dine and pass the night at the country-house of
an English gentleman at Bebec, a secluded and lovely village, six
or eight miles from Constantinople. We reached the landing as
the stars began to glimmer, and, after one of the most agreeable
and hospitable entertainments I remember to have shared, we
took an early breakfast with our noble host, and returned to the
ship. I could wish my friends no brighter passage in their lives
than such an excursion as mine to the Black Sea.
LETTER XXXV,
The Golden Horn and its Scenery The Sultan s Wives and Arabians The Valley of
Sweet Waters Beauty of the Turkish Minarets The Mosque of Sulymanye Mus
sulmans at their Devotions The Muezzin The Bazar of the Opium-eaters The Mad
House of Constantinople, and Description of its Inmates Their Wretched Treatment
The Hippodrome and the Mosque of Sultan Achmet The Janizaries Eeflections or>
the Past, the Present, and the Future.
THE " Golden Horn" is a curved arm of the sea, the broadest
extremity meeting the Bosphorus and forming the harbor of Con
stantinople, and the other tapering away till it is lost in the
" Valley of Sweet Waters." It curls through the midst of the
" seven-hilled" city, and you cross it whenever you have an
errand in old Stamboul. Its hundreds of shooting caiques, its
forests of merchantmen and men-of-war, its noise and its confu
sion, are exchanged in scarce ten minutes of swift pulling for the
breathless and Eden-like solitude of a valley that has not its
parallel, I am inclined to think, between the Mississippi and the
Caspian. It is called in Turkish khyat-khana. Opening with a
gentle curve from the Golden Horn, it winds away into the hills
toward Belgrade, its long and even hollow, thridded by a lively
stream, and carpeted by a broad belt of unbroken green sward
swelling up to the enclosing hills, with a grass so verdant and
silken that it seems the very floor of faery. In the midst of its
SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN. 295
longest stretch to the eye (perhaps two miles of level meadow)
stands a beautiful serai of the sultan s, unfenced and open, as if
it had sprung from the lap of the green meadow like a lily. The
stream runs by its door, and over a mimic fall whose lip is of
scolloped marble, is built an oriental kiosk, all carving and gold,
that is only too delicate and fantastical for reality.
Here, with the first grass of spring, the sultan sends his fine-
footed Arabians to pasture ; and here come the ladies of his
harem (chosen, women and horses, for much the same class of
qualities^), and in the long summer afternoons, with mounted
eunuchs on the hills around, forbidding on pain of death, all
approach to the sacred retreat, they venture to drop their jealous
veils and ramble about in their unsunned beauty.
After a gallop of three or four miles over the broad waste
table plains, in the neighborhood of Constantinople, we checked
our horses suddenly on the brow of a precipitous descent, with
this scene of beauty spread out before us. I had* not yet
approached it by water, and it seemed to me as if the earth had
burst open at my feet, and revealed some realm of enchantment.
Behind me, and away beyond the valley to the very horizon, I
could see only a trackless heath, brown and treeless, while a
hundred feet below lay a strip of very Paradise, blooming in all
the verdure and heavenly freshness of spring. We descended
slowly, and crossing a bridge half hidden by willows, rode in upon
the elastic green sward (for myself) with half a feeling of profa
nation. There were no eunuchs upon the hills, however, and our
spirited Turkish horses threw their wild heads into the air, and
we flew over the verdant turf like a troop of Delhis, the sound
of the hoofs on the yielding carpet scarcely audible. The fair
palace in the centre of this domain of loveliness was closed, and
296 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
it was only after we had walked around it that we observed a
small tent of the prophet s green couched in a small dell on the
hill-side, and containing probably the guard of its imperial
master.
