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

CHAPTER VIII.

A Noble Grecian Lady.—Beauty of Scio.—An Original.—Foggi.—A Turkish Coffee-house.—Mussulman at Prayers.—Easter Sunday.—A Greek Priest.—A Tartar Guide.—Turkish Ladies.—Camel Scenes.—Sight of a Harem.—Disappointed Hopes.—A rare Concert.—Arrival at Smyrna.

( Continuation of the Letter. )

We returned to the house, and seeking out a room less ruined than the rest, partook of a slight collation, and set out on a visit to a relative of my Sciote friend.

On our way my companion pointed out a convent on the side of a hill, where six thousand Greeks, who had been prevailed upon to come down from the mountains to ransom themselves, were treacherously murdered to a man; their unburied bones still whiten the ground within the walls of the convent. Arriving at the house of his relative, we entered through a large gateway into a handsome courtyard, with reservoir, garden, &c., ruinous, though in better condition than those we had seen before. This relative was a widow, of the noble house of Mavrocordato, one of the first families in Greece, and perhaps the most distinguished name in the Greek revolution. She had availed herself of the sultan's amnesty to return; had repaired two or three rooms, and sat down to end her days among the scenes of her childhood, among the ruins of her father's house. She was now not more than thirty; her countenance was remarkably pensive, and she had seen enough to drive a smile for ever from her face. The meeting between her and my friend was exceedingly affecting, particularly on her part. She wept bitterly, though, with the elasticity peculiar to the Greek character, the smile soon chased away the tear. She invited us to spend the night there, pointing to the divan, and promising us cushions and coverlets. We accepted her invitation, and again set forth to ramble among the ruins.

I had heard that an American missionary had lately come into the island, and was living somewhere in the neighbourhood. I found out his abode, and went to see him. He was a young man from Virginia, by the name of ****; had married a lady from Connecticut, who was unfortunately sick in bed. He was living in one room in the corner of a ruined building, but was then engaged in repairing a house into which he expected to remove soon. As an American, the first whom they had seen in that distant island, they invited me into the sickroom. In a strange land, and among a people whose language they did not understand, they seemed to be all in all to each other; and I left them, probably for ever, in the earnest hope that the wife might soon be restored to health, that hand in hand they might sustain each other in the rough path before them.

Toward evening we returned to the house of my friend's relative. We found there a nephew, a young man about twenty-two, and a cousin, a man about thirty-five, both accidentally on a visit to the island. As I looked at the little party before me, sitting around a brazier of charcoal, and talking earnestly in Greek, I could hardly persuade myself that what I had seen and heard that day was real. All that I had ever read in history of the ferocity of the Turkish character; all the wild stories of corsairs, of murdering, capturing, and carrying into captivity, that I had ever read in romances, crowded upon me, and I saw living witnesses that the bloodiest records of history and the wildest creations of romance were not overcharged. They could all testify in their own persons that these things were true. They had all been stripped of their property, and had their houses burned over their heads; had all narrowly escaped being murdered; and had all suffered in their nearest and dearest connexions. The nephew, then a boy nine years old, had been saved by a maidservant, his father had been murdered; a brother, a sister, and many of his cousins, were at that moment, and had been for years, in slavery among the Turks; my friend, with his sister, had found refuge in the house of the Austrian consul, and from thence had escaped into Italy; the cousin was the son of one of the forty hostages who were hung, and was the only member of his father's family that escaped death; while our pensive and amiable hostess, a bride of seventeen, had seen her young husband murdered before her eyes; had herself been sold into slavery, and, after two years' servitude, redeemed by her friends.

