From the little harbor where we had found shelter for our landing to visit BranchidÆ it proved but a few hours’ steaming to Cos, which was scheduled as our next stopping place. Like Samos, Cos lies close to the Asia Minor shore. The chief city, which bears the same name as the island, unchanged from ancient times, proved to be a formidable looking place by reason of its great walls and moles, recalling the Cretan cities much more forcibly than the Samos town had done; for the yellowish-white fortresses which flank the narrow inner harbor of Cos resemble both in color and architecture the outworks that were thrown up to protect the ports of Candia and Canea. Later in the day it was borne in upon us that these walls were by no means uncommon in the vicinity, and that they bore witness to the visits of the Crusaders; for the great walls and castle at Halicarnassus not far away were very similar to the forts of Cos, and with the best of reasons, since they were the work of the same hands,—of the so-called “Knights of Rhodes,” who once settled in these regions and built strongholds that for those times were impregnable enough. Our next day or two brought us often in contact with the relics of these stout old knights, who were variously known as of Rhodes, or of St. John, and, last of all, of Malta. As far as Cos was concerned, the knightly fortress was chiefly remarkable from the water, as we steamed past the frowning battlements of buff and dropped anchor in the open roadstead before the city; for, as is generally the case with these old towns, there is at Cos no actual harborage for a steamer of modern draught, whatever might have been the case anciently when ships were small.

The morning sun revealed the city itself spreading out behind the fortress, in a great splash of dazzling white amidst the green of the island verdure, its domes and minarets interspersed with the tops of waving trees. Behind the city, the land rose gradually to the base of a long range of green hills stretching off to the southward and into the interior of the island. It was easily the most fertile and agreeable land we had yet encountered in our Ægean pilgrimage, and so lovely that we almost forgot that it was Turkish and that we had been warned not to separate far from one another on going ashore for fear of complications and loss of the road. However it was Turkish, this time, pure and unadulterated, and the examination of our papers and passports was no idle formality, but was performed with owl-like solemnity by a local dignitary black-mustachioed and red-fezzed. While this was proceeding the members of our party stood huddled behind a wicket gate barring egress from the landing stage and speculated on the probability of being haled to the dungeons, which might easily be imagined as damp and gloomy behind the neighboring yellow walls of stone.

The Sultan’s representative being fully satisfied that we might safely be permitted to enter the island, the gate was thrown back, and in a quaking body we departed through a stone arcade in which our feet echoed and reËchoed valiantly, past rows of natives sipping coffee and smoking the nargileh in the shade, and thence through a stone archway into a spacious public square, paved with cobble-stones and dominated by the most gigantic and venerable plane tree imaginable. Its enormous trunk stood full in the centre of the square, rising from a sort of stone dais, in the sides of which were dripping stone fountains, deeply incrusted with the green mildew of age. Overhead, even to the uttermost parts of the square, the branches spread a curtain of fresh green leaves. They were marvelous branches—great, gnarled, twisted limbs, that were as large in themselves as the trunk of a very respectable tree, and shored up with a forest of poles. Actual measurement of the circumference of the trunk itself revealed it to be something over forty feet in girth, and it was not difficult to believe the legend that this impressive tree really did date back to the time of Hippocrates, the great physician of Cos, who was born in the island long before the dawn of the Christian era. In any event, the great plane of Cos is called to this day the “tree of Hippocrates,” whether it has any real connection with that eminent father of medicine or not.

We left the shady square by a narrow and roughly paved street, little wider than an alley and lined with whitewashed houses, closely set. It wound aimlessly along through the thickly settled portion of the city, and at last opened out into the country-side, where the houses grew fewer and other splendid trees became more numerous, generally shading wayside fountains, beside which crouched veiled native women gossiping over their water-jars. A pair of baggy-trousered soldiers went with us on the road, partly as overseers, no doubt, but chiefly as guides and protectors—the latter office proving quite needless save for the occasional expert kicking of a barking cur from some wayside hovel. They proved to be a friendly pair, although of course conversation with them was impossible, and a lively exchange of cigarettes and tobacco was kept up as we walked briskly along out of the city and into the open country that lay toward the hills. Their chief curiosity was a kind of inextinguishable match, which proved exceedingly useful for smokers bothered by the lively morning breeze. They were flat matches, seemingly made of rude brown paper such as butchers at home used to employ for wrapping up raw meat. The edges were serrated, and when once the match was lighted it burned without apparent flame and with but little smoke until the entire fabric was consumed.

The object of this walk, which proved to be of something like three or four miles into the suburbs of Cos, was to view the remnants of the famous health temple, sacred, of course, to Asklepios. We found it situated on an elevation looking down across a smiling plain to the sea, with the white walls and roofs of Cos a trifle to one side. It was not a prospect to be forgotten. It was a bright day, but with sufficient haze in the air to give to the other islands visible across the intervening water an amethystine quality, and to make the distant summits in Asia Minor faint and ethereal. The nearer green of the fields, the purple of the sea, and the delicate hues of the islands and far-away peaks, held us for a long time before turning to the curious ruin of the temple, which, as usual, was less a temple than a hospital.