We mounted again and rode up the valley for two or three
miles, following the same level and verdant curve, the soft carpet
broken only by the silver thread of the Barbyses, loitering
through it on its way to the sea. A herd of buffaloes, tended by
a Bulgarian boy, stretched on his back in the sunshine, and a
small caravan of camels bringing wood from the hills, and keep
ing to the soft valley as a relief to their spongy feet, were the
only animated portions of the landscape. I think I shall never
form to my mind another picture of romantic rural beauty (an
employment of the imagination I am much given to when out of
humor with the world) that will not resemble the " Valley of
Sweet Waters" the khyat-khana of Constantinople. " Poor
Slingsby"" never was here.*
* Irving says, in one of his most exquisite passages u He who has sal
lied forth into the world like poor Slingsby, full of sunny anticipations, finds
too soon how different the distant scene becomes when visited. The smooth
place roughens as he approaches ; the wild place becomes tame and barren ;
the fairy teints that beguiled him on, still fly to the distant hill, or gather
upon the land he has left behind, and every part of the landscape is greener
than the spot he stands on." Full of merit and beautiful expression as this
is, I. for one, have not found it true. Bright as I had imagined the much-
sung lands beyond the water, I have found many a scene in Italy and the
east that has more than answered the craving for beauty in my heart. Val
d Arno, Vallombrosa, Venice, Terni, Tivoli, Albano, the Isles of Greece, the
Bosphorus, and the matchless valley I have described, have, with a hundred
other spots less famous, far outgone in their exquisite reality, even the
brightest of my anticipations. The passage is not necessarily limited in its
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 297
The lofty mosque of Sulmanye, the bazars of the opium-
eaters, and the Timar-hane, or mad-house of Constantinople, are
all upon one square in the highest part of the city. "VVe entered
the vast court of the mosque from a narrow and filthy street, and
the impression of its towering plane-trees and noble area, and
of the strange, but grand and costly pile in its centre, was almost
devotional. An inner court, enclosed by a kind of romanesque
wall, contained a sacred marble fountain of light and airy archi
tecture, and the portico facing this was sustained by some of
those splendid and gigantic columns of porphyry and jasper, the
spoils of the churches of Asia Minor. *
I think the most beautiful spire that rises into the sky is the
Turkish minaret. If I may illustrate an object of such magni
tude by so trifling a comparison, it is exactly the shape and pro
portions of an ever-pointed pencil-case the silver bands answer
ing to the encircling galleries, one above another, from which the
muezzin calls out the hour of prayer. The minaret is painted
white, the galleries are fantastically carved, and rising to the
height of the highest steeples in our country (four and sometimes
six to a single mosque), these slender and pointed fingers of
devotion seem to enter the very sky. Remembering, dear
reader, that there are two hundred and twenty mosques and three
hundred chapels in Constantinople, raising, perhaps, in all, a thou
sand minarets to heaven, you may get some idea of the magnifi
cence of this seven-hilled capital of the east.
meaning to scenery, however, and of moral disappointment it is beautifully
true. There is many a " poor Slingsby," the fate of whose sunny anticipa
tions of life it describes but too faithfully.
* Sulymanye was built of the ruins of the church, St. Euphemia, at
Ckalcedonia.
298 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN
It was near the hour of prayer, and the devout mussulmans
were thronging into the court of Sulymanye by every gate.
Passing the noble doors, with their strangely-carved arches of
arabesque, which invite all to enter but the profaning foot of the
Christian, the turbaned crowd repaired first to the fountains.
From the walls of every mosque, by small conduits pouring into
a marble basin, flow streams of pure water for the religious ablu
tions of the faithful. The mussulman approaches, throws off his
flowing robe, steps out of his yellow slippers, and unwinds his
volumnious turban with devout deliberateness. A small marble
step, worn hollow with pious use, supports his foot while he
washes from the knee downward. His hands and arms, with the
flowing sleeve of his silk shirt rolled to the shoulder, receive the
same lavation, and then, washing his face, he repeats a brief
prayer, resumes all but his slippers, and enters the mosque,
barefooted. The mihrab (or niche indicating the side toward the
tomb of the prophet) , fixes his eye. He folds his hands together,
prays a moment standing, prostrates himself flat on his face
toward the hallowed quarter, rises upon his knees, and continues
praying and prostrating himself for perhaps half an hour. And
all this process is required by the mufti, and performed by every
good mussulman Jive times a day ! A rigid adherence to it is
almost universal among the Turks. In what an odor of sanctity
would a Christian live, who should make himself thus " familiar
with heaven !"
As the muezzin from the minaret was shouting his last " mash-
allah !" with a voice like a man calling out from the clouds, we
left the court of the majestic mosque, with Byron s reflection :
u Alas ! man makes that great, which makes him little ! ?
