Sketches of a Yachting Cruise ... With illustrations by the author

Front matter

OUTWARD BOUND. SKETCHES OF A YACHTING CRUISE. BY MAJOR GAM BIER PARRY, AUTHOR OF ■• SDAKIN. I88r>," " REVNELI, TAYLOR. A BIOGRAPHY," etc., etc. mitb Illustrations on the Author. LONDON : W. H. ALLEN & CO., 13 WATERLOO PLACE, PALL MALL. S.W. 1889. {AU Rights Reserved.) LONDON PRINTED BY W H. ALLEN AND CO.. IS WATERLOO PLAI'K. PALL MALL. S « . CONTENTS. PAGE Chapter I. — Outward Bound .... 1 ,, II. — Algeria ...... 18 „ III.— Sicily 46 ,, IV. — Corfu and Albania ... 64 ,, V. — Ithaca. — Zante. — Olympia . . 93 VI.— Navarino 133 „ VII.— Hydra.— Corinth . . . .160 ,, VIII. — Sunium. — Marathon. — Euboea . 183 ,, IX. — Mount Athos. — Eussico . . . '205 ,, X. — Mount Athos. — Vatopedi . . 229 ,, XL — Gallipoli. — Scutari. — Sevastopol .

Preface

. A preface to a volume such as this is unnecessary save on one count — as an apology. The places referred to are already familiar to many, and the road traversed is year by year becoming familiar to many more. All there is to tell has been told : the choicest flowers by the way-side have been picked long since, and those that are left have lost their freshness. It would be idle, then, to pretend that anything new will be found in these Sketches. The most I can hope for is that they may recall hapjiy days to those, whose lives are now spent in harness, and whose time and increasing responsibilities no longer allow leisure for foreign travel. If they do this I shall be repaid. I would only ask that the many shortcomings in the illustrations, as in the text, may be pardoned. E. G. P. fist of Illustrations TO FACE PAGE outwabd bound Frontispiece.

CATANI POINT 16 ALGIERS BAT 20 BOUGIE 40 CONBTANTINE 42 MONTE PELEGRINO 46 ETNA 60 CORFU 64 AN ALBANIAN SHEPHERD 78 BUTRINTO MAB8H 84 THE LAGUNES, LTVITATZA 90 OLYMPIA. A COLUMN OF THE OLTMPIEIUM AND THE HILL OF KRONOS 116 OLTM-PIA. THE PHILIPPEION AND THE HERÆON 120 OLYMPIA. EXOAVATION8 OUTSIDE THE WEST WALL OF THE ALTIS 124 OLYMPIA. THE PALÆSTRA 126 DELTKTJBABA 136 NAVABINO 138 A CALM NIGHT 158 THE ACRO COBINTHUS 182 STONE PINES AT MARATHON 188 THE ENTRANCE TO THE STENO CHANNEL 192 CHALCIS 194 MOUNT ATHOS. RU8SICO 216 THE HOLY MOUNTAIN 222 THE ALMA 258 THE OLD BARRACKS, 8EYASTOPOL YACHTING CRUISE.

Chapter I

Outward Bound. " Peak her for a fair wind ! " " Yo, ho ! " " Once more boys ! " " Ya, hai ! " " Belay." " Up anchor ! " The bars are in the capstan, and all hands are at work in a minute ; the cheery " chink " " chink" of the pawls resounds over the deck, and the cable is gradually stowed, fathom by fathom, in the lockers ; the anchor is tripped, and then the sails, after flapping lazily, fill ; the yacht pays off, and is under way. There is a charm in yachting which, once experienced, never dies. Given a well-found yacht of Cowes build, and leisure for a four or five months' cruise in pleasant company, together with a certain other condition which shall be nameless, and the pastime of yachting will assuredly be found to have few equals. YACHTLNG CRUISE. 2 Did not Thales contend that the sea was the mother of all life ? and is there not life in every breath that Mows over its restless surface?

