The city of Patras, from which port we are about to take leave of Greece, is probably the most incongruous city in the kingdom. To be sure it is second in importance to PirÆus, and the latter city is quite as frankly commercial. But the proximity of the PirÆus to Athens and the presence of the Acropolis, crowned with its ruined temples always in the field of view, conspire to take a little of the modern gloss off the major port, and thus prevent it from displaying an entire lack of harmony with those classic attributes which are the chief charm of Hellas. Patras has no such environment. It has no such history. It is a busy seaport town, a railroad centre, and it is about everything that the rest of Greece is not. It even has a trolley line, which no other Greek city at this writing has, although of course the years will bring that convenience to Athens, as they have already brought the third-rail inter-urban road to the sea. It was stated early in this book that probably the ideal departure from Greece is by way of the PirÆus, as by that route one leaves with the benediction of the Acropolis, which must be reckoned the crowning glory of it all. But since we have elected to enter by the eastern gate in voyaging through these pages, it is our lot to depart by the western, and to journey back to Italy by way of Corfu, the island of Nausicaa. The redeeming feature of this arrangement is that, while it robs one of a most imposing view of receding Greece, it gives a compensatingly beautiful approach to Corfu on the following morning; and there is not a more charming island in the world. It lies close to the Albanian shore, and with reference to the voyage between Patras and Brindisi it is almost exactly half way. In Greek it still bears the name of Kerkyra, a survival of the ancient Corcyra, the name by which it was known in the days when Athens and Corinth fought over it. The ancients affected to believe it the island mentioned in the Odyssey as “Scheria,” the PhÆacian land ruled over by King AlcinoÖs; and there is no very good reason why we also should not In the ancient days, when navigation was conducted in primitive fashion without the aid of the mariner’s compass, and when the only security lay in creeping from island to island and hugging the shore, Corcyra became a most important strategic point. In their conquest of the west, the Greeks were wont to sail northward as far as this island, skirting the mainland of Greece, and thence to strike off westward to the heel of Italy, where the land again afforded them guidance and supplies until they reached the straits of Messina. So that the route of Odysseus homeward from the haunts of Scylla and Charybdis and the isle Ortygia was by no means an unusual or roundabout one. This course of western navigation gave rise to continual bickering among the great powers of old as to the control of Corcyra, and Thucydides makes the contention over the island the real starting-point of the difficulties that culminated in the Peloponnesian Modern Corfu has a very good outer harbor, suitable for large craft, although landing, as usual, is possible only by means of small boats. The declaration in BÆdeker that the boatmen are insolent and rapacious appears no longer to be true. The matter of ferriage to shore seems to have been made the subject of wise regulation, and the charge for the short row is no longer extortionate. From the water the city presents a decidedly formidable appearance, being protected by some massive fortifications which were doubtless regarded as impregnable in their day, but which are unimportant now. They are of Venetian build, as are so many of the fortresses in Greek waters. Aside from the frowning ramparts of these ancient defenses, the town is a peaceful looking place in the extreme, with its tall white and gray houses, green-shuttered and trim. It is a town by no means devoid of picturesqueness, although it will take but a few moments’ inspection to convince the visitor that Corfu is by nature Italian rather than Greek, despite its incorporation in the domains of King George. Corfu has always been in closer touch with western Europe than with the East, and it is doubtless because she has enjoyed so intimate a connection with Italy that her external aspects are anything but Hellenic. Despite the Venetian character of the fortresses, they remind one continually of Gibraltar, although of course infinitely less extensive. Particularly is this true of the "fortezza nuova," which it is well worth while to explore because of the fine view over the city and harbor to be had from its highest point. A custodian resides in a tiny cabin on the height and offers a perfectly needless telescope in the hope of fees, although it is doubtful that many ever care to supplement the eye by recourse to the glass. The prospect certainly is incomparably beautiful. Below lies the city with its narrow streets and lofty buildings, and before it the bay decked with white ships, contrasting with the almost incredible blue of the water, for the ocean is nowhere bluer than at Corfu. Across the straits not many miles away rises the bluff and mountainous mainland of Albania and Epirus, stretching off north and south into illimitable distances. Behind the town the country rolls away into most fertile swales and meadows, bounded on the far north by a high and apparently barren mountain. All the narrow southern end of the island is From the fortress southward toward the bay where lies the “ship of Ulysses,” there runs a beautiful esplanade along the water front, lined with trees and flanked on the landward side by villas with most luxuriant gardens. Even though the British occupation came to an end as long ago as 1865, the roadways of the island bear the marks of the British thoroughness, and make riding in Corfu a pleasure. The houses along the way are largely of the summer-residence variety, the property of wealthy foreigners rather than of native Corfiotes; and their gardens, especially in the springtime, are a riot of roses, tumbling over the high walls, or clambering all over the houses themselves, and making the air heavy with their fragrance. The trees are no less beautiful, and the roads are well shaded by them. After a month or so of the comparatively treeless and often barren mainland of Greece, this exuberant Eden is a source of keen enjoyment with its wanton profligacy of bloom. “SHIP OF ULYSSES.” CORFU It cannot be more than two miles, and perhaps it is rather less, over a smooth road and through a continuous There are unquestionably many rides around the island that are quite as enjoyable as this, but the ordinary visitor is doubtless the one who stops over for a few hours only, during the stay of his steamer in the port, and therefore has little time for more than the sights described. Those who are able to make the island more than a brief way-station on the way to or from Greece express themselves as enchanted with it, and the number of attractive villas built by foreigners The city itself has already been referred to as more Italian than Greek in appearance. Nevertheless it is really Greek, and its shops are certainly more like those of Athens than like those of Italy, while the ordinary signboards of the street are in the Greek characters. It is the height of the houses, the narrowness of the streets, the occasional archways, and the fact that almost everybody can speak Italian, that give the unmistakable Italian touch to Corfu after one has seen the broader highways and lower structures of Athens. But Greco-Italian as it is, one cannot get away from the fact that, after all, it reminds one quite as much of Gibraltar as of anything. The town does this, quite as much as the fortresses, with its narrow ways and its evident cosmopolitanism. The shops, although devoted largely to Greek merchandise, are a good deal like the Gibraltar bazaars, and make quite as irresistible an appeal to the pocket, with their gorgeous embroidered jackets, blue and gold vestments, and other barbaric but incredibly magnificent fripperies, fresh from the tailor’s hand, and not, as at Athens, generally the wares of second-hand dealers. To see peasant jackets and vests of red and blue, and heavily ornamented with gold tracery, go to Corfu. Nothing at Athens approaches the Corfiote display. The long years in which Greece lay fallow and deserted now appear not to have been in vain. Through that period of neglect her ancient sites and monuments lay buried and forgotten, but intact. Men were too busy exploring and expanding elsewhere to waste a thought on the dead past. Even the revival of learning, which exhumed the classic writings from the oblivion of monkish cells and made the literature of Greece live again, was insufficient to give back to the world the actual physical monuments of that classic time. It has remained for the present day, when the earth has been all but completely overrun and when men have found a dearth of new worlds to conquer, that we have had the time and the interest to turn back to Greece, sweep away the rubbish of ages, and give back to the light of day the palaces of Agamemnon, the strongholds of Tiryns, and the hoary old labyrinth of Minos. On the fringes of Magna GrÆcia, where the empire was in touch with the unceasing tides of western civilization, as in Sicily and at Corfu, the remnants of the older days fared but ill. It was in the mountain fastnesses |