Lands, classical and sacred

Chapter I. Page

Arrival in Greece— Patras — Gulf of Corinth — Loutrachi — Isthmus — Peiræus — Athens — Temple of Theseus — Acropolis — Pnyx — Æschines —Hill of Mars— St. Paul .... 1

Chapter II

Athens — Lycabettus — Academus — Colonus — Road to Cephissid — Grotto of the Nymphs — Deceleia — Oropus — Aphidna — Road to Marathon — The Plain — Remarks on the Battle — Return to Athens — Vale of Daphni — Eleusis — Salamis — Sir James Stirling's Remarks on the Battle — Grave of Themistocles . . ..... 34

Chapter III

Transactions of September, 1843, at Athens — Meeting of the National Assembly of Greece — Prospects of the Greek Nation . . .81 CONTENTS. vi PAOK 208 253

Chapter IV

Syra — Packet Trade — M. le Roy— Alexandria— Mahmoudieh Canal — Nile — Cattle crossing — Boulak' — Cairo — Schoubra — Heliopolis — Island of Rhoda— Citadel 120

Chapter V

Mohammed Ali — His habits and government— Ægyptian Slavery — Various Reforms introduced by him — Police — Currency — Some inconsistencies in his system — Medical Establishments — Publick Education — Results of the conduct of other States towards him — Recent threat of retirement to Mecca . . . .160

Chapter VI

The great Pyramids of Gizeh — Campbell's Tomb — Sphinx — Necropolis of Ancient Memphis — Abousir — Sakhara — Ruined Pyramid — Dashour — Mitraheeny — Colossal Statue — Magicians of Cairo — Mr. Lane's explanation of the mystery .

Chapter VII

Preparations for a Journey across the Desert — Departure — Camels and Dromedaries — their Drivers — Itinerary of the Desert, as far as Khan Younes, on the frontier of Palestine CONTENTS. vii PAGE 349

Chapter VIII

Wady Gaza— Question concerning Sihor and the River of Ægypt — Gaza — Quarantine — Entrance of the Land of Canaan — Saccarieh— Khoordman Guards — Plain of Duaime — Pass and Mountain of Douras — Hebron — Vale of Mamre 298

Appendix

I. Delphi : A fragment of a Journal. From the ' Ionian Anthology ' . . . . .331

APPENDIX.

II. Extract of a Letter from Mr. Bonomi to the Secretary of the Ægyptian Literary Society ERRATA. Page 6, line 6, for " ancient Cenchrea," read " near to the ancient Cenchreiæ." Page 53, line 4, for " Bulessus," read " Brilessos." Page 215, line 7, for " at whatever distance observed,1' read " at whatever distance they may be viewed." Page 269, line 13, after " blanket," dele comma. LANDS, CLASSICAL AND SACRED.

Chapter I

Arrival in Greece — Patras — Gulf of Corinth — Loutrachi — Isthmus — Peiræus — Athens — Temple of Theseus — Acropolis — Pnyx — Æschines — Hill of Mars— St. Paul. I occupied myself for nearly six months, from the beginning of December, 1843, to near the end of May, 1844, in the fulfilment of a wish I had long formed, that of visiting Athens, Ægypt, the Holy Land, and Syria. On my way from Malta to Athens, I passed three very happy days among my old friends at Corfu ; a sojourn made all the more agree able to me by the hospitality and kindness of the Lord High Commissioner, Lord Seaton, — by the opportunity it gave me of forming his acquaintance, and by all which VOL. I. B ARRIVAL IN GREECE — PATRAS. [chap. I. 2 in that short time I saw of the measures in progress under his wise and good govern ment, for the benefit of a people whose many excellent qualities I so well know, and which deserve to be kindly cherished, frankly acknowledged, and affectionately remembered.