Little remains of it, save for the foundations. Three enormous terraces, faced with flights of steps of easy grade, led up to the main sanctuary of the god, comparatively little of which remains to be seen. Various smaller buildings, shrines for allied divinities, porticoes for the sick, apartments for the priests, treasuries and the like, are readily distinguishable, and serve to reveal what an extensive establishment the health temple was in its time. Restorations of it, on paper, reveal it as having been probably most impressive, both architecturally and by reason of its commanding position, which was not only admirable by nature but accentuated by the long approach over the three successive terraces to the many-columned main building above.

Of the numerous smaller structures lying about the precinct, the most curious and interesting were the subterranean treasuries—if that is the proper name for them—which have been discovered at the foot of the slope. They apparently consist of vaults in the earth, each covered over with a massive stone slab. The slab is removable, but only at great pains. A circular hole pierces it through the centre, suitable for dropping money or other valuables into the receptacle beneath and for inserting the tackle with which to lift the rock when the treasury was to be opened. The vast weight of the stone and the time required for raising it would have been ample guarantee against unauthorized visits to the treasury. Other theories accounting for these underground chambers and their curious coverings have been advanced—the most fantastic one being the supposition that these were the chambers devoted to housing the sacred serpents of the god, the holes serving for their emergence and for the insertion of food! But while the cult of Asklepios certainly does appear to have made use of the sacred snakes as a part of its mummery, it seems hardly likely that these subterranean cavities were used for any such purpose.

As for the practice of medicine in Cos, it is widely believed to have been of a sensible and even of an “ethical” sort, largely devoid of mere reliance on idle superstition or religious formalism for its curative effects, though unquestionably employing these, as was not only the case in ancient times, but as even persists to-day in some localities of the archipelago. The religious ceremonies, which generally took the form of sleeping in the sacred precincts in the hope of being divinely healed, appear to have been supplemented at Cos by the employment of means of healing that were rudely scientific. Hippocrates, the most celebrated of the Coan physicians, has left abundant proof that he was no mere charlatan, but a common-sense doctor, whose contributions to medical science have not by any means entirely passed out of esteem. Reference has been made hitherto to the custom of depositing in the temple anatomical specimens representing the parts healed, as votive offerings from grateful patients—a custom which persists in the modern Greek church, as everybody who examines the altar-screen of any such church will speedily discover.

The extreme veneration of Asklepios at Cos is doubtless to be explained by the fact that Cos was an Epidaurian colony; for the Epidaurians claimed that the healing god was born in the hills overlooking their valley in the Peloponnesus. At any rate the health temple at Cos and the great sanitarium at Epidaurus shared the highest celebrity in ancient times as resorts for the sick; and in each case there are traces to show that they were sites devoted not only to the worship of a deity, but to the ministration unto the ailing by physical means, as far as such means were then understood.

Cos, however, was far from basing her sole claim to ancient celebrity on her physicians and hospitals. Her embroideries rivaled the more famous Rhodian work, and she was an early home of culture and resort of noted students, not only of medicine, but of rhetoric, grammar, poetry, philosophy, and science. Ptolemy II, otherwise known as Ptolemy Philadelphus, is known to have studied here, and it is not at all improbable that the Sicilian poet, Theocritus, was a fellow student with him. For it is known that Theocritus was a student at Cos at some time, and he was later summoned to Ptolemy’s Egyptian court, where he wrote the epithalamium for the unholy marriage between Philadelphus and his sister. Not a little of the present knowledge of ancient Cos is due to the writings that Theocritus left as the result of his student days in the island.

The curator of antiquities in charge of the excavations at the Asklepeion took us in charge on our return walk and led us through the city to his own home, where, although we were on Turkish soil, we had a taste of real Greek hospitality. Our party was numerous enough to appall any unsuspecting hostess, but we were ushered into the great upper room of the house, with no trace of dismay on the part of the wife and daughter. It was a huge room, scrupulously neat and clean, and the forty or so included in our number found chairs ranged in line about the apartment, where we sat at ease examining the fragments that the curator had to show from the mass of inscriptions recovered from the temple. Meantime, after the national custom, the eldest daughter served refreshment to each in turn, consisting of preserved quince, glasses of mastika, and huge tumblers of water. It was a stately ceremony, each helping himself gravely to the quince from the same dish, and sipping the cordial, while the mother bustled about supplying fresh spoons. And with a general exchange of cards and such good wishes as were to be expressed in limited traveler’s Greek, we departed to the landing and again embarked.

