Travels and Discoveries in the Levant/Volume 1/Letter IX

by Charles Thomas Newton

IX.

Mytilene, December 6, 1852.

As yet I have been unable to make distant excursions, on account of the difficulty of finding a trustworthy person to leave in charge of the Vice-Consulate in my absence. In Levantine consulates there is usually an officer called a Cahcelliere, who acts as the Consul's secretary, keeps his archives in order, and acts as his official deputy. These Cancellieres are generally Levantines, and it is difficult to meet Turkish a genuine Englishman qualified for such an office, which requires a knowledge of Greek and Turkish, and familiarity with the ideas, customs, and forms of legal procedure in the Levant. I have, however, been so fortunate as to secure the services of Mr. J. Blunt, the son of H. M.'s Consul at Salonica, who, after having been educated in England, has had the benefit of two years' careful official training, under his father's eye, at Salonica. He is a very promising young man, and his arrival has greatly enlivened us here. He represents me in all ordinary cases at the Mejlis, where he has shown so much tact and address, that the Pasha, who has been trying to circumvent and thwart me ever since my arrival, is beginning to act in a more straightforward manner. Very soon after Blunt's arrival, he had to appear in court on behalf of an Ionian, who claimed a debt from a Rayah. The debtor pleaded that he had discharged the debt, and produced a receipt duly signed, which the creditor declared to be a forgery. The court was disposed to believe the Rayah, when Blunt very ingeniously pointed out that the receipt, which professed to have been written several years ago, was on stamped paper; whereas it was well known that stamps for receipts were not introduced by the Porte till the year subsequent to the date of the receipt. Of course the forgery was admitted after this. Such frauds constantly take place, and are never punished as crimes; but if detected, the perpetrator loses caste, not on account of his villany, but because of the clumsiness of his manœuvre.

After living in very inconvenient lodgings for many months, I have at length installed myself in my new house, which has been built for me by a rich Greek, with the agreement that I am to pay an annual rent of £32 for it as long as I reside in Mytilene. After duly concluding this agreement, and completing the house, the landlord, like a true Mytileniote, wanted me to pay a higher rent, and as our contract was not on stamped paper, and was drawn up by an amateur lawyer, he might have tried litigation, had he not been afraid of going to law with a British consul. In writing the receipt, he forgot to sign his name till he was reminded. Such oversights are very characteristic of Mytilene.

The other day, I received a letter from the Pasha, which he wrote with the greatest unwillingness, under threat of an appeal to Constantinople. He, too, was as careless as my friend the Greek; for he sent the letter forgetting to put his official seal to it! This oversight was of course detected at once; the Pasha then made a lame apology.

The house will ultimately become the dower of my landlord's daughter, now about eight years old; for, by a custom very general in the Turkish Archipelago, every father is bound, on his daughter's marriage, to endow her Avith a furnished house.⁴⁴

The architect is a native genius, who is styled Maestro Luca. When I first asked him to submit to me the plan of the house, he stooped down and drew on the ground with a bit of stick a few rude lines, marking out the position of the different rooms. The foundations were then laid out, and the walls built, entirely by rule of thumb, without either plan or specifications. The result is much better than I expected. The house is airy, spacious, and not uncomfortable, notwithstanding the rudeness of the carpentry. No doors or windows in Mytilene will shut properly. Locks and hinges are of the clumsiest kind, such as we should hardly think good enough for an outhouse in England. The wood employed is an inferior sort of deal, imported from the opposite coast of Asia Minor, full of knots, and finished in a rough unsightly manner. The windows have no leads, and come down with a run; but the frames are so exceedingly slight, that this is not so formidable an evil as it would seem to you. They are more like the frames of a cucumber-bed than windows; but they are protected outside by green shutters, which bear all the brunt of the wind.

Now that we have fairly installed ourselves in our barrack, we feel very comfortable, according to our rough notions of comfort. We live in a room with a large table and a bookcase, both of unpainted deal, a pair of rocking-chairs, one on each side of an enormous fireplace, on which the ligna super foco repose, without either fender, grate, or fire-irons. The fuel is olive-wood, split into great logs, which yield a pleasant unctuous blaze. In one corner of the room is a large packing-case, lined with tin: this serves as a store-room, where we keep all manner of household things, locking them up after every meal; for we cannot trust anything in the hands of our one servant, a Mytileniote boy. The house contains neither carpets, curtains, nor sofas.; but the fine climate reconciles us to the loss of much which would be indispensable in Europe. Our great deficiency is wholesome food. I am at present without a cook, having tried and dismissed three since I arrived at Mytilene. Our meals are prepared at the house of my Dragoman, who farms us at so much per diem. I notice that every day the food supplied by him deteriorates a little in quantity and quality. I conceive, therefore, that this astute descendant of Pittacus is deliberately trying the experiment on how little Englishmen can be fed, and how much their patience will bear.