As I eagerly closed with the warmly expressed invitation I received again to visit Corfu and the islands on my way back from Syria, I postpone to the account of my return thither all notice of the observations I was enabled to form on subjects so interesting to me. I proceed to the main object of my journey. On the 20th of December I left Corfu in an Austrian steam-packet for Patras. There, the next morning, I spent a couple of hours with Mr. Crowe, the British consul, break fasting with him, and afterwards walking with him and his family over the town and the magnificent hill at the back of it, on which its ancient castle stands, and other ground on its outskirts, which he and I had traversed together nearly ten years before. About half a mile to the south-westward of CHAP. I.] PATRAS. 3 the town, on the shore, are a small church and well, dedicated to St. Andrew, near the spot where, according to tradition, that apostle was crucified.

We visited the school of Mu tual Instruction (ar-fcoXeiov aXXtiXoSiSao-KaXeiov) , established and conducted by the Greeks themselves, but which has also derived great advantage from the attention bestowed upon it by the daughters of Mr. Crowe, whose hereditary talents * so eminently qualify them for rendering their assistance valuable in the advancement of such objects. Patras is famous in the history of the Gre cian war of independence, as the place where the venerable Bishop Germanos headed the first revolt against the Turks. Here he reared the banner of the white cross, unsupported but by the enthusiasm of the mountaineers of the surrounding district. The example * Mr. Crowe is son of William Crowe, formerly publick orator of the University of Oxford ; a man whose memory is respected by all who were admitted to acquaintance with him, and whose taste and learning none are strangers to who have read from his pen some of the best lectures and treatises ever published on the subject of English metrical composition.

B GULF OF CORINTH. [chap. I. soon spread to the opposite coast. It kindled a spirit of obstinate resistance at Missolonghi. This spirit was so organised by the genius of Lord Byron, and conducted by the devoted patriotism of Prince Mavrocordato, as to enable a small town, hardly walled towards the land side, and almost without means of succour from the sea, to challenge all the means that Turkish Ætolia could bring against it, ancl, after enduring a siege of eight months, to beat back the Moslem force upon a country which this success had in spired with a kindred confidence, and had called forth to its allotted duties in the cause of Grecian freedom. From Patras we stood up the Gulf of Corinth ; scenery not altogether new to me, since, in former times, I had landed from thence at the Scala di Salona (ancient Cirrha), on an excursion to Delphi.* We passed the castles of the Morea.

We passed Lepanto on our left, which looks down upon the waters famous for that renowned sea-fight so well placed by Lord Byron as * See Appendix 1. CHAP. I.] LOUTRACHI. 5 intermediate in history between Actium and Trafalgar. We passed Vostitza, with its humble pier, its flat-roofed houses, and stu pendous plane-tree, on our right; and, on the same night, having seen a glorious sun set cast all its varied colours on the pine forests, rocks, and snows of the Parnassus range, we anchored at Loutrachi (the " little bath"), at the north-eastern end of the Bay of Corinth. The origin of the name of Loutrachi will easily appear to any one who will walk about two hundred yards along a low shelf of rocks overhanging the sea to the westward ofa small custom-house, which alone marks the site of what was formerly a town.

He will there, at the foot of the rocks, find three hot springs, each distant about ten yards from the next to it ; the furthermost, the most powerful, rising in a narrow cavern, and gushing in a strong stream into the sea. Each of these springs (I did not try them with a thermometer, but only by wading into them, the furthermost reaching nearly to my knee) is of the tem perature of certainly more than ninety de- [chap. I. 6 ISTHMUS. grees, I should think somewhere about a hundred, of Fahrenheit. From Loutrachi, on the morning of the 22nd, I walked with some of the party from our vessel across the isthmus. Our luggage was carried on cars to Kalamaki, ancient Cenchrea, on the opposite gulf, where another Austrian steamer waited to receive us. This passage is, in fine weather, much better made on foot than in a car with the lug gage, and quite as expeditiously.

