John Stephens - Incidents of Travel in Greece, Turkey, Russia, and Poland, Vol. 1 (of 2)

I dressed myself, and, telling him to be ready when I had finished my breakfast, went out expecting to start forthwith; but, to my surprise, my host told me that the lad refused to go any farther without an increase of pay; and, sure enough, there he stood, making no preparation for moving. The cavalcade of soldiers had gone, and taken with them every horse in Corinth, and the young rascal intended to take advantage of my necessity. I told him that I had hired him to Athens for such a price, and that I had saved him from impressment, and consequent loss of wages, by the soldiers, which he admitted. I added that he was a young rascal, which he neither admitted nor denied, but answered with a roguish laugh. The extra price was no object compared with the vexation of a day's detention; but a traveller is apt to think that all the world is conspiring to impose upon him, and, at times, to be very resolute in resisting. I was peculiarly so then, and, after a few words, set off to complain to the head of the police. Without any ado he trotted along with me, and we proceeded together, followed by a troup of idlers, I in something of a passion, he perfectly cool, good-natured, and considerate, merely keeping out of the way of my stick. Hurrying along near the columns of the old temple, I stumbled, and he sprang forward to assist me, his face expressing great interest, and a fear that I had hurt myself; and when I walked toward a house which I had mistaken for the bureau of the police department, he ran after me to direct me right. All this mollified me considerably; and, before we reached the door, the affair began to strike me as rather ludicrous.

I stated my case, however, to the eparchos, a Greek in Frank dress, who spoke French with great facility, and treated me with the greatest consideration. He was so full of professions that I felt quite sure of a decision in my favour; but, assuming my story to be true, and without asking the lad for his excuse, he shrugged his shoulders, and said it would take time to examine the matter, and, if I was in a hurry, I had better submit. To be sure, he said, the fellow was a great rogue, and he gave his countrymen in general a character that would not tell well in print; but added, in their justification, that they were imposed upon and oppressed by everybody, and therefore considered that they had a right to take their advantage whenever an opportunity offered. The young man sat down on the floor, and looked at me with the most frank, honest, and open expression, as if perfectly unconscious that he was doing anything wrong. I could not but acknowledge that some excuse for him was to be drawn from the nature of the school in which he had been brought up, and, after a little parley, agreed to pay him the additional price, if, at the end of the journey, I was satisfied with his conduct. This was enough; his face brightened, he sprang up and took my hand, and we left the house the best friends in the world. He seemed to be hurt as well as surprised at my finding fault with him, for to him all seemed perfectly natural; and, to seal the reconciliation, he hurried on ahead, and had the horse ready when I reached the locanda. I took leave of my host with a better feeling than before, and set out a second time on the road to Athens.

At Kalamaki, while walking along the shore, a Greek who spoke the lingua Franca came from on board one of the little caiques, and, when he learned that I was an American, described to me the scene that had taken place on that beach upon the arrival of provisions from America; when thousands of miserable beings who had fled from the blaze of their dwellings, and lived for months upon plants and roots; grayheaded men, mothers with infants at their breasts, emaciated with hunger and almost frantic with despair, came down from their mountain retreats to receive the welcome relief. He might well remember the scene, for he had been one of that starving people; and he took me to his house, and showed me his wife and four children, now nearly all grown, telling me that they had all been rescued from death by the generosity of my countrymen. I do not know why, but in those countries it did not seem unmanly for a bearded and whiskered man to weep; I felt anything but contempt for him when, with his heart overflowing and his eyes filled with tears, he told me, when I returned home, to say to my countrymen that I had seen and talked with a recipient of their bounty; and though the Greeks might never repay us, they could never forget what we had done for them. I remembered the excitement in our country in their behalf, in colleges and schools, from the graybearded senator to the prattling schoolboy, and reflected that, perhaps, my mite, cast carelessly upon the waters, had saved from the extremity of misery this grateful family. I wish that the cold-blooded prudence which would have checked our honest enthusiasm in favour of a people, under calamities and horrors worse than ever fell to the lot of man struggling to be free, could have listened to the gratitude of this Greek family. With deep interest I bade them farewell, and, telling my guide to follow with my horse, walked over to the foot of the mountain.