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 299
and, having delivered ourselves of this scrap of poetical philoso
phy, we crossed over the square to the opium-eaters.
A long row of half-ruined buildings, of a single story, with
porticoes in front, and the broad, raised platform beneath, on
which the Turks sit cross-legged at public places, is the scene of
what was once a peculiarly oriental spectacle. The mufti has
of late years denounced the use of opium, and the devotees to
its sublime intoxication have either conquered the habit, or what
is more probable, indulge it in more secret places. The shops
are partly ruinous, and those that remain in order are used as
cafes , in which, however, it is said that the dangerous drug may
still be procured. My companion inquired of a good-humored-
looking caffejee whether there was any place at which a confirmed
opium-eater could be seen under its influence. He said there
was an old Turk, who was in the habit of frequenting his shop,
and, if we could wait an hour or two, we might see him in the
highest state of intoxication. We had no time to spare, if the
object had been worth our while.
And here, thought I, as we sat down and took a cup of coffee
in the half-ruined cafe, have descended upon the delirious brains
of these noble drunkards, the visions of Paradise so glowingly
described in books visions, it is said, as far exceeding the poor
invention of the poet, as the houris of the prophet exceed tlio
fair damsels of this world. Here men, otherwise in their senses,
have believed themselves emperors, warriors, poets ; theso
wretched walls and bending roof the fair proportions of a
palace ; this gray old caffejce a Hylas or a Ganymede. Here
men have come to cast off, for an hour, the dull thraldom of the
body ; to soar into the glorious world of fancy at a penalty of a
thousand times the proportion of real misery ; to sacrifice the
300 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN
invaluable energies of health, and deliberately poison the very
fountain of life, for a few brief moments of magnificent and
phrensied blessedness. It is powerfully described in the " Opium
Eater" of De Quincy.
At the extremity of this line of buildings, by a natural prox
imity, stands the Timar-han6. We passed the porter at the gate
without question, and entered a large quadrangle, surrounded
with the grated windows of cells on the ground-floor. In every
window was chained a maniac. The doors of the cells were all
open, and, descending by a step upon the low stone floor of the
first, we found ourselves in the presence of four men chained to
rings, in the four corners, by massy iron collars. The man in
the window sat crouched together, like a person benumbed (the
day was raw and cold as December), the heavy chain of his
collar hanging on his naked breast, and his shoulders imperfectly
covered with a narrow blanket. His eyes were large and fierce,
and his mouth was fixed in an expression of indignant sullenness.
My companion asked him if he were ill. He said he should be
well, if he were -out that he was brought there in a fit of intox
ication two years ago, and was no more crazy than his keeper.
Poor fellow ! It might easily be true ! He lifted his heavy
collar from his neck as he spoke, and it was not difficult to believe
that misery like his for two long years would, of itself, destroy
reason. There was a better dressed man in the opposite comer,
who informed us, in a gentlemanly voice, that he had been a
captain in the sultan s army, and was brought there in the
delirium of a fever. He was at a loss to know, he said, why ho
was imprisoned still.
We passed on to a poor, half-naked wretch in the last stage of
illness and idiocy, who sat chattering to himself, and, though
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 3Q1
trembling with the cold, interrupted his monologue continually
with fits of the wildest laughter. Farther on sat a young man
of a face so full of intellectual beauty, an eye so large and mild,
a mouth of such mingled sadness and sweetness, and a forehead
so broad, and marked so nobly, that we stood, all of us, struck
with a simultaneous feeling of pity and surprise. A countenance
more beaming with all that is admirable in human nature, I have
never seen, even in painting. He might have sat to Da Vinci for
the " beloved apostle." He had tied the heavy chain by a shred
to a round of the grating, to keep its weight from his neck, and
seemed calm and resigned, with all his sadness. My friend spoke
to him, but he answered obscurely, and, seeing that our gaze
disturbed him, we passed unwillingly on. Oh, what room there
is in the world for pity ! If that poor prisoner be not a maniac
(as he may not be), and, if nature has not falsified in the struc
ture of his mind the superior impress on his features, what Pro
metheus-like agony has he suffered ! The guiltiest felon is better
cared for. And allowing his mind to be a wreck, and allowing
the hundred human minds, in the same cheerless prison, to be
certainly iu ruins, oh what have they done to be weighed down
with iron on their necks, and exposed, like caged beasts, shiver
ing and naked, to the eye of pitiless curiosity ? I have visited
lunatic asylums in France, Italy, Sicily, and Germany, but,
culpably neglected as most of them are, I have seen nothing
comparable to this in horror.