Is there not a sense of freedom connected with the open sea to which all other conditions of life are strange, freedom from worries, freedom from cares, freedom even from the penny post and the conventionalities and restraints of what the world calls society ? The air is filled with a brightness and gladness, and fresh vivific energies are wafted on every breeze ; even the thought of troubles comes tinged with a certain inconsistency, and though some have found a ring of sadness in the sound of the sea, it seems as though sorrow could find no place among waves that are always dancing, and among waters which carry with them every colour of the rainbow. There is happiness in being on its surface, and a pleasure — a deep pleasure — is to be derived from watching its moods at every hour of the day and night.

But as there is no pleasure without pain, so most assuredly there is no sport without a spice of danger in it. The storm encountered, and after a hard battle, may be, weathered, serves to brace the nerves at the time, and when seas have gone down, and the sun shines again in the heavens, there comes a feeling of satisfaction at the danger past, and a sense of having battled successfully with nature in one of her grandest and most terrible moods. It is not the sailing over calm summer seas that makes one love a yacht ; it is the dirty weather run safely through ; the dangers encountered, when the seas have roared in the darkness and the wind has rushed past us over the surface of the great waters ; it is the recollection of storms fought out in company that makes one look upon a yacht as a living being, and causes one at last to love her as a friend.

A gale at sea must always be rough work, alike in the largest steamer as in a sailing yacht, but, if the yacht be well manned and well handled, you are as safe in her as in the biggest vessel afloat. Give her fair play, treat her honestly, and do not ask impossibilities of her, and she will take you through the worst weather you can meet, and bring you safely, though it may be mauled, into that smooth water that lies beyond the zone of every storm. Anyone standing on the quays at Southampton on the morning of November 21, 188 — , might have seen a schooner of some 180 tons burthen spread her sails to the wind and glide slowly down " The Water," till she was lost to sight amongst the shipping which plies so incessantly up and down that busy part of England's coast. She was outward bound on a long cruise ; the days of fitting out had come to an end at last, and, without any fuss, she had quietly weighed anchor and floated out on the ebb, with scarcely wind enough to fill her sails.

Her name was Ptarmigan. A fair wind in the Channel carried her as far as the Start by one o'clock on the morning of the 22nd, but, as day broke, this gradually died away. By noon the glass began to fall slowly. At sunset the weather looked 1 * anything but kind ; the wind drew southerly, and rain fell. Bad weather was coming and no doubt about it. " Snug her down for a gale, boys ! " was the order : so sail was at once reduced, topmasts housed, and everything made ready for fighting out the weather. At midnight the wind suddenly flew into W.N.W., and blew a gale, the sea at the same time running very high ; the yacht was accordingly hove to for a while under reefed trysail and storm staysail. Morning broke with the weather as bad as ever, but the Captain hoped to get out of it and held on.

The day passed ; the night closed in ; the morning broke again, and still the weather moderated not a bit. The sea roared and the wind blew ; the sky became darker and darker all round ; but the yacht behaved splendidly, and she was in good hands. The next day, and the next, passed without a change, till, on the night of the 27th, the weather grew, if it were possible, even worse. The glass was at 29"'40 and still continued to fall ; the yacht's position being 40° 7' N. Lat., 5° 50' W. Long. ; well out in the middle of that dreaded Bay of Biscay, where man has so often battled bravely for days and nights with storm and tempest, and where deeds of heroism have been per formed of which not one soul has lived to tell the tale. Far beyond the reach of succour from any earthly hands, many a sailor has struggled here for very life, clinging to some spar or other flotsam, till at length, worn out, he has let go his hold and found a grave in the cold black waters of the Bay of Biscay.

