Two Roving Englishwomen in Greece

Preface

. To the majority of English people, Greece is still a terra incognita, and to that fact alone can be attributed the wide-spread belief in the dangers encountered by the traveller in that kingdom. On my friend (Edith Payne) and I announcing our intention of starting off by ourselves to Greece, the general opinion seemed to be that we were going out to be murdered ; or, if it did not come to murder, that we should get into some hobble out of which it would take at least a modern Perseus to deliver us. Our experience taught us that Greece was a charming country in which to travel, and if we did encounter danger, that was purely of our own courting. In the spelling of Greek names every writer appears to take out his own patent, but as I could only draw from the Fountain of Ignorance, it has been my endeavour to give the names spelt in the way that we found of the most practical use.

VI Preface. Likewise, in the same spirit, I have tried to refresh the memory with the common traditions con nected with those places, and which will not always come when they are called. Thessaly being very dear to us and almost an unknown country, my pen may have lingered there too long, but for this and the many blemishes that I fear do figure in these pages, I can only throw up my hands to a generous public and cry " Tobah ! " trusting that my sins of omission and commission may find exoneration in the desire to portray faithfully a glance at a state of society that is fast being swept out of Greece by the advancement of railways and the introduction of Western ideas of civilization. I am indebted to the exceeding kindness of Miss Eggar for the spirited frontispiece, in which she has portrayed with wonderful accuracy the dress and character of " Ariel," the chief of our guard to the monasteries of Meteora.

The rest of the illustrations are reproductions of some of my sketches. I. J. A. .Page CONTENTS. chapter I. PAGE About the Greek— Facts and thoughts . . . . i

Chapter II

Land at Patras— Railway to Olympia— Stay at a Greek inn : its domestic economy — Primitive ideas of Leonidos with regard to cleanliness — The Museum and the ruins — The last days of Olympia

Chapter III

1-a vie sauvage — Beautiful scenery between Olympia and Andritsæna — Pass through Krestena and Greka — White heath and red anemones — Arrive in the dark — Strange quarters — The young student — We sleep on the floor 36

Chapter IV

Give up Phigaleia on account of the rain — Stony road to Bassæ — Splendid situation ofthe temple, and utter desolation of the spot — We go without escort — Grisly experiences — Are received by the priest's wife at Andritsæna — Our mistakes in etiquette — Return to Olympia 58

Chapter V

Our classic wash — The last of Olympia — From Patras to Athens — Sikyon — Old Corinth and its acropolis — Akro-Korinthos — Isthmian Wall and the Canal — Contents. X PAGE 83 108 160 184 Eighteen German professors— Athens— Treasures from Mykenæ, and old tombs— Alexander's sarco phagus by Lysippos— Walk up Pentelicus and look down on Marathon

Chapter VI

Huckleberries on the Parthenon— Mykenæ— The shaft-graves and bee-hive tombs — Argos — Nauplia — Drive to the Hieron of Epidauros ; the perfect theatre — Asklepios as physician and humorist — Tiryns : its wonderful walls and galleries

Chapter VII

Nauplia to Athens by sea — The sacrifice of Iambs — Anniversary of Greek Independence — The royal family — Good Friday and Easter Eve ceremonies — Dancing at Megara — Disturbed state of the country — Brigands and soldiers fighting in Thessaly — Everyone advises us not to go there — Finally we escape from Athens 142

Chapter VIII

Start for Thessaly — Experience Greek hospitality at Volo — Leave for Larissa — First view of Olympos and Ossa — The town of Larissa — A Gypsy Wedding — The poor Bride

Chapter IX

The Vale of Tempe — A brigand scare — Cæsar's inscription and the Professor's poulet — Spring of Kryologon — The three-and-twenty murderers develop into cattle-lifters — A go-as-you-please — Green tortoises .