In the morning I rose early and walked out upon the terrace. Nature had put on a different garb. The wind had fallen, and the sun was shining warmly upon a scene of softness and luxuriance surpassing all that I had ever heard or dreamed of the beauty of the islands of Greece. Away with all that I said about Syra; skip the page. The terrace overlooked the garden filled with orange, lemon, almond, and fig trees; with plants, roses, and flowers of every description, growing in luxuriant wildness. But the view was not confined to the garden. Looking back to the harbour of Scio, was a bold range of rugged mountains bounding the view on that side; on the right was the sea, then calm as a lake; on both the other sides were ranges of mountains, irregular and picturesque in their appearance, verdant and blooming to their very summits; and within these limits, for an extent of perhaps five miles, were continued gardens like that at my feet, filled with the choicest fruit-trees, with roses and the greatest variety of rare plants and flowers that ever unfolded their beauties before the eyes of man; above all, the orange-trees, the peculiar favourite of the island, then almost in full bloom, covered with blossoms, from my elevated position on the terrace made the whole valley appear an immense bed of flowers. All, too, felt the freshening influence of the rain; and a gentle breeze brought to me from this wilderness of sweets the most delicious perfume that ever greeted the senses. Do not think me extravagant when I say that, in your wildest dreams, you could never fancy so rich and beautiful a scene. Even among ruins, that almost made the heart break, I could hardly tear my eyes from it. It is one of the loveliest spots on earth. It is emphatically a Paradise lost, for the hand of the Turks is upon it; a hand that withers all that it touches. In vain does the sultan invite the survivers, and the children made orphans by his bloody massacre, to return; in vain do the fruits and the flowers, the sun and the soil, invite them to return; their wounds are still bleeding; they cannot forget that the wild beast's paw might again be upon them, and that their own blood might one day moisten the flowers which grow over the graves of their fathers. But I must leave this place. I could hardly tear myself away then, and I love to linger about it now. While I was enjoying the luxury of the terrace a messenger came from the captain to call us on board. With a feeling of the deepest interest I bade farewell, probably for ever, to my sorrowing hostess and to the beautiful gardens of Scio.

We mounted our mules, and in an hour were at the port. My feelings were so wrought upon that I felt my blood boil at the first Turk I met in the streets. I felt that I should like to sacrifice him to the shades of the murdered Greeks. I wondered that the Greeks did not kill every one on the island. I wondered that they could endure the sight of the turban. We found that the captain had hurried us away unnecessarily. We could not get out of the harbour, and were obliged to lounge about the town all day. We again made a circuit among the ruins; examined particularly those of the library, where we found an old woman who had once been an attendant there, living in a little room in the cellar, completely buried under the stones of the fallen building; and returning, sat down with a chibouk before the door of an old Turkish coffee-house fronting the harbour. Here I met an original in the person of the Dutch consul. He was an old Italian, and had been in America during the revolutionary war as dragoman , as he called it, to the Count de Grasse, though, from his afterward incidentally speaking of the count as "my master," I am inclined to think that the word dragoman, which here means a person of great character and trust, may be interpreted as "valet de chambre." The old consul was in Scio during the whole of the massacre, and gave me many interesting particulars respecting it. He hates the Greeks, and spoke with great indignation about the manner in which their dead bodies lay strewed about the streets for months after the massacre. "D—n them," he said, "he could not go anywhere without stumbling over them." As I began to have some apprehensions about being obliged to stay here another night, I thought I could not employ my time better than in trying to work out of the consul an invitation to spend it with him. But the old fellow was too much for me. When I began to talk about the unpleasantness of being obliged to spend the night on board, and the impossibility of spending it on shore, having no acquaintance there, he began to talk poverty in the most up and down terms. I was a little discouraged, but I looked at his military coat, his cocked hat and cane, and considering his talk merely a sort of apology for the inferior style of housekeeping I would find, was ingeniously working things to a point, when he sent me to the right about by enumerating the little instances of kindness he had received from strangers who happened to visit the island; among others, from one—he had his name in his pocketbook; he should never forget him; perhaps I had heard of him—who, at parting, shook him affectionately by the hand, and gave him a doubloon and a Spanish dollar. I hauled off from the representative of the majesty of Holland, and perhaps, before this, have been served up to some new visitor as the "mean, stingy American."