Letters from the Ægean

Preface

. In the publication of the following pages, I am to be looked upon in the light of an Editor rather than an Author; since, though their composition is my own, I am indebted to some of my friends for a portion of the matter which they contain. In a former work,* to which I was a contributor, I had endeavoured to convey an idea of the situation of Greece and the Islands, at an interesting period of * A Picture of Greece in 1825, as exhibited in the narratives of James Emerson, Esq., Count Pecchio, and W. H. Humphreys, Esq., 2 vols.

PREFACE.

. VIII their present struggle for liberty. Lately, however, on coming to look over my notes, I found that I had still remaining many characteristic sketches of manners and scenery, which, though perhaps amusing in themselves, were properly omitted in a work, whose object was less picturesque than pobtical, and whose details were confined almost exclusively to the Morea and Roumeli. These I employed some leisure hours in collecting into their present form, and a portion of them has already ap peared in the pages of the New Monthly Magazine, under the title of " Letters from the Levant." Here the share of attention which they have attracted has been highly gratifying; and amongst other flattering tri butes which they have received, I cannot avoid particularizing a very beautiful translation of a portion of them into Spanish, by Don Pablos de Mendibil. At the suggestion of Mr. Col burn, I have now completed the series ; and although the information contained in the letters

PREFACE.

. IX was collected at various periods, and during several excursions on the shores of the Ægean and the isles of the Archipelago, I have preferred uniting them in one connected narrative; taking advantage occasionally of the remarks of those who have visited the Levant before me, and inserting the suggestions of my travelling companions ; as well as availing myself of their journals to supply me with descriptions of those points which had not come under my own observation. For this permission, I have to acknowledge my obligations to J. J. Scoles, Esq., whose name I have already mentioned in the body of the work ; to R. J. Tennent, Esq., of Lincoln1s Inn, and Belfast, Ireland, and to my late esteemed and unfortunate friend Edward H. Thomson, Esq., of London, who, in the too eager pursuit of knowledge, fell an early victim to the climate of the Levant. As to those portions of the narratives introduced in the letters to which I was not myself X

PREFACE.

. an eye-witness, I have had them from authority on which I could depend, and my own observation has fully served to corroborate the reports of others. J. EMERSON. Lincoln's Inn, Dec. 1, 1828. CONTENTS OP THE FIRST VOLUME.

Letter I. Sunium

— THE CYCLADES — SCIO, &c. &c. Temple of Minerva Sunias at Cape Colonna. — Singu lar effects of the Sirocco Wind. — Temple of Sunium, splendidly situated. — Sunset in Greece. — Comparative impressions of Dawn and Sunset at Sea. — Zea. — Cyth nos. — A Sabbath at Sea. — The Island of Syra. — Greek Merchant and Family. — Destruction of a Turkish Cor vette. — Political condition of the Syriots. — A Greek Dessert. — Straits of Scio. — Sciot Refugee. — Town of Scio. — Massacre on the Island, in 1823. — Story of Phro sine Kalerdji .... 1 — 27

Letter II. Smyrna

The Bay of Smyrna. — Shipping. — Fruit — View of the City. — Crowd on the Beach. — The British Consul. — CONTENTS. Bond-street, &c. — Fruit-market. — Bazaars. — Populace. — Turkish honesty Paras. — Armenians Arrival of W and his Friend. — Singular story of the former.— Evening Party.— Greek Ballad, " The Mother of tlie Kleft."— Death of W .—Imposition of the Officers of the Harbour. — A Fire. — Funeral of W 28—62

Letter III. The Smyrniots

Smyrna scarcely done justice to by European Travellers.— Its remains of Antiquity— River Meles Modern Town. — Important change going on in the Bay.— Singular effect of the Rivers of Asia Minor, on the tracts through which they pass — Dr. Chandler's Theory of the Hermus.— A Greek Family of Smyrna— their House, Story of Young Lallaho.— The Greek Girls.— Castle of Smyrna— View from the Castle Hill.— Turkish Burying-ground.— Different treatment of Females by the Greeks and Moslems.— Traits of character in the Modern Greeks.- -Ancient zone referred to in the New Testament — Personal appearance of the Turks.— Damascus Sabres.— Inscription on the Cymetar of Kontoghianni the Kleft.— Fragment of a Greek Song, "The Dream of Demos."— Turkish Mosques at Smyrna.—Iden tity of the Pillar-tower of Ireland, and the Muezzin towers of the East—Form of Turkish worship—Hom os Prayer in Scriptures—Turkish cleanliness— Climate of Smyrna. _ The Inbat. -The Cascino. -Evenings at Smyrna—Oriental custom of sitting at the Door alluded CONTENTS.