Chapter X

We start for the monasteries of Meteora — The classic ground of Thessaly — Synopsis of the history of the monasteries — Interviewed by the Demarchof Kalabaka; our escort — Extraordinary position of Hagia Trias ; the net cannot be lowered, so we have to climb the ladders Contents. XI PAGE

Chapter XI

Arrive at the Monastery of St. Stephen's — The Hegoumenos' reception, his keen sense of humour — He dines with us, entertaining us royally — Ariel turns valet, strange proceedings of everybody— The churches, beautifully carved altar-screen — The cells of the Brothers of St. Basil 240

Chapter XII

Leave Kalab&ka — Volo and the old cities in the neighbourhood — We are criticized by a Greek woman — Thermopylæ at sunset, and splendid view of Mount Parnassos — Khalkis, the Euripos, and Bay of Aulis — The mines of Laurion — Beautiful position of the temple on Cape Sunion — Arrive at Athens two days late, the manager of our hotel thought we had been killed 271 Conclusion . LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE Coming down from the Monasteries of Mete"ora Frontispiece Isabel J. Armstrong viii Xenodochion — Hotel d'Olympie 21 Olympia ... 28 Temple of Apollo, Bassæ 64 Entrance to Gulf of Corinth 91 Akro-Korinthos ....*.... 93 Fort Bourzi — Looking across the Bay of Nauplia to Argos, and Fort of Larisa. . . . . .111 Larisa — Mount Zara — Mount Elias . . . . 113 Treasury of Atreus . 118 Mykenæ between Mounts Elias and Zara . . .119 The Lion's Gate, Mykenæ 120 Lion and Feet of Two Figures from Mykenæ. . .124 Nauplia from Tiryns 140 Edith Payne 159 Mount Olympos 171 Minaret, Larissa ........ 174 Mount Ossa 202 Hagia Trias 227 Hagios Stephanos 241 Gulf of Volo 278 Khalkis 285 Cape Sunion

Chapter I. About The Greek

FACTS AND THOUGHTS. EOR his own comfort and interest, any one travelling in Greece without a dragoman should certainly have a slight acquaintance with modern Greek, not but that I believe a traveller with a good temper and a sense of the ridiculous could get through the Peloponnesus on three words — krassi (icpaaL), wine, psoinl (-\^_*/_.), bread, kala (koKci), good, beautiful, &c. Wine and bread appeared to be the staple food of the people, meat we found had to be ordered, and the traveller does not generally stay long enough in a place to benefit by the execution of a lamb, whilst the word kala is absolutely indispen sable. This kala seemed to stand for a number of words and expressions all in the pleasant tense ; thus, when you were struggling over an intensely B nasty native dish, your hostess stood over you and asked you if it was not kala ? and then puzzled you very much the next morning by making kala stand for farewell, a good journey.

In fact, there would be no knowing how a Greek would use this word ; in Thessaly we found it synony mous with " All right," whilst the Peloponnesian would make mdlista (pdXuna), "certainly," do duty for that term. The slowly dragged out mdlista came much more suitably from the lips of the silent Greek of the Peloponnesus than the quick kala of the gay Thessalian. And whilst on the subject of the language it might be as well to say that the difficulty the novice finds is in the daily use of so many synonyms for the same word ; thus in our short experience when asking for hot water we came across three words for hot. Early in our travels it was said to us, " They will under stand you, but you will not understand them, because though they may bring your question into their answer they will reply in other words/' This we found was litetally true.

Our difficulty was not that they could not understand what we said, but that we knew so very little to say. In the same way the names of places are duplicated or even quadrupled, which at first causes the stranger some confusion of mind ; for instance, there is Mt. Olympos in Thessaly and another in Eubœa. Orchomenos in Arcadia and the Orchomenos in A Boot and Shoe Standard. 3 Bceotia, where Dr. Schliemann excavated the Treasury of Minyas ; whilst in Argolis at one glance we could sweep in three hills with the name of Elias. Besides bread and wine, eggs and coffee came in as a luxury ; the latter, of course, was black, and it was not necessarily good. With regard to cleanliness, we were obliged to take a practical view of it, and for further convenience we brought all things into a shoe-standard or a boot-standard.