Thestorm sweeps across the maddened sea, and dashes onward to the coasts of England. The angry gusts tell those ashore it is a wild night ; the wind whistles round the lonely cottage ; the rain is flung against the lattice window, shaking the lead-bound panes, and the single candle within flickers in the draught. An anxious face is peering through the darkness to where the white surf is thundering on the beach, and a short " God help them " is whispered between quivering lips. Ah ! God help them, it is indeed ; but days will pass and no news will come, till at last the ship will be classed as "missing," and no more will be heard then of Joe or Tom, the husband of the young wife who lives up in the cottage yonder, just beneath the cliff, till the day when the sea at last gives up her dead, and he and she meet hand in hand once more.

Those on the Ptarmigan were far too busy, though, for thoughts like these. At midnight on the 27th a terrific gale was blowing, and, the wind having gone round more to the southward, the Captain determined to heave dead to. All went well until 4 a.m. ; the yacht had shipped little water and had behaved splendidly, and everyone on board hoped that now they would be able to ride out the rest of the gale where they were. This was, however, not to be, for the men at the helm suddenly reported that the rudder-head was straining, and on the Captain making an inspection, this was found to be only too true — indeed, it was almost twisted off. Of all the accidents that may happen to a ship — fire and collision excepted— anything affecting the helm is the worst. Let the sea make a clean sweep of the decks, and let spars and bulwarks be carried away, at least a rag of some sort can be rigged and the vessel steered ; but take away the rudder, and the ship becomes at once unmanageable, for to fix any thing of a jury rudder in an Atlantic gale passes the power of man.

" I am sorry to say, Sir, that I have bad news to report," said the Captain to the owner of the Ptarmigan r in the small hours of the morning of the 28th. " lam sorry for that," saidC ■; " what 's up now?" " Well," replied the Captain, " the rudder-head is nearly twisted off, and with the heavy strain of this sea it cannot hold much longer. What would you wish me to do, Sir ? " "Do? Why do exactly what you would if I was not on board," said C , preparing at the same time to come on deck and see for himself. " There is nothing for us, Sir, but to put her before it, and run for the Channel, though it is a good bit to ask of a vessel in such a sea as this, and I know nothing of her running capabilities. One thing is certain, it won't do for us to stop where we are, and we must chance it, Sir," and with this the Captain returned on deck.

As soon as a tiller had been rigged, the wheel and steering-gear were unshipped. Then the sea was watched for a moment or two ; a favourable opportunity was seized, and round went the yacht before the wind,. scudding along before the gale at fearful speed. The vast volumes of water followed her and towered above her, threatening every moment to descend and, in one instant, to dash her to atoms. But she fled on under bare poles before the gale, reared at one moment high in the air, lowered at the next into a deep valley, where smaller waves leaped at her sides, where the air was filled with the roar of the storm, and the spray was caught up and sent swirling on the wind. " Wonders in the deep " face to face ; the great waters maddened by the winds of heaven, and lashed into a fury which no power could assuage ; a gale, a stern reality at last, and to be fought out now in a yacht of 180 tons with a damaged helm.

The rudder still held with the help of the lashings round the tiller and head, but all on board knew that it might carry away at any moment. Throughout the 28th the weather continued the same, and all day and all night the yacht raced on before the gale. The morning of the 29th broke with the air thick, and the sky still black overhead. No observations had been possible for three days, and the yacht's whereabouts could only be guessed. On the night of the 29th the rudder-head at last twisted completely off. The chock over the head was immediately cut away ; a couple of eye-bolts were driven in on each side of the rudder below the deck, and a quantity of seizing wire was passed through these and others placed on each side of the tiller. Two of the iron gangway-stanchions were also driven into the fore part of the rudder and lashed to the tiller, and thus the helm was strengthened as far as possible.