XIII to in Scripture. — Turkish Toleration. — Hostility of the Latin Church to the Ikonoclasts. — Excursion in the Bay. — Death of Young Lallaho . 63—107

Letter IV. Ephesus

Departure from Smyrna. — Our Equipage. — Tumulus of Andremon. — Sedicus. — Sacred fountain of St. John. — Scenery. — Terenda. — Turkish Coffee-house. — Introduc tion of Coffee into Europe. — Manner of preparing it in the Levant. — A Karavan Serai. — Mahometanism. — Tour bali — Turkish Fanatics. — Signs of the Destruction of the World Road to Ayasalook. — Ayasalook. — Cave of the Seven Sleepers. — Castle. — Mosque. — Sarcophagus. — Ephesus — Stadium. — Theatre. — A Shepherd. — Temple of Diana. — Solitude of the Scene. — Verses from Que vedo . . . 108 — 142

Letter V. Laodicea

Character of the general Scenery of Asia Minor. — Pygela Skala Nuova. — Sirocco wind — Illustrated from the Bible Gipsies. — Meander. — Inek-Bazaar, the ancient Magnesia ad Meandrum. — Sufferings from thirst. — Turkish Fountains similar to those in the Old Testa ment. — Guizel-hissar. — Scenery between Guizel-hissar and Sultan Hissar. — History of Spiro. — Asian meadow of Homer. — Greek bullets — Denizli. — Our Greek host. — CONTENTS. Situation of Females in Turkey. — Influence of Climate on the situation of Women in Society. — Laodicea — Sin gular fulfilment of the Scriptural denunciations against. —A Storm . . . 143—181

Letter VI. Philadelphia, Sardis

&c Ruins of Hierapolis. — Petrified Cliffs. — A Renegade An Earthquake. — Scenery. — Turcomans — Their Identity with the tribes of Kedar in the Old Testament. — History of Philadelphia — Description of her situation and remains. — Wall of Petrified Reeds. — River Cogamus. — Interior of a Greek Church. — Road to Sardis Tartar Keuy Kara Osman Oglou. — Sardis — A Caravan. — Temple of Cybele. — Greek Cookery. — Adventure at the Pactolus. — Barrows of Halyattys and Gyges. — Pergamus and Thiatyra. — Remarkable fulfilment of the prophecies in the Revelations concerning Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamus, Thiatyra, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. — The Golden Sands osthe Pactolus. — Turgutli. — Want of wheel carriages a main cause of the filthiness of Turkish towns — Magnesia ad Sipylum Amurath the Second. — Magnets on the Mountain Return to Smyrna. .... 182—227

Letter VII

PHOCŒA, PATMOS, SIME, &c. Affected exterior poverty of the Smyrniot Greeks. — Turkish love of Comfort. — Treatment of their Women. CONTENTS. XV — Beauty of Turkish Women.— - Story of a Turkish Lady at Napoli di Romania Opinion of Dr. Clarke of Smyrna. — M. Fauvel, the former French Consul at Athens. — A Turkish Regiment. — Punishment for pass ing forged Money. — Fete on board the Cambrian. — Manufactory of base Money at Hydra and Spezzia (note.) — Diplomatic Phrases of a Consul. — An Emir . THE ÆGEAN.

Letter I

Linquitur Eois longe spectabile proris Sunion, unde vagi casurum in nomina ponti Cressia decepit falso ratis Ægea velo. Statii Thebais, lib. xii. v. 625. SUNIUM— THE CYCLADES— SCIO, &c. &c. Temple of Minerva Sunias at Cape Colonna. — Singular effects of the Sirocco Wind Temple of Sunium, splendidly situated. — Sunset in Greece. — Comparative impressions of Dawn and Sunset at Sea. — Zea. — Cythnos. — A Sabbath at Sea. — The Island of Syra. — Greek Merchant and Family. — Destruction of a Turkish Corvette. — Political condition of the Syriots. — A Greek Dessert. — Straits of Scio. — Sciot Refugee. — Town of Scio. — Massacre on the Island, in 1823. — Story of Phrosine Kalerdji. The sun was slowly sinking behind the range of Hymettus and the hills of Attica, as VOL. I. B we weighed anchor from Cape Colonna, and steered for the narrow strait between Zea and Cythnos.