Shoes and civilization seemed to go hand in hand. When you had to get into bed with your boots, and there take them off, you knew what you had to expect. Until we went to Thessaly I do not remember seeing a cow in Greece, but there were sheep and goats in abundance, and so milk and cheese could be had ; butter was an extravagance that we only tasted at Patras, Athens, and Volo. Oxen were used for ploughing, and presented an extraordinary variety in shape and size. Ponies, donkeys, and mules were the beasts of burden ; horses seemed to be principally kept for carriage use, and a miserable lot they were. We were told that the national costume was fast dying out, and that probably we should hardly see it, but in this we were singularly fortunate throughout our tour. At Olympia men in fustanella were constantly coming to the Greek inn at which we put up, even sometimes sitting B down to our table, and the blacksmith's shed out side — as in England — was the local club, more than half of whose members wore the national dress.

When we went still farther into the depths of the country all the men appeared either in fustanella or loose white tunics and Turkish knickerbockers of various patterns ; likewise at Athens, owing to the influx of countrymen for Easter, we constantly saw the national dress, irre spective of the Queen's guard. On the other hand, excepting when dressed up for Easter, we never saw a Greek woman in the typical costume of her country. Sometimes in the fields a woman would be seen with her head tied up in a gorgeous handkerchief, whilst an apron that once had been embroidered was twisted about her waist ; and when seated on a bright striped rug on a mule she would make a patch of colour, but as a rule the women looked like walking bundles of dull-coloured rags. It seemed as if the occupation of the men was such as to permit them to wear their " swagger clothes," but that the work that fell to the lot of woman was of a nature that would allow of no display of dainty dress ; even their hours of recreation apparently were spent in washing the clothes of the male portion of their houses.

This can be no sinecure considering that the ordinary Greek, with the exception of his black cap and black embroidered jacket, is clothed The National Dress. 5 in white from head to foot — white shirt, white fustanella, white woollen hose, and, in many cases, white turned-up shoes. The marvel is how he manages to keep his clothes as clean as he does, for Greece is by no means a land guiltless of mud ; the dust is proverbial, and heavy rain often turns this into a sea of slime ; in Athens alone after rain some of the streets would be ankle deep in mud. To tall dark men the national dress is particularly becoming, and although artistically the fustanella that has the fewest pleats is the most elegant, this is not the Greek ideal, which appears to be to plait as many yards as you can cram into the waistband so as to make it stand out in a perfect frill all the way round ; over this in cold weather a black coat is worn, fitting in at the waist and with long flaps covering the white skirts.

To our ideas there was something intensely feminine about the cut of these coats, and made their wearers look exactly like a troupe of ballet girls masquerading as brigands ; indeed, when they lounged in elegant attitudes about the picturesque shoeing-shed at Olympia it might have been a scene out of an opera ; moreover, they all walked with the same peculiar swagger that is noticeable in the premiere danseuse as she crosses the stage. Whatever the ancient Greek might have been, with the exception of his dress, there is nothing feminine in the physiognomy or physique of the modern Greek ; his face may be characteristic of distrust, but his figure is the embodiment of true art. If such were the models the old Greeks had ever before their eyes, it is no wonder that Greece produced such a succession of sculptors and painters.

Whether the women retain any of the famous classic grace I cannot venture to say ; certainly they displayed none in the home life as we saw it, neither did we see one really pretty girl among the people. In the higher grades it is different ; there are ladies famous for their beauty, and the few Greek ladies we came across were all good looking. Afterwards at Constantinople, and especially at Broussa, we saw lovely Greek women, but we were told they were all the wives and daughters of well-to-do Greeks. The Greeks as we found them appeared an exceedingly odd jumble of education and barbarity. Latin and French they are taught at school, and yet they think nothing at night of all sleeping in a row on the floor in one room — beginning with the father and mother down to any stranger that might happen to turn up.