" Is he never unchained ?" we asked. " Never !" And yet,
from the ring to the iron collar, there was just chain enough to
permit him to stand upright ! There were no vessels near them,
not even a pitcher of water. Their dens were cleansed and the
poor sufferers fed at appointed hours, and, come wind or rain,
302 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
there was neither shutter nor glass to defend them from the in
clemency of the weather
We entered most of the rooms, and found in all the same damp
ness, filth, and misery. One poor wretch had been chained to
the same spot for twenty years. The keeper said he never slept.
He talked all the night long. Sometimes at mid-day his voice
would cease, and his head nod for an instant, and then with a
start as if he feared to be silent, he raved on with the same inco
herent rapidity. He had been a dervish. His collar and chain
were bound with rags, and a tattered coat was fastened up on the
inside of the window, forming a small recess in which he sat, be
tween the room and the grating. He was emaciated to the last
degree. His beard was tangled and filthy, his nails curled over
the ends of his fingers, and his appearance, save only an eye of
the keenest lustre, that of a wild beast.
In the last room we entered, we found a good-looking young
man, well-dressed, healthy, composed, and having every appear
ance of a person in the soundest state of mind and body. He
saluted us courteously, and told my friend that he was a renegade
Greek. He had turned mussulman a year or two ago, had lost
his reason, and so was brought here. He talked of it quite as a
thing of course, and seemed to be entirely satisfied that the best
had been done for him. One of the party took hold of his chain.
He winced as the collar stirred on his neck, and said the lock was
on the outside of the window (which was true), and that the boys
came in and tormented him by pulling it sometimes. " There
they are," he said, pointing to two or three children who had just
entered the court, and were running round from one prisoner to
another. We bade him good morning, and he laid his hand to
his breast and bowed with a smile. As we passed toward the
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 303
gate, the chattering lunatic on the opposite side screamed after
us, the old dervish laid his skinny hands on the bars of his win
dow, and talked louder and faster, and the children, approaching
close to the poor creatures, laughed with delight at their excite
ment.
It was a relief to escape the common sights and sounds of the
city. We walked on to the Hippodrome. The only remaining
beauty of this famous square is the unrivalled mosque of Sultan
Achmet, which, though inferior in size to the renowned Santa
Sophia, is superior in elegance both within and without. Its
six slender and towering minarets are the handsomest in Constan
tinople. The wondrous obelisk in the centre of the square,
remains perfect as in the time of the Christian emperors, but the
brazen tripod is gone from the twisted column, and the serpent-
like pillar itself is leaning over with its brazen folds to its fall.
Here stood the barracks of the powerful Janisaries, and from
the side of Sultan Achmet the cannon were levelled upon them,
as they lushed from the conflagration within. And here, when
Constantinople was the " second Rome," were witnessed the
triumphal processions of Christian conquest, the march of the
crusaders, bound for Palestine, and the civil tumults which Jus
tinian, walking among the people with the gospel in his hand,
tried in vain to allay ere they burnt the great edifice built of the
ruins of the temple of Solomon. And around this now neglected
area, the captive Gelimer followed in chains the chariot of the
conquering Belisarius, repeating the words of Solomon, " Vanity
of vanities ! all is vanity !" while the conquerer himself, throwing
aside his crown, prostrated himself at the feet of the beautiful
Theodora, raised from a Roman actress to be the Christian empress
of the east. From any elevated point of the city, you may still
304 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN.
see the ruins of the palace of the renowned warrior, and read
yourself a lesson on human vicissitudes, remembering the school-
book story of " an obolon for Belisarius !"
The Hippodrome was, until late years, the constant scene of
the games of the jereed. With the destruction of the Janizaries,
and the introduction of European tactics, this graceful exercise
has gone out of fashion. The east is fast losing its picturesque-
ness. Dress, habits, character, everything seems to be under
going a gradual change, and when, as the Turks themselves
predict, the moslem is driven into Asia, this splendid capital
will become another Paris, and with the improvements in travel,
a summer in Constantinople will be as little thought of as a tour
in Italy. Politicians in this part of the world predict such a
change as about to arrive.