A bag of oil was hung out from one of the afterdavits, and with this safeguard the seas were prevented in a great measure from breaking in board. All hands were nowbeginning to feel the heavy strain they had had to bear. For eight days the storm had raged around them, and the condition of the yacht had for most of that time given cause for the gravest anxiety. No observations had latterly been possible ; soundings had been attempted, and the result of these seemed to indicate the whereabouts as the Channel. At last, on the afternoon of the 29th, a large steamer was caught sight of for a moment, and the Captain, thinking that she was bound up Channel, altered his course by hers. It was fortunate he did so. Early in the morning of the 30th he made the Start, and before mid-day the Ptarmigan had dropped her anchor in the peaceful harbour of Dartmouth.

The wind had gone down, the sky had cleared, and the sun was now shining brightly. Picturesque Dart mouth, with its quaint, old-fashioned houses grouped along the water's edge, looked very quiet and very peaceful after the eight days' fight in the raging storm. The circling waters of the Dart were undisturbed by even a ripple, and on the wooded slopes the leaves still hung tenaciously to many of the trees, tinting them with the last golden hues of autumn; the smoke ascended skywards from the cottage chimneys, or hung in blue wreaths about the hill-sides, and the yacht, which a few hours before had been racing for her life, now lay motionless and at rest in still waters. A fortnight to refit, and we are off again, dancing over the waves at ten knots, with a fair wind aft, and the shores of England gradually settling down into a faint blue line astern.

No bad weather stopped us this time, and in a few days we were entering the Straits of Gibraltar, and heading up for the famous Rock. What a current that is that runs through the narrow channel dividing the continents of Europe and Africa. It is a hard matter to get through " the Gut " with a head wind, even with the current to help you, and it is no uncommon sight to see upwards of a hundred sailing vessels, of all manner of rigs, working for days to get out of the Mediterranean when the wind is against them. After a while they seem to tire of trying, and one and all go about and run back for anchorage to the Eastern Beach. Here they cluster together waiting for a change, every day growing in numbers, till at last, and often suddenly, the air begins to grow thick to the eastward, and a faint swell becomes visible on the surface of the sea.

In an instant every ship is busy getting under way. For a short while the Gut is filled with a crowd of vessels, and then, like a flock of birds flushed by some passer by, they are gone. As luck would have it, we carried the fair wind through the Straits, and in an hour or two we were darting in and out among the hulks and shipping in Gibraltar bay. It wanted but half an hour to sunset as we dropped anchor at the New Mole. The sky to the westward was bathed in a wealth of colour, and as the sun sank behind the hills of Algeciras the whole bay glowed with crimson light. I must pass over Gibraltar without notice ; but that night on board the yacht at the New Mole was filled with dreams of days long gone by : dreams of six happy years spent in the best quarter for soldiers out of England. At one moment I was galloping with the Calpe hounds over the Alcadezas or through the cork woods ; at the next, riding steeplechases or playing polo on Campamento common.

Then the scene would change and there was a sound of music, a stirring sound of many bands playing together. The whole of the troops in garrison were deployed into line in front of me, and the General was riding clown the ranks in a silence broken only by the silvery sound of the massed bands, sometimes loud and echoing up the Rock, and sometimes soft, but always playing the same slow march to the throbbings of big drums. But while the long lines of bayonets were still glittering in front of me, the whole picture gradually grew dim, and the beat of the drum was changed to a slow measured tramp of a sentry over head. I was a subaltern again on the Waterport Guard, with the rats fighting for the candle on the table, and the poultry in the Moorish market close by keeping up a constant crowing through the night.

Then the door of the guard-room opened and a person stood before me, who for more than twenty years was as much a part of the Rock as the batteries which encircle it ; a man who, in his day, was little short of an autocrat in all matters connected with guards and sentries, and before whom subalterns trem bled. He had a curious and somewhat comical expression of countenance, grey whiskers, and black curly hair, and when administering a rebuke in connection with some trivial omission or oversight — always a heinous neglect of duty in his eyes — he had a habit of clipping his words and of accompanying each remark with a bow. " My friend," he began, bending forward in a peculiar manner from the hips, " My friend, ov curse you don't know that the key sergint did not repurt himself last evening — no, no." Did the great Town Major stamp his foot as he said this, or had the rats, in quarrelling over the soap, knocked the soap-dish into the basin ?