At the date we visited Greece (April, 1892), all education was free — from A B C up to the university at Athens, and a free education a Greek looked upon as his birthright. No doubt this was a reaction from the time when under Turkish rule it was impossible for many a Greek child to receive any education at all. In Free Education. 7 like manner a reaction the other way seems to have set in, helped perhaps by the financial posi tion, and the result has been the introduction of a bill for payment by students in the three higher schools, the lowest or elementary school being still entirely free. As the highest fee, that of the university, is only proposed to be ioo drachmas a year (4/. at the outside), the fees in the schools below cannot be called excessive ; yet, of course, this bill is producing great agitation among " the politicians."

The Greeks rightly are very proud of their free education, but the present generation do not appear to have found it the panacea they expected, and I was very much surprised to hear both young men and middle-aged men speaking against this unlimited free education. "We manufacture nothing but professors and writers," exclaimed one, " whilst what Greece re quires are men to cultivate her waste lands, artisans, and engineers. Look at our railways; they are laid out by foreign engineers, the same with our mines, the same with our canals. The Greek should be educated to be able to perform the work which the advancement of his country requires ; " and he seemed to think that anything that would check the absorbing desire of coming up to the University of Athens would be a step in the right direction.

Another national institution against which the young Greek is beginning to inveigh is " the poli tician." Now, as far as we understood, cabinet ministers and members of Parliament were not in cluded in this term, which they used to designate the professional amateur ; in a word, all Greeks are "politicians," from the shepherd upwards. This gift of everlasting political talk appears to have come to them as a heritage, and is styled by the practical party " the curse of the nation.*" In the railway carriage, on board the boat, in the streets, at the khans, verily, where two or three Greeks are met together, there will politics be talked. Of course, as we visited Greece just before the elec tions that put M. Tricoupis into power again, we had the benefit of this mania far into the witching hours of night.

The characteristic of the Greek that struck me most — and I do not think that this was due to the force of contrast — was his intense patriotism. The rich Greek may make his money abroad, but he spends it freely for the embellishment of his own country ; witness Athens alone, with its streets of marble palaces and its beautiful public buildings, all built at the expense of private individuals. Then talk to the people, and their intense love of their country is at once apparent. Perhaps some of their patriotism may be credited to the rebound to liberty after centuries of oppression ; anyway their late servitude accounts for their bitter hatred of the His Face a History. 9 Turk. Although the nightmare is over, the horror of it is easily kept up in a country where there is hardly a family that has not some curdling domestic tragedy dating from that dark hour.

Then again the Greeks appear to excite the dislike of many tourists by their dark and often distrustful look, their forbidding silence, and slow ness to comprehend the wants of a stranger which are shouted at him in an unknown tongue. Over and over again you hear, " Those stupid Greeks, they never understand what you want, so different to the dear, delightful Italians, who are always so bright and smiling." So humbug, even with both hands held out for coin, ever wins the day. I quite admit that the Gieek peasant has not the charm of manner, the attractive beauty, the inimitable power of telling pleasant fibs, which is possessed by his brother in Italy ; but then our experience of the Greek taught us that he never begged, never expected money for doing nothing, was always, satisfied with what he got ; in many cases more than pleased.

I was told, however, that the English, and our still more self-indulgent cousins beyond the sea, were doing their best to destroy this happy state of things. The Greek of to-day carries in his face an epitome of the modern history of his nation ; the slightest scratch below the surface shows a man who, under oppressive servitude, found safety alone in silence, that stealthy tread is the outcome of those years of hunted life, that dark suspicious glance was bred by repeated treachery, whilst the women are only to be glanced at to see that every good-looking one has been swept out of the land. The War of Indepen dence is still green in the memory; it is only ninety four years since the protomartyr Rhigas, poet and patriot, was murdered in prison at Belgrade, and his body thrown into the Danube.