The morning we had passed in wan dering through the groves of lentiscs and mastic, which cover the promontory of Sunium, and in lingering among the fast-fading re mains of the temple of Minerva. Around the base of this majestic ruin, the debris of its fallen fragments have almost obliterated the outbne of the platform on which it was erected on the verge of the cliff, and the overthrow of a number of its columns a short time previous to our visit, has not only added to the heap of decay, but must soon weaken the tottering foundation of the remainder. The destructive effects of the Sirocco wind were here most singularly displayed : the sides of the columns fronting the south-east were eaten away and corroded from base to capital for the depth of two or three inches ; whilst on the other portions of the shaft the fluting was as sharp and perfect as at the first hour of its erection.

The town and temple of Sunium were built during the brightest days of Greece — the age of Pericles ; of the one not a vestige is left, and all that remains of the other are a few shattered columns supporting a frieze which fronts the " Island-gemmed Ægean."* I had seen nearly all the temples now7 remaining in Greece, but none, not even Athens itself, is * This beautiful relique at present affords an instance of the barbarous taste of the Austrian commodore Accourti. As if at once to commemorate to future travellers, and keep fresh in the memory of the miserable Greeks, his frequent arbitrary infractions of the law of nations, as regards their present glorious, but unfortunate struggle for liberty ; he has been at some pains to disfigure the entire front of the temple, by inscribing on it, in massy black letters, the name of his detested vessel, the BELLONA AUSTRIACA.

This affectionate memorial is now legible at a considerable distance from sea, but it has not passed without a comment, as a midship man of one of the English ships of war has inscribed near it, in almost equally conspicuous characters, " Ruy Warren's Blacking." B calculated to produce such vivid emotions as that of Sunium. The greater number of them are seated in frequented spots, and surrounded by the bustle of the crowd ; Sunium stands alone, its crumbbng columns look but on the blue hills of Attica, or the azure billows of the Ægean : all is solitude around it, save the whirl of the sea-bird towards its summit, or the waving of the olive-groves at its base, and the only sound that awakes its silence is the sigh of the summer wind, or the murmur of the waves that roll into the time-worn caves beneath it.

Far removed from every human habitation, it is seldom visited, except by the mystic of the Mainote corsair, the caique of the passing tra veller, or the fowler in search of the wild doves which frequent it. Its prospects are the most extensive and interesting in Greece:* from its * The practice of building sacred edifices on lofty situa tions, which has obtained in all ages, was most scrupulously observed by the Greeks and Romans ; nor do I remember any one temple in Greece or the Islands, which is not situated od brow the eye wanders over the mountains of Argolis, and the hills that circle Athens ; to the east are the purple plains of Helena and Eubœa ; and, to the south, the endless mazes of the Cyclades, separated by narrow channels, whose glittering and intricate passages form the labyrinths of the Archipelago, the naviga tion of which is known almost exclusively to the pilots of Milo and Argentiera. a hill.

The custom seems of most remote antiquity, and the frequenting of "high places," even before the erection of a temples, undoubtedly originated in the same feelings with which the devout inhabitants of every country, from Italy to India, still select the most lofty and delicious situations for their sacred buildings. Strabo instances the fact in the Persians, and Kaempfer mentions it among tlie inhabitants of Japan. (Vol. ii. b. 5.) Hector sacrificed on the top of Ida. (Homer's H.-y_v. 170.) 'ExTOpOf, Off fxot TToXKa. Boav tir) /nvjpt exijfV, &C. Balaak, the King of Moab, took Balaam to the summit of a hill in order that he might curse Israel and sacrifice to the Gods (Num. xxiii 1). Abraham was commanded to offer up Isaac on the hills of Moriah (Gen. xxii. 20), and Christ seeing the multitude, went up into a mountain to preach.