One day, a fowl was brought us for dinner. We noticed a certain discomposure in its general aspect: its limbs were more than usually distorted; its surface ragged and gritty; and there was a singular absence of all gravy. There was, too, a strange flavour about this fowl; but a good appetite does not stop to speculate on such phenomena, and we ate our dinner in unsuspecting confidence. It was not till many days afterwards that we were informed that in its passage to our house this unhappy bird had been dropped in the street gutter, picked up again by our Greek serving-boy, wiped, and replaced in the dish, minus the gravy.

Last night we had from the Dragoman our usual dinner of two plats, one of which Blunt declared to be cat disguised as hare; but I assured him that the Mytileniotes starved their cats so effectually that it would have been impossible to find any flesh on then bones. Blunt is a capital ally, particularly for coins. He goes about all sorts of unfrequented streets, hunting for antiquities, and drawing down on himself thereby many angry looks and inquiries from jealous husbands and duennas.

"It is not coins you are looking for, 'pallikari,'" said an old hag to him the other day; "you are looking for black eyes."

The μικρός, as the Greeks call Colnaghi, is also not a bad hand at bargaining for a coin. We go out all three together into the villages, and hold long parleys with the natives, seated on the raised platform of the rustic kafé, each on a little low stool, with a cup of coffee in his hand and a paper cigarette in his mouth. In order to succeed in this sort of traffic, it is necessary to address people in their own language and in their own way, smoke out of their very dirty pipe if they offer it, drink their coffee, and employ every art to ingratiate oneself with them. Then, by degrees, comes out the very information you are in search of. After you have sat for about an hour, and have in vain demanded coins (mongoures, as they call them), some fellow comes up and produces a battered Byzantine coin; then comes another. If you buy, the mere sight of a piastre brings a whole crowd round you. Then the plan is, to get on your mule and move a few yards towards home; upon which the price instantly begins to fall. You ride on; the crowd gradually tails off, till, about two hundred yards from the village, you are entreated to buy the particular coin which you secretly wished to have, but did not venture outwardly to show any anxiety about.

A few days ago our solitude was broken in upon by two travellers who crossed over from Assos on the opposite coast,—a young Irishman and a somewhat apathetic and beery German from Saxony, and who, being desirous of seeing something of Mytilene, started on a little tour with me. The first part of our route was in a caique. The day was lovely, the sea perfectly calm. I saw an immense fish shaped like a carp leap twice right out of the water, glitter- ing in the sun like a mass of gold. We rowed to a place called Yeni Liman, "new haven," on the N. side of the island. It was the first time I had made an expedition in a caique. The scenery was so lovely, and the weather so agreeable, that I could think of nothing but that famous cruise of the god Bacchus, described in the Metamorphoses of Ovid, and sculptured on the frieze of the Choragic monument of Lysikrates; how he put to sea in a boat manned by Tyrrhenian pirates; how they tried to throw him overboard; and how he then revealed himself as a god, turned the mast into a vine, and transformed the pirates into tunny-fishes.⁴⁵ It is in such a climate and on such a coast as that of Mytilene that these old myths can be most thoroughly enjoyed.

We slept the first night at the village of Mandamatha, near Yeni Liman. I had a letter of introduction to a very respectable old Greek gentleman, at whose door we knocked at about 8.30 p.m. He answered not; so we went elsewhere for lodging. The next day he called upon me, and embracing us all very tenderly with a salute on the cheek, apologized for not letting us in: he was so afraid of pirates. Probably this was a polite manner of declining the duties of hospitality.

About half an hour from Mandamatha is the monastery of Taxiarches (the Archangel Michael). The walls inside were covered with all manner of paintings on tablets representing the patron saint of the church. In one place I remarked a napkin with a figure of the archangel embroidered in gold on it. I asked what this was, and was told that the embroidery was an offering made by the women of Mandamatha on the feast of the saint to whom the church was dedicated. Here we have a custom exactly analogous to the Athenian ceremony of offering a new veil to Pallas Athene on the occasion of her great festival, the ornaments of which were the exploits of the goddess, embroidered by the Athenian maidens. Thus, in the Greek temple and in the Byzantine church, the local legend was first recorded and celebrated in permanent monu- ments of art, and then in ephemeral and perishable materials, such as veils and napkins.