LETTER XXXVI,
Sultan Mahmoud at his Devotions Comparative Splendor of Papal, Austrian, and Turk
ish Equipages The Sultan s Barge or Caique Description of the Sultan Visit to a
Turkish Lancasterian School The Dancing Dervishes Visit from the Sultan s Cabinet
The Seraskier and the Capitan Pacha Humble Origin of Turkish Dignitaries.
I HAD slept on shore, and it was rather late before I remem
bered that it was Friday (the moslem Sunday), and that Sultan
Mahmoud was to go in state to mosque at twelve. I hurried
down the precipitous street of Pera, and, as usual, escaping
barely with my life from the Christian-hating dogs of Tophana,
embarked in a caique, and made all speed up the Bosphorus.
There is no word in Turkish for faster, but I was urging on my
caikjees by a wave of the hand and the sight of a bish/ik (about the
value of a quarter of a dollar), when suddenly a broadside was
fired from the three-decker, Mahmoudier, the largest ship in the
world, and to the rigging of every man-of-war in the fleet through
which I was passing, mounted, simultaneously, hundreds of blood-
red flags, filling the air about us like a shower of tulips and roses.
Imagine twenty ships-of-war, with yards manned, and scarce a
line in their rigging to be seen for the flaunting of colors ! The
jar of the guns, thundering in every direction close over us, al
most lifted our light boat out of the water, and the smoke ren-
306 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
dered our pilotage between the ships and among their extending
cables rather doubtful. The white cloud lifted after a few
minutes, and, with the last gun, down went the flags altogether,
announcing that the " Brother of the Sun" had left his palace.
He had but crossed to the mosque of the small village on the
opposite side of the Bosphorus, and was already at his prayers
when I arrived. His body-guard was drawn up before the door,
in their villanous European dress, and, as their arms were
stacked, I presumed it would be some time before the sultan reap
peared, and improved the interval in examining thehandja-bashes,
or state-caiques, lying at the landing. I have arrived at my
present notions of equipage by three degrees. The pope s car
riages at Rome, rather astonished me. The emperor of Austria s
sleighs diminished the pope in my admiration, and the sultan s
caiques, in their turn, " pale the fires" of the emperor of Austria.
The handja-bash is built something like the ancient galley, very
high at the prow and stern, carries some fifty oars, and has a
roof over her poop, supported by four columns, and loaded with
the most sumptuous ornaments, the whole gilt brilliantly. The
prow is curved over, and wreathed into every possible device that
would not affect the necessary lines of the model ; her crew are
dressed in the beautiful costume of the country, rich and flowing,
and with the costly and bright-colored carpets hanging over her
side, and the flashing of the sun on her ornaments of gold, she is
really the most splendid object of state equipage (if I may be
allowed the misnomer) in the world.
I was still examining the principal barge, when the troops
stood to their arms, and preparation was made for the passing out
of the sultan. Thirty or forty of his highest military officers
formed themselves into two lines from the door of the mosque to
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 307
the landing, and behind them were drawn up single files of sol
diers. I took advantage of the respect paid to the rank of Com
modore Patterson, and obtained an excellent position, with him,
at the side of the caique. First issued from the door two
Georgian slaves., bearing censers, from which they waved the
smoke on either side, and the sultan immediately followed, sup
ported by the capitan-pacha, the seraskier, and Haleil Pacha
(who is to marry the Sultana Esmeh). He walked slowly down
to the landing, smiling and talking gayly with the seraskier, and,
bowing to the commodore in passing, stepped into his barge,
seated himself on a raised sofa, while his attendants coiled their
legs on the carpet below, and turned his prow across the Bos-
phorus.