The track, which is called the Hexamilion (six miles), but which, in truth, is not more than five in length, commands an expanse of rare beauty all along. During the first half of the walk, the Aero Corinthus and site of the ancient city stand full in view ; * that city, the " friend of Sparta, and rival of Athens," the last stronghold of the Achaian league, once famous above all other cities in * I do not break in upon the order of time in my narrative, by describing places which I did not visit till subsequently to the time of which it treats. Some months afterwards, I had an opportunity of passing a few hours at Corinth. CHAP. I.] ISTHMUS. 7 Greece for the extent of its commerce, the beauty of its coinage, and the skill of its artisans ; — Corinth, the queen of seventy prosperous colonies, and, amidst all the allurements of its own wealth and luxury, and in the days when Grecian liberty was lost, the home and refuge of the ancient philosophy, and the first among the Grecian schools to receive and spread forth among the Gentiles the doctrines of the Christian revelation.

The latter half of the walk across the isthmus leads down a sandy path, among young pine-trees, juniper, and cistus, to one of those prospects seen nowhere but in Greece : a range of deep blue waters, studded with islands, and bounded on either side by swelling mountains and bold pinnacles, every one of them a time-honoured monument, as it were inscribed with some great name sacred to us from our earliest days ; — the gorge through which Leonidas passed on towards Thermopylæ, the hills of Phyle and of Thebes, and those which look down upon Megara, Eleusis, Salamis, and Ægina, as PEIRÆUS. [chap. I. 8 they rise successively over the bay of Cen chrea, and the Saronick gulf on the way to Athens. We reached the Peiræus by moonlight. It is a fine bright harbour ; to be entered, as of old, only through the narrow opening between the pillars of the Lions.

The ancient pedestals are still there. The statues with which they had been adorned by Cimon were carried away by Morosini and his Venetians, who, in a spirit well befitting a Vandal origin, memorized his own shame ful plunder by changing the glorious name of Peiræus into the bastard compound of Porto Leone. But classical as well as moral justice has at last been done between these two famous sea-born republicks of ancient and of modern Europe : Athens, who first framed and established within her walls that scheme of popular jurisprudence which has since been applied as the safeguard of per sonal rights and publick justice in all free states ; Venice, who invested with the sym bols of democracy the most cruel, odious, and debauching tyranny of which any his- CHAP. I.] PEIRÆUS. 9 tory bears record, and who finally, having surrendered all on purchase, even to the symbols themselves which she had so long dishonoured, lies chained to the footstool of one of the last remaining arbitrary go vernments of the world.

The lions of the Peiræus are at Venice still. But the Peiræus is now again a Grecian port, and Athens the capital of a free country, made so by the act of her children ; while Venice, a city of deserted palaces, is but the sepulchre of a proud, vicious ancestry, whose descendants are subjects of Austria. The entrance of the Peiræus is extremely ill lighted at night. On each of the pillars is a lanthorn. These are intended to be sea-marks for the coast, as well as guides through a channel where a large ship in passing has but little room to spare on either side. But they are much too dim to answer the former purpose well at any time ; and the latter purpose is left unprovided for during the greater number of the dark hours ; for the lanthorns are so ill furnished that they begin to "pale their ineffectual b [CHAr.

I. 10 PEIRÆUS. fires" generally within three or four hours of being kindled, and, through the winter months, when their duty begins early, always expire about midnight. The light-house on the headland anciently called the Promon tory of Alcimus, to the southward of the entrance, standing between the Peiræus and Munichea, answers well the purpose of a distant sea-mark. The Peiræus is finely flanked by this ground on the one hand, and on the other by the high hills which to the northward reach from Ægaleia to Parnes. It is hollowed out into a gracefully curved basin, deep and clear, of nearly a mile in ex tent each way, lined at its termination to the east by a newly-built and cleanly town, and backed by a distant view of Athens in all its glory at about five miles across the plain. For the first half mile of the modern road to Athens, the long walls of Themistocles, com pleted under the name of the Triple Wall by Pericles, may still at intervals be traced.