The people have not had time to shake themselves free of those years of gloom ; no doubt the rising generation will be lighter of heart. The poems may sing of "the gay pallikar," but the life he led, which was little removed from that of the wild beast, had in it no element of gaiety, and it was only through sacrifice, such as this, that the sons of Greece won through to freedom.

Chapter II

Land at Patras — Railway to Olympia — Stay at a Greek inn : its domestic economy — Primitive ideas of Leonidos with regard to cleanliness — The Museum and the ruins — The last days of Olympia. FROM Brindisi to Corfu we had had the boat to ourselves, but on boarding the steamer the next day we turned grey at hearing that our advent brought the number up to five in the ladies' cabin, which a brutal naval architect, with a cynical disregard to the intricacies of the human mechanism, had designed for six. As yet we were novices in this department of travelling, and we were about to learn that the amount of com fort or discomfort experienced entirely depends on the — we will not say caste, but — character of the occupants of those other berths. We gazed at lovely Corfu until the inexorable dinner-bell rang, and, after that repast, alas ! it was too dark to see anything.

The rock of Leukas wreathed with the memory of Kephatos and Sappho, Ithaka, Kephalonia, all places we had looked forward to seeing, would be passed in the dark, and with sadness in our hearts we went down to our cabin ■ but our gloom was soon di verted by the charm and liveliness of our com panions. We had a consumptive lamp that momentarily threatened to go out, and everything insisted on rolling off the table and under the sofa-berths, but nobody troubled about such minor evils as these. Then it occurred to us generally that not one of us knew at what time in the morning the boat arrived at Patras. "And how," exclaimed one, " can we possibly go to sleep if we don't know the hour we are to awake ? " Everything can be heard on board ship if only you speak loud enough ; so the baroness called for her son, whom Edith had christened Signor Dov'e, from his commencing every Italian sen tence by that word, and we soon heard him seek ing for information in various tongues all over the boat.

How that boy talked, and how he loved to air his English, and how excited he grew, and then how involved his language became, but he never gave in. One of our companions, an Australian, had been immensely amused by his asking when she was going to return to her " wild country," and he gave us a graphic ac count of how he went to school for three months in the Isle of Wight to learn English. Apparently he did not take kindly to school life, so he shammed being ill, and was placed in what he Signor Dov'E's Experiences. 13 would insist upon calling "the Reformatory." Then he was sent to London for change of air, which, he said, with great glee, "agreed with me, splendid, but I never come again to your shores because of your Channel." " Why, what did the poor Channel do ? " " Oh, that Channel !

It began to move, to rock ; I felt so bad; I went down to the cabin, and I screamed, and I screamed, and I screamed ! And the captain he did come to me, and he took me by the shoulder and he did say, ' Oh, you damn boy, for why do you make that noise ? ' " If Patras is lovely under the mid-day sun I cannot say, but at dawn, in the early morning, and at evening, it is simply exquisite. When we came on deck, dawn was still struggling with night ; the dark mountains were backed by a pale primrose sky ; a boat getting up steam stood out a splodge of violet-black in a streak of gleaming straw-coloured sea. Moreover, we had nothing to do but to admire the scene, for we found we were all going as baggage, that is to say, we had Cook's railway tickets, and were to be landed by him. Indeed, his indefatigable agent had been endeavouring to effect this for the last hour, but as we knew the time our train started, likewise the unexhilnrating atmosphere of a station wait ing-room, and we were well amused on board, we pretended not to understand.

Besides, the baroness' thirteen trunks took about that time to be hauled up and lowered into the many boats that awaited them. A few minutes' row on the dark waters and our boat touched the steps. We were all very anxious to be the first to land on the classic ground of Greece, and Signor Dov'e jumped off with such ardour that he drove the boat half way back to the steamer. Somehow the air of Greece seemed to get into our heads. It was the native soil of one ; to the others it was the long-looked-for goal of their desires. In a phalanx we took Patras by storm until our attention was arrested by the words and signs of the loafers who were here congregated, if possible, in greater numbers than at any other place. We then saw our guide sending out signals of distress, and, on retracing our steps, found that here our ways parted, those going by train to Athens turning to the left, those bound for Olympia to the right.