We designed to push on to Cnidos at once, and to climb the heights of that ancient promontory of Asia Minor in the late afternoon. But inasmuch as Halicarnassus, the native city of Herodotus, lay directly on the way, we sailed into its capacious harbor and out again without stopping, for the sake of such glance at the site as might be had from the water. The bay on which the city lies—it is now called Boudrun—is wonderfully beautiful, running well into the mainland, while the city itself, with its great white castle of the Knights of St. John as the central feature, lies at the inmost end. Of the castle we were able to get a very good view, going close enough to arouse the violent excitement of a gesticulating Turkish official who came out in a tiny boat, bravely decked with the crescent flag, to show us where to anchor if we so desired. The site of the famous Mausoleum was pointed out from the deck, and most of us were confident that we saw it, although it was not easy to find. The remains of this incomparably magnificent tomb, designed for King Mausolus, are, as everybody knows, to be seen in the British Museum to-day.

It was but a few miles farther to the promontory of Cnidos, and we dropped anchor there in mid-afternoon, in one of the double bays for which the ancient naval station was famous. The bays are still separated by a narrow isthmus—the same which the ancients tried in vain to sever. The story goes that the drilling of the rocks caused such a flying of fragments as to endanger the eyes of the workmen, and the oracle when questioned dissuaded them from continuing the work, saying “Zeus could have made the land an island if he had intended so to do.” Hence the two little harbors remain, one on either side of the neck of land that juts into the sea. They were used as anchorage for triremes and merchant ships respectively, when Cnidos was a power in the world. To-day the spot is absolutely deserted, and we found both the diminutive bays devoid of all trace of life, until at evening a passing fisherman came in and made all snug for the night.

Above the waters of the harbor towered the commanding rock of the Cnidian acropolis, something like twelve hundred feet in height—a bare and forbidding rock, indeed. Of the town and the temples that once clustered along its base nothing was to be seen. Man has long ago abandoned this spot and left it absolutely untenanted save by memories. It was in ancient times a favorite haunt of Aphrodite, and three temples did honor to that goddess on the knolls above the sea. Here also stood the marble Aphrodite carved by Praxiteles, and esteemed his masterpiece by many. It was carried off to Constantinople centuries ago, and perished miserably in a fire in that city in 1641.

Our three boatloads landed with no little difficulty on the abrupt rocks of the shore, being somewhat put to it to avoid sundry submerged boulders lying just off the land. It was a sharp scramble from the water’s edge to the narrow and ascending shelf above, on which the temples had stood. The ruins of them lay buried in tall grasses and in huge clumps of daisies, the latter growing in the most remarkable profusion. With a single sweep of the knife I cut a prodigious armful of them, and the dining saloon that night was made a perfect bower by the wild flowers that the returning party brought back with them.

It was one of the days when the non-archÆological section of the party hastily left the remnants of ancient greatness below and set out precipitately for a climb, for the prospect of a view from the overshadowing cliff above was promising. It proved the most formidable ascent that we undertook in all our Ægean cruising. Anciently there was a gradual ascent by means of a zigzag causeway to the fortified heights above, but the majority of us disregarded it and struck off up the steep toward the summit. It is not a wise plan for any but hardened climbers, for the slope soon became so sharp that it made one giddy to look back down the mountain, and the footing was often difficult because of the shelving stone and fragments of loose rock. Small bushes were the only growth, and they were often eagerly seized upon to give the needful purchase to lift us onward and upward. The summit, however, amply rewarded our toil. It was easier going toward the top, for we found the old road and rose more gradually toward the point where the ancient walls began.

From the pinnacle of the rock the sweep of the view was indescribably fine. The sun was sinking rapidly to the horizon, illuminating the islands and the sea. The wind had dropped, the haze had disappeared, and the shore line of Asia Minor stretched away, clear cut, in either direction. We were practically at the southwest corner of the peninsula. The rugged headlands retreated to the north and to the east from our feet, while inland piled the impressive interior mountains rearing their snow-capped heads against the blue evening dusk. Over the Ægean, dark blue and violet islands rose from a sea of molten gold. At our feet lay the twin harbors and our steamer, looking like a toy ship, the thin smoke of her funnel rising in a blue wisp into the silent evening air. The fishermen from the tiny smack that had sought a night’s berth there had kindled a gleaming fire on the beach. Along the sharp spine of the promontory we could see the ancient line of wall, rising and falling along the summit and flanked here and there by ruined towers—a stupendous engineering work of a nation long dead. It was all impressively silent, and deserted save for ourselves. The course of empire had indeed taken its westward way and left once powerful Cnidos a barren waste.

But the darkness coming suddenly in these latitudes at this season warned us to descend in haste to the fire that was signaling us from the landing, and we slipped and slid down the old causeway to the boats. That night the moon was at the full, and we sat late on the after-deck enjoying the incomparable brilliancy of the light on sea and cliffs, shining as of old on a time-defying and rock-bound coast, but on a coast no longer teeming with life and harbors no longer alive with ships. And at midnight the wheezing of the engines and the jarring of the screw gave notice that we were slipping out of the harbor of Cnidos and out into the sea, to Rhodes.