At about a quarter of a mile to the right of the road, and a mile from the Peiræus, is the tomb of Karaiskaki, and of the Greeks CHAP. I.] ATHENS. 11 and Philhellenes, who fell under the sabres of the Turkish cavalry in the attempt to raise the siege of Athens in 1827. This is the same ground on which, but with a very different issue as respected the freedom of the country, the Athenian garrison under Archelaus the Cappadocian was destroyed by Sylla, at the close of the last struggle made in Greece against the Roman power. To the same heights too to which Archelaus retired with the mangled remains of those whom he had led, General Church effected a masterly retreat, on the evening of his disastrous battle (undertaken, I believe, against his advice), in the face of an over whelming force which was pouring in from every direction, and covering the whole plain between the Peiræus and the city.

Nothing has been left undescribed of the general appearance of the city and plain of Athens. Every body is now familiar with it, even such as know them only through the full and exact details given by Colonel Leake and Dr. Wordsworth, the architectural ele vations and restorations of Mr. Cockerell, TEMPLE OF THESEUS. [chap. I. and the clever and faithful panoramick drawing published, a few years ago, from the pencil of Mrs. Bracebridge. Yet there are effects, not of colouring and of lights and shadows only, but created by the very out line of the hills and buildings as you shift your ground in approaching them, which no general description can give to the imagination, and even the best drawings must fail to convey to the eye ; but they forcibly im press themselves on the mind when presented in their wondrous reality.

Of all that architecture has done in this way, I think the Temple of Theseus, every part of which has been so much studied and so often represented by artists, is what not only the most delighted but astonished me in its relation to all that surrounds it. There is a grandeur belonging to its position for which I was quite unprepared. Occupy ing, as it does, a ground so much below even the base of the rock of the Acro polis, still its commanding height above the whole of the modern, and the site of the ancient city, is what I have never seen a drawing or description which gave me an adequate idea of. From afar, it seems hardly to rise above the plain ; but, as you approach it, and chiefly as you stand under its eastern portico, looking down on that part of the city where, of old, a w7ide street led from it to the Dorick gate of the second Agora, you see in its full majesty the loftiness of the station to which you have gradually mounted.

And this is in no wise impaired by the much greater height of the Acropolis that overhangs you. And your admiration of these things does not subside with the first surprise. Far otherwise. The Parthenon, so well said by Dr. Wordsworth to be " the finest building in the finest situation in the world," all Athens (I mean not that of the Romans, the Venetians, or the Bavarians, but the Athens of Pericles) grows and improves vastly upon your admiration the oftener you see and the better you know it. As with all that is love liest in beauty, there is, if such a word may be applied to the forms and colours of architecture and of country, a kind of expression, which, on better acquaintance, gives a charm and dignity beyond what from the first you acknowledge in its faultless symmetry of feature. Each building stands in the best possible relation to all the rest; and the lines along which Art has arranged that you should approach it are those from which it is to be seen to greatest advantage.

As you draw nearer, its proportions become more grand, and the fine mellow complexion of the an tique marble, blended rather than contrasted with the rich hues which mantle over the country around, are effects such as no painter can give, and few would dare attempt to copy faithfully. Standing on the eastern brow of the Acropolis, I saw the sunrise over Hymettus, full against the portico of the Parthenon, and lighting up its whole face, in its minutest details, even to the round stains left by the votive shields which hung above the architrave during the second Peloponnesian war. Far behind me, streams of purple and crimson crept along the sides of Parnes and Deceleia, till the white houses and garden walls began to sparkle below where once were the villas and stoæ of Academus. This was a scene which one who has looked upon it can never describe, and never forget.

The same sun has, it is true, at its daily rising, beheld Athens, for nearly three thousand years, an example or a monument of great renown, and has awakened the tints of the same climate around her : but, as you stand on that rock in the morning twilight, till the first gush of the returning dawn pours through the gorges of Attica and at every moment grows into a broader and warmer gleam, calling forth again from darkness each bright landmark of her heroick history, it is surely not too fanciful or too excited an imagination which can at such an hour exult in it, as in a living type of joyful things, — the sunshine of peace and justice and education restored, after so long a night, to the plains, the courts, and the schools of that noble land, together with the best of human blessings, Liberty.

