THE ISLES OF THE MEDITERRANEAN.

Remember, as the great Dr. Johnson remarks, how life consists not of a series of illustrious actions or elegant enjoyments; the greater part of our time passes in compliance with necessities in the performance of daily duties, in the procurement of petty pleasures; and we are well or ill at ease as the main stream of life glides on smoothly, or is ruffled by small obstacles and frequent interruptions. This is emphatically true as regards life at sea. But as we steam along we see much to attract and excite in the isles of the Mediterranean, that diversify the travel all the way from Marseilles to Jaffa. It is said that there are eighty ports in the Mediterranean, and that into all of them Lord Brassey can take his yacht without a pilot. Alas! I am permitted to tarry at none of them.

As we sail out of the Bay of Naples we pass Capri—a rocky island, where there is scarce a yard of level ground—dear to Englishmen and artists. The highest point of Capri is about 1,960 feet above the sea. The traveller will find there several hotels. Roman remains abound, and Tiberius, the drunken and dissolute, had twelve palaces there. There he was in no fear of unwelcome intrusion, and gave himself up to shameless and unnatural lusts; while his worthy lieutenant, Sejanus, carried on a series of persecutions against all who stood in any relation to the imperial family, or excited the suspicions of the tyrant by freedom of speech, independence of character, or position, or popularity. The famous Blue Grotto of Capri is on the northern side, near the landing. In the great war with France, Sir Hudson Lowe—the same General who had subsequently charge of Bonaparte at St. Helena—had to surrender the island to Murat, after a fortnight’s siege, and had the mortification of seeing reinforcements arrive just after the treaty was signed. Leaving Capri, the Gulf of Salerno opens; PÆstum, with its temples, lying on the southern bight of the gulf. Then follows the elevated headland of Cape Palinure—named after Palinurus, the pilot of Æneas, whose tomb is marked by a tower on the cliff some eight miles northward, thus fulfilling the Sibyl’s promise in the ‘Æneid,’

‘And Palinurus’ name the place shall bear.’

We next get a peep at the now active volcano of Stromboli, and the Lipari Islands to the northward. On these islands, the InsulÆ-EoliÆ, also the VulcaniÆ of the ancients, Æolus held the winds enclosed in caverns, letting them blow and howl as it seemed good in his sight. There, too, Vulcan forged the bolts of Jove.

From Naples we steer for Sicily, once, though only for a short time, prosperous under British rule, when we took possession of it in the name of the King of Naples, after he was driven away from Italy by the soldiers of France. Garibaldi handed it over to United Italy. Sicily is a country which is almost unknown to tourists, though in his youth Mr. Gladstone visited the island and wrote: ‘After Etna, the temples are the great charm and attraction of Sicily. I do not know whether there is any one, if taken alone, which exceeds in interest and beauty that of Neptune at PÆstum, but they have the advantage of number and variety as well as of interesting position.’ We pass Catania, which had the most celebrated University in Italy. The present town is comparatively new; many of its more ancient remains are covered with lava; among them the theatre, from which it is probable Alcibiades addressed the people in b.c. 415. What memories rose up before us as we steamed along the Straits of Messina! It was from Syracuse that St. Paul sailed away to Reggio, on the coast of Italy, and all the parsons on board pull out their Testaments and compare notes. I trow I know more of the Greeks, and Romans, and Carthaginians, who shed so much blood, and waged so many desolating wars in these now peaceful regions. The town was founded by the Greeks nearly 3,000 years ago. All the nations seem at one time to have held Sicily—Romans, Greeks, Moors, Turks, and Normans. There are some of us who can yet remember how Cicero thundered against Verres for his misgovernment of Sicily. It was to Sicily that Æschylus retired to die after Sophocles had borne away the prize from him for his tragedy. The pet of the Athenian mob, the gay and graceful Alcibiades, fought against the Sicilians in vain. At that time they must have been a more intelligent people than they are now. Take, for instance, their appreciation of Euripides. Of all the poets, writes old Plutarch, he was the man with whom the Sicilians were most in love. From every stranger that landed in their island they gained every small specimen or portion of his works, and communicated it with pleasure to each other. It is said that on one occasion a number of Athenians, upon their return home defeated, went to Euripides and thanked him for teaching their masters what they remembered of his poems; and others were rewarded when they were wandering about after the battle, for singing a few of his verses. Nor is this to be wondered at, since they tell us that when a ship from Cannes, which happened to be pursued by pirates, was going to take shelter in one of their ports, the Sicilians at first refused to receive her. Upon asking the crew whether they knew any of the verses of Euripides, and being answered in the affirmative, they released both them and their vessel. We are a cultured people. The Americans, according to their own ideas, are yet more so. Yet it is evident that the Sicilians were far before us in their admiration of poetic genius. Alas! Pompey the Great, as we still call him, gave the Sicilians a different lesson when he summoned the people of Messina before him, who refused to obey his summons, arguing that they stood excused by an ancient privilege granted them by the Romans. His reply was, and it was worthy of the present Emperor of Germany, ‘Will you never have done citing laws and privileges to men who wear swords?’ Another lesson Sicily teaches us is how much readier the world is to remember its oppressors than its benefactors. We all have a vivid impression of Dionysius, the Tyrant of Syracuse, yet how few of us are familiar with the fame of Dion the Patriot, who was the pupil of Plato when the philosopher dwelt for a time in Syracuse. It is to the credit of the Sicilians that they were a grateful people. When Timoleon died they gave him a public funeral, and instituted games in his honour, ‘as the man who destroyed tyrants, subdued barbarians, repeopled great cities which lay desolate, and restored the Sicilians their laws and privileges.’