Ascending, I saw in one of the openings of the road a packhorse and a soldier in the Bavarian uniform, and, hoping to find some one to talk with, I hailed him. He was on the top of the mountain, so far off that he did not hear me; and when, with the help of my Greek, I had succeeded in gaining his attention, he looked for some time without being able to see me. When he did, however, he waited; but, to my no small disappointment, he answered my first question with the odious "Nix." We tried each other in two or three dialects; but, finding it of no use, I sat down to rest, and he, for courtesy, joined me; my young Greek, in the spirit of good-fellowship, doing the same. He was a tall, noble-looking fellow, and, like myself, a stranger in Greece; and, though we could not say so, it was understood that we were glad to meet and travel together as comrades. The tongue causes more evils than the sword; and, as we were debarred the use of this mischievous member, and walked all day side by side, seldom three paces apart, before night we were sworn friends.

About five o'clock in the afternoon we arrived at Megara. A group of Bavarian soldiers was lounging round the door of the khan, who welcomed their expected comrade and me as his companion. My friend left me, and soon returned with the compliments of the commandant, and an invitation to visit him in the evening. I had, however, accepted a prior invitation from the soldiers for a rendezvous in the locanda. I wandered till dark among the ruined houses of the town, thought of Euclid and Alexander the Great, and returning, went up to the same room in which I had slept with my friends, pored over an old map of Greece hanging on the wall, made a few notes, and throwing myself back on a sort of divan, while thinking what I should do fell asleep.

About ten o'clock I was roused by the loud roar of a chorus, not like a sudden burst, but a thing that seemed to have swelled up to that point by degrees; and rubbing my eyes, and stumbling down stairs, I entered the banqueting hall; a long, rough wooden table extended the whole length of the room, supplied with only two articles, wine-flagons and tobacco-pouches; forty or fifty soldiers were sitting round it, smoking pipes and singing with all their souls, and, at the moment I entered, waving their pipes to the dying cadence of a hunting chorus. Then followed a long thump on the table, and they all rose; my long travelling friend, with a young soldier who spoke a little French, came up, and, escorting me to the head of the table, gave me a seat by the side of the chairman. One of them attempted to administer a cup of wine, and the other thrust at me the end of a pipe, and I should have been obliged to kick and abscond but for the relief afforded me by the entrance of another new-comer. This was no other than the corporal's wife; and if I had been received warmly, she was greeted with enthusiasm. Half the table sprang forward to escort her, two of them collared the president and hauled him off his seat, and the whole company, by acclamation, installed her in his place. She accepted it without any hesitation, while two of them, with clumsy courtesy, took off her bonnet, which I, sitting at her right hand, took charge of. All then resumed their places, and the revel went on more gayly than ever. The lady president was about thirty, plainly but neatly dressed, and, though not handsome, had a frank, amiable, and good-tempered expression, indicating that greatest of woman's attributes, a good heart. In fact, she looked what the young man at my side told me she was, the peacemaker of the regiment; and he added, that they always tried to have her at their convivial meetings, for when she was among them the brawling spirits were kept down, and every man would be ashamed to quarrel in her presence. There was no chivalry, no heroic devotion about them, but their manner toward her was as speaking a tribute as was ever paid to the influence of woman; and I question whether beauty in her bower, surrounded by belted knights and barons bold, ever exercised in her more exalted sphere a more happy influence. I talked with her, and with the utmost simplicity she told me that the soldiers all loved her; that they were all kind to her, and she looked upon them all as brothers. We broke up at about twelve o'clock with a song, requiring each person to take the hand of his neighbour; one of her hands fell to me, and I took it with a respect seldom surpassed in touching the hand of woman; for I felt that she was cheering the rough path of a soldier's life, and, among scenes calculated to harden the heart, reminding them of mothers, and sisters, and sweethearts at home.