The sword is is made fat with fatness, and with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams."* here, too, not merely the symbol, but the actual instrument of justice. Very recently the pasha of Smyrna beheaded with it three notorious robbers who had infested the place, and set up their heads on poles in the market-place, with their names and crimes written under in Greek, Arabic, and Turkish, as if Pilate's custom lingered here still. Where the sword has so much practice, it ought to be a perfect instrument, and the East should be the Sheffield of the sword cutler. Indeed it has some reputation in that respect; for a naval friend of mine, showed me a sword which he had bought at Chios, whose temper was said to have proved its owner's prowess by having cut off nineteen heads, which number, in attestation of the fact, was marked upon its blade. Not quite sure of this warranty, however, he walked out the next morning, and showed the sword to another Chiote, and asked him whether he thought the story true. "I know it is," he replied, "for the man has been the public executioner for four years, and that is the sword he has done execution with." Hitherto, we had had none but gentlemen passengers in Isaiah xxxiv. 6. our cabin, and, notwithstanding their number, we were a quiet orderly party; but at Smyrna we bade farewell to quiet, for there we took on board two French ladies, a young lady the daughter of one of them, an Armenian lady, and two female servants. One of the French ladies was on her way to the camp at Varna, where her husband had some appointment. She was a sprightly woman, exceedingly well read, spoke beautiful French, and had remarkable powers of conversation, which, as most people are fond of doing what they can do well, she was not unwilling to exercise. Her tongue ran on for hours, and by turns, or all at once, she engaged everybody in conversation, except the two mollahs, who only spoke Turkish. But her intelligence and sprightliness did not more distinguish her from the daughters of Asia, than her manners from the quiet delicacy of a well-educated English woman. At dinner she challenged the Turkish naval commander to drink with her to the fall of Sebastopol, and when he had accepted the challenge and was filling his glass, like a good Mussulman to drink it in water, she insisted on his pledging her in wine, and the Turk was too gallant to refuse it. In the course of the evening, in answer to her inquiry whether he was married, the officer, who seemed to enjoy her badinage, said that he was waiting to find a good wife, and meant to be married as soon as he could find one. We were very much amused to find afterwards that this Turkish Lothario had already three wives, and that he was now on his way to Constantinople to be married to a fourth. The conversation which was spiritedly kept up for some hours, effectually put off bed-time till a late hour, and sleep until to-morrow. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 24. OUR fellow-passenger's lively tongue had this good effect, that it kept us up until after midnight, and when the ship soon afterwards approached Castro, anciently Mytelene, the capital of Lesbos, an island of old renown, I went on deck to watch her enter the harbour. Will it be believed that on these shores, fringed with promontories and studded with ports and islands equally difficult to approach as to avoid, there is neither a lighthouse nor a beacon to guard the mariner against the dangers of the navigation or guide him to safety. A Bengal light, burnt by the ship's agent on shore, which threw a lurid and mysterious glare over the scene, alone served to show the pathway into the VOL. II. haven. After staying here a short time to take in goods and passengers, we proceeded on our voyage. Is there any nation but the Turks who would suffer this valuable carrying trade to be usurped by strangers without a single effort to profit by it themselves. One of the articles we took in here was grana giala a seed like a nasturtian, which is much used in this country for dyeing a yellow colour. This morning we were still coasting along the shores of Mytelene. In old times this island was celebrated for its fertility, the beauty of its scenery, and its poetry. Its scenery is now its only distinction, for the grape loses more than half its value with the Turk who does not know its use, and its cultivation has consequently declined, while Turkish pastorals are only found in the pages of Collins and other English poets. The castle of Molivo, which we passed, standing in a commanding situation on the shore, reminded me of the fortresses where black mail was levied on the Rhine. It was built by one of the Gatilusios, the princely Venetian family to whom the Emperor John Palæologus gave the island. Not far from Molivo I saw a small white isolated rock rising from the sea, which so reminded me of a ship in full sail that for a time I thought the petrified ship at Phæacia, in Homer's story, no longer a fable "Swift as a swallow sweeps the liquid way, The winged pinnace shot along the sea, This is peculiarly the land of fable. It was in Lesbos that Arion, who proved the power of music by making the dolphins his coursers, was born. But although Arion was here no longer, the dolphins gambolled and played about us this morning, as they did when he was here. They will play long, however, if they stay until another Arion comes with like power to charm them: for even the strains of Sappho, his countrywoman, immortal as they are, could not save her from the Leucadian waves. Horace frequently mentions the island. From Mytelene we steered across the gulf of Adramyttium, so called from the city of that name, once visited by St. Paul, and in a few hours we were off Troy, that wondrous shore where Agamemnon, and Menelaus, and the Grecian host, in that story which Homer has made immortal, prosecuted their ten years' siege. s 2 |