1 have, perhaps, never set my eyes on a handsomer man than
Sultan Mahmoud. His figure is tall, straight, and manly, his air
unembarrassed arid dignified, and his step indicative of the well-
known firmness of his character. A suporb beard of j ;tty black
ness, with a curling musta-che, conceals all the lower part of his
face ; the decided and bold lines of his mouth just marking them
selves when he speaks. It is said he both paints and dies his
beard, but a manlier brown upon a cheek, or a richer gloss upon
a beard, I never saw. J3is eye is described by writers as having
a doomed darkness of expression, and it is certainly one that would
well become a chief of bandits large, steady, and overhung with
an eyebrow like a thunder cloud. He looks the monarch. The
child of a seraglio (where mothers are chosen for beauty alone)
could scarce escape being handsome. The blood of Circassian
upon Circassian is in his veins, and the wonder is, not that he is
the handsomest man in his empire, but that he is not the greatest
sl.ivo. Our u mother s humor," they say, predominates in our
308 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
mixtures. Sultan Mahmoud, however, was marked by nature for
a throne.
I accompanied Mr. Goodell and Mr. Dwight, American mis
sionaries at Constantinople, to visit a Lancasteriau school estab
lished with their assistance in the Turkish barracks. The build
ing stands on the ascent of one of the lovely valleys that open
into the Bosphorus, some three miles from the city, on the Euro
pean side. We were received by the colonel of the regiment, a
young man of fine appearance, with the diamond crescent and
star glittering on the breast of his military frock, and after the
inevitable compliment of pipes and coffee, the drum was beat and
the soldiers called to school.
The sultan has an army of boys. Nine-tenths of those I have
seen are under twenty. They marched in, in single file, and
facing about, held up their hands at the word of command, while
a ^ubalteiu looked that each bad performed the morning ablution.
They were healthy-looking lads, mostly from the interior pro
vinces, whence they are driven down like cattle to fill the ranks
of their sovereign. Duller-looking subjects for an idea it has not
been my fortune to see.
The Turkish alphabet hung over the teacher s desk (the
colonel is the schoolmaster, and takes the greatest interest in his
occupation), and the front seats are faced with a long box cov
ered with sand, in which the beginners write with their fingers.
It is fitted with a slide that erases the clumsy initiation whwn
completed, and seemed to me an ingenious economy of ink and
paper. (I would suggest to the minds of the benevolent, a
school on the same principle for beginners in poetry. It would
save the critics much murder, and tend to the suppression of sui
cide.) The classes having filed into their seats, the school opened
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 309
with a prayer by the colonel. The higher benches then com
menced writing, on slates and paper, sentences dictated from the
desk, and I was somewhat surprised at the neatness and beauty
of the characters.
We passed afterward into another room where arithmetic and
geography were taught, and then mounted to an apartment on
the second story occupied by students in military drawing. The
proficiency of all was most creditable, considering the brief period
during which the schools have been in operation something less
than a year. Prejudiced as the Turks are against European in
novation, this advanced step toward improvement tells well. Our
estimable and useful missionaries appear, from the respect every
where shown them, to be in high esteem, and with the sultan s
energetic disposition for reform, they hope everything in the way
of an enlightened change in the moral condition of the people.
We went to the chapel of the dancing dervishes. It is a beau
tiful marble building, with a court yard ornamented with a small
cemetery shaded with cypresses, and a fountain enclosed in a
handsome edifice, and defended by gilt gratings from the street
of the suburb of Pera, in which it stands. They dance here
twice a week. We arrived before the hour, and were detained
at the door by a soldier on guard, who would not permit us to
enter without taking off our boots a matter, about which, be
tween straps and their very muddy condition, we had some de
bate. The dervishes began to arrive before the question was
settled, and one of them, a fine-looking old man, inviting us to
enter, Mr. H. explained the difficulty. " Go in," said he, " go
310 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN
in !" and turning to the more scrupulous mussulman with the
musket, as he pushed us within the door, " stupid fellow !" said
he, "if you had been less obstinate, they would have given you a
bakshish" (Turkish for a fee)- He should have said less religious
for the poor fellow looked horror-struck as our dirty boots pro
faned the clean white Persian matting of the sacred floor. One
would think, " the nearer the church the farther from God," were
as true here as it is said to be in some more civilized countries.
It was a pretty, octagonal interior, with a gallery, the mihrdb
or niche indicating the direction of the prophet s tomb, standing
obliquely from the front of the building. Hundreds of small
lamps hung in the area, just out of the reach of the dervishes tall
caps, and all around between the gallery ; a part of the floor was
raised, matted, and divided from the body of the church by a
balustrade. It would have made an exceedingly pretty ball
room.