No, it was morning gun-fire, and as I jumped up in my bunk "Reveille" was sounding: the garrison was waking to another day, and from far and near the old familiar call was ringing out on the still, clear air. It was a dream after all, and the dream, like the happy times it pictured, had passed away. The first day of a new year, ushered in with a bright sky and a warm sun, and scarcely enough air stirring to fill the sails. Getting under way early, however, and floating lazily out of the New Mole, we found a little more wind at Europa Point, and thus we soon passed from the busy, bustling side of Gib to the lonely and uninhabited eastern face, where the great, grey, massive cliffs rear themselves out of the sea, and where the echoes of restless waters are never still. From the typical English garrison town of Gibraltar, with its atmosphere of method, rule, and cleanliness, to dirty, struggling Malaga is only a sail of fifty-seven miles. ''Slay a king and go to Malaga," runs the Spanish proverb ; but though Malaga has been over and over again upset by revolutionary demagogues, decimated by plagues, and tumbled about by earthquakes, there is yet an air of prosperity about the place, and its harbour is always crowded to excess.

Though given a bad name, Malaga has been blessed with a most beautiful climate, and its fertile vega produces coffee, sugar, and fruits of all kinds. But who will stay at Malaga when a few hours by train will take him to a place renowned before all others for its scenery and its historical associations? Granada seems to possess attractions which may be looked for in vain elsewhere. Few places can compare with that thicklyplanted hill where the elm-trees grow closely side by side, and give impenetrable shade. It may be that you have been worshipping at the shrine of the good queen, Isabella, whom you fell in love with years ago on reading Prescott's immortal work. Weary with the heat and dust of the town, you enter beneath the great Moorish gateway. In a moment the scene around you is completely changed.

The noise of the streets gives place to the rippling of water, which flows in tiny rivulets on either side as you wend your way along the narrow paths between the trees. The first green leaves of early spring are beginning to fleck the labyrinth of branches above you, and the ground is carpeted with young grass. You look up at the blue sky and catch sight of the snowy ridge, the Sierra Nevada, which seems as if it joined the wood in which you stand, so close is it. Then you enter that marvel of delicate beauty, the Alhambra, where you wander undisturbed from court to court, surrounded by some of the most perfect examples of Moorish architecture. Every inch of surface is incrusted with ornament, and scarcely a wall or ceiling remains without some trace of the gorgeous colouring and ornamentation which at one time overlaid it.

Though four centuries have swept by since Abdallah surrendered the keys of the fortress to Ferdinand and Isabella, the Alhambra, thanks to the climate, bears comparatively few traces of the hand of time ; and this, though the keen air from the snowy Sierra circulates at will throughout the building, and though neither door nor casement bars entrance to wind and rain. It is impossible to look across the lovely Vega of Granada from one of these open casements, without letting the thoughts run back to the great event with which the Alhambra must always be associated. It was these old walls and towers encircling the gem that crowns the hill, which witnessed the first act of a great drama. During eight centuries the Moors had risen to the very summit of their attainments as a nation ; they had covered the land with those monuments which still remain the wonder of all who behold them ; they had raised themselves from a condition of barbarism to one of comparative civilization ; but they had by degrees sunk again into a condition of impotent degeneracy and slothful indifference.

On the termination of the war of Granada their final extinction and decay was merely a matter of time. Ten years had sufficed to overturn the work of nigh eight centuries, and though a hundred years of unmerited persecution followed before the sur vivors of a once magnificent race were finally driven out of Europe, these last remained only as wanderers in a land which still flourished on the fruits of their past industry. A new nation gradually supplanted them ; a nation which has in its turn risen to a pinnacle of power unattained by any people in modern history, but one which has long since fallen from its high position among the kingdoms of the world. Generation follows genera tion, and while Spain is torn by internal dissension and rent with civil war, the Moors in further Morocco, on certain Fridays in the year, hang up a petition in their mosques and pray that Allah will see fit to restore to them the lands from which they have been wrongfully expelled.