The long tract of olive grove, stretching along the sites of the Academy and Colonus, and far to the north and south of them, lias a very remarkable appearance through the dimness of a morning or evening twilight. The first morning after my arrival, when I looked out upon them from my window, I was, for a short time, deceived into the im pression of there being an arm of the sea spreading itself along the plain before me. And this very much confused my geogra phical notions of the Plain of Athens. I did not remember then that passage in Dr. Wordsworth's book, to the striking truth of which, after reading it again, I can from ex perience bear testimony : " The thick wood of olives, still growing on the site of the Academy towards the left, — which looks like a silver sea rippling in the autumnal breeze."

The view of the Acropolis from the Street of Æolus, one of the two largest streets of the modern city, leading by the Temple of the Winds to the foot of the rock, is the least advantageous of any. For, on that side, the northern one, neither of the porticos of the Parthenon is to be seen, and a few ouly of the pillars that connected them are left standing since the last bombardment by the Turks. You are so much under the brow, CHAP. I.] PARTHENON. 17 that the Saracenick wall which crowns it entirely hides from you the temple of Mi nerva Polias, which would at a greater dis tance break the long line facing you. But the side pillars also of the Parthenon being most of them laid low, little is visible from hence save the bluff crag rising behind the houses of the city, crowned with a straight embattled wall whose square towers even do not rise above the flat extent of its top.

It is when you have mounted the winding path from the Areopagus on the west, and are within a few yards of where the buildings of the Propylæa rise, to the right of the ascent, that the whole majesty of the edifice is disclosed. Colonel Leake was, I believe, the first to draw attention to the mode in which the Greeks managed the entrances of their fortified places, so that the right, the unshielded side of persons approaching them should always be exposed along the whole way. The assailant thus had no defence against the weapons of the garrison, unless he braced his shield on his right arm ; im peding thus the action of his sword, or spear, ACROPOLIS. [chap. r. or sling, or bow. But the most exquisite lines of beauty were studied here as carefully as the useful ones of defence ; and it is very observable, in mounting towards the Parthenon, how artfully they are combined.

At every step from the outer gate, as you approach from the Hill of Mars, or by the ancient Peiræan Way, and from the very beginning of the ascent, for full half a mile of ancient road from the opposite side (that of the Ilissus, the Temple of Jupiter Olympius, and the great theatre of Bacchus), your right shoulder is turned towards the walls. And the winding course that opposed this difficulty to an enemy brought also the stranger coming to admire, and the procession to worship and sacrifice, up to the most picturesque angle of each successive building. After you have passed the temple of the Unwinged Victory and the Propylæa, then it is that the Erechthæum, Minerva Polias, Pandrossium, and Parthenon, are in turn presented; each in its noblest per spective, not full-faced, like the Madeleine of Paris, or like those many monuments of a taste not Attick which line the sides or front the extremities of the wide streets of London.

I cannot but believe that the utmost effort of reflection and taste is required to apply successfully an imitation of Grecian architecture, where it is so rarely fitting to climate, habits, or historical associations, in the countries of the north. Nothing surely is plainer than the error committed in building, line for line, upon a Grecian model on any ground or in any scenery dissimilar from that where the ori ginal was placed. Even the proportions themselves, after all the measurements which these buildings have for so many ages under gone, are a difficulty to our ablest architects, of whom the best are they who feel the most how much on this subject yet remains to be learned. They have long known that all these models differ in the symmetry of their parts according to the height and general character of the ground on which they stand and over which they are to be approached.

They have long learnt that, in these things, as in many others, there is a certain spirit of compromise which is not at variance with the strictest principles, while it abates the harsh ness of their application. And, as in musick the tuning of an instrument is a merely mechanical process, whereas the harmo nizing: of the chords afterwards makes trial of the ear and genius of an accomplished musician, so, in the other arts, taste and genius are required to nicely arrange those modifications which give a charm to the whole, but are never perceived, except in the general effect. Thus it was left to Mr. Cockerell, and to the Germans who have followed him in the inquiry, within the last few years to discover that in the Parthe non and Temple of Theseus there is not one straight line. Not only, as any eye will easily detect, the tapering lines of each column, converging from the bottom of the shaft to the top, are curves, no one of which can be described from a single centre, but the axes themselves converge also to assist the perspective of height ; and this in diffe rent degree, with reference to the different height of the ground the temple covers.