(Matt. v. 1.) B 3 VOL. 1. It is seldom that the view of the Ægean presents any thing but a picture of calm repose ; its blue unruffled waters sleeping undisturbed beneath the equally unvaried sky, or gently curling their rippling surface to catch the dancing sunbeams, and flash them back in mimic splendour. Sometimes a group of the white sails* of the Levant are seen p-lidinofrom isle to isle, " like wild swans in their flight," or lagging lazily on the breathless tide to await the breeze of evening ; earth, air, and sky, are all in unison, and their calm still repose belongs alone to the clime of the East. We descended the cliff, and regained our vessel as the line of the ruined temple was thrown into fine relief against a sky now crim soned with the dyes of sunset. There was no filmy cloud to break the softness of the west, * From being made, almost universally, of cotton, the sails of the Levantine vessels are invariably of a brilliant white ; contrasted with those of the northern nations, which are woven from hemp. where the sun sank like a globe of molten gold, his rays spreading gently over the heaven, not flashed and caught from cloud to cloud, but blending in one massy sheet over the vast and glowing concave.

The dawn of morning at sea is perhaps the most subbme sight in nature : sunset on land is more reposing and lovely, but sunrise on the ocean is grandeur itself. At evening, he sinks languishing behind the distant hills, blushing in rosy tints at his declining weakness ; at morn, he rises all fresh and glowing from the deep, not in softened beauty but in dazzling splendour. With the weary pace of age, he glides, at eve, from peak to peak and sinks from hill to hill ; at morn, he bursts at once across the threshold of the ocean with the firm and conscious step of a warrior. His decline con •veys the idea of fading brightness, his rise the swelling effulgence of mounting and resistless light. The succeeding day was calm, and we lay almost motionless in the narrow strait which separates the islands of Zea and Cythnos.

The former contains now no objects of attraction amidst its sun-burnt hills and barren valleys, except the snowy walls of its villages, and the vestiges of a temple once dedicated to Minerva, and built, as our pilot said, by Nestor, on his return from Troy. Cythnos is a hilly, fertile mound, rising gently from the sea, and remark able for nothing but its warm springs, from which it takes the modern name of Thermia. We slowly passed the strait, borne along solely by the current, and about mid-day lay totally becalmed in a little bay formed by the islands we had left, and those of Gyarus* and Syra. It was Sunday, and if that day be possessed of peculiar stillness and repose on land, it must * Rats, according to Pliny, were once so numerous as to drive off the inhabitants of Gyarus, an island which is referred to by Juvenal and Ovid as a place of banishment for exiled Romans.

" Aude aliquid brevibus Gyaiis et carcere dignum." Juvenal Sat. 1 . It is now a desert. be doubly more so at sea, and among the Cy clades. The day was an Oriental one : not a wandering vapour to stain the deep blue hea ven, and not a breath to warp the mirror of the sea ; no passing bark gave life or motion to the scene, the sails hung in lazy folds upon the mast, and not a sound disturbed the ocean's silence. The crew were assembled on the quarter-deck, and I never listened to the Li turgy with such interest and attention, — every sound was solemn, and every line awoke some recollection of home and of England. It was a new feeling, in such a situation, to hearken to the same accents we had so long heard only in the village church, repeated amid scenes rich in all the sublimities of nature, and hallowed by the brightest associations of history and time : to listen to the precepts of Christianity almost amidst the very scenes where they were first delivered, and to trace the wanderings of its Apostles on the same waves their barks had traversed.

There is no spot, not even the very seas of Greece, which wants its peculiar attractions; every valley has its ruin, every hill its history, and every wave is associated with the naval enterprizes and martial spirit of the mighty dead. Even those scenes unmarked by earlier memorials of her fame, are rendered interesting by after-recollections of her fall. Age has suc ceeded age, but to leave the impress of their events on the shore where true greatness first burst to light. The same soil once trod by the bard and the warrior, was again pressed by the feet of those who bore over the earth the pure precepts of the Gospel and of Christianity, and where even these have left no traces of then path, the immortalizing hand of Liberty is now raising on every hill a trophy, and inscribing on every rock a triumph.

In the evening, as there was still no appear ance of wind, a few of the officers landed at Syra, within a very short distance of which we were floating on an almost breathless sea. The town is by no means so well built as those of some of the other islands less equivocally Greek. Its streets, owing to their situation on the sides of a steep and conical hill, are irre gular, narrow, and infamously filthy, — while its little harbour is crowded with vessels of various flags from Hydra, Malta, and Marseilles, as Syra is now the only neutral port of the em pire equally respected by Turk and Greek, and permitted to carry on the trifling remnant of commerce which remains to the Cyclades. On the beach we were met by a Greek merchant with whom I had formerly made the voyage from Hydra to Napoli di Romania.