A still evening ; the hum of busy Malaga, mingled with the deep tones of great cathedral bells, coming to us over the oily surface of the sea ; the light dying fast out of the western sky, and night creeping over the eastern horizon. The red rocks of the hills, the white houses dotted here and there among the vineyards, the crowded mass of shipping in the narrow harbour, all toning down into one homogeneous tint of blue-grey. The yacht lying becalmed two miles out with every sail set, waiting for the land breeze ; her head pointing first one way and then another according to the whim of passing currents, and the man at the helm spinning the wheel round to pass the time, or whistling for the wind. The breeze came at last, raffling the water as it stretched further and further out from the shore ; there was a rippling sound under the counter, and the yacht at length began to move.

Slow-ly and almost imperceptibly we glided along at first, but by degrees the wind freshened and we set our squaresail and raffy. Once up, our light canvas was never taken in again till we had •completed a run of nearly four hundred miles, and were entering the bay of Algiers. It would be hard to forget those first days in the Mediterranean, when the weather was so glorious and the wind so kind. Day by day the sun rose in a cloud less sky ; we took our observations by him at noon, and watched him sink slowly below the horizon in the even ing : then, as darkness came on, and our wake turned from a path of foam to one of sparkling gold, the sky above us deepened to sapphire hue, and the heavens were studded with a thousand jewels. Does any situation bring more directly home to the mind the vastness of the work of the Creator, than being afloat in the solitude of the boundless ocean, with nothing around you but the great deep, and with nothing above but the firmament of the heavens ?

Surely a man may obtain a more complete idea of his own utter insignificance, and arrive at a truer appreciation of the greatness of his Maker, in one night spent at sea in the quiet of a sailing vessel, than by a hundred and one days ashore, even if he be there surrounded by the grandest scenery nature can put before his eyes. But the quiet of a sailing vessel is now, to the traveller, almost a thing of the past, and the majority of yachts even, cruising in foreign waters, are steamers. It is the influence of the times. We are no longer satis fied with any element of uncertainty in our travels. Our ocean-going steamers must run with as much exactitude as our trains. We must leave England one day and be in America seven days later. We run any risks ; we dash along in the inky blackness of the night at eighteen knots, chancing the icebergs and risking collision ; we are no longer content with trains of ordinary speed ; we fly over the country and over the sea ; and thus we annihilate distance and economise time, but the romance of travel becomes more and more a thing of the past.

The magnificent scenery of the southern coast-line of Andalucia has faded away, and even the highest points of the Sierra Nevada are no longer visible. Cape Gata light has dipped below the horizon ere we turn in for the night ; and when morning breaks the high lands of another continent are visible to the south-east, like so many islands studding the sea. The west wind blows fresh, and the sea is calm, and for three days we sail along on a even keel averaging from five to six knots. The first impression conveyed by the coasts of Algeria is that of a country of extraordinary richness and fer tility. In the neighbourhood of Algiers the land rises in gentle slopes from the sea, and the pastures and corn fields, the vineyards and olive-groves, the patches of deep-red plough-land, the endless small, white, farm houses dotted everywhere over the landscape, and the flocks and herds browsing by the river-banks, make up EL CATANI POINT.

OUTWARD BOUND. 17 a picture of no ordinary beauty. But when to this is added the brilliant atmosphere of the south, when the whole landscape is shimmering in the warm rays of a morning sun, then the colouring assumes a tone ap proaching gaudiness, and the sombre groups of cypresses serve only to accentuate the glitter in which nature is revelling. For several hours we sailed slowly along close in shore. The wind had died away as we neared the land, and it took us many hours to round Catani Point. Then Algiers came gradually into view, and before sunset we had dropped anchor in its magnificent harbour.