Gradually we make our way through the Straits, sailing between Scylla and Charybdis, which for the modern traveller has no terrors. Our last view of Sicily gives us a fine glimpse of Etna, with the crater into which Empedocles threw himself, 400 b.c. Men are immortalized as much by their follies as by their virtues. As we onward press we get a glimpse of Candia, with the snowy peaks of Mount Ida, and Gavodo, or Goro, supposed to be the Clauda of St. Paul’s voyage to the westward. What associations rise as we see Cephalonia, Zante, Corfu!—all looking dry and bare in the scorching sun. We manage to make our way, though with some difficulty, through the Canal of Corinth, a work which I fear can never pay, as it is not large enough for the big steamers which now plough these waters. Everywhere islands, or rather rocks, diversify the scene, and every day we have more radiant sunsets and sunrises than you can realize in a Northern clime. To sail on this summer sea is indeed a treat. No wonder old Ulysses loved to wander among these isles, and to leave Penelope to do her knitting and to look after her maids at home. I regret that I cannot have a peep at Crete and Cyprus, the most famous islands in the Mediterranean, and we pass over the far-famed bay of Salamis almost unconsciously.

The Corinth Canal (From a photograph by Fradelle and Young)

It is not my privilege to sail from one of the historic isles of the Mediterranean to another, nor do I know that in all cases it would be safe. In many cases besides Corsica and Sicily the traveller has to look to his ways. There are brigands to be met with still and as we travelled we heard of a British officer who had just been made captive as he wandered about in search of a day’s shooting. As you may well suppose, I gave the brigands a wide berth. I am quite content with being fleeced by guides and hotel-keepers. When I was in Australia, I was amused to learn that the last of the bushrangers had sailed to America to carry on a hotel. I fear that in many parts of the world the two callings have much in common. I believe the British pay no taxes—at any rate, they do not in Jerusalem—and this is one reason why we meet with such swarms of shady Greeks who claim to be British subjects. In this part of the world the Civis Romanus sum of old Palmerston seems to me in danger of being carried a deal too far. Not that I am a Little Englander; I am, in fact, very much the reverse.

Over these waters sailed the hardy mariners of ancient Greece in search of the Golden Fleece, and the brave Theseus, as he went to do battle with the monster Minos, who demanded a yearly tribute of Athenian maids. We all went on deck to have a look at Patmos, where the Apostle John wrote that wondrous dream, the Revelation, and viewed with interest the white convent on the island which still bears his name.

In the Sea of Marmora we pass the Princes Islands, four of which are inhabited. In one of them is the grave of Sir Edward Barton, the first resident British Ambassador in Turkey. He was sent by Queen Elizabeth to the Sultan Mahommed III., and died in 1507. Another of them, Plati, was purchased by Sir H. Bulwer while Ambassador to Constantinople. He built a castle on it, which is now falling into ruins, and later sold the island to the ex-Khedive of Egypt, to whose family it still belongs. Steaming south, we pass Alexandria Troas, which was twice visited by St. Paul. On the first occasion he came down from Mysia and went to Macedonia; on the second, on his return from Greece, he had an interview with a large body of fellow-workers. It was there he restored Eutychus, who had fallen from an upper window in his sleep.

Next we pass the ancient island of Lesbos, one of the most beautiful in the Ægean Sea. Islands are around us everywhere. There is no end to them. The most thickly populated of them is Chio; another is Cos, of which we see the chief town, the birthplace of Hippocrates, the great physician. Then we pass Rhodes, famous for its renowned knights, who did battle with the ever-advancing Turk, of whom Luther had such fear, and its grand Colossus overthrown and broken in pieces by an earthquake fifty-six years after its erection, b.c. 224; and then we leave the lovely Mediterranean at Jaffa, where, according to Greek mythology, Andromeda was chained to the rock and delivered by Perseus, and where the prophet Jonah embarked when he tried to escape the command of God to go and warn Nineveh of its impending fate. Of course I went to the house where St. Peter lived, the dwelling of Simon the tanner, a very dreary, tumbledown old place, which required a good deal of climbing, rather trying in that sultry clime. And here I leave that wonderful Mediterranean over which the navies of all the world in all ages have swept.

‘Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee—
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?
Thy waters washed them power while they were free,
And many a tyrant since; their shores obey
The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay
Has dried up realms to deserts: not so thou;
Unchangeable save to thy wild waves’ play—
Time writes no wrinkles on thine azure brow—
Such as Creation’s dawn beheld, thou rollest now.’