His house, to which he conducted us, after visiting the town, was situated at a short dis tance from the suburbs, in the midst of a gar den cultivated in the Eastern style. Its furniture was of that kind generally found in the houses of the Greek Islanders, half Ori ental and half European, combining the luxurious comforts of the one, with the taste and durabibty of the other. Our pipes and coffee in china cups placed in bttle vases of filigreed silver were presented by his daughters, two rather handsome girls, dressed in a costume between Grecian and Frank, and possessed of an ease of manner much superior to those of the same class whom we had left in the Morea. The old gentleman seemed deeply to regret the ruin of his trade in the islands, occasioned by the convulsion of the w7ar. A few weeks before our arrival, Syra had been thrown into the utmost commotion by the arrival of a Turk ish corvette, escaping from the general rout the Ottoman fleet had suffered at Andros, and Capo d'Oro.

She was pursued by a few Greek cruisers, with whom she capitulated on the terms of giving up the vessel : as soon, how ever, as the Turks were landed, the treaty was broken, by the captain blowing up the corvette : an attempt was immediately made to secure the crew, and after some rioting, and the death of a few of the unfortunate wretches, they were secured, and to the number of a hundred and fifty, sent to Hydra as prisoners of war, where a few days after, they were massacred by the Islanders. The wreck of their vessel, and the unburied corpses of the Turks, were still lying on the beach as we passed. Of the present war, and its prospects of success, our host spoke with that disinterested enthusiasm which characterises every class of the Islanders, whose lot, before the revolution, was sufficiently happy to render them contented with their submission to the Sublime Porte,* * I do not remember to have any where seen an allusion to the coincidence between this title of the Grand Seignior, or rather the Turkish Government, aud the constant application of the term Gate, throughout the Sacred writings.

The Baba Hoomajun, the Sublime Porte, is one of the gates of the Se raglio, and from it, the Ottoman Emperor derives his singular appellation. In the same manner, the word " gate" in its various appli cations throughout the Scriptures, signifies power, as in the in stance when God promises Abraham that his posterity should possess thegates of their enemies," Gen. xxii. v. 17. And, the gates of Hell (shall not prevail against the Church), Matt. had not a feeling of patriotism impelled them to ruin their own tranquillity, in order to assist the noble efforts of their less fortunate countrymen. Governed bv their own laws, and in the full xvi. v. 18 ; the gates of Death (Psalm ix. v. 13) ; the gates of the grave (Isaiah, xxxviii. v. 10) ; the gates of righteousness (Psalm cxviii. v. 19) ; and various other passages, convey the same import.

Agaiu, gate signifies in another sense, justice and judica ture, or the place of assembly where judgment is pronounced; for example, — the gate of Bethlehem, where judgement was given between Boaz and Naomi's relation, in the matter of Ruth's marriage. (Ruth, iv. v. 1.) And in Lamentation, v. v. 14, it is mentioned thus : "the elders have ceased from the gate," that is, from frequenting the council-chamber. Another, amongst many significations, is a multitude or a family ; thus when Boaz tells Ruth (chap. iii. v. 11.) that all the gate of his house know she is virtuous ; it means literally, the persons of his household. Influenced by that unchanging tone of habit and feeling which characterizes the Orientals, it is easy to account for tht assumption of this poetical aud patriarchal epithet by the Sultan; and the passages I have quoted, assigning to it pomes, justice, and multitude, render it expressive, as well as tasteful and magnificent. exercise of their own religion, a trifling yearly Karatsch to the Porte purchased them permission to elect their governors and senate from among themselves, and freed them from the presence or residence of a Turk in the Islands.

Syra was once the happiest spot of the Archipe lago, its plains* the richest of the Cyclades, and its merchants the most enterprising in the Le vant ; its only political grievance the necessity of sending an annual number of sailors to the Ottoman fleet, and its only tax about 8,000 piastres a year paid to the reigning favourite of the imperial Harem, on whom the revenue of the island was usually conferred by the Sultan. After a protracted and gratifying visit we rose to depart, but were pressed by our hospitable host to partake of a dessert preparing in another apartment. It was the sole produce of his own immediate household, consisting of sweetmeats, oranges, fresh figs, peaches, melons, apricots., * It is thus characterised by Homer, Odyssey. B. 15. 1. 45. E#/3otos, tii/j.T}?xOS, oivonhridrjs, iroKajvirpos, and grapes, such as I have never seen equalled, not even in Smyrna; some of the bunches weighing from five to eight pounds, of the purest amber sprinkled with red spots, and a skin so delicate as to ruffle off with the slightest touch of the finger.