On the sea-coast, at the distance of one hour and a half to the S.E. of Mandamatha, one hour from Palaio Liman, and two hours and a half from Yeni Liman, is a roofless church, dedicated to St. Stephen (Agios Stephanos). In front of the altar is a flat stone, on which is a Greek dedication by the people of some unknown place to a lady called Allobogiona, the daughter of Deiotaros, in acknoAV- ledgment of her services to the city. This name seems to be Galatian.⁴⁶

Close to Palaio Liman, within the bay formed by the promontory Tokmakia (called in the chart Tomari), is a place on the shore called Anoikto, where are fragments of columns and foundations. Here is a large well, which may be antique. The soil is very black. This place is distant two and a half hours from Mandamatha, and two hours from Yeni Liman. Near Anoiktò is a village called Mariantliyia, where are ancient fragments. Immediately to the S. of this the land bends in, forming a bay; it will be seen by the chart that this is the narrowest part of the neck of land between the Gulf of Kalloni and the N.E. coast. Somewhere here then must have stood Ægiros, placed by Strabo on this coast where the isthmus was narrowest. The fragments which I noticed at Anoiktò may belong to this place, though Strabo speaks of it as only a village—κώμη.⁴⁷

From Mandamatha we went to Molivo, the site of the ancient Methymna. Here I presented my credentials from the Governor to an aga, who could not read,—a retired Janissary. He sat turning the letter different ways in despair. I could talk no Turkish, and had no dragoman with me; luckily I had a letter for the Greek schoolmaster of the town, a pleasant, well-educated person, who gave us a very hospitable welcome. The Greek schoolmasters are always the most intelligent persons in the villages: their education at Syra or Athens gives them some glimmering of European ideas. He showed me three inscriptions, which took me a whole day to decipher; one of them was an alliance between the Romans and Methymnæans, but very mutilated: these I afterwards foimd to be unpublished.⁴⁸ I could hear of no coins in the place. There is a curious little harbour, what the ancient geographers called a λιμὴν κλειστός, or "closed port," evidently unchanged from antiquity, with an ancient mole, and the ships crowded together like little boats. I went over the fortress, which was probably built by the Genoese. On entering it, I noticed over a doorway, on the left-hand side, a Byzantine inscription, recording that it had been repaired.

From Molivo we went to the neighbouring village Petra, situated on the sea-shore, and still celebrated for that wine—"quam Methymæo carpit de palmite Lesbos." In the centre of the village is a very steep rock, on the summit of which is a small church. This may have been an Acropolis, and has given the village its name. Here we were magnificently entertained by a rich but somewhat pretentious Greek, who had lived at Smyrna and Constantinople, and consequently had nothing of rural simplicity in his manners.

Here, for the first time in travelling in Mytilene, I enjoyed the luxury of a regular bedroom and a bedstead, instead of a mattress on the floor; but though the house was very well furnished, still we found no jugs or basins, only the old ewer and pewter basin with a colander.

From Petra we went across the narrow part of the island to Port Kalloni, a beautiful ride. We slept at a place called Agia Paraskeue. The gentleman to whom I had a letter was out olive-gathering, and, in his absence, his wife gave us rather a chilly reception; the more so as, after eating up all her fowls, we still felt hungry. The house where we lodged was an old one, and under the whitewash I saw traces of mural painting. At the entrance, and immediately over the den of a very savage live dog, was an old picture of a house-dog on the wall. I thought at once of the cave canem dog on the mosaic at the entrance of a house at Pompeii; and, on inquiry, was told that it was anciently the custom in Mytilene to paint a dog over the entrance of the house. About ten minutes' walk from this village is a very curious chapel in a cave, "called σπήλαιον τῆς Αγίας Παρασκεῦης. It is hewn out of the rock, and probably dates from an early period of Christianity.

Externally, the rock is cut into the form of a facade, thus:—

In the centre is a square-headed doorway, on each side of which is an archway of inferior height, sculptured in relief, with low mouldings. Inside is an irregular oblong space about 21 feet long by 13 feet 6 inches wade.

A A. Rectangular pillars dividing the chancel, or ἱερόν, from the outer space, G.

B. Altar, called ἅγιων βῆμα, and ἁγία τράπεζα.

C. C. Two small tables formed by rectangular projections.

D. Apse.

E. Small square window.

F. Entrance.

Between the two pilasters A A hangs a cloth used as a veil. The opening, partially concealed by this veil, is called ὡραία πύλη. The altar is a square slab placed on a column. On the altar the priest's vestments lay covered with a cloth. Of the tables C C, the one on the north side is the highest. On it is placed the sacramental cup, Ἅγιον ποτήριον or Δισκοποτήριον, covered with a cloth. In the walls are archways cut in relief, and in each archway the figure of a saint is painted; the ceiling is also covered with paintings. In the outer division or nave, the paintings on the roof represent our Saviour in the centre, surrounded by the four Evangelists. These paintings are very much blackened by the smoke of the lamps. Those on the roof of the hieron appear old; the rest have been much restored. On the left of the entrance is another small cave, called Apotheke, with niches and a large stone seat cut in the walls. It is now used as a magazine.

From Agia Paraskeue, we rode home by Pyrrha and Ayasso.