Then, again, the ground plan also is of curves. The columns both of the porticos and sides stand on convex lines. The con verging of the axes of the columns is very distinctly shown in the diagrams even of that old but beautiful work of Stewart's. The convex lines of the ground-plan have been very recently and ably reasoned upon by Mr. Pennethorne,* and may be observed by looking along the face or side from an angle of either of these buildings. All the lines of the architraves, pediments, and peristyles, are also curved. He who advised his country men to employ every hour in studying the "exemplaria Græca," well knew that any imitation of such models, to be perfect in spirit, required genius little inferiour to that which first conceived them. The advice, which had reference to the arts of writing and * ' Elements and Mathematical Principles ofthe Greek Architects and Artists,' by John Pennethorne, 1844.

Mr. Pennethorne has also, I think, very satisfactorily shown that Vitruvius was aware of this, but that it was not worth the toil or expense of applying these refine ments of art to works done for those who would not have had taste to appreciate them. rhetorick, tainted as those arts also were, even in the Augustan age, by the infusions of the Oriental school, was surely not less applicable to the art of architectural design. And it was much required. For, without speaking of the grosser barbarisms of Roman innova tion, such as the monumental column with a massive capital made to support nothing but the image of a man placed as far out of sight as invention and labour could hoist it, — without speaking of such gross enormities of taste as these, — there is not a Roman temple, save those built in the colonies by Grecian artists, which, though perhaps of the exactest proportions, does not want that tranquil majesty of composition that distinguishes all the works of that wondrous people from whom Rome plundered or learnt all she ever possessed or ever knew worthy of fame in art or science.

Before leaving the Acropolis and the ruins which still adorn it, and the station where once stood that gigantick work of Phidias, the statue of Minerva, the point of whose spear and golden crest seen above the Parthenon served as a sea-mark for mariners on their course from Sunium, I cannot but say a few words on that choice and graceful little Ionick temple, high upon the right of the entrance of the Propy læum, the temple of the Unwinged Vic tory, lately disencumbered from the screen of wall and rubbish which concealed it, and now undergoing a very judiciously con ducted process of restoration ; limited, as it ought to be, to setting up again in their proper places the columns and such parts of the architrave as had fallen. This was pro ceeding when I was in Athens, and was nearly completed when I last saw it.

This building is eminently worthy of notice ; not less on account of its history than of the singularity of its position and the exceeding beauty of its structure. It was a votive shrine dedicated to Victory, after the defeat of the Persian hosts at Marathon, Salamis, and Pla tæa, and the final retreat of the army of Mardonius out of Greece. The goddess was then first worshipped by the Athenians as NtKri A-n-repos, — as having stripped off her wines, to remain thenceforward with their city. The basement on which the columns stand was adorned with a relief of figures, examples of the best style of the best times of Greek sculpture, as is evidenced by the few detached and mutilated fragments which were found buried among the heaps below. Three of these figures, broken and much defaced, are preserved and now placed within the temple.

One of them, the most perfect, but deprived of the head and part of the left arm, may, for gracefulness of form and action and perfection of drapery, be placed in rivalry with the most admired of the Elgin marbles. It is not of more than about half the size of life, and represents Vic tory, her wings still displayed, but stooping to loose her sandal in token of her intent to sojourn in the midst of the triumphant people. Whatever other important speci mens of sculpture have been lately dis covered are, with one exception, preserved in a temporary museum within the Temple of Theseus. One statue, eminently worthy of note, remains on its pedestal, in what is CHAP. I.] ACROPOLIS. 25 now an obscure court surrounded by mean houses, but where once ran the famous Street of the Statues leadingfrom the foot ofthe Tem ple of Theseus to the entrance of the second Agora.