His wine was delicious, and, after pledging our host, and speedy freedom to Greece, we reached our boat and again regained the frigate. As usual, the breeze freshened at sunset, and at night we were again swiftly cleaving the Ægean, its phosphorescent waves leaving a long line of light in our vessel's wake, that tracked her course along the pitchy deep. We drove rapidly through the straits of Tenos, whilst the landmarks of our pilot were the watchlights and fires that blazed from the cliffs of Myconi and the distant hills of Delos. The following day a strong head-wind de tained us till evening, beating through the straits of Scio, and alternately tacking from its wooded shore to the opposite coast of Chesme and Asia Minor. This beautiful arm of the sea, once celebrated as the scene of the de feat of Antiochus, has in later days been ren dered doubly interesting by the struggles of Greece; it was at Chesme that in 1770 the Russian Admiral Orlow destroyed the Ottoman fleet ; and it was in this same strait that in 1822 the modern Themistocles* consigned to de struction the author of the Sciote Massacre.

The view on either shore is splendidly beautiful ; but on both, the associations of memory cast a feeling of disgust over every object : we could not look on the verdant hills of Scio without a shuddering recollection of the slaugh ter that had so lately stained them, whilst the opposite and equally beautiful coast was alike detestable as the home of its perpetrators. But wrhilst to us the scene was any thing but a pleasing one, there was one individual on board our vessel to whom the sight of this devoted island served to summon up the most * Canaris. C VOL. Iheart-rending reflections. This was a young Greek lady of twenty-two or twenty-three years of age, a native of the island, a witness to its massacre, and a destitute exile in consequence of the murder of her family. She was now on her way with us to Smyrna, in order to place herself under the protection of a distant relative ; whom she hoped, though faintly, to find still surviving.

She sat all day upon the deck, watching with wistful eyes the shores of her native island ; at every approach which our vessel made towards it, she seemed straining to recognize some scene that had once been familiar, or perhaps some now-deserted home that had once been the shelter of her friends : and when, on the opposite tack, we again neared the Turkish coast, she turned her back upon its hated hills to watch the retreating shores of her desolated home. I had not been aware of her being on board, as her national retiring habits had prevented her appearing upon deck during the early part of the voyage; but as she drew near Scio, feeling seemed to overcome education and pre judice, and she sat all day beneath the awning to satiate herself with gazing and with recol lection. Towards evening we drew near the ruined town, built on the sea-shore at the foot of a wooded hill, which had been the site of the ancient city of Scio.

Its houses seemed all roofless and deserted, whilst the numerous groups of tall and graceful cypresses which rose amidst them, contrasted sadly with the sur rounding desolation ; all was solitude and si lence; w7e could not descry a single living creature on the beach, whilst from the shat tered fortress on the shore, the blood-red flag of Mahomed waved in crimson pride above the scene of its late barbarous triumph. At sunset the wind changed ; we passed the Spalmadores and Ipsara, and, rounding the promontory of Erythræ, entered the bay of Smyrna. As we caught the last glimpse of the ruins of Scio, the unfortunate lady pointed out c the remains of a house to the north of the town, which had been her father's : it was now in ruins, and as clearly as we could discern, appeared to be of large dimensions, and situ ated on one of the most picturesque points of the island.

Her name, she said, was Kalerdji, and her father had been one of the commissioners for collecting the revenue of the Sultana from the gum-mastic of the island. On the breaking out of the revolution in the Morea, strong apprehensions of a similar revolt in Scio were entertained in the Divan, and a number of the most distinguished Greeks of the island were selected to be sent to Constantinople as hos tages for the loyalty of the remainder . amongst these were her father and her only brother ; herself, her mother, and two elder sisters being left alone in Scio. Tranquillity continued un disturbed in the island for more than a year, though the accounts of the reiterated successes of the Moreots were daily stirring up the energies of the inhabitants, whose turbulence was only suppressed by the immediate dread of the Turkish garrison in the Genoese fortress on the beach, the only strong hold in Scio.