Having rescued our modest Gladstones and roll of rugs from the miscellaneous heap of petit bagage, we watched our courteous and agreeable companions depart, the thirteen trunks and Signor Dov'e's Jittle black box at the top bringing up the rear. It was a longer walk to the train than we had expected. I say train, advisedly, because out of the many buildings that stood before the waste piece of land where we found our train, I never First Tickets to Olympia. 15 did discover which was the station proper. By this time the sun had risen and the beautiful out line of the coast of Greece was shadowed out in the softest pinks, a peak of snow brightening the colour here and there, just as Chinese white does in a water-colour. We thought we made out to the north-west where Mesolonghi lay, and farther west where Kephalonia began and Zante faded into sea, but as the coast and the islands appeared to the eye to be one continuous line, it was exceedingly difficult at first sight to distin guish the one from the other.

The railway line from Patras to Pyrgos had been opened about two years, but the continua tion to Olympia was of quite recent date ; in fact, we held the first tickets, respectively numbered one and two, that had been issued by Cook and Son. These unfortunate tickets created quite a sensation, the guard calling together all the officials and hangers-on of the place, and passing them round for inspection. When at last our precious yellow papers were returned to us we hoped they would be able to recognize numbers three and four when they came that way; but they seemed to have a doubt on the subject, and asked to turn the papers over yet another time. Soon after leaving Patras a lovely range of snow mountains came in view on our left ; these were a part of the Erymanthos group, and many exquisite peeps we had of them.

As we coasted along the Peloponnesus the line brought us opposite to Meso longhi, which was pointed out to us at the foot of Mt. Arakynthos, whilst a little to the right lay hid the ruins of Kalydon, so interesting in connection with Meleager's celebrated Kalydonian Boar-hunt, which by the way appears to have set the precedent of presenting the lady with the brush, though in this case it was the skin and the head that Me leager gave to Atalanta for being in at the death. Turning our back on the lovely outline of Northern Greece, we now only had Kephalonia and Zante before us ; but the sea view was perfect the whole way to Pyrgos. We passed quantities of red anemones, and masses of violet, blue, and pink flowers ; whilst a few early poppies gave us a foretaste of what they would show us later on, and amid all this brilliancy cropped up the grey-green lily leaves of the star-like asphodel, crushing down and tram pling over her bright sisters till in places she spread out into fields.

Such was our first taste of the physical beauty of Greece, a beauty which, to my surprise, was never once spoilt by hard lines the five weeks we spent in that enchanting land. Accustomed to the villainous hardness of sky, sea, and land of the Riviera, the pictorial softness in Greece struck me with much force. The uncertainty of the weather no doubt accounted in a measure for this, and of course five weeks' experi- The First Impossible. 17 ence of a country is of no value one way or tho other. I can only trust that other travellers may be as fortunate in atmospheric effects as we were. We arrived at Pyrgos at twelve, and found the train for Olympia did not start until 4.30; in fact, it was the two o'clock train from Olympia which came up, loafed about the line, reversed its engine, and went back.

This onerous journey it performed ■-wice in the day, and its time was regulated so as to enable tourists stopping at Pyrgos to spend a few hours at Olympia in the middle of the day and yet catch the late train to Patras. We were told there was a very good hotel at Pyrgos, and cer tainly the agent did his very best to persuade us to give up our idea of staying at Olympia. In the first place our Gladstones were seized, and he tried to compel us to come in ; but finding that that method aroused our British ire, it was then ex plained to us how it was not possible for English people to go to a Greek inn. " And ladies, too ! Why, there will be nothing fit for you to eat ; you will starve ! But if you prefer all these discom forts, as you say you do, then you must go to the new inn, the ' Hotel d'Olympie.' " To all of which we listened with great attention, but it made no alteration in our determination to go to the old " Xenodochion."