None but the dervishes entered within the paling, and they
soon began to enter, each advancing first toward the mihrab, and
going through fifteen or twenty minutes prostrations and prayers.
Their dress is very humble. A high, white felt cap, without a
rim, like a sugar-loaf enlarged a little at the smaller end, protects
the head, and a long dress of dirt-colored cloth, reaching quite to
the heels and bound at the waist with a girdle, completes the cos
tume. They look like men who have made up their minds to
seem religious, and though said to be a set of very good fellows,
they have a Mawworm expression of face generally, which was
very repulsive. I must except the chief of the sect, however,
who entered when all the rest had seated themselves on the floor,
and after a brief genuflexion or two, took possession of a rich
Angora carpet placed for him near the mihrab. He was a small
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 311
old man, distinguished in his dress only by the addition of a
green band to his cap* (the sign of his pilgrimage to Mecca) and
the entire absence of the sanctimonious look. Still he was seri
ous, and there was no mark in his clear, intelligent eye and amia
ble features, of any hesitancy or want of sincerity in his devotion.
He is said to be a learned man, and he is certainly a very pre
possessing one, though he would be taken up as a beggar in any
city in the United States. It is a thing one learns in " dangling
about the world," by the way, to form opinions of men quite in
dependently of their dress.
After sitting a while in quaker meditation, the brotherhood
rose one by ono (there were ten of them I think), and marched
round the room with their toes turned in, to the music of a drum
and a Persian flute, played invisibly in some part of the gallery.
As they passed the carpet of the cross-legged chief, they twisted
dexterously and made three salaams, and then raising their arms,
which they held out straight during the whole dance, they com
menced twirling on one foot, using the other after the manner of
a paddle to keep up the motion. I forgot to mention that they
laid aside their outer dresses before commencing the dance.
They remained in dirty white tunics reaching to the floor, and
very full at the bottom, so that with the regular motion of their
whirl, the wind blew them out into a circle, like what the girls
in our country call making cheeses." They twisted with
surprising exactness and rapidity, keeping clear of each other,
and maintaining their places with the regularity of machines. I
have seen a great deal of waltzing, but I think the dancing
dervishes for precision and spirit, might give a lesson even to the
Germans.
We left them twisting. They had been going for half an hour.
312 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN,
&,nd it began to look very like perpetual motion. Unless their
brains are addled, their devotion, during this dizzy performance
at least, must be quite suspended. A man who could think of
his Maker, while revolving so fast that his nose is indistinct,
must have some power of abstraction.
The frigate was visited to-day by the sultan s cabinet. The
sera-skier pacha came alongside first, in his state caique, and
embraced the commodore as he stepped upon the deck, with
great cordiality. He is a short, fat old man, with a snow-white
beard, and so bow-legged as to be quite deformed. He wore the
red Fez cap of the army, with a long blue frock-coat, the collar
so tight as nearly to choke him, and the body not shaped to the
figure, but made to fall around him like a sack. The red,
bloated skin of his neck fell over, so as to almost cover the gold
with which the collar was embroidered. He was formerly
cnpitaa pacha, or -admiral-in-chief of the fleet, and thougli a
good-humored, merry-looking old man, has shown himself, both
in his former and present capacity, to be wily, cold, and a
butcher in cruelty. He possesses unlimited influence over the
sultan, and though nominally subordinate to the grand vizier, is
really the second if not the first person in the empire He was
originally a Georgian slave.
The seraskier was still talking with the commodore in tho
gang-way, when the present capikan pacha mounted the ladder,
and the old man, who is understood to be at feud with his
successor, turned abruptly away and walked aft. The capitan
pacha is a tall, slender man, of precisely that look and manner
which we call gentlemanly. His beard grows untrimmed in tho
ON BOARD AN AMERICAN FRIGATE. 313
Turkish fashion, and is slightly touched with gray. His eye is
anxious, but resolute, and he looks like a man of resource and
ability. His history is as singular as that of most other great
men in Turkey. He was a slave of Mohammed A15, the
rebellious pacha of Egypt. Being intrusted by his master 
